Whatever Happened to Mike Ivie?

One Bill James got wrong

Whatever Happened to Mike Ivie?

In this review of the 1980 Baseball Abstract, I discovered that Bill James apparently once thought highly of an obscure player named Mike Ivie:

Ivie played for San Francisco in 1979. A quick glance at his statistics reveals what James might have been referring to:

At only 26 years old, Ivie had a breakout season in 1979, hitting 27 home runs, keeping his average up, and posting an impressive OPS+ total. He even managed to outperform teammate Jack Clark, who contributed 26 home runs of his own for the 4th place Giants. And, of course, the fact that the Giants still managed to lose over 90 games with two hitters like this shows just how bad the rest of the team was.

Ivie never played in another full season, and ended his career 4 years later.

So what happened?

Well, it turns out that Ivie was bit by the injury bug — the one thing destined to turn even the most promising ballplayer into another obscure name.

From The Berkeley Gazette, January 10, 1980, page 15

Interestingly enough, Ivie wasn’t the only Giants player to have injured himself in the 1979-80 offseason:

From The Sacramento Bee, February 8, 1980, page 73

While Ivie did recover from his knife wound, his hitting tailed off considerably in the early part of the 1980 season. Ivie was hitting .233 on May 29th when he left the lineup for what appears to have been mental reasons:

From The San Francisco Examiner, June 6, 1980, pages 57 and 58

Ivie returned in mid-July, but was never the same again. He wound up with Houston in 1981, and signed as a free agent with Detroit in 1982. He was out of the game entirely by the end of 1983.

So was James wrong? Not necessarily. Bill had the right analysis; he just couldn’t foresee an accidental knife cut and whatever mental anguish Ivie was suffering from.