Win-Loss 20-23 Role Baseball player Name Bryan Clark | Strikeouts 259 Earned run average 4.15 | |
Bryan Donald Clark (born July 12, 1956) is a former pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox in a span of eight seasons from 1981–1990. A native of Madera, California, Clark was listed at 6'2", 185 lb., and batted and threw left-handed. He attended Fresno Community College.
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Career
Selected 226th overall by the Pirates in 1974 draft, Clark proved pretty quickly in the minor leagues that his control was very suspect. For example, in just his second year in the minors, he walked 138 batters in only 131 innings of work. Used mostly as a starter in the minors, he posted ERAs as high as 7.11 with a team in a season, and he walked over 100 batters four times. Even in his best season in the minors, one in which he went 14-5 with a 2.64 ERA, he still walked 112 batters in 167 innings of work.
Although his minor league statistics were not too impressive, Clark still managed to make his major league debut on April 11, 1981 at the age of 24 against the California Angels. Although he was technically a pitcher, he was used in a rather unorthodox way in his debut - the Mariners (who purchased him from the Pirates in 1978) used him as a pinch runner.
He spent the rest of his career trying to find his niche. He was used both as a starter and reliever throughout his career, with his best season being 1982, when he went 5-2 with a 2.75 ERA in 37 games, most of them in relief duties. This season included his only complete game shutout, on September 25, 1982, against the Blue Jays. He gave up six hits, walked one, and struck out two.
In 1983, he was traded from the Mariners to the Blue Jays for Barry Bonnell. Perhaps a game on August 19, 1983, against the Cleveland Indians shows just how poor his control could be at times. In just 2.2 innings of work, he managed to walk seven batters.
In the end, his career never really panned out. He posted a 20-23 record with a 4.15 ERA in 516+ innings of work, walking 261 and striking out 259. He was sixth in the league in wild pitches in 1981 with seven, and fourth in the league in wild pitches in 1983 with 10.
In between, Clark played winter ball with the Tiburones de La Guaira and Navegantes del Magallanes clubs of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League during seven seasons spanning 1980–1989, pitching also for La Guaira in the Caribbean Series in the 1983 and 1985 tournaments.
Clark played his final game on May 30, 1990 with the Mariners, who had reacquired him in December 1989.