1989 Topps Major League Debut #148: Eric Yelding

Eric Yelding

PHOTO: OK, that's some serious bling around Yelding's neck. Does anybody know what that is? On the big image, it looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

STAT: Yelding has the second-worst season, ranked by OBP, among guys with at least 25 caught stealings in that season. Yeah, that's bad. Oh, Omar Moreno.

ANAGRAM: Eric Yelding = Idly generic

CAREER: 2/10

Yelding is another in a long line of fast players who couldn't get on base. Fortunately, teams saw that he was so bad offensively that he didn't stick around nearly as long as similarly talented guys.

Interesting that he played more games at SS and in the OF despite being listed as 2B on this card.

1989 Topps Major League Debut #22: Jose Cano

Jose Cano, don't ya know?

This guy is the dad of current Yankees' 2B Robinson Cano, which shocks me because I had no idea until I wrote this post. Of course, the younger Cano had such a crap year in 2008 that the Canos might become altogether forgotten soon enough.

PHOTO: These crazy borders actually work with this card, because we have all of the Astros rainbow colors reproduced on the cards.

STAT: Cano had such a short major league career that I'm not even going to bother looking for a stat. But check out his minor-league numbers. After fizzling out of the Astros system in 1990, he pitched in Taiwan 8 years later at age 36. Wow!

CAREER: 1/10

The guy pitched in only 6 major-league games.

1989 Topps Major League Debut #5: Eric Anthony

Eric Anthony

PHOTO: This has got to be a spring training photo, just mainly by the fact that his cap appears to have #63 written under it. Anthony might want to think about closing the Velcro on his batting gloves before taking a hack.

STAT: Anthony had 78 career homers, including 4 games with 2 homers each. Interestingly, in 3 out of 4 of those games, both his homers were solo shots and he had no other RBIs in the game. His team lost 2 of those 4 games, too.

CAREER: 3/10

After some big homer years in the minors, Anthony was a fairly highly-regarded prospect, but I'm not sure why. His performance in the big leagues was pretty much in line with usual projections based on minor league performance. He was a pretty decent part-time player who put together some decent seasons.