Saturday, March 16, 2013

#48-Zane Smith




A 3rd round pick of the Braves in the 1982 draft Zane Smith made it to Atlanta by 1984 and was a mainstay of their pitching staff in 85. Horrible, awful soul crushing 1985. The year of, the late, 1-13 Pascual Perez  and his 6.14 ERA, Steve Bedrosian in the rotation and going 7-15 and what was really the end of Len Barker's career with his 2-9 and 6.35. 
In 87 he won 15 though his ERA was a high 4.09 and the Braves were still awful. Two years later the losing caught up with Smith as he started the season 1-12 with his career worst WAR of -1.3. Traded in July he went to Montreal, who's uniform we see him in on this card and responded with a 1.5 WAR to finish out his season. Speaking of this card, it was outdated on August 8, when he was traded to the Pirates for two players and a player to be named later who turned out to be Moises Alou. That season he went 0-2 in his first postseason. The next year he faced his old team in the NLCS and went 1-1 with a superb 0.61 ERA, however the Pirates lost again. 
Smith stayed with the Pirates until 1995 when he joined the Red Sox but arm injuries lead to a miserable year there and in 96 he was back in Pittsburgh when another bad year made that his last season. 

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