A salute to Jeff Suppan

He was the hero of the 2006 postseason for the St. Louis Cardinals, but other than that never really accomplished much, but somehow Jeff Suppan managed to last 17 years in the major leagues.

He has announced his retirement and one writer salutes the former Cardinal starter by taking the unusual tack of praising Suppan's mediocrity, which the humble Suppan has always acknowledged. Will Leitch finishes his article like this:

For one week, he was a golden god. Suppan's career ERA-plus was 97, which makes him almost definitively a slightly below-average pitcher for his career. But for one week in the month of October 2006, he was Bob Gibson. Suppan essentially beat the New York Mets by himself, giving up just one run in 15 innings in the 2006 NLCS, including a terrific Game 7 start that helped the Cardinals clinch a trip to the World Series. The Bob Gibson comparison falls apart when you look beyond Suppan's surface stats. He faced 57 batters in that NLCS and only struck out six, as many as he walked. He still gave up only one run. He won MVP of that NLCS -- joining Ozzie Smith, Darrell Porter, Albert Pujols, David Freese and Michael Wacha in Cardinals history -- and set himself up for a free-agent contract that offseason from the Milwaukee Brewers that, inevitably, turned out to be a disaster. The Brewers gave Suppan $42 million for four years, such an insane deal that Suppan ended pitching for the Cardinals again, essentially for free. Just to annoy the Brewers, he was better that season than he ever was for Milwaukee.

This is key to the Suppan legacy, such as it is. He was never great. He was rarely good. But he was always there. And when you're always there, sometimes, everything will align just right. Baseball has unlikely heroes because everything that happens in baseball is unlikely. Woody Allen famously said that 90 percent of life is just showing up. Jeff Suppan always showed up. That seems like small praise. But it's not. For all of us, really: It's just about what we can squeeze out. Jeff Suppan squeezed out a ton.