secret santa statis: pro

thanks to matt from bob walk the plank for organizing the secret santa program again this year. i had fun picking out cards to send to my recipient - the daily dimwit - even if that meant looking for astros cards a few weeks after they beat the dodgers in the world series.  my secret santa was rob, who runs a few blogs (which i can appreciate) - 1988 topps, collecting 1982 topps, and statis pro 1984.

rob tied our collecting habits together by sending me copies of the infield's statis pro cards from the 1984 season.

a quick look at these and the wikipedia site for statis pro tells me that steve garvey is not likely to miss many games (his consecutive game streak ended in 1983, otherwise i assume his "inj" rating would be 0), ron cey is the only one likely to be hit by a pitch, bill russell is the better bunter, and davey lopes is the better base stealer.  at closer inspection, i also see that the garv would never walk in this game.  this is very realistic, as garvey didn't walk much.  in fact, i think that his inability to take a walk (he took the free, non-intentional pass only 366 times in his career) is one of the things keeping him out of the hall of fame.  172 more walks instead of outs (lay off that slider down and away, please) would have netted him a .300 career average and boosted his obp to .348.  that's just 10 more walks per season, on average. in the end, as much as i want to see garvey in the hall (and i think he should be in), he just made too many outs for him to be a more obvious choice to the people who matter. we'll see if anything changes in three years when he is eligible for consideration by the modern committee again.

rob included some real cards in the package - there were these two relic cards from 2002 upper deck world series heroes featuring davey lopes and bill russell

plus a 2005 upper deck classics ron cey relic card

thanks rob!