Jan Drábek

Jan Drábek

• Bats Right, Throws Right

• Born November 29, 1982

Biographical Information

Jan Drábek has played for the Czech national team several times. In the 2003 Extraliga, he hit .349/.462/.419 for the Tegola Praha club and was 5-2 with a 3.27 ERA. He was 6th in the league in OBP, tied for 4th in complete games (5) and tied for fifth in wins. In the 2003 European Championship, Drábek made his national team debut, going 3 for 12 with a walk and a RBI; on the mound, he was 0-1 with 4 hits and 2 runs allowed while retiring no one.

In 2004, Jan batted .325/.394/.450 for Tegola with 25 RBI in 22 games; he had a 2-2, 2.17 record with one save. He was third in the league in RBI behind former major leaguer Pavel Budský and Michal Břeň. Drábek batted .406/.500/.547 with 28 runs and 34 RBI in 30 games and fell to 3-4 with a 6.29 ERA. He was 5th in the circuit in hits (43), was 4th in average, was 4th in slugging, 6th in OBP and ranked third in RBI.

Jan was 4 for 10 in the 2005 European Championship, backing up Michal Kočí at 1B. He went 2 for 13 in the 2005 Baseball World Cup as a backup 1B behind Budský and Kočí; he also pitched briefly, giving up 4 runs in one inning. Drábek played for Belgium's Hoboken Pioneers in 2006, hitting .390 and slugging .535; on the mound, he was 1-0 with a save and a 1.13 ERA. In 2007, he moved to RCH in the Dutch Hoofdklasse and hit .279/.380/.402 while playing primarily third base; he gave up 6 hits and 4 runs in two innings on the mound.

Drábek hit .313/.421/.313 in the 2007 European Championship and gave up four runs in one inning, again the worst Czech hurler. In 2008, he returned to the Czech Republic with the second-division Patriots Liberec. In the 2008 European Championship Qualifiers, he went 2 for 9 with a double, triple, two times hit by pitch, two runs and a RBI to help the Czech squad qualify for the 2010 European Championship.

Sources

• Dutch stats
• Czech baseball stats, 2003-2007
• Defunct IBAF site
• CEB website
• Belgian baseball stats
• Wayback Archive of the 2005 European Championship site