In fact, he was credited with the win for the ’78 & ’79 All-Star games, and then got the save in 1980.

That was all with the Cubs though. Would the pressure of trying to impress a new team and the new fans, make him crumble? NAAWW! He began the season with 4 saves in 4 save opportunities. The only reason it wasn’t 5 saves, is ’cause the Cardinals offense scored an extra 2 runs in the top of the inning of one game that Sutter came into.

He hit a rut after that though. From April 29 – May 24, 1981, he managed 4 saves and only blew 1, but… he was allowing batters to hit .319/.424/.551 off him and posted an awful 5.68 ERA. He got credit for 3 St Louis losses too.

Just when you’d think he wasn’t going to be good enough for another All-Star appearance, he righted his ship. in his next 5 appearances leading up to the strike, he got back to being Bruce Sutter, holding batters to a .154/.154/.231 batting line. He went 1-0, with 3 saves, and a 1.59 ERA during that stretch.

That was enough to get his season ERA back down to 3.07, and get enough All-Star votes to get into the game in Cleveland in ’81.

In typical Bruce Sutter fashion, he was the 9th inning guy for the National League, expected to hold down the 1 run lead that Mike Schmidt gave them an inning earlier.

First batter, Frank White, fouled off 3 pitches and draw a couple balls, but eventually grounded out to third base. Second batter was Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb. Now, I don’t know why the AL batted a pitcher, maybe they were out of position players, but whatever the case, Sutter mowed him down on 3 pitches.

At that point, it was all up to Dave Winfield, who gave it his best shot but only managed a flyball to leftfield.

So once again, Bruce earned the save. He won consecutive midsummer classics, and now he’d saved consecutive ones. Would the American League ever figure this guy out? …To be Coninued …in October.

The guy pitched decently when he finally got to training camp, posting a 2.63 ERA over 10 innings during March. Wasn’t enough for the Indians though, who sent him down to AAA ’cause they felt he had control problems.

When the ’82 Topps set went public, Topps slaps a picture of him wearing a helmet on his card as if to suggest the guy the guy has no place on the mound. Making him look like his main job is to hit, probably wasn’t a good self esteem booster for Silvio.

The poor guy just couldn’t catch a break.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Silvio had arm problems all through ’82, throwing just 2 IP in AAA. I find that detail very interesting really, ’cause where there’s smoke—there’s fire.

During this same season, the Indians had two other starting pitchers develop arm problems. Len Barker had his elbow spur, which went ignored but was well known. Bert Blyleven, injured his arm early in the season and missed almost the entire year. When Silvio shows up in Cleveland, he finds his arm problems from two years earlier suddenly returning?!?

I have no clue if the Indians medical staff wasn’t up to snuff, or if this was just a run of bad timing for the tribe. These injuries actually turned out to be the downfall of the ’82 Indians. The team had stocked up on pitching during the off-season, and actually started to look pretty good on paper when the season began. Their starting rotation was set to be—

1. Len “Perfect Game” Barker
2. Bert Blyleven (future Hall of Famer)
3. John Denny (’83 NL Cy Young)
4. Rick Sutcliffe (’84 NL Cy Young)

As you can clearly see, the Indians who’d gone 52-51 in 1981, were trying to build on their success and try to become a great pitching team. Instead, they’d find some of their key pitchers coming down with arm problems and falling just 3 wins short of the .500 mark when the season finished.

So it’s not really far fetched to think that maybe if Silvio wasn’t traded to Cleveland, he would’ve pitched a few more years. If he stayed a Cardinal, he would’ve won a World Series, assuming he wouldn’t have blown the team’s chance with a badly timed bad night on the mound. If he’d been traded to Philadelphia, he might’ve been in the ’83 World Series, possibly instead of John Denny.

Poor Silvio Martinez, he just couldn’t catch a break.

It all started on December 12, 1980, when he was sent to the Cardinals, from the Brewers.

Milwaukee received three extremely important puzzle pieces from that trade, which would help them to the ’81 playoffs and to win the American League in ’82 — Rollie Fingers, Pete Vuckovich, and Ted Simmons.

After a season in St Louis, the Cardinals wrapped him in a package to the Padres that brought Ozzie Smith to St Louis.

Those two trades helped the Brewers and Cardinals get the parts they needed to reach the playoffs and face off in a classic seven game series to decide the World Champion in October ’82.

In the meantime, Sixto would spend his time in San Diego producing one of the most underrated seasons of the 80′s.

His 7.2 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in ’82 still stands as the 7th best single-season WAR in Padre history (through 2009). It was also the highest he’d ever earned, and good enough for 4th best WAR in the National League—

Back in ’82 though, there was no such view provided by WAR or OPS+ yet, and so BA and RBI’s were very overvalued. So Sixto not only didn’t receive any MVP votes, but he wasn’t even considered the best batter on his own team! Yep, his teammate Terry Kennedy actually got some MVP votes, based on 5 more HR’s, 13 more RBI’s, and a batting average only .006 better than Sixto.

While Sixto’s traditional stats—16 homers, 84 RBI’s, .289 average—aren’t MVP impressive, his OBP, OPS+, and being in the top 4 WAR in his league, is very impressive. I’m not saying he should’ve been the MVP, but he certainly should be considered the best player on the Padres in 1982, even if nobody realized this in 1982…or 1983… or 1984.. etc.

There’s one more thing that makes Sixto’s season so much better than you knew, and that’s how he hit so much better against his division rivals than against other teams. Check this out—

He hit like a Hall of Famer when facing teams the Padres needed to beat, if they were going to have a chance to win the division and reach the playoffs. What more could you want?

Unfortunately, Sixto Lezcano’s season came to an early end when he was hit in the hand by a Bob Welch pitch in the 1st inning of the epic 16 inning game against the Dodgers on September 13.

This makes his stat totals all the more intriguing, since he would’ve had more HR’s, RBI’s, WAR, and RC, if he hadn’t been injured with 20 games left on the schedule (including the 9/13 game). Add to that, the fact that the rest of San Diego’s schedule was against NL West teams too, so he certainly would’ve done well and affected the outcome of the division pretty deep.

Imagine if he’d played in that final series of the season against the Braves? Yeah, the Dodgers might’ve won the West, instead of losing the division on that final weekend. Maybe there would’ve been a 1 game playoff. Maybe the Giants would’ve snuck past them all. Might the Braves have won the division sooner and been more rested and beaten the Cardinals in the playoffs? It’s all speculation of course, but it really makes me wonder.

What we know for sure is that the Padres had just lost 2 games at the time of the injury, but Sixto was still hitting well, going 4 for 7 with a walk in those two games. The Padres fell from 5.5 GB to 10 GB within a week of his injury forcing him out of the lineup.

I just can’t help but be fascinated by how this overlooked player having an overlooked career year, had so much affect on how the ’82 season played out. From teams he no longer played for or against (remember this is pre-interleague so he couldn’t face the Brewers), to the team he was on, and the teams in his division. He wasn’t the whole year or all of the story, but Sixto Lezcano is where everyone should start telling the story— of 1982, a season so underrated and overlooked.

The Cardinals made 2 trips to Wrigley in ’81, meaning this photo is either from late April or September 21-22. It’s possible this photo is from the day Bob blew a save against the Cubs on September 22, but there’s no way to tell. It’s notworthy though, that Bob didn’t pitch any games for St Louis until May 4, so perhaps he wasn’t even on the major league roster in April.

That blown save, was due to a solo shot by Leon Durham and was the only run Bob gave up after September 7, ’81. He finished the season tossing a scoreless 9th in Pittsburgh, finishing off a 4-0 Cardinals victory. That also finished his major league career.

Right after the season, he was traded to the Yankees for a young minor league outfielder named Willie McGee. Willie was a big part of the Cards championship run in ’82 and he had a massively impressive game 3 in that series. Meanwhile, Sykes began ’82 in AA and moved up to AAA where he imploded, posting a 8.03 ERA in 15 appearances.

The back of this card becomes very interesting now that we know he was traded to the Yanks right after the ’81 season. The Yankees pitching trivia tidbit is on here, almost as if Topps wanted to put a connection here to his new team since they didn’t have a photo of him in a Yankees uniform yet. It’s also in a different font face.

Perhaps they had a different trivia note set for the card but changed it sometime later but before printing the card? This makes me wonder if the other cards with this same unusual font face indicate a change in the trivia note before the cards were printed.

In that 5th start, he was shutting out the Pirates after 7 1/3, when Phil Garner came to the plate. Now, Garner was off to a very hot start in ’81, hitting the leather off the ball. He entered this game batting .429/.500/.714/1.214 in 9 games.

His first time up, Rincon got him to flyout to right field.

Next at-bat, Garner ran out an infield hit. He always did have a reputation as a scrappy little throwback player. Gotta love those.

So by the time he came to the plate in the top of the 7th, he had a good idea what Andy Rincon was dealing that day. When he hit the ball, it was a line drive straight back at Rincon. So fat and so quick, that it fractured Rincon’s arm.

And that was the end of Andy’s season, though he did pitch in the minors later that year, he never got back to the big leagues until ’82. Even then, he was not the same pitcher. He appeared in 11 games in ’82, 6 of them starts, posting a 4.72 ERA and a massive 1.500 WHIP. Needless to say, the Cardinals sent him down to AAA after May 22. he was no longer major league material.

The Cardinals went on to win the 1982 World Series, and Rincon got a championship ring for having played a part on the team.

He continued in the minors for a couple years after that, mostly in the Pirates organization. How’s that for irony? Anyway, he returned to play a little more later in the decade, finally ending his playing career in 1989 for the AA Arkansas Travelers.

All that potential, gone. Good thing baseball isn’t everything in life. I’m sure he made the most of his situation somehow, but it’s still sad when I look at this card.