Could Have Been A Hall of Famer

              Many times, a player has busted onto the Major League scene and has immediately been compared to some or one of the greats who preceded him. I remember when Eric Davis first burst on the scene for the Reds. He showed promise, but from 1986-89, he was one of the best players in the majors. He slipped a little in 1990, but still was top 15 in the MVP vote.

           Injuries then started taking their toll and he was never the same player. The player the Dodgers traded for in 1992 was a shadow of what he was before. He wasn’t much better in 93 and they traded him to the Tigers. He hung on until 2001. He did have one very good year in 1998 with Baltimore where he hit .327 with 28 homers and 89 RBIs His OPS that year was .970. 

       His last season with the Giants, he played 74 games and hit.205, His career numbers were good, but he could have been so much better without the injuries.

        Donny Baseball is another one who had his career derailed by injuries. The first six seasons of Mattingly’s career, he was definitely on a Hall of Fame path. Six straight seasons of averages over .300. He was a lot like Freeman, good power, but a ton of extra base hits. He led the league in doubles three straight seasons and improved his number each of those years culminating in a career high 53 in 1986. Over his six years of excellence, he never had less than 36 doubles, and never hit less than 18 homers. Then his problems started with his back issues. 

    He hit over .300 just once more in his entire career. And this was when BA meant something. He did finish his career over .300 at .307. But for a first baseman, what is considered a power position, he slugged 222 homers in his 14-year career. An average of 20 per season. He did though win an MVP award in 1985. He earned 9 gold gloves, but never played in a single postseason game. 

       On of the more prominent players who had all the tools, and started out so well was Darryl Strawberry. Strawberry was the first pick in the 1980 June draft. Born in Los Angeles, he went to Crenshaw High. He spent part of 80, and then all of 81 and 82 in the Mets system. He started out at AAA Tidewater in 1983 and after 16 games, the Mets brought him up for good. He hit 26 homers and drove in 74 and was named the NL ROY for 1983. He played for the Mets for 8 seasons, and then he became a free agent. He was signed to a six-year contract at around 3 million or so a year. 

        He had been averaging 35 homers a season between 1987-90. He hit 28 for the Dodgers in 1991. He amazingly hit 10 of those against one team, the Astros. He drove in 99 runs and hit .265. His OPS was .852. He played in 139 games for the Dodgers that season. He would play 100 or more just once more in his career, which lasted until 1999. His 1992 season got off to a slow start. He was hitting .237 with 5 homers and 25 RBIs when he asked for help with a serious drug addiction. I remember seeing him in the players parking lot with Eric Davis after a split in a doubleheader with the Expos. Both left without acknowledging the fans who were trying to get autographs. He played in only 43 games for LA that season. In 1993, it was even worse, he played in just 32 games and hit .140. The Dodgers then decided to cut bait and released him in May of 1994. He signed with the Giants, but his fortunes did not improve much. He only played 29 games in SF.

        The Yankees took a chance on him in 1995. He would finish his career in New York. His first two seasons with the Yanks were ok. But his third year, he only played in 11 games. In 1998, he had a bounce back season. He played in 101 games for the Yankees, he hit 24 homers, three less than he had hit over the previous six years combined and drove in 57 runs. He hit .247 for the Yanks that year. He missed the postseason for the Yankees. He had been a huge part of their post season win over Baltimore in 1996. He slammed 3 homers in the 4 games. 1999, his last year, he played only 24 games. But he had his best BA of his career, .327, and the highest OPS he ever posted, 1.112. He hit .333 in the playoffs, 5-15 with 2 homers and 4 runs driven in as the Yankees won the series over the Braves. He retired after that. His career line, .257/.357/.505 with an OPS of .862. He slugged 335 homers and drove in exactly 1000 runs. Just think what he might have been capable of had he not gotten into drugs.

         Another one we thought destined for the Hall was Strawberry’s teammate, Dwight Gooden. Doc as he was called, won the ROY the season after Strawberry. He won the Cy Young the next season after that. He would be an A-list pitcher for much of his career. Unlike Strawberry, who had an addiction to cocaine and freely admitted the same, Gooden always seemed to deny that coke was the problem. He always said he had health issues. But Doc was one of those guys who you just did not want your team to face. He was just flat nasty. 

          Gooden burst on the scene, and he was so electric. His rookie year, he was second in the Cy Young voting. His Cy Young year, he was other worldly. 24-4 1.53 ERA, 16 complete games, 276.2 innings pitched and 268 Ks. Which was actually down from his rookie season when he struck out 276 in 218 innings. But he was 0-4 in his career in postseason play. Even in 1986 when the Mets won the World Series, Gooden was 0-3 in that postseason. He was 0-2 with an 8.00 ERA against Boston. 

        After that World Series season, he struck out over 200 hitters only once more in his career. A career that lasted 13 more seasons. He won 20 or more only that once. So, what happened to this guy? The answer was cocaine and alcohol. He remained effective, but not dominant. After three successive losing seasons, he was suspended by MLB for the 1995 season after a positive drug test while serving a prior suspension. In 1996, he helped the Yankees to a pennant in a championship year, but he did not pitch in the postseason. He retired after the 2000 season, finishing just 6 wins shy of 200. He had an excellent won-lost percentage of .634. He was elected to the Mets Hall of Fame in 2024 and his #16 was retired. His addiction problems continued after his career, and he was arrested several times. He also was incarcerated for 7 months in 2006 for violating the terms of his probation. 

        The way Pete Reiser started out, many felt he could have made the hall. Reiser’s all out style of play would eventually end his career. He was as they say, a baller. Pete had only one speed in which he played the game, fast. His rookie status was used up in 1940 when he was 21. He played in 58 games for Brooklyn and hit .293. But the following year Reiser showed his skills.  He won the batting crown with a .343 average. He led the league in doubles, triples, BA, runs, slugging, OPS, OPS+ and total bases. He did all of that in 137 games. He would only hit .200 in the series against the Yankees, but he had the trifecta, a double, triple and homer in the series driving in 3 runs. 

          The injury problem started the next season. Reiser was hitting .350 when on July 19th, he crashed face first

into the wall in center field in St. Louis, trying to catch what turned out to be a game-winning inside the park homer by Enos Slaughter. He would miss only 4 games with the resulting concussion, but he only hit .244 the rest of the way and his average dropped to .310. Brooklyn lost the pennant by 2 games to the Cardinals. Reiser would spend the next 3 years in the Army. 

        Reiser, who was a switch-hitter, would sometimes restrict himself to hitting left-handed because of an injury. While in the service, he mostly played baseball for Army teams. He was injured again and had to learn to throw with both hands. The shoulder injury he suffered in the Army would eventually be what ended his career. The shoulder would keep popping out, bone chips developed, and he had constant pain in his arm and shoulder. 

          Some good came from Reiser’s injury’s, they caused the Dodgers to pad the outfield walls at Ebbets Field in 1948. Although robbed of some of his other talents, Reiser maintained his speed. He stole home a record 7 times in 1946. If one may wonder just how good Reiser was, or could have been, his first manager, Leo Durocher said this about Pete. ” There is one player who could compare to Pete, Willie Mays. Pete had more power than Willie, both left and right-handed.  He could at least throw as well as Mays both right and left-handed. Willie had everything; Pete had everything but luck.” High praise indeed for a very talented ballplayer. 

                                           The Dodgers blew the Rockies out with a solid 13-2 win. Yamamoto went 5 innings and gave up the 2 runs. Wrobleski pitched 4 scoreless innings in relief to get his first MLB save. Yoshi got his 7th win. The Dodgers pounded out 18 hits and had 9 walks. The Hernandez boys, Kike and Teo, both hit 3 run homers. Teo’s was his career high, 33rd.  He also is 1 RBI short of 100. They scored all of that without Ohtani driving in a run. Ohtani, Muncy, and Smith all had 2 hits. Kike, Lux, and Taylor had 3. The Phillies lost earlier in the day, and the Dodgers secured home field for the entire playoffs.