The 10 most under-appreciated players of the 1990s: #5 Eric Plunk

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Have you been paying attention? Then you should already know that Eric Plunk is one of the most under-appreciated players of the 1990s.

He showed up on a table in Mike Jackson's post, and in fact was the top middle reliever in baseball from 1992-1997, minimum 300 IP, ranked by ERA+.









Plunk also makes the list for most wins without ever winning 10 in a single season. He appeared in the post-season a lot, but didn't pitch all that well. In 15 games he pitched to a 7.53 ERA.

A neat Eric Plunk fact: he was involved in a trade for Rickey Henderson twice:

• December 5, 1984: Traded by the New York Yankees with Tim Birtsas, Jay Howell, Stan Javier and Jose Rijo to the Oakland Athletics for Bert Bradley, Rickey Henderson and cash.
• June 21, 1989: Traded by the Oakland Athletics with Greg Cadaret and Luis Polonia to the New York Yankees for Rickey Henderson.

OK, so now for the elephant in the room...I've shown Plunk's 1991 Fleer card, #676. Most folks agree that this is a pretty awful set. The cards are yellow. All yellow. All of the cards are all yellow. Seen one card from this set and you've seen them all.

The backs are even worse with some ugly red and blue thrown in. The only good thing about the card design is the second photo on the back.