The Most Interesting Man in Baseball
Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 10:49 am
“To be honest, no one knows how he does it,” said YS9 GM Ron Collins. The “he” Collins is talking about is relief ace Jose Marroquin. At 6’2”, 230 pounds, the Dominican is not cut a particularly athletic figure—probably because his favorite workout routine is sipping a margarita at the Tiki bar while surrounded by a throng of baseball groupies, who he serenades with stories of hot foots and cream pies and the day he and Leon Sandcastle got thrown out of a Dollar General store. At 34, he’s at the age where a pitcher is on shaky ground. He has only one pitch, and that one isn’t all that much to write home about, a solid, if not spectacular sinker that the throws 90 miles an hour if he has a little tail wind.
“I go out to keel some worms,” he says when he hits the mound.
He does not hold runners well. Hs doesn’t play defense. “The other guys get paid to throw it to first,” he replies when asked about his acumen with the glove. His teammates don’t really care that much for him because on the whole Jose is out for Jose. He’s not particularly worried about who he plays for as long as the money is good, going as far away as Belfast one year when BBA teams weren’t interested.
There is no real reason that Jose Marroquin should be successful in the BBA, where highly skilled and highly honed athletes rule the day.
Despite all this, Marroquin will make three million dollars this year with the Yellow Springs Nine, and he’s earning it with a solid 3.06 ERA in 18 innings pitched.
The bottom line is that studying the career of Jose Marroquin requires a special investigator of its own type. He broke into the league with Tucson at age 23, going 1-5 in 44 games as their closer while dropping an uninspiring 5.65 ERA. Things got better after that, but not much. He played six seasons in Tucson, winning a total of 9 games, losing…uh…considerably more (31). He did save 28 games in 2022, his only season of any real repute. His last year with the Cactus saw him go 1-1 with a 4.99 ERA and a career worst FIP of 4.74.
Things changed then.
We have no idea why, but after Marroquin left Tucson, things got interesting. “It was the magic cigars!” Marroquin says with a glimmer in his eyes. He orders drinks and all the people in his entourage laugh.
In 2029, the Dominican went closer to home and threw a 2.27 ERA, winning 8 games and saving 3 for Havana. Convinced he was now the star he always assumed he was, he held a tough line on Free Agent cash, and did his time in Belfast, where he mowed EBA hitters down like they were so many flights of microbrew. When expansion hit the BBA, he went to Twin Cities and saved 23 games, then signed with New Orleans and went 6-4 with a 2.44 ERA. Now he’s in Yellow Springs doing about the same.
Here are some numbers:
Age 23-28: 293 IP, 4.70 ERA, 1.396 WHIP, 4.08 FIP, 86.3 ERA+
Age 29-Now: 219 IP, 2.64 ERA, 1.290 WHIP, 3.58 FIP, 155.3 ERA+
Basically, either getting out of Tucson made a difference, or Marroquin got some kind of Keith Richards Blood Transfusion that turned him into a new man.
“I ain’t telling,” Marroquin says, smiling with his nicotine-stained teeth and buying the entourage another round.
So, yes, Jose Marroquin may well be the most interesting man in the BBA right now, but all we can say is that when he goes to the mound in Yellow Springs, the worms dig deeper and the other club is probably not going to score.
