MLB history: Forgotten stars of the current AL West teams

In the second of our series about stars lost in MLB history, we take a look at the current teams that make up the American League West.

As major league baseball’s owners and their players union finally debate the terms of opening the current season, this is the second in a Call to the Pen series about stars forgotten by MLB history. Today, we take up the American League West, and begin with an important contributor to the 2002 World Champions of baseball and complicated team names:

Scot Shields, Angels of Anaheim

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The challenge is: Name the last member of singular World Champion Angels squad of 2002 to leave the team.

Correct: Scot “One T” Shields owns that distinction, as well as a rarer distinction in 21st century MLB history. He is a player who retired with at least ten years in the major-league game with his only team. He was the last ’02 ring winner when he retired after the 2010 season.

However, he is included here because he was also one of those semi-obscure players who produced when it mattered — that is, in 2002, when the Halos beat the San Fran Large Persons 4-3 in the World Series.

That’s not to say Shields produced in that Series – he really didn’t – appearing in only one game and being shelled, but he did help the Angels get to the postseason, and guys who do that, especially relievers who aren’t closers, are easily forgotten.

In 2002, he was a young player bouncing between the triple-A Salt Lake Stingers and the Angels, as he had done the previous year. A slender player, Shields was surprisingly durable, once throwing 261 pitches in a 16-inning inning college game. He didn’t return to the minors after June 14 of the Angels championship campaign.

Throwing a sinking fastball and a slurve, he started, relieved, and closed for Anaheim, and he pitched particularly well during the championship season before that one appearance in the Series when he gave up two homers while getting five outs.

He posted a 2.20 ERA in 29 games, covering 49 innings. He had the second-best WHIP figure (1.061) on the entire pitching staff after Brendan Donnelly (1.027), another reliever.

Shields went on post three more sub-3.00 ERA campaigns in a career that ended after his age-34 season. His overall ERA was 3.18, and he had four workhouse years for his team from 2005 to ’08 when he appeared in 287 games with three sub-3.00 ERA seasons. A very nice little place, a minor star’s place, in MLB history.