Today's blog post has us up to former Detroit Tigers slugger Jason Thompson in my on-going 1978 subset, "30 Home Run Club", celebrating the big bashers of the 1977 season:
Thompson had a breakout year in 1977, his second in the Big Leagues, though first truly full-time season.
Besides
the 31 jacks, he drove in a career-best 105 runs while hitting .270
over 158 games and 585 at-bats, scoring 87 runs and getting his first
All-Star nod.
He would remain consistent with his numbers over
the next four seasons for Detroit, though never hitting 30+ homers or
driving in 100+ runs again.
Nevertheless he hit 20+ each year,
while reaching 90 RBIs as well except for his 79 in 1979, yet he found
himself traded to the California Angels for Al Cowens just after the
start of the 1980 season.
He only played for them that year,
hitting 17 homers while driving in 70 over 102 games, certainly good
production for his new team.
However, yet again, just before
the 1981 season he was on the move again, this time traded to the
Pittsburgh Pirates for Mickey Mahler and Ed Ott.
Thompson
would play for Pittsburgh for the next five years, reaching 30+ homers
again in 1982 when he also topped 100 RBIs with his 101, hitting .284
and making his third All-Star team.
He became (at the time)
one of the rare batters to reach 30 homers in both the A.L. and N.L.,
and as a nerdy baseball 13 year old back then, I took notice of that!
After
three more somewhat productive seasons for the Pirates, Thompson found
himself North of the border in 1986, playing for the Montreal Expos,
where he only appeared in 30 games in his 31-year-old season, with a
combination of bad knees and an upstart young man named Andres Galarraga
outperforming him causing Thompson to be released on June 30th.
Sadly,
he never found another gig so even though only 31 years old, his career
was over, hitting 208 homers with 782 RBIs over 11 seasons, with a .261
batting average and 1253 hits to his credit.
