I first noticed it with Steve McCatty‘s card, and now I’m thinking about it again. Scott was just 12-12 with a 106 ERA+ on the year. Average. Dull. Just like his pose & expression.

Just like McCatty’s card, the only thing that keeps this card interesting is the colorful uniform of Les Expos de Montréal.

He had his moments of course, just like anyone else, but he couldn’t catch a break. A good example is the “squirrel game“, in which he tossed a CG but lost, due to a pair of unearned runs.

I think something about that game changed him a little. Maybe it made him feel like, “Why bother?”, I don’t know. If you split his season’s stats after that game though, it’s clear that batters started connecting with Scott’s pitches more after that game.

See? A slight decrease in SO & BB, and a dangerous increase in HR’s allowed. I find it kinda funny that his ERA balloons to nearly double, yet he still ends up with the same W-L. It’s as if the guy cannot win or lose, he was just made to break even.

My main memories of Scott are from his days with the Yankees. I always think of him an Expo though.

Wow, now that’s a card. Two of the greatest base stealers of all-time, on the same baseball card. I absolutely loved this card when I was a kid, for that very reason. you can keep your home runs, steals and triples are far more exciting.

Neither Tim Raines nor Rickey Henderson had any real trouble leading their league in steals in ’81 In fact, Tim, had 50 steals by mid-June when the strike halted all the games. Oh yeah, 50 steals but he’d only been caught 6 times. 6 TIMES!

That amazing 89.2% success rate was really the only thing that separated the two during the first half of the season. Beyond that, they had the same amount of XHB (18) and the same OBP (.419).

Tim was in the midst of breaking rookie record for steals in a season, and had a shot at breaking the all-time single season record for steals in a season. The strike held him back from getting a chance to break that 2nd record.

Nobody in the NL ever challenged Raines that year for the lead in steals. When he reached 50, his nearest competition was at half that — 26. If he didn’t play another game all year, he would’ve led the league anyway, ’cause nobody else managed to steal more than 39 by the end.

I think people forget just how great Tim Raines was.

Over in the American League, things weren’t much different. Rickey Henderson was having a tougher year than he did in 1980, but still never really had trouble winning the AL Stolen Bases title in ’81.

The closest he came to letting it slip away, was at the end of August when Seattle’s Julio Cruz was just 3 steals behind Rickey. It was just too hard to catch Rickey though.

In hindsight, this card was a declaration of a new era. From 1981 – 1984, Rickey & Tim would be the stolen base leaders every year in their leagues. Gone were the days of Ron LeFlore, Willie Wilson, or Omar Moreno, leading the league.

That day was his only appearance at Candlestick during the Expos only trip to San Francisco that season. I hardly think he’d be doin’ a pre-game warm up on the days he didn’t pitch, so it’s a clear cut case of May 16th. I know, he could be posing for the camera, which is why I’m only 99.9% sure of the date.

Anyway, on the back of his card, it mentions that Charlie’s first shutout of San Francisco was more interesting then his second, ’cause he no-hit the Giants when they visited Montreal on May 10th.

I often wonder if that no-hitter, is the reason we have a Charlie Lea card in the ’82 Topps set.

Most of the ’82 Expos card photos were definitely snapped during spring training or at Shea Stadium. There’s only four of their cards that I’m not 100% sure about, but they’re probably in one of those places. That raises some questions about Charlie’s card — why was it taken at Candlestick?

Flashback to spring training of ’81, when Charlie was a young pitcher struggling to break into the Montreal Expos pitching staff. He’d gotten 19 starts in ’80, but nothing was guarenteed, as he was still just 24 and the Expos were a team contending for a championship. So Montreal definitely wasn’t interested in developing a player on the major league level, who’d already proved to be slightly below average the previous season.

Thinking about that for a moment, it’s possible Topps wasn’t thinkin’ of making a Charlie Lea card for their next set if they weren’t sure he’d make the team. Then he threw the no-hitter on May 10th and they needed a picture of him, ’cause they didn’t have one from spring training to use.

After all, if they did take a picture of him during spring training, then why spend any more money to get another picture? To try to trick us into thinking this photo was from the actual no-hitter? I doubt that, ’cause if they wanted to do that for this card, they probably would’ve tried it with the Len Barker card too….but they didn’t.

I don’t know if Topps would’ve flown a photographer out to San Francisco or if they would’ve bought the photo from a freelance photographer. I’ve heard they bought some photos like that during this period in a mad rush to put together a set now that they had competition, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was one example of that since they never got any other Expos players in Candlestick.

I can’t think of a better reason why this card would have a photo from San Francisco, while none of the rest of the team does. If anyone else has thoughts on this, I’d love to hear it. The whole thing makes me wish I could see their original plan for the card set, before they finalized things and printed.

Random Facts & Stats—

• One of only eleven baseball players born in France.
• Credited with the W in the 1984 All-Star game
• Began to have shoulder troubles in ’85, got surgery, and was never the same.
• 13-3, 2.32 ERA for his career during the month of May.
• He was 6-1 with a 2.44 ERA vs Giants in his career.
• In 642 1/3 IP on artificial turf, held batters to a .364 slugging percentage
• Had a 3.16 ERA when Gary Carter was catching him
• With bases loaded, he kept hitters down a .159/.204/.205 batting line.

In 1981, Andre was 26 and just made his 1st All-Star game after posting a .325/.380/.598 batting line leading up to the strike. Once in the game, he smacks a 1st inning single off Jack Morris and then steals 2nd base.

So when we collected cards in ’82, Andre was one of the big stars we were all excited about. His Expos were a top notch team, and he was a big reason why. For much of his career we thought he’d be a Hall of Famer. Every time he’d come to the plate against your team, you’d worry a little inside.

Lots of people these days think Dawson shouldn’t have been voted into Cooperstown because his career OBP is so low, and for a while, I was swayed to agree with that view. After all, if you got out more than most other stars, how could you possibly be a Hall of Famer?

That’s a legitimate question, but it really created more questions in my head than it answered.

So after taking a closer look at his stats, I realized that my memory of Andre being one of the most clutch hitters around was pretty accurate. This part seems to be lost on most of the sabermetrics fans. Check out some of how Andre Dawson got on base—

1. .409 OBP (Men on 2nd & 3rd)
2. .373 OBP (Man on 3rd)
3. .366 OBP (Man on 3rd w/ 2 out)
4. .363 OBP (Man on 2nd)
5. .349 (Overall RISP)
6. .315 OBP (Man on 1st)
7. .312 OBP (bases empty)

This makes it clear he didn’t get on base much when there was a runner on 1st base, and that dragged his overall OBP down, making him look worse when you don’t take into account his situational split stats. His RISP OBP would be even higher, if there weren’t a runner on 1st some of the times he had RISP too.

The point is, he didn’t often waste outs when there were runners in scoring position. That’s very important. If you’re going to get out, do it at less crucial points in the game.

Related to this, Andre ranks 48th all-time in Isolated Bases Earned (TB+BB+SB) with 5,690. That’s more than most of the guys in Cooperstown, including Willie McCovey, Ernie Banks, Willie Stargell, Jim Rice, and Richie Ashburn. If Andre did more for his team’s offense when he got on base than those guys, how can you leave him out?

A crucial moment in that season was on Saturday August 29, 1981, when Tim Raines broke for 2nd base and seconds later broke the record for steals in a season by a rookie.

He’d have done it a couple months earlier if the strike didn’t happen and wipe out 2 months of games. Nonetheless, Raines ended the season with 71 steals in 82 atttempts; a remarkable 85.6% success rate.

It’s even more remarkable than it sounds. He did this in just 88 games. As a rookie. If the strike didn’t happen and we assume he plays in the rest of the Expos games, then he’d get 132 steal attempts in 142 games. If he kept stealing at an 86.5% success rate, he’d have swiped 114 bases in ’81.

Of course, if he got that close to the pe-Rickey record 118 steals, I think he’d have pushed to swipe 5 more. Who wouldn’t? I would.

By the time Tim finished his playing days, he had a career .388 OBP, 1571 runs scored, & ran his way to 5th in steals all-time by stealing bases at the highest success rate in history.

So, does Tim Raines belong in the Hall of Fame?

I think the best way to answer that question is by looking at his combined Total Bases + Steals + Walks (IBE), which is a little statistic I created to help me quantify the production by a player for their team. For now I call it Isolated Bases Earned.

These three stats together (TB + BB + SB), isolate how many bases a player earned without the help of teammates, errors, fielder’s choices, intentional walks, or sac hits. It doesn’t include intentional walks, because that’s more to do with the batter’s reputation on that particular moment instead of their ability.

Now let’s compare Tim Raines IBE to a few Hall of Fame sluggers and hitters and see who went farthest on the base paths on their own—

There’s 26 higher on the list than him, and everyone else in history did worse. This is just showing that Tim Raines fits in perfectly with other Hall of Famers when you think about how much they each produced in terms of how far they got themselves on the basepaths without the help of a teammate.

It doesn’t matter if you hit 20 doubles or if you stole second base 20 times, it’s just different styles of getting there on their own. It doesn’t matter if you smack 20 triples or steal third base 20 times, it’s just different ways to achieve the same result of getting into better scoring position.

By the way, if I calculate correctly, then Tim Raines advanced 1 base every .57 plate appearances. That’s a slightly better average than 1 base for every 2 PA’s, without help. Think about that. That’s impressive.

Among other numbers that put him in a class with Hall of Famers, this IBE stat really nails down my belief that he belongs in Cooperstown. There’s just not many players who can say they touched over 5900 bases without help, but Tim Raines is one of them.

But you probably knew all that already plus more, ’cause he’s a Hall of Fame catcher who won a ring with the ’86 Mets.

What you might not have known, is that in 1982 was easily his best offensive season and it could’ve been much better (I’ll explain this at the end).

That year, his batting average was about 30 points higher than his career average up to that point, and his OBP was almost 50 points higher than his career up to this point. He produced 107 runs created, which was 17 more than any other major league catcher & 21 more than any AL catcher. His slugging almost matched his previous career high. All this gave him his best single season OPS (.890). All while continuing to backup his reputation as a great defensive catcher…winning his 3rd consecutive gold glove.

It’s tough to pick one game that stands out in his season. I’m stuck between three games—

• 4/18, Expos @ Mets. Goes 3 for 3 (HR & 2B), drew 2 walks, while driving in 3 runs
• 5/28, Reds @ Expos. Goes 1 for 1, drawing 3 walks. Oh, and that one hit was a 3 run HR.
• 8/26, Astros @ Expos. Smacked a pair of 2 run homers, giving his team a 5-3 win.

But I have to share the most surprising fact I found about his ’82. Check this out—

Unfortunately he played his home games on artificial turf in Montreal. He probably would’ve been the 1982 NL MVP if he played his home games on a grass field, like Atlanta.

I find it cool that Topps chose pitching trivia for the back of a catchers card. Topps used the exact same back info for the 1982 Squirt set Carter card, though they used a different photo of Carter for the front.

Elias Sosa was never the big time closer like Rollie Fingers or Goose Gossage. He only earned 83 career saves, but don’t let that fool you. Sosa was a very reliable reliever in his day. Of all the bullpen hurlers from 1901-1983 (last season of Sosa’s career), Sosa was one of only 16 players with less than 50 career starts, to appear in over 600 games.

1982 was the beginning of his downhill period, after a five year stretch of eliteness that nearly passes you by because he wasn’t used as a closer. From 1977-1981, he posted a 142 ERA+. Sounds pretty impressive by itself eh? It’s even more impressive when you see that places him on a short list of pitchers during that period. He’s one of only six pitchers during that period to throw 300+ innings and have an ERA+ of 140 or higher. That list includes Gossage and Sutter.

For three of those five seasons, Elias Sosa wasn’t used as a closer, so nobody remembers his great stretch anymore. In 1979, he put up a gorgeous 1.96 ERA over 96 2/3 IP!! After that, he was no longer the closer in Montreal. That was the third & final time he was the closer for his team over his twelve year career. If Sosa played these days, he’d probably be used as an elite closer, and post up be good for 200-300 career saves.

A few Elias Sosa stats that might surprise you—

• Was 3rd in ROY voting for 1973
• Did his best in July & August, posting a 2.97 ERA
• 83 saves, and only 18 blown saves
• With 2 outs & runners in scoring position, he only allowed a slim .324 OBP for 602 PA’s
• Had a 1.27 ERA & 3-0 record lifetime against the Twins
• He was 10-7, 2.88 ERA, in Olympic Stadium (Montreal)