MLB history: Who was lost to baseball in 2017

January deaths

2) Daryl Spencer – Spencer hit 105 home runs in his 10-year major league career, but his most notable contribution was hitting the first home run in San Francisco Giants history as well as the first home run between two teams in the Pacific Time Zone. Spencer was 88 years old.

6) Bob Sadowski – Sadowski was a Missouri boy who was able to make it to the majors with the Cardinals, but spent the next three seasons with three different organizations, never playing more than 90 games in a single season, finishing with a .222 career batting average in 368 plate appearances. He was 79.

6) Greg Jelks – Jelks got just a cup of coffee in 1987, creating one of the more amusing moments when he and teammate Steve Jeltz were mistaken for one another by an opposing announcer. He was 55 when he passed away.

7) Bill Champion – Champion was known for being long and lanky at 6’4″ and under 190 pounds for his career. Champion was a swingman over his 8-year major league career with the Phillies and Brewers, with a 4.69 ERA over 202 games, 102 of which were starts. He was 69.

8) Jackie Brown – Brown pitched for 3 organizations over 7 seasons, including moving with the second iteration of the Senators to Texas when they became the Rangers. He was a swing man that made 214 appearances and 105 starts. His brother, Paul, was a pitcher with the Phillies for four seasons. Brown was 73.

18) Dick Starr – Starr played for the Yankees, Browns, and Senators over a 5-year career. Starr had gotten to the brink of the major leagues when he was called away to military service, then when he returned, he finally made his way to the major leagues with the Yankees in 1947. He earned a complete game win in his first start. He also has the unique background of being involved in two trades in his career, and in both trades, the same player headed to the other team (though the first trade was not a 1-for-1 deal). He was 95.

18) Red Adams – While he just had one 8-game stint in the major leagues in 1946, Adams spent 19 years in minor league baseball, even losing most of two seasons to military service. He won 193 minor league games as a pitcher, throwing over 3,000 minor league innings. He passed away at 95.

19) Walt Streuli – Streuli was one of the youngest players when he made the major leagues in 1954 for his major league debut with the Tigers. Streuli played just six games at catcher in 3 seasons, and just one year after his final brief major league season, he was out of baseball for five seasons before making a brief appearance in the Orioles minor league system for one final season at age 25. He was 81 years old.

21) Ken Wright – A “big” pitcher for his era, Wright was 6’2″ and 210 pounds, but his workhorse size didn’t translate to the field as Wright made just 113 appearances, 24 of them starts. He was notably part of the trade that sent Lou Pinella to the Yankees. He was 70 years old.

22) Yordano Ventura – On a horrid day in the Dominican, two young lives were taken from the baseball world. The only active player that passed away in 2017 was also the youngest baseball death of 2017 at just 25 years old. Ventura was just establishing himself as a major league pitcher, having gone 38-31 in his career over 94 games (93 starts), throwing 547 2/3 innings, with a 3.89 ERA and 1.34 WHIP, sporting a 211/470 BB/K ratio. He was killed in an accident in his native Dominican Republic.

22) Andy Marte – Due to the tragic circumstances around both deaths on the same small island, Marte was originally thought to have been in the same accident as Ventura, but the 33 year-old was tragically killed on the same day as the young hurler.

Marte was a very highly-regarded prospect as he traversed through the minor leagues, ranking as high as the #9 overall prospect in the game with Baseball America (and 3 times ranking in the top 15), but he could never bring that success forward to the major leagues. He hit .218/.276/.358 over 307 games with 3 different organizations in the major leagues.

24) Morris Nettles – The incredibly-fast Nettles was drafted out of high school by the Angels, but he never could develop anything beyond his elite speed on the baseball field, making the major leagues in 1974, and spending the 1975 season as the Angels’ 4th outfielder. In 518 career plate appearances, he hit .247/.310/.279 with 42 stolen bases, though he was caught 26 times (61.8% success rate).

27) Bob Bowman – By the end of the season, another Bob Bowman had put a bad spin on Bowman’s name in the game as the MLBAM exec was dismissed for inappropriate behavior. This Bowman was a part-time outfielder for the Phillies in the 1950s. He passed away at age 85.