Atlanta Braves' Peter Moylan is baseball's coolest player

Atlanta Braves reliever Peter Moylan is 36. He’s been a major-league pitcher for nearly a decade, but is far from a household name. Braves fans know him and serious baseball fans likely do too. But he’s probably not getting talked about on Baseball Tonight or MLB Whiparound any time soon.

And it’s a shame. Moylan’s one of baseball’s great stories on and off the field. Former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner is famous for going from grocery store checker to Super Bowl Champion, and Astros designated hitter Evan Gattis‘ history of odd jobs along the way has also been well-documented. Moylan’s story make not be of the same extremity, but it certainly falls off the lower branches of the same tree.

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Moylan signed with the Braves in 2006, but his MLB story starts much earlier. He was signed by the Minnesota Twins out of Australia in 1996, posted underwhelming numbers in two seasons of rookie ball, and was ultimately released in 1998.

Here’s the Warner/Gattis part: After being released, he went back to Australia and sold pharmaceuticals.

The next time Moylan’s name was mentioned state-side in terms of baseball was eight years later. He was on the Australian World Baseball Classic team, and pitched well enough to earn a Spring Training invite from the Atlanta Braves. To conclude the off-the-field marveling here, he’s still in a big-league uniform a decade later. But go to the mound now, and Moylan’s intrigue continues.

Moylan was assigned to the Braves’ AAA affiliate out of spring in 2006, but proceeded to make his major-league debut less than a month into the season. Injuries to Horacio Ramirez and Blaine Boyer forced the Braves to start the year with Joey Devine and Ken Ray on the big-league team, both of whom were originally slated to pitch alongside Moylan in the AAA bullpen. Devine, a former first-round pick by Atlanta, had struggled in his first cup of coffee in the bigs the previous year, and did so again early on in 2006.

So Devine was sent back to AAA on April 11, and Moylan was subsequently called up. He made his debut the next day on April 12, a decade after originally signing with the Minnesota Twins as an 18-year-old. He pitched a shutout inning in Atlanta’s 7-5 loss to the Phillies, throwing nine of 16 pitches for strikes and making David Delluci his first big-league strikeout victim.

The first batter Moylan faced in his debut? Ryan Howard, who would go on to win the National League MVP award that year. He got him to pop out. Welcome to the big leagues, Peter Moylan.

The Aussie would go on to give up no earned runs in 12 of 15 appearances on the season, though a trio of rough outings would leave his season ERA at a misleading 4.80. He struck out 14 batters in 15.0 innings, but did run into troubles with walks.

The strikeout numbers went down and the walk numbers went slightly up, but Moylan somehow managed to turn the next season into one of the better relief campaigns in Atlanta Braves history. He made 80 appearances in 2007, pitching to a 1.80 ERA in 90 innings while finishing 16 games and picking up is first career save.

But the innings caught up to Moylan in 2008, as he was placed on the disabled list with elbow troubles, only to find that he needed surgery on his ulna collateral ligament (UCL). He would miss the rest of the 2008 campaign recovering from Tommy John Surgery, though he impressed once again in a small sample size before getting hurt.

2009 would kick off Moylan’s run putting together arguably the grittiest multi-year stretch a Braves reliever has ever pieced together. Fresh off his Tommy John, Moylan bounced back to appear in 87 games, bringing his strikeout numbers back up and allowing just 23 runs in 73 innings. He also went the entire season without giving up a home run, setting the major-league record for most consecutive appearances without allowing a long ball.

He would go on to have a similarly successful campaign in 2010, once again logging over 80 appearances and pitching to a sub-3.00 ERA. Moylan’s back-to-back 80+ appearance-seasons were the first time a reliever had accomplished the feat in Braves franchise history. In spite of all that, Moylan was left off the National League All-Star team in both 2009 and 2010.

Injuries got him again the following season, as he made just 13 appearances due to mid-season back surgery and a torn rotator cuff late in the year. Recovery from the rotator cuff injury carried into 2012, allowing Moylan to pitch just eight games for Atlanta that year. The “injury-prone” label caught up with Moylan the following offseason, as he ultimately had to sign a minor-league deal with the Dodgers and made just 14 appearances with the major-league team. He signed with the Astros in the winter of 2013, but tore his UCL once again in Spring Training and was released before the 2014 season.

That’s where his reunion with the Braves begins. March of this year, Atlanta signed Moylan to a two-year minor-league deal, with the idea being that he would spend much of 2015 coaching minor-league pitchers while he recovered from his Tommy John surgery. But Moylan got healthy faster than expected, and against all odds, earned himself a call-up to the Braves in August. Moylan and every other Atlanta pitcher won’t be getting a shot at the postseason this year, but the 36-year-old has come full circle and is under contract with the Braves for 2016.

If the back story isn’t enough to make you love Moylan, perhaps his outfit during this 2011 clip of “Side Session with Peter Moylan and Kris Medlen” is enough to get you on board. Or the time he did his hair to look like John Smoltz. Or his epic sleeve tats. Or his sick goggles. Or the time his facial hair one-upped, or “raised the bar,” after then-Dodgers teammate Scott Van Slyke sported a full-on Fu Man Chu. The man is part myth, part man, part tattoo, part mustache, part pitcher and all Aussie. And it’s hard to find a part of him that isn’t entirely, as How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson would put it, “legendary.”

Next: Aubrey Huff Hints At MLB Comeback

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