Sixto's '82 Season

I think this photo of Sixto Lezcano sums up baseball, and life, in the late 1970s.

But that's a discussion for another day. Today I'd like to talk about Sixto's 1982 season with the San Diego Padres.

Sixto came to the Padres on December 10, 1981, in one of the more fateful trades of baseball's modern era. The St. Louis Cardinals traded Sixto, Garry Templeton and a PTBNL (Luis DeLeon) to the Drinos for Steve Mura, a PTBNL (Al Olmstead) and Ozzie Smith. Ozzie obviously became a Hall of Famer and helped lead the Cardinals to a World Series title, two other World Series appearances, and countless franchising opportunities. Mura, though he'd only pitch three more seasons, started thirty games for the Cardinals' '82 World Series team. Al Olmstead sucked.

On the Padres side of the deal, Templeton, and to a lesser extent, DeLeon, helped the team to the '84 World Series, but Templeton, a pure monster in his first few seasons with St. Louis, never recaptured the All-Star potential he flashed in those early Redbird years. DeLeon pitched well in '82 and '83, less so in '84 and '85, and left to the Orioles as a free agent after the '85 season.

But what of Sixto?

He only played 1 1/2 seasons with the Drinos - shipped off in the middle of '83 ostensibly, I believe, to make room in the outfield for a couple of beasts named Kevin McReynolds and Tony Gwynn - but that one full season was a quietly beastish year that I won't soon forget. (I don't really remember it as it happened - '82 was my first cognizant summer - but it looks pretty beastish in retrospect.)

Playing RF and batting primarily fourth or fifth in the lineup, Sixto put together a solid season for a .500 ballclub. In 470 ABs, he triple slashed at .289/.388/.472, knocking 16 bombs and plating 84 ribeyes. He walked more than he struck out - always a nice little stat to feature - and even tripled 6 times. He crushed lefties to the tune of .326, but could also hit tough right-handers, batting .287 against right-handed starters. At 28 and in his prime, he was, to use Baseball-Reference's Similarity Scores, a lot like Dwight Evans.

Looking at the game logs on Baseball-Reference, I'm particulary enamored of his 4-6, 2 bomb, 4 ribeye game on April 23 against the eventual NL West Champion Braves. Sixto's 3-run bomb in the top of the 12th off Rick Camp provided the margin of victory. (Note: his first bomb of that game was a 4th inning smoker off HOFer Phil Niekro who happened to go 17-4 in '82.) Also worth mentioning is his work in a doubleheader sweep of the Reds on July 31. Sixto went 6-7 over the two games, hitting 3 bombs with 7 ribeyes. They're probably still talking about that in Cincinnati.

Finally, how many joints did Sixto smoke before taking this picture:


What a beast.