Horacio Piña

Horacio Piña García [pee'-nyah] (born March 12, 1945 in Matamoros, Coahuila de Zaragoza, Mexico) is a former relief pitcher who played in Major League Baseball between 1968 and 1978. Piña also played professionally in Mexico for several years. He batted and threw right-handed.

Piña reached the major leagues in 1968 with the Cleveland Indians, spending two years with them before moving to the Washington Senators (1970-1971), Texas Rangers (1972), Oakland Athletics (1973), Chicago Cubs (1974), California Angels (1974) and Philadelphia Phillies (1978). His most productive season came in 1972 with the last-place Rangers, when he posted career-numbers in saves (15), strikeouts (60) and games pitched (60). Traded to the Athletics before the 1973 season for Mike Epstein, he responded with a 6–3 mark, eight saves and career-highs in ERA (2.76) and innings (88.0), helping them to clinch the ALCS and the World Series Championship. In an eight-season career, Piña posted a 23–23 record with a 3.25 ERA and 38 saves in 314 games. In three post-season games he had a perfect 0.00 ERA in five innings.

As a pitcher in the Mexican League, Piña threw a no-hitter in 1975, posted a 21–4 record with a 1.94 ERA and pitched a perfect game in 1978, and gained induction in the Salón de la Fama del Béisbol de México in 1988.

See also

• Players from Mexico in MLB

Sources

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube
• Baseball Library
• Salón de la Fama del Béisbol de México (Spanish)
• The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia – Gary Gillette, Peter Gammons, Pete Palmer. Publisher: Sterling Publishing, 2005. Format: Paperback, 1824pp. Language: English. ISBN 1-4027-4771-3