My First Cards

In February ‘82, Alex Trevino was part of a trade to the Reds, bringing George Foster to the Mets. Trevino was Cincinnati’s answer to the catching position, as they were trying to elongate Johnny Bench’s career by moving bench to third base.

Alex posted a pithetic 74 OPS+ and slugged a junkie .318 over 120 games in his first season with the Reds. This is part of why the Reds lost 101 games the year after they led the NL in wins. Simply put, when you get 401 plate appearances and only 14 extra base hits, it doesn’t help your team much.

There were 2 highlights in his season though. The first came against his old team the Mets on September 5, when he went 4 for 4. The 2nd, was on September 14, when he finally hit his first major league home run! It was a top of the 2nd, 2 out, solo shot off Atlee Hammaker. Although, the Reds lost both those games anyway.

Looking into his situational stats though, show he still had the ability when his team needed him to show it. With runners in scoring position, he had a .410 OBP. Also, the more outs there were in an inning, the better he got on base. In fact, when there were 2 outs, he batted .320 and got on base at a .416 pace and only K’d 5 times in 113 PA’s.

The team he liked facing most in ‘82, were the Cardinals. He batted .360/.385/.520 over 10 games. Which is kind of funny, considering that the Cardinals won the World Series but they couldn’t hold down the light hitting Alex Trevino.

Mistake on the back. Card says he caught 45 base stealers in 1980. Looking up his stats on Baseball Reference though, shows he caught 47 stealing that year. Apparently Topps made a small adding mistake or something has been corrected over the years.

PS. Alex Trevino makes a cameo in Joe Lefebvre’s card in this set, from a game on May 2nd or 3rd, 1981.