1994 Montreal Expos season

Updated on Nov 19, 2024

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Owner(s) Claude Brochu Manager(s) Felipe Alou		General manager(s) Kevin Malone
Local television The Sports Network(Dave Van Horne, Ken Singleton)SRCRDS Network(Claude Raymond, Camille Dube) Local radio CIQC (English)(Dave Van Horne, Rich Griffin, Ken Singleton, Elliott Price)CKAC (French)(Jacques Doucet, Rodger Brulotte, Alain Chantelois)

The Montreal Expos had the best record in Major League Baseball (74-40), when the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike ended the season and the team's postseason aspirations. Five Expos represented the National League at the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game held in Pittsburgh. Moisés Alou had the game-winning hit for the National League.

Offseason

November 19, 1993: Delino DeShields was traded by the Expos to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Pedro Martínez.

December 13, 1993: The Expos traded a player to be named later to the Cleveland Indians for Randy Milligan. The Expos completed the deal by sending Brian Barnes to the Indians on December 17.

March 31, 1994: John Vander Wal was purchased from the Expos by the Colorado Rockies.

Spring training

The Montreal Expos held spring training at Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Regular season

In 1994, the Expos team appeared to be reaching its potential. Led by rising young stars including Pedro Martínez, Larry Walker, Moisés Alou, Cliff Floyd, Mike Lansing and Jeff Fassero, Montreal was off to a 74-40 start, leading the National League Eastern Division. They had scored 585 runs (5.13 per game) and allowed 454 runs (3.98 per game) through 114 games by Friday, August 12. Their 1994 pitching staff was very nearly as good as that of their division rivals, the Atlanta Braves, as the Expos finished the strike-shortened season with an MLB-best 3.56 ERA, an MLB-high 46 saves and just 288 walks, the fewest in the Majors.

Walker, with 86 RBIs, was well on his way to his first 100-RBI year; Ken Hill was on pace to win 23 games while Pedro Martínez was on pace to strike out more than 200 batters. Moisés Alou was hitting .339 and on pace to collect more than 200 hits for the first time in his career. Marquis Grissom was on pace to score 137 runs. Two other Expos, namely Alou and Walker, were also on pace to score more than 100 runs. The team was also drawing well at home: through 52 home games in 1994, 1,276,250 fans had attended Expos games, for an average of 24,543 per game. At that pace, the Expos would have had a good chance of drawing two million fans for the first time since 1983. The season, however, was stopped due to the 1994 players' strike. The World Series, for which the Expos appeared to be destined, was never played and Montreal lost many of its players during the next season due to free agency and salary constraints and the team never recovered. The 1994 Montreal Expos team that could have been remains one of baseball's hot discussion points. The collapse of the Expos would eventually lead to the franchise's move to Washington, D.C., for the 2005 season to become the Washington Nationals.

When baseball returned for an exhibition series in Olympic Stadium in March 2014, the team was honored during a pregame ceremony, along with a banner with the words On se souvient Édition 1994 (We remember the 1994 season).