Happy Birthday David Cone

David Cone turns 60 today.

Cone had two short stints with the Blue Jays.

The Jays traded for him in 1992 at the end of August. We were in first place, 2.5 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles. We were doing alright except for the 5th starter spot. Dave Stieb had the role, but his last start was August 8. Stieb only went 3 innings and allowed 5 runs. His final real season with the Jays ended there, with a 5.04 ERA (he did try to make a comeback in 1998). Rookie Doug Linton took his spot, made three starts, and had a 10.66 in those starts.

So the Jays sent Jeff Kent and Ryan Thompson (as the PTBNL) to the Mets for Cone. Kent went on to have a great career. But then Cone helped us win a World Series. In the stretch run, Cone went 4-3, with a 2.55 ERA in 8 games, 7 starts. We finished in first, 4 games up on the Brewers. Cone made 2 ALCS starts, picking up a win and a loss, with 3.00 ERA and didn’t have a decision in 2 starts in the series against the Braves with a 3.48 ERA (and hit 2 for 4 with a walk). So yeah, we might have won the World Series anyway, but you never know.

But the Mets got good value for the rental.

After the 1992 season, Cone Signed with the Royals, but we traded for him again at the start of the 1995 season, giving up three guys who didn’t do anything for him. Cone was great, going 9-6, with a 3.38 ERA in 17 starts. He did well, but the team didn’t. We were in 5th place with a 35-47 record, so we were sellers at the trade deadline. We traded him to the Yankees for three players that didn’t do much. Marty Janzen was the only one of the three to make it to the majors, and he went 6-7 with a 6.39 ERA over two seasons for use.

Cone went on to win four more World Series rings with the Yankees.

David had a heck of a career. He was a 5-time All-Star and won a Cy Young award in 1994. He had a 19-strikeout game in 1991 as a Met and pitched a perfect game as a Yankee on July 18, 1999 (which he talked about in detail in the book Full Count).

Cone retired with a 194-126 record with a 3.46 ERA in 450 major league games regular-season games and an 8-3 record with a 3.80 ERA in 21 playoff games. However, he didn’t get much love from the Hall of Fame voters, appearing on just 3.9% of ballots, falling short of the 5% needed to get on the ballot a second time. He got ripped off because he was in that bridge between when pitchers needed 250 wins to make the Hall and modern times, where getting to 200 wins is much harder. It would have been for him to get 5% of the vote and let the Writers consider him for longer.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

Also having a birthday today is Royce Clayton, who turns 53 today.

As a free agent, the Jays signed Royce to play shortstop in 2007. Royce, 37 at the time, wasn’t great, hitting .254/.304/.344 in 69 games before the Jays released him, giving John McDonald the full-time job. Nevertheless, Royce had a nice career, playing for 17 seasons, hitting .258/.312/.367 with 110 home runs.

Happy Birthday, Royce.