NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION- 1979 KEN MACHA

On the blog today, we have a "not so missing" 1979 card for former infielder Ken Macha, who played in just under three dozen games for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1978:

 

Macha played in 29 games over the Summer of 1978, hitting .212 with 11 hits in 52 at-bats, with five runs scored and five runs batted in.

Originally up in 1974 when he appeared in five games for Pittsburgh, he wouldn't make it back to the Majors until 1977, when he played in 35 games, hitting .274.

In 1979 he found himself North of the border with the Montreal Expos, where he'd play for two seasons before one last year as a Big League player with the Toronto Blue Jays during the strike-shortened 1981 campaign.

All told, over those six seasons under the Big League sun, Macha finished with a .258 career average, compiling 98 hits over 380 at-bats, with 30 runs scored and 35 RBIs over 180 games.

Later on in the 2000's he'd become a Major League manager, guiding the Oakland A's between 2003 and 2006 with great success, finishing in first place twice and second place twice, averaging about 92 wins a season, before managing the Milwaukee Brewers in 2009 and 2010, where he met with less success, winning 80 and 77 games respectively.

Nevertheless not a bad baseball life!

NOT REALLY MISSING IN ACTION- 1975 KEN MACHA

Today we have a “not so missing” 1975 card for Ken Macha, who made his MLB debut during the 1974 season as a catcher, something he wouldn’t do much of again over the course of his six-year Major League career:

Macha went 3-for-5 at the plate over his first taste of the Big Leagues, scoring and driving in a run while playing one game behind the plate.
He would spend all of 1975 and 1976 in the Minors before making it back to the Majors in 1977, appearing in 35 games where he hit .274 with 26 hits in 95 at-bats.
Now generally a third baseman, he would go on to play parts of the four seasons with the Pirates, Montreal Expos and Toronto Blue Jays before taking his bat and glove to Japan in 1982.
He’d play four years there, putting up some nice slugging numbers including 31 homers in 1984 with 93 RBIs for Chunichi, averaging over .300 for his career in the JPCL.
He’d never make it back to the Big Leagues as a player, but he would go into coaching, then later on managing, where he’d spend four years with the Oakland A’s (2003-2006) and two with the Milwaukee Brewers (2009-2010), really having a nice managerial career where he finished with a .568 winning percentage based on a 368-280 record.
In his four years with Oakland, the team finished two seasons in first place, with the other two years in second.
As a player, he finished his career with a .258 batting average, with 98 hits over 380 at-bats over 180 games, driving in 35 runs while scoring 30.