Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Hall of Fame Review-Rich Meyers

Well, it's time for my final review of the season 15 Hall of Fame inductee's. The only pitcher elected this season was star pitcher Rich Meyers. Meyers had a great career in Pine Tar and is another of the three that more than deserved this honor. This crafty pitcher from Princeton, WV, surely had the career to enter the Pine Tar Hall of Fame.

Meyers got his start in Pine Tar back in season 1 with the Salt Lake City Slop Tarts. He pitched in Salt Lake City for his first 2 seasons before being traded to Philadelphia in season 3 when his original franchise moved to Portland. He would go on to pitch the rest of his career in Philadelphia. He pitched his last game for the franchise in season 11. For as dominant a pitcher as he was, Meyers played his career for very little money considering he could have made much more if he tested free agency. He made a total of 71.8 million dollars in his 11 seasons as he chose to resign twice with Philadelphia by giving them a hometown discount.

Meyers displayed really good control throughout his career and was especially tough on right handed hitters. Early in his career he was a power pitcher, but a couple injuries in his career forced him to be more crafty later on. He was a pitcher that kept the ball down in the zone a featured a good fastball to go with a decent slider and change up. He had an excellent 4th pitch with his curveball and had a cut fastball he would throw in their that wasn't very good and used more to get batters thinking.

This is the first pitcher to win a Cy Young in Pine Tar as he did so in season 1 and then repeated it in season 8. He also had 6 all star appearances in his career. The first Cy Young came after pitching 35 games and finishing 5 of those. He had a 25-5 record and pitched 264.2 innings. Opponents batted a .203 and he had an ERA of 2.41. His second Cy Young came after pitching 31 games, and going 19-6. In 184.2 innings he allowed opponents to hit .234 and had an ERA of 2.49.

The career stats for Meyers are 326 starts and 333 games, with 16 complete games. He finished 170-55 and also had 2 saves. In 2068.1 innings he struck out 1736 batters. Hitters batted only a .235 and had an OBP of .288. His final ERA was an outstanding 3.08 for his career. He had 20 wins twice, over 200 strike outs 3 times, and a sub 3.00 ERA seven times. His 25 wins in season 1 are still the record for most wins in a season.

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