Welcome again to TA94, the sequence that applies a contemporary analytical sense to the key transactions of 30 years in the past. After two complete weeks of ready, the primary domino of the winter lastly falls, as Will Clark finds himself a brand new house. The homeowners had prohibited their normal managers from attending the final supervisor conferences, anxious about rising expenditures. However whereas many groups sat out the month, the Giants, Rangers, and Orioles, newly bought by Peter Angelos, had been trying to make a run at a trophy.
November 21
The San Francisco Giants signal RHP Mark Portugal to a three-year, $10 million contract.
In case you personal 9 baseball playing cards, odds are good that 5 of them are Mark Portugals. The 15-year veteran was as ubiquitous in baseball as he was forgettable; he by no means made an All-Star roster, posted a precise league-average ERA over his profession, and struck out fewer than 15% of the batters he confronted. The one time that anybody even considered Portugal’s existence, in truth, was after 1993, when the innings-eater put up his most interesting season, a 18-4, 2.77 ERA mark with a younger budding Astros workforce that earned him some Cy Younger down poll assist.
The Giants, contemporary off a 103-win season, wanted to switch the innings of no. 3 starter Trevor Wilson, who was out for 1994 with a torn tendon. With Will Clark’s wage coming off the books, the workforce purchased excessive on Portugal, and rapidly regretted it because the righty resumed his conventional ranges of voting current. They obtained 38 terribly common begins from him earlier than, within the midst of their second-straight dropping season, buying and selling him on the deadline for a set of future busts and a reasonably first rate two months of Deion Sanders.
This could finish as yet one more parable of groups overreacting to a profession 12 months, because the Giants had simply completed with Robby Thompson. However it might be unfair to banish Portugal from our reminiscence collectively with out noting two issues: 1) that he hit .354/.360/.500 in 1994 and gained the Silver Slugger, his solely award; and a pair of) WARP considers him double the pitcher (28.6) that the opposite WAR metrics do. A few of that’s park results: Throughout his peak, Portugal spent most of his time in pitcher’s parks, significantly the cavernous Astrodome, and DRA is much less excessive about their results than different metrics.
In any other case, this blurb is already longer than Portugal’s wikipedia entry. It could not have labored out for the Giants, nevertheless it’s good that the veteran managed to pack simply sufficient of his greatest work into one season to get one slice of the pie. This contract is about as a lot as fellow lifer Jim Eisenreich, under, would earn in his complete profession.
