A trade for a minor-league pitcher gave the Cardinals a lift in their quest for a World Series championship.
Forty years ago, on April 1, 1982, the Cardinals acquired Jeff Lahti and another minor-league pitcher, Oscar Brito, from the Reds for big-league pitcher Bob Shirley.
Called up to the Cardinals two months later, Lahti added valuable depth to a bullpen featuring Bruce Sutter, Jim Kaat and another ex-Red, Doug Bair.
Promising prospect
Born and raised in Oregon, Lahti was taken by the Reds in the fifth round of the 1978 amateur baseball draft. A right-hander, he became a reliable reliever in the minors, posting ERAs of 2.67 in 1979, 2.77 in 1980 and 2.97 in 1981.
“Lahti has very good ability, and he has that intangible _ competitiveness,” Reds manager John McNamara told the Dayton Journal Herald in 1981.
After watching Lahti pitch for Class AAA Indianapolis in 1981, Cardinals scout Mo Mozzali recommended him.
A chance to acquire Lahti came during spring training in 1982 when left-hander Dave LaPoint earned a position on the Cardinals’ pitching staff as a spot starter and reliever.
LaPoint’s performance made left-hander Bob Shirley expendable. For the Cardinals in 1981, Shirley was 6-4, including 2-0 against the Reds. Including his four seasons with the Padres before being dealt to the Cardinals, Shirley had a 12-7 record and two saves versus the Reds.
When the Reds learned Shirley was available, they agreed to send Lahti and Brito, another right-hander, to the Cardinals.
“This was a big decision for us to make to give up two young prospects like this,” Reds general manager Dick Wagner told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Brito is one of the highest-regarded prospects in the game, period. They were very important to us. It was a tough decision.”
Fired up
The Cardinals assigned Lahti and Brito to Class AAA Louisville to begin the 1982 season. In June, Lahti was called up when reliever Mark Littell accepted a demotion to Louisville.
Lahti, 25, brought a rookie’s enthusiasm that was embraced by the contending Cardinals. Between pitches, he “stomps around the mound like a bull protecting a pasture,” Hal McCoy wrote in the Dayton Daily News.
“I try to keep myself pumped up, but I’m not conscious of my actions,” Lahti told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Maybe it’s my second being. They say there are two sides to everybody. Maybe that’s my second side. On the mound, I’m a monster.”
On July 16, 1982, in a game Shirley started for the Reds, Lahti won for the first time in the majors, pitching 3.1 innings in relief of Steve Mura before Bruce Sutter came in to close.
In the ninth, when Sutter got Paul Householder to ground into a double play, Lahti raced from the dugout onto the field. “He was halfway to the foul line before realizing there were only two outs,” the Dayton Daily News reported.
Lahti called his first big-league win “the thrill of my life.”
“I never thought my first victory would be against the Reds,” he said. “I always thought it would be for them.” Boxscore
Getting it done
On Aug. 9, 1982, Lahti pitched six scoreless innings in relief of Dave LaPoint for a win against the Mets. Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog told the Post-Dispatch, “I like him because he comes in and gets after people. He’s a good jam pitcher.” Boxscore
From then on, according to the Cardinals media guide, Herzog referred to Lahti as “Jam Man” for his ability to work out of tight situations.
A month later, on Sept. 18, Lahti again pitched six innings of relief for a win versus the Mets. Boxscore
In his last five regular-season appearances, totaling 4.1 innings, Lahti yielded one run, helping the Cardinals secure a division title for the first time.
Lahti was 5-4 with a 3.91 ERA in 33 games for the 1982 Cardinals. Excluding his one start, his season ERA as a reliever was 3.04.
Key contributor
Bob Shirley finished 8-13 in 1982, his lone season with the Reds. He went on to pitch for the Yankees and Royals.
Oscar Brito never made it to the big leagues.
Despite persistent shoulder pain, Lahti pitched well for the Cardinals from 1982 through 1985. He led them in saves (19) and ERA (1.84) in 1985, and was the winning pitcher in the pivotal Game 5 of the National League Championship Series which ended on Ozzie Smith’s iconic walkoff home run. Boxscore
After apearing in four games in 1986, Lahti underwent shoulder surgery. “The surgeon found a torn rotator cuff, with which Lahti had pitched for several years, and also bone chips that no one had detected before,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
The shoulder never regained full strength and Lahti’s pitching career was finished.
His career numbers with the Cardinals: 17-11 record, 20 saves and a 3.12 ERA. Against the Reds, Lahti was 4-1 with a save and a 1.66 ERA.
According to the Post-Dispatch, Lahti returned to Hood River Valley in Oregon, operated a bottling company, owned an apple orchard and coached baseball.
RetroSimba 
Not sure why this was a “tough decision” for the Reds. After taking a gander at Shirley’s stats–he walked a lot of guys, didn’t strike anyone out, and lost more than he won. In short…he stank. What’s even stranger about the guy is that he had seasons with a horrendous WHIP but seemingly came out of situations untarnished because his ERA was about par for the course for that era.
Yes, baseball is weird.
Thanks, Gary. It was an odd decision by the Reds. General manager Dick Wagner was fired a year later.
Another pitcher who had a promising career cut short by shoulder trouble. He went from being the set up guy for Bruce Sutter to being an integral part of the bullpen by committie. If I’m not mistaken, he was at PSU the same time as former Big Red QB Neil Lomax.
Thanks, Phillip. Those were a couple of good Portland right-handers that St. Louis had in the 1980s. Neil Lomax was with the NFL St. Louis Cardinals from 1981-87, so his time with the football Cardinals overlapped with Jeff Lahti’s time with the baseball Cardinals. In 1984, Lomax completed 61.6 percent of his passes, throwing for 4,614 yards and 28 touchdowns.
I’m here to defend Bob Shirley. I say any time a pitcher gives up fewer hits than innings pitched, he’s effective, and in ’82 for the Reds, he gave up only 138 hits in 152 innings. And that’s for a 101 loss team – managed by John McNamara no less. Need any more be said? By the way, harkening back to a piece by RS last year, everyone should check out the Dan Patrick interview with Johnny Bench, where he talks about the time Jim Maloney started throwing a spitter. Pretty funny.
Thanks for the insights, Marty.
In addition to the Johnny Bench interview with Dan Patrick and the story of the Jim Maloney spitter, here is the version Maloney gave in an interview with Jim Walker of the Ironton (Ohio) Tribune in 2020:
“I was losing a little bit off my fastball and I needed another pitch that I could use to get batters out. I was at home and talking to this guy and he started talking about Whitey Ford, who was throwing a spitter. This guy was a Yankees fan and he was my wife’s OBGYN. He lived in Fresno and we became friends. He said, ‘You know, that might be a good pitch for you.’ I said I’d never tried throwing a spitter,
“He gave me a couple of tubes of K-Y jelly and I took it to spring training and started fooling around with it. I came up with a terrific pitch and you couldn’t hit it. A catcher would need a sign or he wasn’t going to catch it.
“So, when Bench came up I told him I had this pitch and you’ll need a sign for it because I never know which way it’s going to go. It comes in there like a fastball in the high 90s and then just explodes. It goes down, or down and away, or straight down. There’s no way of tracking it the same, you just have to be ready. He told me, ‘You throw it and I’ll catch it.’ He was pretty cocky in those days. He knew he was a Hall of Famer and everybody knew that with the talent he had at 19, 20 years old.
“I started a game in Cincinnati at Crosley Field and got a couple of outs in the first inning and he calls for a fastball and I loaded it up. I had it on the back of my neck. I put a little dab on my fingers and put it on the smooth part of the ball and wound up and threw it and he never got a glove on it and it hit him on the toe. I got the guy out and went back to the bench in the dugout and I figured he was going to say something but he didn’t say anything.
“I did the same thing in the next inning. I got two outs and I wasn’t going to try it with anybody on base because he wasn’t going to catch it. I threw it and it went up high and he jumped up a little bit and it came down and hit him in the cup and broke his cup. He went down on all fours at home plate and he was moaning and yelling. They finally revived him a little bit and I got a new ball and was walking back up on the mound and I turned around and he was right behind me. He had his mask up on his head and he said, ‘I think I need a sign for that pitch.’ “