Brian Guinn

Brian Lamont Guinn

• Bats Both, Throws Right
• Height 6' 1", Weight 173 lb.
• School University of California, Berkeley
• High School Berkeley High School

• Born December 9, 1960 in Berkeley, CA USA

BR Minors page

Biographical Information

Infielder Brian Guinn played in the minor leagues from 1983 to 1992, reaching AAA for several years, and was involved in a famously lopsided trade. He is sometimes called Brian Guinn Sr. because his son, B.J. Guinn, also played in the minors.

He was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the 30th round of the 1979 amateur draft coming out of high school, but declined to sign with them, going on to attend the University of California, Berkeley instead. He was drafted twice more during his college career, first by the San Francisco Giants in the 6th round of the 1982 amateur draft, and finally by the Athletics again in the 5th round of the 1983 amateur draft. He played in the 1980 College World Series with Cal.

He played in the A's organization until 1986, reaching AAA in his final season. In 1985, he hit .277/.370/.404 in 139 games between the Modesto A's of the California League and the Huntsville Stars of the Southern League, scoring 112 runs and stealing 46 bases. In 1986, he hit .277/.349/.369 between Huntsville and the Tacoma Tigers of the Pacific Coast League. Just before the start of the next season, on April 3, 1987, he was traded to the Chicago Cubs alongside two other minor leaguers, Dave Wilder and Mark Leonette, in return for starting pitcher Dennis Eckersley, a one-time star who the Cubs considered washed up. Of course, the A's then hit gold when they moved Eckersley to the bullpen and he became the best closer in baseball, whereas none of the three prospects acquired by Chicago ever panned out.

In Guinn's case, he played five seasons in their system - the first in AA with the Pittsfield Cubs of the Eastern League and the next four with the Iowa Cubs of the American Association. He played over 100 games each year, hit .281 with Pittsfield in 1987 and .270 for Iowa in 1990, but his days of scoring a lot of runs or stealing a large number of bases were behind him. He never scored more than 50 runs in a season for Iowa, never hit double figures in homers, and never reached 20 doubles with the Cubs in spite of doing so repeatedly in the A's system. As a result, he never got called up to the Show - and even if he had been, it would have been as a short-term fill-in. He played one more season, still in AAA, with the Vancouver Canadians in the Chicago White Sox system in 1992. He hit .270 in 53 games as he was now strictly a back-up.

After his playing career, he became a college coach. He managed the first baseball teams in the history of the Academy of Art University in his hometown of San Francisco, CA from 2010 to 2014, then in 2016 moved to Contra Costa College in San Pablo, CA. Guinn moved to Solano Community College as assistant coach in 2023 [1].