1989 Topps Major League Debut #133: Larry Walker

Larry Walker

PHOTO: Wow, this is a beautiful card. The red borders on this set bug me, except on nice red cards like this. We've got basically just 4 colors on this card, which is nice one in a while. Gotta love the powder blue pants, too.

STAT: Sometimes it's easy to forget Larry Walker, but from 1990 to 2005, he's in the top 20 for highest OPS+ (minimum 5000 plate appearances.) He's ahead of Chipper Jones, Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez, Mo Vaughn, Fred McGriff, and Sammy Sosa, just to name a handful. He did definitely benefit from Coors Field, though, as his neutralized career OPS is .924, as compared to the actual value of .965. (Still, though, over 1990 to 2005 he's 8th in OPS, and even his adjusted value would still be 21st.)

ANAGRAM: Describing Walker's smooth swing....Larry Walker, Expos = Laxly wreak ropers

CAREER: 9/10

Walker had a great career. It's easy to write off his accomplishments as created by Coors Field, but there's no doubting that he was a phenomenal player. Three batting titles, two slugging titles, one 400-total-base season, one MVP award...and he hit 7 HR in 28 post-season games, despite most of them coming at the tail end of his career with the Cardinals. Other than his 20-game cup of coffee in 1989, he finished every other season with at OPS+ of at least 110 and topped 150 in SEVEN different seasons...WOW!

I wonder what will happen when he comes up for the Hall of Fame soon. The numbers say he belongs, but somehow I doubt he'll get as much support as that.

1989 Topps Major League Debut #98: Marty Pevey

Marty Pevey

PHOTO: This guy is clearly a catcher. Nice batting practice Expos jersey on display.

STAT: Pevey had only 2 extra-base hits in his career, but at least he drove in a run and scored a run in both of those games. The Expos went 6-5 in the 11 games that Pevey started.

ANAGRAM: Marty Pevey = A very empty

CAREER: 1/10

Just 42 career plate appearances...

1989 Topps Major League Debut #48: Marquis Grissom

Marquis Grissom

PHOTO: Oh, what a great photo! Looks like Grissom just roped a double down the line at Wrigley. Oh and there's a busty lady in a green dress in the background.

STAT: Over 1991-1992, Grissom had by far the most stolen bases in the big leagues. He's also one of just 10 players since 1901 to have multiple seasons with 75+ stolen bases.

CAREER: 6/10

Grissom is pretty overrated, actually, although he was a heck of a lot better in the big leagues than the majority of the players in this set. He had an OPS+ of 100 or better with a minimum of 140 games in just 4 seasons although his career OPS+ of 92 is certainly not terrible. To his credit he did hit well in the post-season, with an .800 OPS. In 231 career PAs in the post-season he drove in 20 runs (great) and scored 34 runs (fantastic.)

Grissom was traded in a number of big deals with or for some very good players including Roberto Kelly, David Justice, Kenny Lofton, Mike Fetters, and Devon White.

1989 Topps Major League Debut #41: Mark Gardner

PHOTO: Always nice to have the back of another guy's head in your photo, especially when you're sprouting two mini heads out from your own neck.

STAT: Check out Garnder's neutralized stats. Since Baseball-Reference.com was relaunched, let me tell you how to do that. Go to this page, which is Gardner's pitching detail page.About two-third of the way down, his stats are presented in neutralized form, meaning that park factors and run scoring have been adjusted to skew Gardner's performance had he been on an average team. It also tends to even out luck, which it appears that Gardner had a lot of.

In reality, Gardner finished 99-93 (.516) with a 4.56 ERA and an ERA+ of 88. Right away you see something wrong with that--how can a guy with an ERA so far below league-average finish with a winning record? The answer is that he got lucky. On his neutralized stats, he deserved to have an ERA of 4.81 but also a record of 78-109 (.417). Ouch.

CAREER: 4/10

Gardner was a very typical just-below-average starter. As mentioned above, his ERAs were just below league-average virtually every year and when healthy he was basically a good #3 or #4 starter. Had he stayed healthy and not missed significant chunks of 1993, 1994, and 1995, he might be rated higher.

1989 Topps Major League Debut #40: Steve Frey

Steve Frey

PHOTO: This card has great color unity of red, white, and blue, but there's simply no looking past Frey's mustache.

STAT: Nobody hit more than 1 homer off Frey, but two guys homered off him in their only plate appearance against him.

CAREER: 3/10

Frey had an up-and-down career with a few very good years and a few not great years. He stuck around for 8 seasons thanks in part the throwing left-handed.