The last Montreal Expos' All-Star never pitched in the 2004 MLB All-Star Game. NL Skipper Jack McKeon, who'd managed the Florida Marlins to their second World Series Championship in 2003, used eight pitchers in the '04 edition of the Mid-Summer Classic, which the AL won 9-4, but not Livan Hernandez, the lone representative of the then-31-56 '04 Expos, whose last season in Montreal (and partly in Puerto Rico), and last place finish in the National League earned the Washington Nationals the draft pick they used to select Ryan Zimmerman 4th overall in 2005.
The Expos acquired a then-28-year-old Livan Hernandez from the San Francisco Giants with IF/C Edwards Guzman and cash for a player to be named later (LHP Matt Blank) and RHP Jim Brower in 2003. After going (15-10) with a 3.20 ERA and a 3.87 FIP in 33 starts (eight complete games) and 233.1 IP in 2003, Hernandez was (6-8) with four complete games, one shutout and 102 K's (6.77 K/9) in 135.2 IP at the halfway point in 2004 when he was the lone Expo named to the NL All-Star roster.
Joining Hernandez in the '04 NL All-Stars' bullpen, however, was 1985 Expos' 2nd Round pick Randy Johnson, a 5-time Cy Young award winner who'd gone on to success outside of the Montreal organization after he was included along with three other players in the deal that brought left-hander Mark Langston to Montreal from Seattle. In addition to Livan and Johnson, there was Carl Pavano, then a Florida Marlin, one of the two players (along with Tony Armas) the Expos acquired from Boston in the deal that sent Pedro Martinez to the Red Sox in 1997. Pavano was one of five players traded to Florida in 2002. In '03 he allowed 1 ER in 9.0 IP in two games of the Marlins' World Series win over New York's Yankees.
Vladimir Guerrero, then 29 in his first year with the LA Angels after Montreal allowed him to walk following an '03 season in which he'd posted a .330/.426/.586 slash with 20 doubles and 25 HR's, was an Angels' All-Star in '04, with 25 doubles, 20 HR's and a .345/.392/.591 line at the All-Star Break. Javier Vazquez, whose second-half of '04 to a great degree erased the memory of how the season started, was (10-5) with a 3.56 ERA and 95 K's in 18 GS and 118.1 IP in his first year with New York following a winter '03 trade that sent the Expos' 1994 5th Round pick to the Yankees.
Livan Hernandez watched the entire '04 All-Star Game in Minute Maid Park in an Expos uniform, but never pitched. The Series MVP in the Florida Marlins' first World Series Championship and the runner-up for Rookie of the Year in 1997 hadn't made an All-Star appearance in his career before the 2004 season. In 2005, Hernandez made his second-straight and only other All-Star Game appearance as one of two Washington Nationals (along with Chad Cordero) to represent the relocated franchise in their inaugural season in the nation's capital.
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