Baseball has some great names and a guy named Rocky Cherry definitely belongs in the conversation for one of the most delicious sounding names.
It's fitting that we're covering this player now considering the Cape Cod League is in full swing up north, and he is somewhat of a legend in the Cape Cod League, having set several records as a reliever during his time in the wood bat collegiate league. Rocky Cherry played baseball at the University of Oklahoma. His first career strikeout actually came against eventual Golden Spikes winner Khalil Greene.
You know a player is obscure when they don't even have a SABR article yet. Being a journeyman career reliever in the mid 2000s without high prospect prestige will make that happen sometimes.
Rocky Cherry started with the Cubs as a 14th rounder in 2002. He's so often overlooked that he's not even listed in the other notable players selected in the 2002 draft Wikipedia article despite actually being a major leaguer. He came to Baltimore via trade after the trade deadline in 2007 for Steve Traschel along with fellow "random stop gap player of the mid 00s Orioles" Scott Moore. Not to be too critical of his career but acquisitions like this one show how directionless and random the vision of Orioles during this era really was.
Cherry is notably the last visiting pitcher to pitch at the old Yankee Stadium in 2008. During that game he pitched 1.2 innings of not hit ball to close out a 7-3 loss. I find it pretty interesting that the last game at the Old Yankee Stadium and Derek Jeters last home game were both against the Orioles.
Cherry would only appear in 28 games with the Orioles. While he had two more appearances to close out the season after his appearance at Yankee Stadium, he wouldn't make another major league appearance after 2008. Cherry would be picked by the Mets in the Rule 5 Draft during the off-season. Incidentally the same Rule 5 Draft that the Mets would also pick future Orioles legend Darren ODay. He wouldn't make the team during spring training and was released after the Orioles didn't have room on the 40 man roster to take him back.
After bouncing around the minors Rocky Cherry would retire and eventually move in to the pain contracting business. His company is called Cherry Coatings which I think is an awesome name for a painting company.
2 comments
Great baseball name. I gotta find a video of him, that windup looks so relaxed.
Rocky Cherry was an interesting (sad) story, and a likely failing of our system. He was reasonably good for us when he was in Norfolk — and a strike thrower. Never looked like he’d be an All Star but should have been a competent middle reliever
But when we called him up he couldn’t throw a strike to save his life for all the sudden.
Cherry pitched in a time (2008-2011) where we had a ton of pitching prospects and none of them lived up to expectations.
Later, one of them (I forget which one) revealed to the press that Orioles player development was so disjointed that the players were being told to do different things at different levels of MiLB and then when they got called up would be again asked to make changes. I know Jake Arrieta had some similar, but less specific, comments.
I feel bad for guys like Cherry who’s dreams were derailed by our mess.