Matt Huff (minors01)

Mathis M. Huff

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 6", Weight 215 lb.

• School Lamar University
• High School Mira Mesa High School

• Born July 25, 1964 in San Jose, CA USA

BR register page

Biographical Information

Matt Huff was a minor league batting titlist who also starred in Taiwan and played for the American Samoa national team.

Born in the US, Huff grew up in Pago Pago. He was in the US again for high school and college. He was undrafted out of college but signed with one of the few independent teams of that era, the Salt Lake City Trappers. He hit .310/.362/.447 in 1986, just missing the Pioneer League top-ten in average. He was the league's All-Star DH.

The next season was way better; as Salt Lake City set a record with a 29-game winning streak, he hit .417/.487/.626 with 37 runs and 37 RBI in 48 games. He won the batting title handily (.020 ahead of teammate Frank Colston) and also led in OPS. He was named the All-Star DH again. Moving to another indy team, he hit .239/.344/.379 for the 1988 Miami Marlins, backing up Shuji Inagaki at first base.

In 1990, he went to Taiwan and batted .337/.399/.613 for the Wei Chuan Dragons in the first season of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. He led the 1990 CPBL in OBP (.012 ahead of Jung-Tai Sung), slugging (.070 ahead of Luis Iglesias) and strikeouts (63, 5 more than Iglesias). He was also 2nd in average (.005 behind Kuang-Huei Wang), 2nd in RBI (53, 5 behind Iglesias), tied Rick Bernardo for 7th in runs (48), tied Chin-Mou Chen and Michael Bosco for 6th in doubles (21) and was second in homers (16, two behind Iglesias). The CPBL MVP and Best Ten were not yet given out or he would have been a top candidate. He homered in Game 3 of the 1990 Taiwan Series; the Dragons took home the initial title in six games.

The 6' 6" slugger fell to .248/.336/.435 with 12 homers in the 1991 CPBL. He tied Jim Aylward for 4th in the league in home runs and was 5th with 46 RBI and 6th with 32 walks (between Fu-Lien Wu and Wen-Sheng Lu). He homered in the 1991 Taiwan Series opener. His last season in Taiwan, he went deep on Opening Day, becoming the first player to do so on consecutive Opening Days. He batted .243/.348/.486 in limited action in the 1992 CPBL.

He had hit .310/.389/.468 in 192 games in the US minors, .286/.365/.519 in 192 games in the CPBL.

Huff made America Samoa's team for the 1999 Oceania Championship. He was a bench player when American Samoa won Silver in the 2003 South Pacific Games, going 0 for 2 with two runs at age 39.