The year a reliever almost won the ERA title

Good Tuesday morning to you all, hope that you survived Monday unscathed.  I was taking a deeper look into the cards that Kerry from Cards on Cards  had sent me, and came across a bunch of 1987 Leaf cards.  Leaf was Canada's version of Donruss, and it was pretty cool to see these cards again.

Case in point...

Here are 4 of the cards from the '87 set.  I like the black borders, the cards for the most part were pretty simple, no fancy logos or anything to distract you from the player on the card.


Joe Johnson started 15 games for the Jays in '86 after coming over in a trade from Atlanta, going 7-2.

Ernie Whitt was a long time Jays catcher who platooned with Buck Martinez for several years in the 80's,

Jim Clancy was also a long time starter for the Jays, spending 12 seasons in Toronto and winning 128 games. 











In the upper right hand corner is Mark Eichhorn, and yes he is the reliever that almost won the ERA title in 1986.  To say that he was a rubber armed pitcher that year was an understatement; check out his stats for the season.

14-6, 1.72 ERA, 10 Saves.  157 IP, 166 K's 45 BB, 105 Hits allowed.  All that in 69 appearances.  Mark was the talk of Toronto that year, so much so that there was a faction of people that wanted him to start a game during the last week of the season in order to get enough innings and qualify for the ERA title.  Mark refused, and Roger Clemens wound up winning the ERA title in '86 with a 2.48 ERA.  (Clemens won the Cy Young award unanimously as well that year)

1987 was also another good year for Mark, as he led the league in appearances with 89 but his innings pitched dropped to 127.2.

Mark also spent time in Atlanta, California and Baltimore, but to me will always be remembered for the 1986 season where he was the rookie with the golden arm.

Thanks for reading, Robert

(words in this post, 343:  total for the month, 7968)