Following the 1979 season, Joe Morgan headed to the Houston Astros via free agency. With Tony Pérez and Pete Rose already gone, the "Big Red Machine" was beginning to come apart, and the Reds slumped to a third-place finish in . Foster led the club with 25 home runs and 93 RBIs. A rejuvenated Cincinnati Reds team won a major league best 66 games in the strike shortened season, but managed to miss the playoffs as a result of the split-season format used that season. Foster returned to form, finishing second to Mike Schmidt in the NL's RBI race. At this point in his career, when it looked like he would one day rank among the game's all-time greats, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book "The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time".