Baseball's Best Fifth Round Draft Picks 1975 - 80

Here's my third post on the best players from fifth rounds of MLB's "Rule 4" amateur draft. Previous iterations covered 1965-69 and 1970-74.

Evaluating talent must feel like fishing. You cast into the sea hundreds of times, hoping for one good hit that'll make all that time on a water's edge worthwhile. Fifth rounds of the late 1970s continued to impress me as 1-in-20 long shot picks, as history shows just one team took home a big fish.

1975: Lou Whitaker (75.1 WAR, 5x All-Star, 3x Gold Glove, 4x Silver Slugger, 1984 World Series ring, 1978 ROY)

I consider Whitaker baseball's best fifth-round pick for the 1965-75 decade, as many think Lou should be in Cooperstown. Keystone infielders with such consistency prove hard to find in any age, let alone paired with a teammate like Alan Trammell.

Love that "Sweet Lou" autograph on his 1982 Topps and cards like this convinced me every good hitter wore fielding caps under their batting helmet.

1976: Jack Morris (43.5 WAR, 5x All-Star, 1984/1991/1992 World Series rings, HOF)

An easy pick for his year and yet tough to write about, since Jack's relative career value (in WAR, anyway) falls well short of Sweet Lou. The 1991-92 rings with Toronto made a big difference for Hall of Fame voters.

As a young Seattle fan, I remember Detroit's 1984 maulers came into the Kingdome at 35-5 and left 35-8, swept by an otherwise nondescript Mariners squad. I trimmed shortstop Spike Owen's newspaper highlight photos from that series for my baseball scrapbook and assume it inspired my own player collection that continues today. Stuff it, Jack!

1977: Tim Raines (69.4 WAR, 7x All-Star, Silver Slugger, 1996/1998 World Series rings, HOF)

Tim Raines fed the enthusiasm for rookie cards with his own powder blue Donruss card, jockeying with Fernandomania for 1981 collecting supremacy. As an eight year-old, I knew a dedicated card, even for far away teams like les Expos, felt three times better than sharing space with two other "future stars."

A late-career (and still productive) Raines won two rings with the dominant late-1990s Yankees. Did those titles cement his case for Cooperstown voters? I think they did. Bobby (Roberto) Ramos, 0.1 WAR, and Bob (Bobby) Pate, -0.1 WAR, made the rest of their card a wash.

1978: Dave Stieb (56.4 WAR, 7x All-Star)

This longtime Toronto ace must be wondering if a better early-career personality would've also meant a spot in Cooperstown, given favorable comparisons to guys like Jack Morris. His excellence came with irritability, something the writers who vote for your HOF plaque tend to notice.

Dave's autograph evolved a bit over the years, even though it remains tough to remember I before E when spelling his name. Do you like long-form video journalism? S-T-I-E-B garnered his own series on Secret Base, the pinnacle of modern analytical baseball success.

1979: Greg Gagne (26.3 WAR, 1987/1991 World Series rings)

Gagne spent ten seasons in Minnesota as their everyday shortstop and backed up Jack Morris for 1991's series win over Atlanta. Several of those World Series moments pop up in his highlight reel.

Gagne delivered consistency at a position known for its variance and finished his career in the top 100 players all-time for defensive WAR. Hard to ask for more than that.

For all Greg's fielding prowess and the many cards that show him turning a double play, I prefer these two bat-in-hand shots.

1980: (tie) Mike Fuentes (0.1 WAR), Roy Johnson (-0.5 WAR)

1980's fifth round offered our slimmest pickings since the Rule 4 draft started in 1965. Mike and Roy rank highest in WAR for players with MLB time, which damns with faint praise. The former earned his tenth of a WAR in just nine career games (six in 1983, three in 1984), while the latter suited up in 36 (17 in 1982, 16 in 1948, three in 1985).

With so few games to choose from, did these fifth-round teammates ever play together in Montreal? Let's focus on those three 1984 appearances for Fuentes and see if he crossed paths with Johnson.

• Sept 14: Mike pinch hits a single (off Steve Carlton!) in the 5th inning. Roy Johnson pinch hits a single in the 8th inning.
• Sept 20: Mike starts in LF and is lifted for pinch-hitter Wallace Johnson in the 9th. Two batters later, Roy Johnson pinch hits and flies out to end the game.
• Sept 21: Roy Johnson pinch hits in the 7th, but Mike Ramsey takes over on defense. Mike Fuentes pinch hits in the 9th.

In other words, yes, Roy's in the box score for all three of Mike's 1984 appearances. Like ships in the night, they never quite fit in the active lineup together, given their pinch hitting usage.

Mike's story went quiet until 1995, reemerging for the Marlins when they prepared replacement lineups for striking players. Florida paper The Galveston Daily News highlighted his college power in its look at each National League team's "Imposter Roster," a preseason profile that anticipated scabs taking the field for opening day.

The Strike meant even more to The Streak. Baltimore felt so connected to Ripken's feat that replacement Orioles never materialized, even with forfeits on the horizon.

The strike's human story grew fraught as several union players, who'd endured seven months of lost pay, broke with their union to play alongside replacement players.

As days ticked by, pressure from all sides pushed baseball players and owners to resolve things in front of a name who later joined the US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

"I like to see judges of that...caliber."

Justice meets Judge

"By 'caliber,' I refer to both the size of their guns and the high quality of their characters... Two meanings... 'caliber'... it's a homonym..."

I'll pick up the post-1980 fifth round in future posts. For now, enjoy how even guys with three career appearances can connect to something meaningful for the whole pastime.

1967-68 Coca-Cola Minnesota Twins Baseball Crowns #5, Jim Perry

1960s-70s hurler Jim Perry won 215 career games, placing him in the top 100 all-time, but it's vogue in some baseball circles to re-examine the single-mindedness of wins and update how we value the men credited with them. For example, where does a starter like Jim, pitching in the era of 4-man rotations and multiple expansions, rate compare to today's 6-7 inning pitcher? And did he prove most deserving of the "win?" Whatever you think of Ws and Ls, SABR's Origin of the Modern Pitching Win does a great job laying out the "long, tortured history" of these stats.

But! No amount of words can wipe the name Perry from our statistical record, especially when younger and winning-er brother Gaylord joins the conversation. Between Jim (215) and Gaylord (314), 529 opponents hit the showers in defeat. That's a lot of smiling in the Perry households.

Today's type "card" is what it looks like, a soda bottle cap that sealed 1960s glass bottles of Coke or its related brands. You can also discern right away that the undersides of these Coke crowns are so small, you barely have room for a face and a name. "M5" tells you this is cap #5 from the M(innesota) team set and "P" tells you Perry is a pitcher.

Jim's floating head style reappears on cards and collectibles from time-to-time. The easiest place to find them on cards are Topps league leaders and some teams. The Cubs, for example, often omitted an "annual photo" -- and no group photo meant floating heads. Chicago looked like this for much of the 1970s.

1977 Topps #518, Chicago Cubs

My ode to the floating head, that side effect of too little space for too much baseball player.

Fly free, fly clear. Look to horizons unconsidered, celebrate your lightness of being. Be yourself, be alive, be unexpected. Be Joe Pepitone's sideburns.

Coca-Cola put a lot of floating heads under bottle crowns in 1967 and 1968, matching collections of teams and all-stars to promotional posters like this one. Buy enough soda and you could swap crowns for (cheap) baseballs or ball caps.

I cross-posted this poster from The Fleer Sticker Project's terrific profile of Coke's promotion and its hand-in-glove arrangement with 1967's "Dexter Press photos." You should read it and feel completely informed.

Value: Perry cost me $3 on eBay. High grade stars cost somewhat more, but dinged-up crowns can be a cheap (25 cents) way to start 1960s oddball collecting.

Fakes / reprints: It'd be tough to fake Coke's crowns and none are pricey enough to merit the effort.

1980 TCMA Wisconsin Rapids Baseball #5, Manuel Lunar

Hunting for vintage minor league singles is tricky for modern collectors. No man is an island, and as with Manuel Lunar, it's the guys around you that make the difference.

The story of Manuel Lunar the Pitcher is straight-forward: he spent 3 years in Rookie League and single-A ball, walking more guys than he struck out and compiling a 8.78 ERA in 82 innings (career stats). In any 1980s major league set, he'd be easy to find for a nickel.

The story of Manuel Lunar the #5 Baseball Card is complicated by being teammates with these guys.

Almost any Twins fan would love to add the Olivo / Gaetti / Hrbek trio to their collection. Demand remains high enough for this team set that finding Manuel Lunar would mean ponying up $70+ for all 27 Rapids pictured by TCMA that year.

1. Sam Arrington
2. Luis Santos
3. Robert Mulligan
4. Larry May
5. Manuel Lunar
6. William Lamkey
7. Bob Konopa
8. Hal Jackson
9. Ken Francingues
10. Conrad Everett
11. Chris Thomas
12. Paul Voight
13. Richard Ray Austin
14. Glenn Ballard
15. James Christensen
16. Manuel Colletti
17. Gary Gaetti
18. Kent Hrbek
19. Kevin Miller
20. Norberto Molina
21. Brad Carlson
22. Matt Henderson
23. Joe Kubit
24. Bruce Stocker
25. Ray Stein
26. Rich Stelmaszek
27. Tony Oliva

It stands out (in bold) that Gary Gaetti and Kent Hrbek were the only two from 1980's squad to reach the majors. Gaetti went on play for 20 years and Kent posted a 128 career OPS+. There was also this play:



It's been 20+ years, so I'll just say "LOL" and stop there.

Value: Singles could cost a few dollars, but rarely separate from their pricier team; as of this post, there's a set on eBay for $75.

Fakes / reprints: TCMA reprinted several teams with stars (which might've included Gaetti and Hrbek) as "Collectors Kits" in the late 1980s. Those have black ink backs and originals have blue ink backs.

My "history of marketing to children" essay for a job application

I've been unemployed since my MA-based, high-tech employer off-shored their (my) local team last Sept. When I applied for a job today, the on-line application said cover letters were optional. That would normally save me the work of writing one, but I decided instead to add something different: an essay on a topic of personal interest, the evolution of marketing to children. Why do it? Who knows, maybe it'll stand out in the sea of sameness that all piles of resumes become. If not, at least I've outlined ideas worth diving into later.

Dive, Pedro, dive!

Collectors will see how this intertwines with baseball cards, since most of us started plunking down money for packs at a young age. I started at 8, but I've talked to some who were building sets at 5. If you collected cards a century ago, though, you weren't buying the cards, at least not directly. You were buying tobacco. When kids managed to squirrel away savings, they often spent them on life-shortening cigarettes in pursuit of colorful cards. If there's one thing I love about the modern era, it's that we're so far removed from cigarette marketers controlling the hobby.

Rocky and his chaw, friends to the end

So here's what I wrote, interspersed with blog-only card images.

---

Hi [company],

While the application page says a cover letter's optional, one of my favorite interview questions is to ask the candidate to teach me something about a topic they know deeply that others don't. In that spirit, here's a brief history, for good or ill, of how companies began marketing to children.

Back in the late 19th century, few credited children with the "potential" that we do today, often sending them into class-delineated factories or menial trades they could do for less pay than adults. What little money children earned went back to families, as the thinking went, so advertisers didn't consider them potential customers. They aimed at two other groups: professional men (or farmers) and women who made household purchasing decisions.

The dominant luxury industry of that time was tobacco, both in popular use and in advertising. Cigarettes, rolling tobacco, chaw, cigars, snuff, pipes, and so on. We know from legal history how cynically 20th-century tobacco marketers targeted everyone, clandestinely attracting new teen smokers with a purportedly adult product. While early tobacco makers didn't "discover" children as a market intentionally, they set the wheels in motion for advertisers to target what's now a quarter of America's buying power.

In the 1880s, tobacco growers turned two technologies, mechanical packaging and color lithography, into a landmark promotional campaign, the first mass-produced, in-pack trading cards. These cards enthralled both adults and kids, transporting people who rarely left their home town to distant, exciting lands.

Duke's Cigarettes "Rulers, Flags, and Coat of Arms"

Promotional cards covered dozens of subjects and proved massively successful. While aimed at adults, resourceful children also purchased (and learned to smoke) their own packs in search of cards. The money that flowed into tobacco coffers fed more and "better" marketing. In cities with baseball teams, cigarette makers inked the sport's early stars to promotional contracts, drawing in still more smokers of all ages. Prior to the dissolution of several tobacco trusts, their enduring business success meant advertisers from all industries looked to cigarettes as the example to follow.

Various T206 tobacco card backs

While spiraling costs (and their military supply business) pushed tobacco makers out of "kid-friendly" trading cards prior to WWI, by that time they'd been the dominant force in marketing for two generations.

When candy and ice cream companies entered the 1920s trading card market, they appealed to kids directly, reflecting a shift in their buying power.

1928 Fro-Joy Babe Ruth #5, Babe Ruth's Grip

Expanded programs of public education added a layer of uniformity to schoolchildren that allowed more and more marketers to use the same approaches seen in tobacco's success. First, find something children aspire to (like a baseball or movie career). Second, cross-promote that goal with a cheap, mass-market product like caramel or chewing gum. Third, make your product familiar in the media through sponsorship. Wheaties, for example, built their "Breakfast of Champions" name by signing dozens of 1930s athletes to endorsement deals, a great achievement for what's otherwise unremarkable cereal.

1930s Wheaties cereal box panel

By the 1950s, food marketers established lookalike ad practices for candy, soda pop, cereal, and a host of other nonessential goods, which now addressed children directly. (Tobacco continued to live at the fringes, targeting adults but attracting teens to an extent the public didn't appreciate until state-led lawsuits made details available in the 1990s.)

Is the cap for you or your boy? How about the tobacco?

The evolution of marketing to children, even when they're the indirect target, helps us understand why some governments prohibit or circumscribe such advertising today. Many adults struggle to separate a directed message from its personal consequences, whether or not the product is beneficial. Those who look to us for leadership deserve help in making decisions that impact what they'll enjoy as both customers and kids.

Kind of heavy at the end, but it's a subject that deserves careful thought. I hope there was something new to you in that marketing chronology. I bring deep curiosity into any subject, work included, and look forward to talking with you about how this can help [company].

Matthew

---

Longer than I usually spend on a cover letter, that's for sure!

Fifth Anniversary Giveaway

As baseball's dog days soon breeze into harvest season, so did I miss recognizing this blog's eponymous fifth anniversary earlier this season. How could this happen! Did I forget my glove?

Always, always bring your glove

With nearly 800 posts under my belt, it might be the shrinking number of vintage (pre-1981) sets to profile that left my brain unawares. By the numbers, only a few dozen type cards remain unaddressed and several of those prove so obscure that I've yet to see even a photo to represent them, let alone put my hands on a real card.

MOAR PIX, RANDY

The good news is that even if we run low on vintage stuff, modern companies printed everything under the sun thereafter, so there's no end of potential post-1981 profiles. (Indeed, I have a plethora of potential post-vintage profiles.)

...or perhaps I'll segue into a multiplayer type collection. THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD ONES. (Including this one in part to remind you September 17th is baseball's Roberto Clemente Day!)

In belated honor of the fifth anniversary, let's give something away in the theme of giving things away. Readers might know Spike Owen's one of my favorite players from his days with Seattle, his first of several teams in a long, productive career.

The Mariners ultimately sent Spike and teammate Dave Henderson to the Red Sox in mid-1986 and that's the pair of them celebrating a near-title in Fenway Park. So close, but not quite!

Seattle received this gentleman in return, who took over Spike's position at short, and went on to frustrate both my adolescence and the Mariners and Pirates franchises.

Pitchers & Poets covered the complicated on- and off-field life of Quinones in A Hard Man To Understand. In short, Rey couldn't focus enough to play at short. What he had in skills, he lacked in consistency. Those impressed with flashes of success also felt blocked with inscrutable obstacles. So close, but not quite.

HOW TO ENTER: What's your favorite story of almost, but not quite? Add a comment with the ignominious card goof, near-perfect game you attended, or other famous (or in-famous) baseball stumble, as in "1986 Red Sox" or "Rey Quinones" or "blog that forgot its own anniversary."

WHAT YOU WIN: Selected cards from your favorite vintage team (and I'll try to include a Hall of Famer)! That's the next best thing to a prospect that delivers on his promise.

I'll take "almost, but not quite" nominations until the end of Friday (Sept 20) and pick a random winner from all entries. Good luck and thanks for reading!

1962 Pittsburgh "Exhibits" Baseball 5 of Hearts, Ken Boyer & Harmon Killebrew

Some details of this oddball set remain a mystery outside of its Exhibits-like print style. It's 3"x5", blank-backed, and printed on thick stock, so not practical for actual hands of bridge. The 82-card checklist's officially tagged as "1962 Pittsburgh," with expert opinion placing distribution about there and then. (Keyman Collectibles keeps a checklist and more set info.)

Card front (blank back)

5 of Hearts isn't a proper #5 for my type set, but offers a fun excuse to mention excellent third-sacker Ken Boyer. One of the best offensive and defensive players of the late 50s and 60s, our guest's #14 deservedly hangs on the Busch Stadium wall. (#17 is none other than recent comparative Dizzy Dean.)

Over the years, I've heard a lot of dramatic Key Boyer stories from Midwestern friends. (A major highlight is Ken's take-the-lead grand slam against New York in 1964's World Series.) St. Louis residents remembered him in print as recently as June 21, 2009.

Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew also shows up as five of hearts, one example of the set's multiple players per number and suit.

These Exhibits made me think of other "baseball playing card" designs from over the years. Here's a shotgun profile of the genre.

• 1888 Base Ball Playing Cards, catalogued as WG1, the designation used for "game" sets. You can't use them for poker, but it's an interesting look nonetheless!
• 1927 strip cards, catalogued as W560. Much smaller than modern clubs and spades, so more decorative than playful.
• 1951 Topps Red Backs (and companion Blue Backs) contained 52 cards and a built-in baseball game.
  
• 1962 Exhibit of Dem Bums, a rare issue with size and style reminiscent of today's Boyer card.
• Baseball Heroes cards, the modern, "build to suit" version of putting team stars into play.

Those barely scratch the surface, as you could build a sizeable collection just from playing card sets or playable ones like 1968 Topps Game.

Value: Boyer cost me $10 a few years ago. eBay sellers of other Pittsburgh Exhibits ask from $20-50, depending on the player.

Fakes / reprints: Some Exhibits releases stretched across decades (40s-60s) and went through reprints in the 1980s. It's not clear if this 1962 issue did the same, but it's possible.

1977 Dairy Queen Tacoma Twins Baseball #5, Sal Butera

Collectors of baseball cards that feature catching equipment, take note: many minor league team sets have this kind of shot, since photographers liked to surprise players during warm-ups. DROP THE MASK AND SMILE, SAL. GOT IT, YOU'RE THE MAN, SAL.

Card front (blank back)

Butera left that mustache in the 1970s for most of his 9-year MLB career, apart from a brief return-to-form on 1982 cards. Fleer caught his lip caterpillar in this "putting on the mask" moment.

Collectors, if you're going to get that 1982 Fleer card graded, make sure it's a T-E-N.

Tacoma checklisted this DQ-sponsored set by uniform, so player call-ups meant four cards share the same number. (Note future long-time Twins manager Tom Kelly at #10.)

1. Jim Van Wyck
2. Wayne Caughey or Luis Gomez
3. Dave Edwards
4. Sam Perlozzo
5. Sal Butera
6. Hosken Powell
7. Tommy Sain
8. Willie Norwood or Tim Loberg
9. John Lonchar
10. Tom Kelly, Coach
11. Eddie Bane
12. Davis May
13. Tom Hall
14. Gregg Bemis
15. Gary Ward
16. Gary Serum or Rob Wilfong
17. Mike Proly
18. Steve Luebber
19. Art DeFillippis
20. Jim Gideon
21. Jim Hughes
22. Juan Veintidos
23. Randy Bass
24. Bill Butler or Jeff Holly
25. Dan Graham
26. Del Wilber, Manager

Value: This #5 cost $3 at MinorLeagueSingles.com. Find most of the other Tacoma Twins at COMC and if you shop for a team set, confirm they include all 30 (with multiple uniform numbers).

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any in the marketplace.

Minnesota Twins Opening Day Giveaway Winner

Here are the favorite Twins cards chosen by entrants to 2013's first Opening Day Giveaway. (Five in all, so appropriate!)

Jose Velazquez: Smilin' Joe Mauer rookie card

2002 Topps #622, Joe Mauer

Spiegel83: "Cool" Ed Bane

1974 Topps #592, Ed Bane

Superduperman99: Ben Revere's 2011 rookie card

2011 Topps #99, Ben Revere

Mariner1: Jim Nettles swinging dat bat

1972 Topps #131, Jim Nettles

Gcrl: Jim Kaat at the bat, Jimmie Hall's rookie trophy, and the Pohlads

1973 Topps #530, Jim Kaat

1964 Topps #73, Jimmie Hall

Carl and Eloise Pohlad statues at Target Field

That Jim Kaat card's also a favorite of mine. Something ineffably "vintage baseball" about a great pitcher batting during the last year before DHs.

I tossed the names into a hat...drew one of them...and...congrats to Superduperman99! Please send your mailing address via my contact link and those Twins will head your way.

Thanks to all who chimed in, we're three days even closer to first pitch!

2013 Opening Day Giveaway: Minnesota Twins

Been way too long since I sent cards out the door. Let's count down to opening day with a Minnesota giveaway!

TWINS TRIVIA: Five Twins players have statues at Target Field: Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett, and Tony Oliva. (Former owner Calvin Griffith is likewise honored.)

WHAT YOU WIN: There's a couple dozen in all from 1980 and up, including the handful of highlights above.

WHAT TO DO: What's your favorite card of a past or current Twin? (Pre-1961 Senators also in play, if you're a fan of Walter Johnson or young Harmon Killebrew.) Name it or link it in the comments and I'll randomly grab a winner from there. Cutoff for entries is end of the day this Wednesday, March 13.

UPDATE: The winner was Superduperman99! Thanks to all entrants.

Good luck and only three weeks to first pitch!

Top 5 Seasons To Forget, Pitching Edition

Fans, commentators, and statisticians all enjoy streaking from time-to-time. Hitters, runners, and fielders earn extra kudos for putting several successes in a row. Managers and franchises garner respect by making the playoffs in consecutive years and even pitchers get credit for having a hot hand, despite playing every few days at most.

But what if you're going the other direction? As companion to my look at all-time hitting futility, I dug into the history of pitchers for 5 horses who left the gate slow and spent most of the race falling further behind.

I built this list using Baseball-Reference's pitching streak finder for most consecutive game scores under 50 to begin a season. Game scores help isolate starting pitcher performance, since wins and losses depend a great deal on run support. Check out Tim De Block's article on SB Nation for more, but the bottom line is that below 50 game score = below 50% odds of winning. Tossing a string of mediocre games means extra work for your teammates and these 5 guys did that the most since we started keeping track.

1. Bill Kennedy, 1949 (12 starts, 1-7 record)

1949 Bowman #105, Bill Kennedy

Kennedy's 1949 pitching line of 16 starts, 32 relief appearances, and 153 innings says a lot about what the 101-loss St. Louis Browns had to work with. Seven different guys started 13+ games and even team "ace" Ned Garver (114 ERA+) went 12-17 thanks to lousy run support. Two of their most-worked pitchers, Cliff Fannin and Karl Drews, combined for 48 starts but just 12 wins.

Bill's own "streak" covered five months, April 23 to August 21, with two dozen relief outings mixed in. He did decent work out of the pen, but allowed 4+ runs almost every start, a deep hole for the iffy St. Louis lineup to escape.

High point: Collected two relief wins and a save between Jun 28 and July 19.

Low point: Lost 4 straight starts in June by combined score of 32-7.

2. Nelson Briles, 1970 (12 starts, 3-3 record)

1970 Topps #435, Nelson Briles

I'm a little distracted by the card photo itself, as there's a Cardinals uniform #60 in the background, but no coach or player on the official roster sported that number during Nelson's tenure. Anyone know the St. Louis hitting instructors or spring training squads well enough to guess who it might be?

Nelson got off easy considering his 9+ ERA, going 3-3 over those 12 starts. The Cardinals gave him a lot of run support and bad starts often became no-decisions. Briles did come close to pitching himself off my list with multiple game scores just under 50, but "close" only counts in hand grenades and partner dancing.

High point: Thanks to the aforementioned run support, Briles pitched into the 8th inning twice and won both games, July 17 vs. ATL and August 1 at HOU.

Low point: Left two starts without recording an out, May 29 vs. LA and June 13 at SF.

3. Jim Colborn, 1978 (13 starts, 1-8 record)

1978 Topps #129, Jim Colborn

Colborn spread his ill luck across two teams, as KC moved Jim to the Mariners in a mid-season swap for Steve Braun. Seattle gained little from the transaction other than an answer to the question, "what 1978 pitching acquisition dropped his first 6 starts?"

High point: Jim entered KC's April 28th game in the 2nd inning and threw 6.1 innings of 1-run ball, picking up the relief victory in a 7-6 Royals comeback. That might've been a 50+ game score as a starter.

Low point: Won just 1 of first 10 starts with Seattle and never pitched in the majors again after 1978.

4. Brian Anderson, 2004 (13 starts, 1-9 record)

2004 Topps #627, Brian Anderson

Brian kicked off his subpar streak on April 5th as KC's Opening Day starter, yielding 5 runs in 5 innings in an eventual no-decision. Excellent run support kept his record clean for three weeks, but a return to average Royals hitting started a tailspin of 7 straight losses and demotion to the bullpen. Spot starts on June 30 and July 19, both losses, capped the misery at 13.

High point: April 20, 15-5 win over Cleveland, 46 game score.

Low point: May 5, 10-3 loss at Toronto, 11 game score.

Statistical let-downs not enough for you? Brian Anderson also punched his ticket to Internet immortality in 1998 by testing the temperature of a hotel iron with his face. Wonder which he'd rather experience again, those ignominious cheek burns or this 2004 streak.

5. Nick Blackburn, 2012 (13 starts, 4-5 record)

2012 Topps #316, Nick Blackburn

Blackburn went 4-5 despite this 2012 streak of poor game scores, so why do I rank it most forgettable? Two reasons. First, Minnesota didn't jerk Nick around with bullpen duties. They kept sending him out to chew through 5 or 6 innings, carry a 7+ ERA, and absorb fan frustration after losses. Second, this year's 13-game streak followed a 6-game streak at the end of 2011, so Nick also holds the combined record of 19 straight starts with a below-average game score.

High point: Nick picked up 4 straight wins between May 11 and June 22, thanks to good run support. Minnesota averaged 7+ runs during that streak, helping Blackburn's record look good despite his ERA jumping from 6.84 to 7.45.

Low point: 5 straight losses followed those 4 wins and the Twins sent Blackburn down to AAA Rochester in August. (Nick's outright assignment to the minors left him off September's expanded rosters and cast doubt he'll pitch for Minnesota in 2013, despite a year left on his contract.)

Honorable mention to Scott Elarton, who started three different years on 8+ game cold streaks. Ouch.

• 2003: 8 games (Colorado)
• 2004: 9 games (Colorado and Cleveland)
• 2007: 9 games (KC)

UPDATE: Discovered that High Heat Stats examined pitchers with good and bad streaks just yesterday! Very cool.

Any infamous pitching streaks or performances you'd add to the list?