Graveyard Baseball: Oakland A's / Seibu Lions Series: Neil Wagner

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Oakland A's / Seibu Lions Series: Neil Wagner

===

Neil Wagner

Tenures: 2011 with Oakland Athletics, 2018 with the Seibu Lions

Statistics with the Athletics: Six games, 5.0 IP, 7.20 ERA, 6.43 FIP, 1.800 WHIP, 7.2 K/9

Statistics with the Lions: 36 games, 32 IP, 4.22 ERA, 1.625 WHIP, 6.8 K/9

A Minnesota native, Wagner played University baseball at North Dakota State, a school famous for producing NFL quarterback Carson Wentz. He was a 21st round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians in 2005 and stayed in their minor leagues until 2010, where he was traded to the Oakland Athletics for cash considerations.

With Oakland needing depth, Wagner was used as a mop up pitcher for five out of his six games played. He also appeared in the 12th inning of a tied game, where the A's would lose in 16.

Wagner was claimed by the Padres off waivers in 2012, but later went to the Toronto Blue Jays under a minor league deal. With Toronto, he would spend the most amount of MLB time as he played in 36 games for them in 2013 in relief. His 2014 season was cut short due to Tommy John (TJ) surgery and the team released him after the year. He missed the entire 2015 season recovering from TJ.

He became a minor league journeyman from 2016-2017, spending only time in the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Meets AAA affiliates.

The Saitama Seibu Lions signed Wagner in December of 2017, where he was one of two imports picked up in the offseason. They tried to slot him in the 7th and 8th innings as middle relief, but he was mostly inconsistent as was the Lions bullpen for most of the year. He mostly took medium leverage innings.

With bullpen struggles, the Lions added Deunte Heath and Kyle Martin in the middle of the season and the former proved to be a solid closer while the latter helped as setup man. Wagner fell out of favor when Katsunori Hirai and Shogo Noda were the better pitchers.

In September, Wagner was lit up by the Orix Buffaloes in mop up duty and that was all she wrote on his career in Japan. The Lions placed him on waivers before the regular season ended and he hasn't played a game since.

===

Before he was released, he sold several personal equipment and uniforms on eBay with the Lions permission as it went to charity. I was able to purchase one of the on-field uniforms and it even came with a player card.