A Blue Jay from the Past: Luis Leal

Do you remember Luis Leal?

This is “A Blue Jay from the Past”. Each week, I’ll spin every Blue Jays’ season in the Wheel of Names and pick a player who played a significant number of games for the Jays, ideally a full season. This week, the Wheel of Names landed on the 1982 season, with the player we’ll look at in today’s article being Luis Leal.

The Toronto Blue Jays signed Luis Leal before the 1979 season, with Leal spending the entirety of that season in the Jays’ system, posting a 2.71 ERA in 156 innings pitched with the Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs and the Dunedin Blue Jays. After 110 innings pitched with the Chiefs in 1980, he was called up to the big leagues.

In his first big league season, Leal posted a 4.53 ERA and a 4.80 FIP in 13 games, or 59.2 innings pitched. The 1981 season was his first full season on the roster, where he had a 3.68 ERA and a 3.44 FIP in 129.2 innings pitched, splitting time coming out of the bullpen and starting games.

Leal pitched a career-high 249.2 innings in 1982, finishing the season with a 3.93 ERA and a 4.06 FIP, starting all 38 games he appeared in that season. He hit the 200+ inning mark again in 1983, where he had a 4.31 ERA and a 4.04 FIP in 217.1 innings pitched.

In 1984, Leal posted a 3.89 ERA and a 4.23 FIP in 222.1 innings pitched. His final season in the big leagues was in 1985, where he pitched just 67.1 innings and had a 5.75 ERA and a 5.42 FIP. 

The 1986 season saw Leal pitch exclusively in Triple-A, where he finished the year with a 4.14 ERA in 76 innings pitched. His final season of his professional career was in 1987, as Leal pitched 25 innings between Triple-A and Double-A, posting a 1.80 ERA in 25 innings. Even though he pitched in the Blue Jays organization that season, Leal had been traded to the Atlanta Braves.

In 2008, Leal was inducted into the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame. Overall, Leal was a pretty solid pitcher during the Blue Jays’ early days.