Day Twenty Seven: Dave Fleming

1992 was a weird year. After the seeming paradigm shift of the 1991 season, expectations were higher than they had ever been coming into the spring of 92. Griffey was 22 and had taken a huge step forward in 91, Buhner was becoming the Bone, Edgar and Tino were primed to break out, and the pitching staff looked to be growing in the right direction. Enter into this scenario new skipper Bill Plummer. There is a lot of murky data and conjecture about what the meaning of the 92 campaign truly was but one thing is for sure: it was a shit storm. From the second he purchased the team in 89, Jeff Smulyan (I dare not utter his name aloud) had been complaining that he could not make a profit from the club and needed to move them to Tampa Bay. Many people now talk about 95 as the year that baseball was "saved" in Seattle, but there is little chance that the Refuse to Lose bunch would have been playing in the Kingdome, or anywhere else in the 206 area code for that matter, if the events of 1991-92 hadn't transpired. Smulyan was a shitty version of Clay Bennett. I guess he wasn't all that shitty considering that he ended up turning a 26 million dollar profit on a baseball team that had never made the playoffs (shrug emoji) but he was a fucking clown anyways. He was always whining about attendance and profit, like somebody had forced him to purchase the worst (WORST) baseball club in the league. Isn't that your precious free market Mr capital Man? Them's the breaks aint they? Anyhow, my own dislike and distrust of owners of all kinds aside, it has always seemed like 1992 was an inside job. Jim Lefebvre had worked his butt off getting the clubhouse culture tuned towards competition and winning in the previous year and will forever be the man who took the club over .500. And as the offseason came around the future seemed upbeat. And then Smulyan released Lefebvre and hired an untested minor league manager, Bill Plummer. In a hamfisted Major League Redux, Smulyan was setting the team up to fail. And they certainly did! And with great and lasting vigor.

The 1992 club didn't lose 100 games but they could have. They ended the year at 64-98. There had been years that were worse and a few that were better, but never one that had followed a winning year. The definitive tone in my house, and probably a lot of other baseball homes around the region, was that this was no longer acceptable. Of course, Smulyan was trying to bait the region into giving him a new park, or some money, or letting him move the team, or whatever. That was pretty clear, and in the middle of the season a deal was worked out and Nintendo became the benevolent overlord of the Seattle baseball world. But all the while, the Mariners were tanking under the confounding managerial work of Bill Plummer. Plummer, my little league coach once yelled at a 1992 team outing at the Dome, never removed his hat so as to "hide the scars where they removed his brain!" Little League coaches are the best and also the absolute worst. Most things in baseball are like that though.

So the club was just sputtering along. But there were three things going on that were hugely captivating and positive: first, 92 was Griffey's break out statistically. He took huge strides forward towards total domination in 92 and 93 would see his game elevated to superhuman status. Second, thirdbaseman Edgar Martinez was putting together a serious push for the American League batting title. And third, every five days, with little to no national fanfare, Dave Fleming was pitching brilliantly.

I'm looking at Fleming's 92 game log right now. I recommend you do the same. It's a thing of beauty. April is a rocky month. It looks like the rookie lefty is going to fade out and become just another blip on an awful season, but then on May 5th he turns it around, going 7 and a third and giving up just 2. Then he goes on to have a string of starts that we had never seen from anyone in a Mariners' uniform up to this point. He tosses CG SHO's on May 30th, June 19th, August 25th, and October 2nd. There's a couple more CGs scattered in there and only one really ugly start. Basically he was accounting for a lot of wins. And this isn't just fan speculation. Dave Fleming has a WAR of over 5 in 1992. Even the statheads agree. Dave Fleming was a fucking ace! My dad and I used to listen to every one of his starts that year. We got a chance to see a few in person, but it was always the game to listen to when Fleming was hurling. He was the first (and tbh one of the very few) pitcher that captivated my imagination. All through that year I just knew that he was going to give the team a chance to win. And he rarely let us down.

At season's end he was ripped off when Pat Listach won the AL ROY. Fleming finished third in the voting (behind Kenny Lofton who had a better season than Listach as well), but everybody back home knew his was a rookie season for the books. His stat line from that year is still a glory to behold. And 93 was a great year for Fleming as well. He looked ready to become the next great pitcher in the AL, but it wasn't to be. Injuries mounted, and as we all know, pitching can go wrong really fast. The grim ghost of the still living Rainbow Trout came and plucked up young Dave Fleming after the 1995 season and evidently Mr. Fleming is a fifth grade teacher in New York now.

And that is a fitting end to the story of Dave Fleming's Mariners career. That he not only went on to do meaningful work after flailing out of the league, but that it is something as intrinsically important as elementary school teacher. It says a lot I think. Of course I'm biased because I too am a teacher and I listened to every gemstone of a start that Dave Fleming threw back in the ugly growing year of 1992. Thanks, Mr. Fleming! I'll bet you can still throw a hell of a sinker.