Top 100 San Diego Padres: #91 Steve Arlin

STEPHEN RALPH ARLIN | SP | 1969-1974 | CAREER STATS



Drafted by the Padres from the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1968 expansion draft with the 57th overall pick, Steve Arlin began his Padre career with Columbus in the International League. Despite an atrocious 41:42 K:BB ratio, he was called up and predictably pitched at below replacement level. Arlin would begin the following year with Salt Lake City and would improve his K:BB ratio to 52:50. Allow the fact that 52:50 was an improvement to sink in. Arlin would get another call up and in two starts put up an impressive RA+ despite walking nearly three times as many batters as he struck out.

By 1971 it was clear that Arlin's unfortunate performance was "good" enough to warrant a spot in the starting rotation. His biggest "accomplishment" of 1971 outside of managing to keep his job was giving up a monster home run to Bob Robertson that landed in the 70-foot high RF upper deck at Three Rivers Stadium. Second on the list was leading the NL with 19 losses.

The following year was an improvement. According to Baseball Library, Arlin would throw three two-hitters, a one-hitter and also a 10-inning one-hit game. The one-hitter occurred on June 23rd and wasn't a near no-hitter as Garry Maddox tripled in the 2nd inning. Arlin's two-hitter on July 18, however, was as close as a Padre has come to throwing a no-hitter. With two outs in the ninth, it was still intact. Unfortunately, Zimmer would elect to have Dave Roberts play in close out at third and the result would be a ball dumped over his head. 1972 was also memorable for it being the second consecutive year that Arlin led the NL in losses.

The last two years of Arlin's Padre career were forgettable at best and his final season as a Friar actually did more to hurt his position on this list than help and by June of that year he was packaged for players to be named later. Neither amounted to anything as Padres.