Thursday, August 15, 2013

#58 Jose Melendez

About the Front: Jose Melendez has his uniform number (48) printed on his glove. I love that.

About the Back: Topps really reached back for that 1986 All-Star nod in Class-A ball, didn't they?

Triple Play:

1. Three batters each hit a home run in their only at-bat against Melendez: Ken Griffey, Jr., Ron Karkovice, and Cal Ripken, Jr. One of these things is not like the others...

2. Jose earned his first career win with a two-hit, eight-inning start against the Astros on May 31, 1991.

3. In 1992, he led Padres' pitchers with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 4.1-to-1.

11-Year-Old Kevin Says: I think the only thing I knew about Jose Melendez was that the Padres had traded him to Boston for Phil Plantier, an ex-prized prospect who went on to hit 34 homers in his first season in San Diego. I figured that Jose must be pretty good to get dealt even-up for such a budding power hitter.

Bill James Said: "He has pitched consistently well since coming to the major leagues, and should be a big help to the Red Sox bullpen in '94." Instead he allowed 11 runs in 16.1 innings (6.06 ERA) and never pitched in the bigs again. Baseball is funny, by which I mean unpredictable and cruel.

On This Date in 1993: August 15. Junko Asari wins the women's marathon at the World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany with a time of 2:30:03. She is the first female Japanese athlete to capture such a significant victory.

4 comments:

  1. Jose's '93 Upper Deck card is one of my favorite Padre cards from that set.

    "Unpredictable and cruel" would accurately explain my efforts to hit a curveball. Striaghtball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid.

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  2. One of these things is not like the others...

    Karkovice wasn't named after his dad?

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  3. Max - Cal Ripken, Jr. never had a mustache. There's so many directions to go with that.

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