Monday, August 28, 2023

1975 "IN-ACTION": MIKE CUELLAR

Haven't added a player to my 1975 "In-Action"  set in a long while, so today we go and add Baltimore Orioles ace Mike Cuellar:


By 1975 Cuellar was coming close to closing out a nice 15-year career that saw him win 185 games, post four 20+ win seasons, win a Cy Young Award (shared with Tigers pitcher Denny McLain in 1969) and post four sub-3.00 E.R.A. Seasons.
His 1974 season saw him post his last 20-win season, going 22-10 for the Orioles with a 3.11 ERA over 38 starts, with five shutouts and 20 complete games, ending up sixth in the Cy Young race at season's end.
I never realized that even though he came up in 1959 with the Cincinnati Reds, appearing in two games as a 22-year old, he didn't make it back to the Major's until 1964 at the age of 27, now as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Considering his lifetime win total mentioned above, he could have possibly approached 250 wins had he not missed those four-plus years in the early-1960's.
In 1977 Cuellar found himself with the California Angels, appearing in only two games, which would be the last two games of his career.
His lifetime numbers were impressive: the 185 wins mentioned above, a 3.14 lifetime E.R.A., 36 shutouts and 1632 strikeouts over 453 games, 379 of which were starts.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER...

@wthballs
Everything baseball: cards, events, history and more.