Thursday, June 27, 2019

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.