Lance Belen

Lance Sueo Belen

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 10", Weight 185 lb.

• School University of Hawaii at Manoa
• High School Henry J. Kaiser High School

• Born April 12, 1963 in Honolulu, HI USA

BR register page

Biographical Information

Lance Belen played five years in the minors, peaking at AA.

He was a high school teammate of Sid Fernandez then slugged .526 in college. The Pittsburgh Pirates took him in the 12th round of the 1984 amateur draft. He hit .274/.338/.452 with 10 homers in 281 at-bats for the Macon Pirates that year and was their most-used first baseman despite joining the team in mid-season. He batted .268/.311/.387 for the '85 Prince William Pirates. Repeating with the team in 1986, he put up a batting line of .293/.359/.479 with 32 doubles, 18 homers, 76 runs, 88 RBI and 10 steals in 13 tries. He made 19 errors at first for the lone negative, in his worst season with the glove. He was 4th in the Carolina League in doubles (between Tom Prince and Ron Gant), 4th in homers (between Boomer Harrison and Ron Gideon), 4th in RBI (between Hector Villanueva and Gino Gentile), 6th in slugging (between Dan Norman and Gideon) and 3rd with 237 total bases (trailing only Gant and Doug Dascenzo). He was third in the Pirates chain in doubles (after Prince and Page Odle), 3rd in runs (after Odle and Jeff Cook), second in home runs (one shy of Tony Chance) and first in both RBI (10 ahead of Odle) and total bases (23 more than Odle). He was named the league's All-Star first baseman.

In 1987, he moved up to the Harrisburg Senators. He hit .290/.369/.460 with 15 home runs and 93 RBI for the Eastern League champs. He tied Marty Brown and Gentile for 10th in circuit clouts and was 4th in RBI (between Rolando Roomes and Steve De Angelis). In the Bucco chain, he tied Gentile and Benny Distefano for fifth in homers and was 3rd in RBI (3 behind Chance and Jeff King). The Pirates had Sid Bream in the majors and Randy Milligan and Orestes Destrade at AAA so Belen returned to Harrisburg, where he slumped to .231/.281/.337 to end his career.

Hitting double-digit homers each year as a pro, he had batted .271/.331/.421 with 64 HR and 348 RBI in 583 games. He fielded .987.