5 Great Baseball Cards of Good Players on Bad Teams

Well, "great" relative to the clubs themselves, anyway

Great teams are … well … great.

They’re the clubs we remember forever, the ones we’ll talk about with other old men around the potbelly stove at the general store when we’re creaky and gray (yeah, that’s still part of my dream).

But the truth is, most baseball fans muddle through most years supporting just OK teams, or completely boring teams, or just downright bad teams.

Even those bad teams feature some pretty good players, though. Some of the most interesting seasons of all time, in fact, involve guys you might not remember — or at least not all that much — who “starred” for some pretty bad teams.

Here are five of those Good Players on Bad Teams, courtesy of some wax pack gems…

1952 Topps Murry Dickson (#266)

The 1952 Pirates were historically bad, finishing 42-112-1. That left them in last (eighth) place in the National League, 22.5 games behind the seventh-place Boston Braves.

Heck, they were already eight games out of first by the end of April, and even 20 out by the end of May.

For fans, slugger Ralph Kiner was the highlight of the season, cranking 37 home runs to lead the National League for the seventh (and final) year in a row.

But the man who led the team in WAR (because, you know, that was a really important thing back then), was Murry Dickson, who went 14-21 — the most losses in the majors. Dickson put up a respectable 3.57 ERA, though, and made 34 starts among his 43 appearances.

He also hit a pitcher-decent .224.

All added up, Murry accounted for 5.2 WAR, on his way to an underrated 18-year career that yielded 172-181, 3.66 ERA, 46.3 WAR for some ugly teams.

Murry’s 1952 Topps card, on the other hand, is not so ugly.

1979 Topps Otto Velez (#462)

You expect expansion teams to kinda stink in general, and the Blue Jays lived up to that expectation — three straight 100-loss seasons to begin their existence.

Interestingly, though, it took them three years to bottom out, losing 109 games in 1979.

Their top WAR guy that season was starter Tom Underwood, but Velez was their top position player at 2.9 WAR.

The fun thing about Velez’s supremacy in this regard is that he was more or less the Jays’ fourth outfielder, behind centerfielder Rick Bosetti and corner men Al Woods and Bob Bailor.

In 99 games, including just 77 starts, Velez hit .288 with 15 home runs and 48 RBI. He also scored 45 times.

That performance earned Velez a bump up in playing time, all the way up to 104 appearances in 1980.

He’d go on to play as a part-timer in Toronto through 1982 before finishing with a 10-game stint for the Indians in 1983.

It probably wasn’t what Velez pictured for his MLB career before the Jays drafted him away from the mighty Yankees in 1976. But hey, at least we all got this sunny Velez card out of the deal.

1988 Topps Traded Jose Bautista (#10T)

There were five Orioles who finished ahead of Bautista in terms of WAR in 1988, but they were all already at least somewhat established and expected to produce: Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, Fred Lynn, Mike Boddiker, Mickey Tettleton.

Even with their “stellar production,” though, the O’s lost 107 games.

Meanwhile, Bautista was a Rule 5 selection after spending the first seven years of his career in the Mets’ minor league system.

At age 23, he stepped into the Baltimore swamp and lost 15 games — but he also won 6, posted a 4.30 ERA, and basically held down the fort for 171 or so innings across 25 starts in 33 appearances.

He also threw an eight-inning complete game loss (1-0) against the Mariners in Seattle on September 3, which Wikipedia says is a record low.

Topps and the other card companies rewarded Bautista with his first baseball cards, and he kept chucking the horsehide for another eight seasons in various capacities for a total of five major league teams.

1992 Score Rod Nichols (#559)

The Indians took Nichols in the fifth round of the 1985 draft out of the University of New Mexico, which put him in the organization during a pretty exciting time.

Sure, the Tribe lost 102 games that summer, but they were up-and-comers in 1986, when they went 84-78 and climbed out of the cellar of the old American League East division.

Alas, by the time Nichols debuted for Cleveland in 1988, they were back to losing — it was their second of seven consecutive sub-.500 seasons.

That rendition of the Indians bottomed out in 1991, with a 57-105 record and another seventh-place finish.

Now, there were some names on that roster fans recognized, and some that would eventually become true stars — Greg Swindell, Tom Candiotti, Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga, Charles Nagy all had OK-ish or better summers.

But Nichols wasn’t far behind them, racking up 137.1 innings of 3.54-ERA ball. Of course, that was only good enough for a 2-11 record on that Cleveland team.

Aside from a fairly scarce McDonald’s regional, Nichols came up short on 1991 baseball cards since he had made just four appearances in 1990.

He landed some pretty nifty cardboard in 1992, though, including this very 1990s Score card that’s coming right at you.

Nichols would spend one more summer in Cleveland before moving on to the Dodgers in 1993 and then wrapping up with a five-game run with the 1995 Braves that ended in August, about two months before their World Series championship.

All in all, Nichols finished his 7-year big league career with an 11-31 record, 4.43 ERA, and a Topps rookie card that makes his 1992 Score look like a Rembrandt.

2003 Fleer Tradition Update Dmitri Young (#135)

You probably know Dmitri Young as an All-Star and maybe even remember that he’s one of us — his collection of PSA 10 beauties is legendary in hobby circles (even though he sold it off) and even garnered its own label from PSA themselves.

But, while Young spent the late 1990s and early 2000s teasing the Cardinals and Reds with his huge potential, he actually peaked with the 2003 Detroit Tigers.

Hitting .297 with 29 home runs and 85 RBI, Young also made his first All-Star Game that summer, an honor he’d repeat with the 2007 Washington Nationals.

Young also put up a career-high 3.4 WAR for the ‘03 Tigers, which was exactly what the second best player (by measure of WAR) on the club mustered.

Yeah, Warren Morris checked in at 1.7 WAR.

Then came Nate Cornejo, Eric Munson, Shane Halter. A little further down the line, we find Eric Eckenstahler.

That was also the season that Mike Maroth made headlines by going 9-21. Gulp.

As you might have guessed, that was a rough, rough Tigers team, one that finished 43-119, good for fifth place in the A.L. Central.

Twenty-five games behind the fourth-place Indians. Yikes.

For his part, Young never played more than 136 games in a season after the 155 he labored through in Motown 20 years ago.

This 2003 Fleer card, done up in 1963 style but without the cherry cookie, captures the sort of devastating fatigue and numbness all that losing must have left him with by the time October rolled around that year.

Young would hang up his spikes in 2009 after a 14-game run in the Washington minor league system.

—

That was a lot of words, but these good players endured a lot of losses while they were putting up some respectable-plus numbers.

So they’re owed some attention. They’re worth it.

And besides, where else are you going to find the non-flipping Jose Bautista rubbing elbows with Otto Velez and a next-level card collector?

Not to mention Rod and Dickson?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

As always, I’d love to hear your picks for this one — who are the good players on bad teams that really stick out to you?

Until next time, I’ll be cuddled up with my run of 1982 Mario Soto cards and maybe a few Dion James rookie cards.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam