1989 Montreal Expos season

The 1989 season for the Montreal Expos was the baseball club's 21st. With owner Charles Bronfman thinking of selling the team he founded, he wanted to take one last shot at a playoff berth. Bronfman gave young general manager Dave Dombrowski a clear mandate to win now, reportedly telling him he had all the financial ressources needed in the quest to bring a championship to Montreal. Dombrowski pulled off a massive trade on May 25, acquiring star left-handed pitcher – and pending free agent – Mark Langston from the Seattle Mariners. While the move was viewed as a coup at the time, it came at a heavy cost as a young, very tall and very raw Randy Johnson was the key part of the package going to the Pacific Northwest. Johnson would eventually harness his fantastic stuff and became one of the game's most dominant left-handed pitchers for well over a decade. Still, it seemed like a worthy gamble at the time for the Expos. That year, there was no dominant team in the National League. The team seemed poised to compete for the NL East crown with a loaded starting pitching staff that featured Langston, Dennis Martínez, Bryn Smith, Pascual Perez and Kevin Gross.

Contents

• Offseason
• Regular season
• Opening Day starters
• Notable transactions
• Draft Picks
• Major League debuts
• Starters by position
• Award winners
• Farm system
• References

The team peaked on August 2 with an NL best record of 63-44, holding a 3-game lead in the NL East and everything running along smoothly. What followed would go down as the greatest collapse in franchise history. The next night, a Benny Distefano pinch hit single in the 12th inning dealt the Expos a 1-0 loss in Pittsburgh. It was the start of a 7-game losing streak. The club limped through the rest of August but remained in the race in early September, with the team being only 2 games back of 1st place on September 6. Regardless, the downward spiral continued as the Expos inexplicably ended up losing 37 of their final 55 games to finish the season a disappointing 81-81, well out of the playoff picture. The easiest analysis of the collapse is to point to the offence, which struggled after August 2, scoring an MLB worst 3.23 runs per game. For long-time Expos fans, the collapse is viewed as the beginning of the end of the franchise. If the team makes the playoffs, perhaps even wins the NLCS against a beatable Giants team to make it to the World Series, one can only wonder if Bronfman changes his stance about selling the team and remains the owner.