Last week’s Terrible Tuesday post got more positive feedback than I anticipated so I’ll continue the series. The theme is simple. Bad APBA cards. Unlike Monster Card Monday, these will only include cards with a sufficient amount of playing time. I’ll officially start it with a suggestion I got a while back from Mel M. -Tom
“All-field, No hit”. That describes 60s AL shortstop Ray Oyler to a tee. In 1968, he got only 29 hits in 215 at-bats for a miniscule .135 batting average for the Detroit Tigers.
| Split | G | GS | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 Totals | 111 | 70 | 247 | 215 | 13 | 29 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 12 | 0 | 2 | 20 | 59 | .135 | .213 | .186 |
As bad of a hitter that he was, Oyler did manage two 0s thanks to an amazing six doubles (no patronizing here). Other than that, you’ll find hit numbers 8-8-9-9 and that’s it. He does have three 14s but unfortunately two of them occupy 15 and 
25.
The 1968 Oyler card also has three 24s. On the plus side, he did receive a SS-9.
The 1968 season wasn’t an anomaly for Ray Oyler. For his six year career over 542 games, he hit .175. His 1967 APBA card (shown right), when he hit .207, was a little better offensively but not by much. He has an extra 7 and one extra 8.
Thanks again to Mel M for his help with this!
I remember reading somewhere that Ray went “0 for September.” He was replaced at short in the World Series by Mickey Stanley, an outfielder who hadn’t played SS in the majors (I don’t recall if he did earlier) and did fairly well defensively. The Tigers needed his bat in the lineup.
Jack,
not only was he 0 for September but he was 0 for August too.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=oylerra01&year=1968&t=b#month
only 3 hits in July, too :-P
Ha! Thanks. Looks like he was on fire early (March/April) with a mighty .220 BA!
I am using the ’68 Tigers in a GTOP league currently. In spite of the complete lack of production from SS and 3B, the Tigers are 19-11 and have the league’s 2nd best record.
Wert, Tracewski, Matchick, Oyler. I combo them all sorts of ways and they cannot produce. Matchick is actually hitting close to .250, but he is a 7 at SS. Oyler is currently 2 for 36.
Amazing defensively supposedly. Just how good was he? Anyone have any information to provide that clearly shows this?
Looks like he was fabulous in 1967, good in ’68. Check out the stats at
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/oylerra01.shtml
i would love to see adam dunn’s card from a few years back