There are some really good baseball channels with short videos on YouTube that occasionally provide me with good background while I am doing my school work at night. I ran across one a few week's ago about former Blue Jays and Angels relief pitcher Mark Eichhorn. You can find the video here.
Interesting career.
In summation, Eichhorn came up with the Blue Jays in 1982 and failed miserably. He went back to the Minors and started throwing sidearm. Eichhorn also dialed back the velocity on all his pitches and became noted as the softest tossing pitcher in modern baseball. He came back up in 1986 as was the setup man for Tom Henke. Eichhorn had one of the best seasons by a modern relief pitcher with a sub 2 ERA, 14 wins, 10 saves, and more than a strikeout per inning.
Without going year-by-year through his career, Eichhorn ended up playing 11 years, mostly with the Blue Jays and Angels. If you're into sabermetrics, his WAR7 (WAR in his best 7 seasons) is equal to Billy Wagner and Lee Smith, just without the saves.
Eichhorn's career was derailed by injuries in 1995, which is where my baseball cards come in. As a middle reliever, Eichhorn has very few cards and not many with much flash or pizzaz, but after watching the video I felt like trying to find one.
Eichhorn attempted to come back with the Angels in 1996. He missed huge chunks of the season and was not very effective, ending the year with an ERA north of 5. However, he did end up signing cards for the per-pack-autograph Leaf Signature Series.
Here is the flashiest Mark Eichhorn card out there:
This was less than $2, a small price to pay for an intriguing player with a good story.
In the process of finding this card, I discovered that Mark Eichhorn actually fit into my collection quite well and I already owned a card of him outside of common cards from the 1980s and 1990s products. It turns out Mark Eichhorn was on the Durham Bulls for a season.
Deep dig into the Durham Bulls team set box:
Ooh, I love that autograph! He's a guy that I've thought about collecting for a while, but haven't been able to commit myself to the idea one way or the other. His pitching style did lend itself to some pretty neat cards though, and of course it doesn't hurt that 99% can be had for mere nickels and dimes.
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