Saturday, February 17, 2024

Player Spotlight

 Like yesterday, but a little more focused, we have many cards of two baseball players from the COVID lot today - first up being Phil Plantier.


Phil was a bit of a journey man with a career spanning from 1990-1997 in the majors. He played in Oakland, Houston, Boston, St. Louis and San Diego during that time. Stat wise, what he earned in offsive WAR< he gave up defensively being an "on average" overall player.


Not to say he was "bad" in any manner, but he floated around because he solidly filled the gap for teams that needed a serviceable leftfielder.


The other player today is Javy Lopez. Javy is more along the lines of Tim Salmon - maybe not his entire career with one team, but close to it with Atlanta. His successes were with the team as that's where he won his only World Series ring. He played in the majors from 1992 through 2006 and was a catcher (or DH for all of that time, save for a couple innings at first base for Baltimore in 2005.


Similar to Salmon, he earned less than 1% of the Hall of Fame voting on his first and only ballot, but was a solid player who did well for his team and had a lengthy career. Not all great players are Hall of Famers, and that's okay.

1 comment:

  1. I remember stocking up on 1991 Stadium Club rookie cards of Plantier after that monster rookie year. Not my wisest card investment... but fun nonetheless. As for Lopez... I will always remember him for being part of those star studded Braves rosters of the 90's.

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