Former Expos pitcher Jose DeLeon dies at 63

February 27, 2024

By Kevin Glew

Cooperstowners in Canada

Former Montreal Expos pitcher Jose DeLeon passed away on Sunday at the age of 63.

He died of cancer in Santo Domingo, D.R.

Canadian Baseball Network writer Danny Gallagher was the first Canadian writer to report DeLeon’s death.

DeLeon made the final seven appearances of his 13-season big league career with the Expos in 1995.

Born in Rancho, Viejo, D.R. in 1960, DeLeon moved with his family to New York as a child. They settled in Perth Amboy, N.J. where he developed into a dominant right-handed pitcher in his sophomore high school season.

The Pittsburgh Pirates selected him in the third round of the 1979 MLB draft. Armed with a potent fastball and a deceptive forkball, DeLeon gradually rose through the Pirates’ minor league ranks. He made his major league debut on July 23, 1983 when he started and permitted just two runs on four hits, while striking out nine, in eight innings to earn a win against the San Francisco Giants.

He was even better in his next start when he tossed a four-hit complete game in a Pirates’ 10-1 win over the San Diego Padres. He followed that up with a one-hit shutout against the New York Mets four days later. His dominance generated quite a buzz in Pittsburgh that year and he finished with a 7-3 record and a 2.83 ERA in 15 starts.

Over the next two seasons, the hard-throwing righty would tease the Pirates with flashes of greatness, but he was often a victim of poor run support. After going 7-13 with a 3.74 ERA in 30 games (28 starts) in 1984, he was a dreadful 2-19 for the last-place Pirates in 1985. Tony Pena, DeLeon’s catcher that season, said the pitcher sometimes had confidence issues.

“It would get to his head. He would say, ‘I’m going to pitch a good game, but I’m going to lose because we don’t score any runs,’” Pena would tell the authors of the 1995 book, The Worst Baseball Pitchers of All-Time. “He was pitching as well as he did the other years, but he got too frustrated, too confused. He thought he wasn’t any good.”

DeLeon started the following season in the minors but was traded to the Chicago White Sox for Bobby Bonilla on July 23. He rediscovered his form with the White Sox, posting a 2.96 ERA in 13 starts down the stretch.

The Dominican right-hander then became a mainstay in the White Sox rotation in 1987, picking up 11 wins and registering a 4.42 ERA in 33 appearances (31 starts) before he was dealt to the St. Louis Cardinals on February 9, 1988.

The switch back to the National League served DeLeon well. In 1988, he went 13-10 with a 3.67 ERA in 34 starts and he fanned a career-high 208 batters. He followed that up with his finest campaign in 1989 when he had a 16-12 record and a 3.05 ERA in 36 starts. He also set personal-bests in innings pitched (244 2/3), complete games (5) and shutouts (3).

He was rewarded with a three-year, $6.5-million contract from the Cardinals in January 1990. But the burden of expectations that came with the contract would impact his performance and he had a National League-leading 19 losses that season. He’d recover to record a 2.71 ERA in 28 starts in 1991 but was converted into a reliever after a tough stretch in late May of 1992.

Less than three months later, DeLeon was released by the Cardinals and signed by the Phillies. He was strong out of the pen for the Phils in 1993 before being dealt back to the White Sox.

He had a 1.74 ERA in 11 relief appearances in the final months of the 1993 regular season for the Sox and then pitched out of the pen against the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series. In Game 5, he fanned five batters in 3 2/3 innings. That strikeout total remains a record for a reliever in a postseason game for the Sox.

He returned to the Sox for the next two seasons before he was traded to the Expos on August 28, 1995 for Jeff Shaw. In spite of their woeful bullpen, the Expos were 55-59 and still in contention for a wild card spot.

Expos manager Felipe Alou told the Montreal Gazette that DeLeon would replace Shaw as the team’s long reliever.

“Shaw had some tough times for us, but he has been just part of an overall problem we’ve been having,” said Alou. “We can make use of DeLeon. We’ll use him basically the same way we used Shaw.”

Expos GM Kevin Malone was excited about adding DeLeon.

“He can be used in the sixth or seventh inning, depending on the situation,” said Malone. “Felipe knows him well.”

In his Expos debut on August 31, DeLeon tossed a scoreless seventh inning in the club’s 5-4 win over the Padres. Unfortunately, everything went downhill for DeLeon and the Expos from there. DeLeon allowed two runs in three of his next six outings and the Expos would go 11-19 after acquiring him. The veteran right-hander completed his Expos’ stint with a 7.56 ERA in seven appearances.

That proved to be DeLeon’s final taste of the big leagues. He’d play two more seasons in the Chinese Professional Baseball League before hanging up his playing spikes.

In total, in 415 big league appearances (264 starts), DeLeon had an 86-119 record and a 3.76 ERA with 1,594 strikeouts. At the time of his retirement, he was the only pitcher in major league history to have collected 1,500 strikeouts, but not record 100 wins. He has since been joined in that exclusive group by Kerry Wood and Oliver Perez.

DeLeon is survived by his wife Natasha and three children Jose Luis, Giancarlo and Anthony.