Red Sox: Home run hitting sluggers Boston should have signed
By Rick McNair
ROY SIEVERS
As a teenager, Roy Sievers was one of my favorite visiting players. Sievers had the misfortune of spending most of his career with two just awful performing franchises – the St. Louis Browns and Washington Senators. Both teams were generally out of the race by the end of April.
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Sievers was the Rookie of the Year in 1949 as a 22-year-old with the Browns. The next four seasons were punctuated with inconsistent performance and a series of injuries that eventually resulted in a trade to the Senators. The new surroundings proved rather favorable and Sievers led the American League in home runs (42) and RBI (114) in 1957.
Sievers was a dead pull hitter who would hit arcing fly balls or rising line drives. Usually, the wall has a tendency to take from hitters, but Sievers had some nice loft to his Fenway hits. In 110 games encompassing 416 at-bats, Sievers hit 25 home runs, had 87 RBI and hit .327 – a far distance from his career .267. Sievers also went to four digits with a 1.006 OPS. Just a natural Fenway Park swing.