St. Louis Cardinals: Another Sad Sunday in the MLB
Sundays are magical days during the baseball season but some seem sad. The St. Louis Cardinals received sad news one Sunday morning a few years ago of the passing of their young, promising outfielder. Today bears sad news as well.
News broke one early Sunday morning that the St. Louis Cardinals had lost their young phenom Oscar Taveras to a senseless car accident. This morning, Major League Baseball has again been rocked with terrible news of the passing of Andy Marte and Yordano Ventura in two separate car accidents.
Andy Marte joined the Atlanta Braves organization in 2000 when he was signed as a free agent. Marte, from the Dominican Republic, was to be a promising third baseman. His career spanned fourteen years with seven of these spent in the majors. He played for the Braves, Red Sox, Indians, Pirates, Angels, and Diamondbacks organizations.
His seven year MLB career held appearances with Atlanta, Cleveland, and Arizona. He never broke into the majors for the Redsox, Pirates, or Angels. For his MLB career, Marte sported a .218/.276/.358 slash line. Nothing too shiny. Defensively, Marte is credited with a career -2.2 UZR at third, and a career -7.0 at first base.
Yordano Ventura, on the other hand, was a splash player. Ventura was one heck of a pitcher on the mound and carried with him a fire-filled personality. Ventura was signed as an amateur free agent in 2008 by the Kansas City Royals in 2008. He spent his entire career with KC and broke into the majors in September of 2013.
For his career, Ventura appeared in 547.2 innings across four MLB seasons. In these, he faced a total of 2,355 batters striking out 470 of these. This right-handed, passionate pitcher earned a MLB career ERA of 3.89. Passion is probably the best description of Ventura who was known to yell at batters and even incite fights.
The video above is just one example of brawls that were started by Ventura. Ventura’s spicy personality showed not just in his attitude but in his pitching repertoire as well. He was known to confound batters with his stuff which allowed him to earn a postseason ERA of 4.66 across two seasons of postseason play with KC.
These two Dominican players now join the sad list of players lost too early due to senseless accidents of one kind or another. These two players join the list that is already full with names like Oscar Taveras and Jose Fernandez.
News of the passing of these two players broke this morning in two separate stories. First, the news of Marte was released and then shortly thereafter the news of Ventura broke. Here are just a few of the links that will direct you to the stories:
Those are just a few of the many news sites sharing the sad news. Marte dies at 33 and Ventura dies at mere 25. Sad day indeed.
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Stay with us at Redbird Rants as we will keep you updated as we learn more about these horrible news items. Let us all spend some time today- a sad Sunday- hugging our loved ones ever more tightly. Let us also wish that sunny MLB Sundays will speed themselves so that we might all experience happier moments soon.
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