The St. Louis Cardinals’ All-Time 28-Man Roster

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Starting Pitcher #4 – Dizzy Dean

These last two starting spots were really hard. There have been a lot of good Cardinals’ starting pitchers over the years, but a lot of underwhelming top candidates. Admittedly, I am not too familiar with Dizzy Dean, other than his election to the Hall of Fame in 1953 and place on the Cardinals’ LF “wall of fame”.

However, that’s what is so awesome about the internet, I can learn about a player who last played for the Cardinals almost 80 years ago. What we know is that like Gibson and Carlton, Dean had one of the better pitching seasons of all time in 1934. Dean went 30-7 that year, with seven saves, an ERA of 2.66 (3.23 FIP), and totaling a 6.6 fWAR that year, and being named the NL MVP. Remarkably Dean appeared in 50 games for the Cardinals’ that year, making 33 starts, and 17 appearances out of the bullpen.

Surprisingly, the five seasons over 45 appearances is not what did Dean in. According to Baseball Almanac, during the 1937 All-Star game, Dean suffered an injury to his toe on a line drive. Dean, living in the “Great Depression” era probably was a little rushed to comeback, and came back too soon. According to the piece by Baseball Almanac, he altered his mechanics to avoid the pain in his toe and unfortunately hurt his arm, never being the same again, as he finished the last five years of his career with the Cubs and Browns making just 44 starts during that time.

Next: Starting Pitcher #5 - Adam Wainwright