Ken Pot

• Born December 17, 1980

Biographical Information

Ken Pot played in the First Division and for the Belgian national team.

Pot hit .319/.440/.377 for the 1996 Antwerp Royal Greys in his debut, at age 15. The next year, he batted .380/.455/.467 followed by going 5 for 9 with two doubles in limited time in 1998. Moving to the Namur Angels in 1999, he hit .384/.447/.576 and stole 11 bases in 13 tries. He was third in the league in steals, behind Rudi Brouwers and Andrei Selivanov. In 2000, he played for Antwerp, batting .346/.403/.683. He was 10th in the league in runs (38), tied for 8th in home runs (9) and tied Johnny Peerens for third in times plunked (6).

Ken produced at a .434/.508/.858 clip in 2001 with 11 homers, 37 runs, 43 RBI and 10 steals in 13 tries. He tied for 7th in runs, was third in homers, was third in RBI, tied for 10th in steals and was fifth in slugging (between Tonny Verhaert and Erwin Maes). He made Belgium's team for the 2001 European Championship, starting at DH in the opener against the Croatian national team but going 0 for 3 with two strikeouts against Jimmy Summers before being replaced by Sven Hendrickx. After starting the tourney 0 for 5, he was 7 for 11 the rest of the way with three doubles, three runs, three RBI, a walk, a hit-by-pitch and a steal, handling 22 chances error-free and throwing out one of two runners, splitting catching with Verhaert and Kevin Knollenburg. He led Belgium in average (.026 ahead of Randy Giorgiadis), slugging (.094 ahead of Giorgiadis) and OPS (29 ahead of Giorgiadis) while tying Robby Verhaert and Giorgiadis for the team lead in hits. He finished 4th in the tourney in average (.438, between Selivanov and Jurjan Koenen) and 8th in slugging (between Remy Maduro and Valeri Platonov).

In 2002, he hit .342/.453/.456 for Antwerp followed by .327/.486/.527 in '03 while making no errors in 86 tries. In 2005, he hit .363/.465/.575 then vanished from Belgium's top league for several years. Returning in 2011, he hit only .156/.386/.188 for the Borgerhout Squirrels, apparently ending his career.

Sources: Belgian Baseball and Softball Federation, International statistician Harry Wedemeijer