Jerry Blevins
Oakland Athletics — No. 13
Relief pitcher
Born: September 6, 1983 (1983-09-06) (age 26) Johnson City, Tennessee
Bats: Left	Throws: Left
MLB debut
September 16, 2007 for the Oakland Athletics
Career statistics (through June 15, 2009)
Win-Loss	1-4
Earned run average	4.18
Strikeouts	61
Teams
Oakland Athletics (2007-present)

Jerry Richard Blevins (born September 6, 1983, in Johnson City, Tennessee) is a left-handed Major League Baseball relief pitcher for the Oakland Athletics.

[edit] College baseball career

Blevins attended the University of Dayton, where he pitched for two years. He had a 7-4 record in 21 games while playing for Dayton.

[edit] Professional baseball career

Blevins was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 17th (516th overall) round of the 2004 Major League Baseball Draft. He signed with the club on June 23 of that year, and began his pro career with the Single-A Boise Hawks, where he pitched 23 games.

In 2005, he pitched for the Single-A Peoria Chiefs, but returned to Boise for the 2006 season. In 2006, he also pitched for the Single-A Daytona Cubs and the Double-A West Tenn Diamond Jaxx.

Blevins began the 2007 season with the Daytona Cubs. He pitched in 15 games there and had a 1-0 record with a 0.38 ERA before being promoted to the Double-A Tennessee Smokies on May 15, 2007. He pitched in 23 games for the Smokies, in which he had a 2-2 record with a 1.53 ERA. Blevins had pitched a total of 38 games in the Cubs organization and had a 3-2 record with a 1.02 ERA when he was traded to the Oakland Athletics, along with catcher Rob Bowen, for catcher Jason Kendall on July 16, 2007.^[1]

The Athletics, upon receiving Blevins, optioned him to Double-A Midland. He went 1-3 there with a 3.32 ERA in 17 games. He was promoted to the Sacramento River Cats, the Athletics Triple-A affiliate, on August 31, 2007. Before the River Cats season ended, he pitched in one game in which he did not give a run and got the win in 2 2/3 scoreless innings pitched. Blevins helped the River Cats win the Pacific Coast League championship. After the win, Blevins was promoted to the Athletics major league club on September 15, 2007. Blevins pitched for four different minor league teams in 2007 and had a combined 5-5 record with a 1.63 ERA in 56 games. He also struck out 11.87 batters per nine innings and had a total of 102 strikeouts in 77 1/3 innings.

On September 16, 2007, Blevins made his major league debut, coming into the game in the ninth inning against the Texas Rangers. He pitched a perfect ninth inning and struck out David Murphy.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)