This week I received the missing piece(s) of my hyper-specific Tigers baseball card collection: the 1983 team set. (I’ve never learned if a set’s designation is the last season listed on the back, or the year it came out.)
Anyway, an unexpected bonus was receiving two Jerry Ujdur cards.
Sutherland wore number 3 and played in 320 games for the Tigers in 1974, ’75 and part of ’76. He (and Jim Ray) came to Detroit from Houston on Dec. 3, 1973 for Fred Scherman and cash.
In ’74, he played 149 games, with 619 at-bats and a .254 batting average, drew 26 walks, and scored 60 runs.
The next year Sutherland played 129 games and 509 at-bats, posting slightly better numbers with a .258 batting average and scoring 51 runs.
His 1976 season began with Detroit but he struggled, hitting just .205 in 42 games before being traded to Milwaukee on June 10, 1976 for Pedro GarcĂa. As Sutherland’s successor, GarcĂa performed even worse, managing only a .198 average.
There are many candidates for this distinction, but I think Mike Moore was the quintessential Dave Duncan reclamation project in the late 1980s.
He went from a so-so starter in Seattle to a 19-game winner in Oakland.
By the time he signed a three-year, $10 million contract with the Tigers in 1993, most of that Duncan magic had vanished … much like the benefit of the spacious foul territory in the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium.
But we wouldn’t find out right away. Soon, but not right away.
As it seems to often happen in baseball, if not all sports, Moore made his Tigers debut on Opening Day 1993, April 5, against his former team in Oakland. It was a start to forget and a sign of things to come — again, we didn’t know it yet! — 42/3 innings, six hits, three walks and four earned runs. The Tigers lost 9-4.
Four days later, he started against the Angels in Anaheim and got only four outs. In 11/3 innings, he gave up six hits and five runs.
To recap: In his first two Tigers starts, he pitched six innings and allowed nine runs on 12 hits.
Although Moore’s ERA dipped below five once all year — 4.99, after his two-hit shutout of the White Sox on Sept. 10 — he did have a couple of incredible starts:
Moore was certainly durable* in his first season in Detroit: 36 starts and 223 innings. His final line: 13-9, 5.91 ERA, with three shutouts.
*In nine of his 14 seasons, he finished with more than 200 innings pitched — and in 1990 he threw 1991/3.
Well, 1994 and 1995 went about as well for Moore as it did for his Tigers teams. Still, the man did take the ball every fifth day (maybe fourth day back then?), pitching 25 starts both years.
In 1994, he could’ve reached 30+ starts again if not for the player’s strike, but anyway …
The third and final year of his Tigers contract, 1995, was a disaster: 25 starts, 5-15 and a 7.53 ERA.
Looking back 30 years, it wasn’t fair to expect Mike Moore, at 33, to be a top-of-the-rotation starter. After the mirage of 1993, the Tigers were not good in 1994 and ’95, so it wasn’t going to make a difference whether Moore was the staff’s ace, the fifth starter or a long reliever.
Oh and just looping back to the benefits of pitching home games in Oakland versus Detroit: Tiger Stadium’s cozy dimensions not only hurt him in the no-foul-territory fashion but also in surrendering the long ball: He made 86 starts and gave up 86 homers. Not all of them at The Corner, of course, but enough of them.
Ron LeFlore, 1976. I’m surprised to see that LeFlore was named to only one All-Star team.
Matt Nokes, 1987. I’d forgotten Nokes was an All-Star but he certainly earned it with a great first half. He almost made us forget Lance Parrish. Almost.
Don Wert, 1968. This one I don’t get, for two reasons: The first is that Wert finished the season batting .200, so I don’t know what he was producing in July. The second is I don’t have any context for All-Star roster construction back then. I was born within three weeks of the game.
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