Brian Roberts: Mr. Consistent for the Baltimore Orioles- MLB Player Profile
Brian Michael Roberts is a name that needs no introduction in the baseball circles. The second baseman is a 12 season’s veteran in the Major League and has spent all this time with the Baltimore Orioles.
The Durham, North Carolina native was born on October 9, 1977. Brian attended the Chapel Hill High School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a place where he still resides. His father is a baseball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Attending the same university, Brian had a dream run during his freshman year. He was named to the NCBWA Second Team. He posted a batting average of .427 with over a hundred hits and 47 stolen bases.
Roberts continued the good work in the coming years of the college, hitting at .353 in the sophomore year with 49 RBI’s, hit 13 home-runs and stole 63 bases. After his father was fired from the University, he transferred to the University of South Carolina
in 1998.
Brian remained a potent hitting force and was named on the All-American team for a second time. In the South Eastern Conference, he batted with a .353 average, stealing 67 bases, a record that still stands.
Brian’s professional career kicked off in 1999 when the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in the first round of draft. He started to play in the Orioles farm system the same year. His first team was the Class-A Delmarva Shore Birds.
He was consistent in the Minor League and posted good returns during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. The good work paid off for Brian as he was called into the Majors in 2001. He made a decent start in the big leagues as he posted a .253 batting average in 273
at-bats with 17 RBI’s and stole 12 bases. The same year, he had been a part of two Orioles Minor League teams.
In the next year, Roberts saw lesser action in the Majors playing just 38 games with a batting average of .227 and a .308 on-base percentage. He performed quite well in the 78 games that he played for the Rochester Red Wings, posting a .275 batting average
and a .361 on-base percentage.
His 2003 season started with the Ottawa Lynx and after 44 games, he was called by the birds for the injured Jerry Hairston Jr. He was able to hit his first professional career grand slam in against Anaheim Angels and helped the team win the game. Playing
112 games in the season, he posted a .270 batting average and for the first time hit over 100 hits in a single season.
Roberts started the next season on the second base and did exceedingly in parts of the season. He was named as the American League Player of the Week in second week of August after posting a .531 batting average in six games. In his 175 hits in 2005, 50
were doubles and he led the American League in the category and was third in the Majors.
Brian’s became a permanent feature of the team from 2005 onwards and performed regularly in the next few seasons. He was named on the All-Star team in 2005, an honour he again received in 2007. He consistently had a high batting average, posting a career
best .314 in 2005.
Between 2005 and 2009, he hit a steady number of home-runs and RBI’s. He was also consistent in scoring runs and scored in excess of a hundred from 2007 to 2009.
During this period, he was dragged in the controversy of using performance enhancing drugs, a charge that he denied with a few other players who were named with him. Nothing was proved against Brian on account of these charges.
He has had injury trouble since 2010 and has had scattered appearances during this period. He has been on the disabled list a few times and had managed just 105 Major League games in the last three seasons.
Overall, he has achieved quite a bit as a player. He has a career average of .280 and an on-base percentage of .351. He has almost 1400 hits, 777 runs, 482 career RBI’s and 84 home-runs. He has also stolen 275 bases in his career.
He is expected to be fit for the 2012 season, something that Brian himself, the Orioles and the fans will all be looking forward to. One hopes that he can get fully fit and make a strong comeback for the Baltimore ball club.
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