Baseball Cards: Donruss 1990

The last time I posted a lineup based on baseball cards, it was made from the Topps 2013 set, the most up-to-date set I own (indeed, there is no other set that's more up to date). So it's only fitting that the next lineup I post is from the oldest, and thus most historical, set in which I own a significant amount of cards: Donruss 1990. All of these cards originate from a factory-sealed box I bought at a garage sale several years ago containing several unopened packs and a special edition puzzle of Carl Yastrzemski, who had retired six years before this set was published. At the time, Donruss was a brand owned by Leaf Inc., as I learned from reading the back of the cards in detail. Today, Donruss is now exclusively a football and basketball card producer, as I learned by digging deeper on Wikipedia. As they were made for the beginning of the 1990 season, the stats we are working with are from 1989, a year in which the Oakland Athletics won the World Series, as I learned from baseball-reference.com. Let's get right into a photographic version of the lineup.

I'd like to start with the rotation, just so that we can start the post by seeing how AL Cy Young Award winner Bret Saberhagen's blue Royals uniform stands out against the delightfully retro red and black background (although the white cursive does make those names a chore to read, even on the actual cards themselves). But that's right, my rotation is anchored by the guy who led the major leagues with 9.7 WAR in 1989. He also led the majors in ERA, W, and WHIP, en route to his second Cy Young Award, all at the tender age of 25. Behind him is #8 on the WAR list (6.0) Bert Blyleven, heading out of his last great year: at age 38 he finished 4th in the Cy Young voting. His longevity truly was amazing; I think the only reason they kept him out of the Hall of Fame for so many years was because of how much Twins fans hate his play-by-play calling. Next is a member of the World Champion Oakland Athletics, Dave Stewart. Stewart's 21 wins led him to a better finish in the CYA voting than Blyleven ("Smoke" finished #2) even though he averaged about 10 fewer fantasy points per game (61.9 for Stewart, 71.8 for Blyleven - they both finished well behind Saberhagen, who clocked in at 89.6 [for a whopping 3,224 on the season!]).

Our first NL pitcher is Doug Drabek of the Pirates, who in 1989 was one year older than his son Kyle is in 2013, where he is currently struggling in the Blue Jays organization. But no matter how much success young Kyle has in the majors, he will never have a cooler moustache than his pops. The battle for #5 starter was neck and neck between a 23-year-old Greg Maddux and a 35-year-old Dennis Martinez. The choice is more than obvious if this were a keeper league, but looking at '89 alone they were pretty comparable by all measures: Maddux trails insignificantly in Points (2,070 to 2,081) but Martinez finishes slightly lower in WAR (4.7 to 5.0). I went with The Professor just because of youth and reverse nostalgia, but El Presidente still made the team as the all-important long reliever/swingman/sixth starter. At the back end of the bullpen is lefty John Franco in his last year on his original team (the Reds) before he was traded to his hometown Mets, for whom he would go on to play for 14 years and record 276 saves.

Now the batters:

I organized this by position rather than by batting order, because if your baseball knowledge starts in the late '90s (which mine does) you will be confused to see Craig Biggio, someone you're used to seeing as an infielder, instead playing behind the plate. 1989's Silver Slugger at C would go on to play two more seasons at that position before moving full time to 2B - he played there primarily for 14 of his the next 16 seasons, all as an Astro. Pedro Guerrero isn't a guy you hear about too often after his trade from the Dodgers to the Cardinals, but he had somewhat of a resurgence in '89, finishing 3rd in MVP voting. 2B Ryne Sandberg is someone I'm really sorry I didn't get to see play extensively - he retired after the 1997 season - but a quick glance at his numbers show that he was consistently one of the best in the game for a very long time. It's too bad he could not have taken the Cubs to the World Series one of those years. One player I did get a chance to see a little of is Wade Boggs, but mostly when he was with the Devil Rays, i.e. after his amazing stretch of 12 straight All-Star Game appearances. He actually trailed fellow 3B Bobby Bonilla in fantasy points (2,074 to 2,152), but Boggs's monumental WAR advantage (8.4 to 4.9) plus the fact that he is a Hall of Famer, a leadoff hitter, and one of the all-time greats solidifies his spot in the lineup. Also Bonilla still makes the team as the DH, so all's well.

On the subject of Hall of Famers and all-time greats, Cal Ripken mans the shortstop position at a time in history when there was no one better. In addition to his well-publicized "Iron Man" consecutive games streak, Ripken was also in the midst of 10 straight seasons in which he hit more than 20 HR and an unprecedented 19 straight seasons where he made an All-Star appearance. Our left fielder and cleanup hitter Kevin Mitchell, however, had pretty much the exact opposite career trajectory. Mitchell played for 13 seasons and amassed 29.0 WAR in that time, but nearly 38% of that total came over two seasons, the first of which being 1989, when he led the league in HR, RBI, and OPS en route to winning the NL MVP award and leading his Giants to the World Series (only to see them fall to the A's). In center field is Mitchell's MVP counterpart in the other league, Robin Yount, a full nine years before the Brewers switched leagues (it was the last awards recognition he would receive for the rest of his Hall of Fame career). Rounding out the outfield is the fifth Hall of Famer in this lineup, Tony Gwynn, who qualified at RF, but who I was surprised to see played the majority of his 1989 in CF, his only full season in which he did so. I was also surprised to see that he stole 40 bases that year, which would have been impractical in his later, heavier years when I first started watching him.

Among the honorable mentions are an entire lineup made up of Hall of Famers: C Carlton Fisk, 1B Eddie Murray, 1B George Brett (he had moved from 3B two years prior to the release of this set), 2B Roberto Alomar, 3B Paul Molitor, SS Barry Larkin (who won the Silver Slugger that year despite playing only 97 games and averaging 10.7 PPG), OF Dave Winfield (although he spent all of '89 on the DL), and RP Goose Gossage (at the tail end of a fine career). We also have AL Silver Slugging 2B Julio Franco, pre-steroids Barry Bonds, on-steroids Jose Canseco, and current Five Hour Energy spokesman Bo Jackson. A pair of all-time great Braves starters, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, join such other future greats as Curt Schilling, Larry Walker, and Bernie Williams (in all their Rookie Card glory). And we also have three current managers (Mike Scioscia, Robin Ventura, and Kirk Gibson) and four future TV announcers/pundits (Al Leither, John Kruk, Rick Sutcliffe, and Mark Grace).