Ben Moore (minors01)

Benjamin N. Moore

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 1", Weight 170 lb.
• School Viterbo College
• High School Hudson (WI) High School

• Born June 10, 1981 in St. Croix Falls, WI USA

BR Register page

Biographical Information

Pitcher Ben Moore played in the minor leagues and in international baseball from 2003 to 2014, in spite of being undrafted. He was a two-way player at Viterbo College and the school's all-time leader in wins and was later inducted in the school's athletic Hall of Fame.

He began his career in the New York Yankees system, playing for the GCL Yankees and Tampa Yankees, going 0-1, 4.29 in 16 games as a reliever. In 2004, his only other year in the affiliated minors, he played for three teams and briefly reached AA, making appearances with the Battle Creek Yankees of the Midwest League, Tampa in the Florida State League and the Trenton Thunder of the Eastern League, the latter for just one game and two-thirds of an inning. Altogether, he went 9-3, 3.45 with 1 save in 40 games, including 6 starts, and pitching 91 1/3 innings.

This looked like a promising-enough first full season, but the rest of Moore's career was spent entirely in the independent leagues, except for a few stints abroad. From 2005 to 2007, he pitched in the Northern League, with three different teams, going 5-9, 7-6 and 7-4 those three years, the last of which was with the Winnipeg Goldeyes. Winnipeg and a few other Northern League teams helped to form the 21st century incarnation of the American Association in 2008, and he went 8-7, 5.06 in 20 games in the circuit's original season. In 2009, he moved to the Sioux Falls Canaries, and this became the team Moore was most associated with, as he would pitch for them for six seasons and would eventually become the second player in team history to have his uniform number, 25, retired, after Beau Torbert.

He was 10-7, 5.70 in his first season with Sioux Falls, and 5-9, 5.27 in 2009 - nothing really to make him a team icon. He had a very good season in 2010, however, going 11-8, 3.10 in 20 games, and that winter he went to Australia to join the Perth Heat of the Australian Baseball League. He ended up leading Perth to the 2010-2011 ABL championship as he was named the MVP of the finals. On February 11th, he pitched a complete game 7-1 win against the Adelaide Bite, allowing just 4 hits and striking out 10. In 2011, he was 13-4, 2.92 for Sioux Falls and also briefly pitched for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in the Atlantic League, a circuit chock-full of former major leaguers. He returned to pitch to Perth in the winter of 2011-2012 but more remarkably was recruited by the Uni-President Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League to play in the 2012 Asia Series. He turned in a solid start in his only appearance in the tournament.

In 2012, he spent part of the year in the CPBL while starting and finishing the season with Southern Maryland. He pitched for the Lamigo Monkeys who won the 2012 Taiwan Series. He went 6-3, 3.92 in 13 games and went 3-2, 3.06 in 8 starts in the Atlantic League. He then returned to Sioux Falls for the 2013 and 2014 seasons, going 10-8, 4.11 the first year and 6-6, 4.97 the second. He retired as a player after that but remained in baseball. He was Sioux Falls' all-time leader in wins (55) and strikeouts (698) when he retired. He was a pitching coach for the Washington Generals of the Frontier League in 2015, the Laredo Lemurs of the American Association in 2016 and with Sioux Falls from 2017 to 2019. He was then hired by Gustavus Adolphus College as an assistant coach.

Related Sites

• Gustavus Adolphus College bio