Jose DeLeon? Have We Met Before?

Many of the Cardinals teams from my early teen and high school years were fairly hard to watch.  Yet, I still really enjoy collecting many of the players from those teams.  My favorite Cardinals player to collect, Ray Lankford, played the majority of his career during that time.  The talent level on those teams was generally lean, but every once in awhile someone would stop by for a season. Danny Jackson, Andres Galarraga, Gregg Jefferies, and Tom Henke were just a few All-Star caliber player who were subject to the cheapness of August Busch III.

No post of Gregg Jefferies to link to?  I'm on it.

While there were a few good players here and there on those early 1990s Cardinals teams, the vast majority of the roster was filled with all sorts of cast offs.  Who remembers Denny Walling or Dave Collins on the Cardinals?  Darnell Coles?  All bad.

There were some cast offs who faired well with those Cardinals teams.  Bob Tewksbury would probably be the best of the bunch.  He had some rough years with the Cubs and Yankees before landing with the Cardinals.  His 1992 season was downright Maddux-like.  Not joking.  One of the other somewhat successful cast offs was former Pirate and White Sox Jose DeLeon.  

The Cardinals acutally got Jose during the late 80s, his time in St. Louis just spilled over into the early 90s.  

Jose's Cardinals career started out well.  During his first two seasons he won 30 games, finished third in strikeouts in the National League behind and David Cone and Nolan Ryam, and then led the league in Ks the following season in 1989.  DeLeon played three more seasons with the Cardinals and he won 14 games.  That included a 19 loss season, the second of his career, and a season where he won 5 games in 32 starts with an 2.71, or basically Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine, or Jose Rijo minus about ten runs.  

Always felt kind of bad for Jose, better teams would have definitely landed him a few more career wins, a little bit better legacy too.  Perhaps if the White Sox could have traded him elsewhere....then I would have missed out on having Jose in my stacks of Cardinals cards.  

Speaking of trades and Jose DeLeon, a brand new player named Jose DeLeon has entered my life, and card collection via a trade.  This new Jose DeLeon came over to the Rays from the Dodgers this past off season.  He's spent some time in Durham, but has really spent most of this season sitting on the disabled list.  Still hasn't stopped me from picking up a few of his cards recently.  

First up is a 2016 Bowman Inception autograph.  I always really loved the Inception brand and have picked up a ton of these cards over the years.  I like the coloring and background on this card, love that it's an on card signature too.  Pretty popular card last year since DeLeon was a Top 100 prospect in most of those publications with top prospect lists.....

I really wanted a Rays autograph of the new Jose DeLeon, but Topps is still putting him in Dodgers uniforms.  In fact, I am pretty sure that he has about twenty Dodgers autographs this year and one Rays autograph.  I ended up with another Dodgers autograph because it looked like this......

Inception was actually switched over from Topps from Bowman this year, they are the same company, but the cards still look really nice.  I kind of dig the lighter backgrounds on this year's set.  I will have to get a Rays Jose DeLeon card sooner than later, in the meantime I hope to see him back on the field sooner than later.  Hope this Jose DeLeon can fair a little better than the other Jose DeLeon in my collection.