Sid Fernandez, 1995 Donruss #270

Today it was Sid Fernandez's turn to be featured on my 1993 Topps blog. That got me thinking. I've spent some time smacking El Sid around on this blog, but he must have had a good game or two amidst that horrific season-plus in Baltimore, right?

Right. As a matter of fact, Sid had seven "quality starts" as an Oriole, all coming in 1994. The best of those was on April 28, in his third appearance in orange and black. He pitched into the ninth inning against the host Angels, allowing three hits and two walks and striking out five. The only Halo runs came on a pair of solo homers by Chili Davis and future sexual predator Chad Curtis. The second of those homers chased Fernandez from the game, but Lee Smith only needed three pitches to nail down the 4-2 O's win, Sid's first with the Birds.

Now you can't say that I never said a kind word about Sid Fernandez.

Sid Fernandez, 1995 Leaf #353

I recently took advantage of Strat-O-Matic baseball's trial offer of one free team in one of their online leagues. I chose to join a 12-team league with a player pool from the 1990s. The player profiles are based on one of five randomly-selected season stat lines for each player, making it a mystery which one you'll get. For instance, I could have Cal Ripken's 1991 MVP season, his mediocre 1993 season, or his pretty-good 1994 season. The teams are auto-drafted, so I select my preferred 25-man roster in priority order (constrained by an $80 million salary cap) and then hope that I get most of my guys. A full season is simulated at a rate of three games per team per day using Strat-O-Matic's game engine.

I did pretty well in the draft, winding up with an offense anchored by Chris Hoiles, John Jaha, Ripken, Kenny Lofton, Jay Buhner, and Harold Baines. I seem to have a strong bullpen, with Randy Myers closing. Of course, you probably wouldn't confuse my starting rotation with the Bobby Cox-Leo Mazzone Braves. Mike Mussina is the marquee name, followed by Jeff Fassero, Sid Fernandez, Rick Sutcliffe, and Scott Kamieniecki. There's a few names in there that should give longtime O's fans a cold chill.

Nine games into the season, my Hop Bottom Alemeisters are in first place in the East with a 6-3 record. But it hasn't been pretty. In true 1990s fashion, they've hit 16 home runs (led by Buhner's four) and have a .274/.352/.492 batting line that Earl Weaver would love. Cal and Lofton have matching .368 batting averages in a small sample size. But the pitching...woof. Moose has been battered in two straight starts and now has a 6.45 ERA; Fassero and Sutcliffe are almost as bad, and Kamieniecki gave up six runs in three and one-third innings in his lone start. The only guy holding the starters above water is...El Sid. Of course.

Fernandez, one of my favorite punching bags due to his dumpy physique and disastrous year-plus performance in Baltimore, has allowed a grand total of four hits and one earned run in 17.2 innings, with 22 strikeouts and eight walks. In his first start, he hurled a two-hit shutout. In the second, he balked in a run in the sixth and let Jeff Nelson close the door on a 2-1 win in the ninth. That's a 0.51 ERA, 0.68 WHIP, and 11.51 K/9. Just the way I drew it up.

It looks like I got one of Sid's early-1990s Mets seasons. Thank goodness.

Sid Fernandez, 1994 Pinnacle #483

Today, I'm thankful that I didn't have to cook Thanksgiving dinner for Sid Fernandez. Happy Turkey Day, folks. It's time to slip into a food coma.

Sid Fernandez, 1994 Donruss #396

As you can see here, things usually get ugly when the Orioles and Mets mix. In addition to the Birds' ill-fated acquisition of Sid Fernandez, there's the 1969 World Series, the Bobby Bonilla and Mike Bordick/Melvin Mora trades...by now, fans of both teams are probably throwing things in disgust. But we can and do find common ground in baseball cards. One of my favorite Mets fans is Max, who comments here as jacobmrley. After all these years, he's finally broken down and started his own card blog, Starting Nine. It seems like he's got a unique concept; he's pared down his considerable card collection and has grouped the remnants by theme in nines. (Nine pockets to a binder page, you know.) So best of luck to Max...welcome to the club!

Sid Fernandez, 1994 Topps Traded #28T

I'm going off the beaten path from the usual caliber of O's Card birthday wishes today. Yes, it's my pleasure to wish a happy 49th to #50, Sid Fernandez. I've made El Sid the butt of my jokes more than once, due to his doughy physique and his abominable two seasons in Baltimore. It's easy to forget that the guy was a pretty danged good pitcher for the Mets in the decade prior to his arrival here. He was a two-time All-Star with a 3.15 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, and 8.2 strikeouts per 9 innings when the Orioles inked him to a three-year deal. Though you can question the wisdom of Peter Angelos and Co. giving a guaranteed three-year deal to a 31-year-old lefty with weight issues, you certainly can't fault Fernandez for taking the money. Sure, he could've rewarded his new employers by getting in better shape, but let's not get crazy. Anyway, time really does heal all wounds...or most, anyway. (This isn't over, Jeffrey Maier!) I just can't stay mad at someone whose cards give me so much entertainment, and I've always thought that there weren't enough native Hawaiians in the big leagues. Plus, I read a book about the 1986 Mets that revealed that Sid thought pro wrestling was 100% legit. You've gotta love that.

Other Orioles born today: Nolan Reimold (28), Leslie Brea (38), and Ray Murray (b. 1917, d. 2003).

Sid Fernandez, 1994 Fleer Flair #253

Sid Fernandez was one of the best-known baseball players to come from Hawaii, the 50th state to join the United States of America. That's why he chose to wear #50 on his back throughout his career. Those are the kind of nuggets of uniform-number minutiae that I share on my NumerOlogy website, which chronicles the men behind the numbers in Oriole history. I've just given the site an update for the first time in nearly a year, because I am equal parts technologically impaired and prone to procrastination.

As I've mentioned, I found out last May that some unscrupulous person had hacked my site to redirect to malware sites. However, I was in the process of renovating and moving into my house, and I wasn't sure how to fix things. So I put it off...and put it off some more...and suddenly another baseball season was upon me. So I finally did what I should have done months ago and emailed the troubleshooting folks at my webhost. They responded the same day with a solution that was embarrassingly simple. One file in particular had been corrupted, and I needed only to reload it and set it to read-only. Done and done. I also logged the last season's worth of uniform number comings and goings. Now the 2011 season can truly start, and I feel like a proper dope.

Sid Fernandez, 1995 Stadium Club #188

I'm sure I've been unfairly cruel to Sid Fernandez on the rare occasions that I've blogged about him, but I just can't resist low-hanging fruit. This may be the single funniest Orioles card that I own. "El Sid" looks more like a certain pixellated adventurous Italian plumber than he does a major league pitcher as he looms large over the dugout rail and the low-laying photographer. When I look at his cheesy smile and ample chins depicted in all of their full-bleed color glory, I almost forget about the sky-high ERA and the towering home runs he allowed. This glossy little rectangle makes me glad - for just a fleeting moment - that this pear-shaped Hawaiian was an Oriole.

Sid Fernandez, 1994 Sportflics Update #2

Okay, so lenticular cards don't scan too well. But in this case, it gives the image an ethereal sort of quality that I like. Besides, Sid Fernandez is the guy who, after racking up a 7.67 ERA to start the 1995 season and being demoted to the bullpen, was quoted as saying: "You just won't see me...I'll be gone with the wind, and that's it." Rather than retire, he hung around until the Birds released him in July, halfway through his three-year, $9 million contract (which was a hefty sum in those days). Naturally, he signed with the Phillies and went 6-1 with a 3.34 ERA the rest of the way. Feh.

I look at El Sid's career numbers and try to figure out where the O's went wrong. He was flat unhittable for a full decade with the Mets, never allowing more than 7.4 hits per nine innings in a full season. He was switching to the American League, but there's no reason that the move should have turned him into a toad. Then again, he was pretty chunky, had missed big chunks of two of the previous three seasons with injuries, and was on the wrong side of thirty. Caveat emptor. I also just learned from The Bad Guys Won, Jeff Pearlman's book about the 1986 Mets, that the rotund Hawaiian apparently believed that professional wrestling was real. This absolutely dumbfounded me. How is this possible, even in the 1980s?! I realize that it's not the sort of thing that routinely comes up when a team meets with a free agent, but now I think that it should. If I'm about to sign a guy to a multi-year, seven-figure deal, I think I might like to know that he's afraid of being eaten by Kamala the Ugandan Giant. It's called doing your due diligence.

Sid Fernandez, 1994 Score Select #353

I have to be honest with you, I haven't given Sid Fernandez much thought since he was released by the Orioles in July of 1995. But this weekend, I received a few boxes of O's cards in the mail from reader and frequent commenter Tim in New Orleans. I had a great time just flipping through the cards one by one, letting the names and faces of the past come back to me. When I got to this card of "El Sid", I was just dumbfounded by his appearance. I remember the lefty being overweight, but the photos on this card are just grotesque! Look at the size of those expansive hindquarters and massive thighs, cruelly accentuated by tight-fitting, bright white polyester pants. Sid was about average height at 6'1", but his legs look comically stubby below the knee, adding to the illusion that he is all midsection. Even his feet look tiny, based on the angle of the action shot. The belt is straining under the pressure of his protruding belly, proving that even the slimming effect of black clothing has its limits. His physique doesn't exactly lend itself to the tucked-in and tight dress code of the baseball uniform, as his pants seem to be hiked halfway up his stomach; it's a look that is usually associated with men much older than Fernandez. To sum up, the camera is not your friend, Sid.

This picture would have been taking in Spring Training of 1994, right after the Orioles signed Sid away from the Mets with a 3-year, $9 million contract, a rather large sum of money for a pitcher at the time. Though he'd missed significant time with injuries in two of the previous three years, the O's were banking on bolstering their starting rotation with a lefthander who had been consistently unhittable for a decade in the National League (his highest WHIP in that period was 1.26, and his highest ERA 3.81 - both occurring in 1987). When they got a good look at the native Hawaiian stuffed into a black and orange #50 jersey, I wonder if the team brass started having buyers' remorse. If it didn't happen right away, they had cause for regret soon enough; his numbers in Baltimore speak for themselves. What's maddening is that the Birds convinced him to show up for duty in 1995 37 pounds lighter, and he was even worse!

Maybe Baltimore was just a bad fit for El Sid. His success pre-and-post Orioles definitely seems to suggest that. But the damage has been done; to this day, whenever the O's set their sights on a National League pitcher, my father can be found rolling his eyes and exhaling in disgust. Caveat emptor.