As previously mentioned during the 1980 AL East recap, the O's fought the good fight, won 100 games and still came up 3 games short. This was another pitching rich Earl Weaver team that did just about everything well. In most seasons they win the division by 3 or 4 games easily. Steve Stone (25-7, 3.23) would have a career year and win the Cy Young. Scotty McGregor (20-8, 3.32) was just as effective. Surprisingly future HOF'er Jim Palmer (16-10, 3.98) had a sub par year by his standards. Simply put, if the O's get a typical 20 win Palmer season they are champs. Then again, how could you count on Stone winning 25 when he never even came close to 20 during the first 9 seasons of his career. The lineup was solid. Kenny Singleton (.304-24-104) and 24 year old Eddie Murray (.300-32-116) were the pacemakers. 36 year old Mark Belanger didn't hit much (when did he ever?), but he was still the slickest glove this side of that wizard in San Diego. The bench was that typical mixture of super subs and Weaver platoon experts. John "let it be" Lowenstein hit .311 in 196 at bats. Rick Dempsey (the glove) and Dan Graham (the bat) platooned nicely behind the dish with the latter chipping in 15 homers and hitting .278. Legacy Terry Crowley hit 12 homers and batted .288 as a part time DH. Weaver had lots of moving pieces and he placed them in the right position time and time again. This was just one of those strange years where 100 wins equaled second place.
It took just 12 cards to complete this set.
A pretty non-descript set of card updates. My only regret here is not finding a good color shot of Paul Hartzell. Instead I used this poor colorization/airbrush job that I created. I’m still holding out hope that a nice crisp color shot will come my way for an update.
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