Steve McCatty

January 10th, 2010 @ 11:55pm

Here, Steve McCatty looks more like a pastey white nerdy kid who should be home playing baseball on a video game than actually in the major leagues. Has he actually been outside in the sun during the past 6 months?

He’s even got this look on his face like he’s a little nervous, with this slouch that says “I’m not quite sure how to pose manly but I think this is it.”

Compared to his 1980 card, this one is just flat boring. A simple dull pose as opposed to firing a pitch to the plate in a game. Even the lettering on his jersey looks unfinished, as if nobody even bothered to care to color it in.

This makes for a very fitting card at this point in his career, as this was the season his career started downhill. Back in ‘80, he was a big deal. He was now faltering with arm problems and wouldn’t get surgery to fix it. Stubbornness isn’t usually a good thing.

From ‘81 to ‘82, his ERA rose a full 1.66 runs. He went from leading the AL in shutouts to not throwing any at all.

Just like his cards, he went from interesting to boring. he wasn’t even a laughingstock pitcher who’d put up a 5.00-something ERA and make you laugh at the team. He was just suddenly a 97 ERA+…just about average. Dull. Nothing special, nothing horrible.

In fact, he had the exact same ERA in both ‘82 and ‘83… how dull is that? After posting a 2.33 ERA, you really shouldn’t be pulling off a pair of 3.99 ERA’s as an encore.