Moritz Scheicher

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 160 lb.

• Born June 20, 1998

Biographical Information

Moritz Scheicher has played in the Austrian Baseball League and Czech Extraliga and for the Austrian national team.

Scheicher debuted in the ABL in 2014 with the Wiener Neustadt Diving Ducks, going 1 for 14 with a walk at age 15-16. He was 0-1 with a 10.61 ERA. In '15, he hit .146/.250/.146 and had a 8.61 ERA in eight games. He also played for Cardion Hroši Brno in the Extraliga, going 4 for 15 with 3 walks, a double, two runs and four RBI. He was 1-1 with a 3.14 ERA.

In 2016, he improved to 1-0 with four saves and a 1.69 ERA and .220/.317/.260. He tied another Moritz, Moritz Hackl, for the ABL lead in saves. He was 1 for 8 for Austria in the 2016 U-23 Baseball World Cup and had a 11.05 ERA. The next year, he was 4-2 with a 3.92 ERA and continued to develop as a hitter, batting .337/.434/.416 for the Diving Ducks. He tied for 8th in the ABL with 7 doubles and tied for 9th in wins.

He debuted for Austria's senior national team in the 2017 B-Level European Championship while still a teenager. He allowed one run in three innings to beat Serbia and was 1-for-3 at the plate as a bench player. In the 2018 ABL, he was 3-3 with a save and a 5.40 ERA and batted .407/.477/.531 with 25 RBI in 25 games. He finished 7th in the league in average, 2nd with 41 runs (5 behind Ferdinand Obed), 2nd with 46 hits (one behind Obed), tied Richard Alzinger for 4th with 11 doubles, 9th with 60 total bases and tied for 8th in games pitched (12). He did not play for Austria (though on the roster) when they won the 2018 European Championship Playoff against Lithuania to win their second trip to a European Championship (the prior one had been 2007).

Scheicher kept on rolling in 2019. He produced at a .361/.465/.518 clip with 25 runs and 21 RBI in 20 games, though his pitching days seemed to be numbered (2-3, 2 Sv, 6.97). He tied for 10th in the ABL in RBI, tied for 4th in doubles (9), tied for 4th in saves and tied for 7th with 11 pitching appearances.

He made his European Championship debut in the 2019 European Championship as a reliever for Christian Tomsich with a 2-0 deficit in the 8th against Belgium. The day did not go well as he walked Benjamin Goffaux. Benjamin Dille reached on a fielder's choice and Thomas De Wolf reached on an error. Dennis De Quint grounded in Goffaux then Stephen De Lannoy singled in two more. He recovered to get Hans Heyrman on a fly and Sam Boermans on a fly, though. The next day, he started at shortstop and batting leadoff and went to town. He doubled off Owen Ozanich his first at-bat and went 4-for-4 with a walk, two doubles and two RBI. The only negative was two errors. Later in the Euros, he homered off Rei Martinez and former Rockies farmhand Lowuin Sacramento. He finished at .529/.636/1.000 with two doubles, two homers, five walks, four runs and four RBI in five games, with one steal in one try, though he fielded .789 between 2B, SS and P. He did not make a second trip to the mound. He was among the 2019 Euros leaders in average (2nd, .004 behind Sebastiano Poma; Joachim Frick had the old record for Austria in a European Championship at less than half of Scheicher's mark, .250), slugging (2nd, .111 behind Ademar Rifaela, again more than double Frick's old record, .500), OBP (1st, .004 ahead of Poma, .279 ahead of Frick's old Austrian record) and errors (4, tied for first with Kruno Gojkovic, Will Savage, Claus Seiser and Nico Filice). He was thus easily the first Austrian to lead a European Championship in OBP, though teammate Benjamin Salzmann also made the top 10 at .519.

Scheicher's batting line for the 2020 Diving Ducks was .311/.481/.378 and he scored 27 times in 20 games. After his power display in the 2019 Euros, he did not go deep once. His pitching continued to decline (2-2, 7.28). He tied for 2nd in the league in runs (6 behind Philipp Eckel) and he led with 27 walks (5 ahead of Hiroyuki Sakanashi, his manager in the 2019 Euros). He managed to tie for 8th with 34 batters struck out and led the league with 11 games pitched.