Kevin Brown Marquee

He won 211 games against 144 with a 3.28 earned run average and 2,397 strikeouts across nineteen seasons, and was chosen for six All-Star teams. He led the American League in wins in 1992 with 21 and threw a no-hitter in 1997. The sinker he threw is the pitch other pitchers of the era describe when asked what was hardest to hit.

In December 1998 the Dodgers signed him for seven years and $105 million, the first contract in the game worth more than a hundred million, and the figure became the story. He was thirty-four, gave them two excellent seasons and three broken ones, and the deal is still cited whenever a long contract goes wrong.

He appeared in the Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drugs in 2007. The writers gave him 12 votes of 581 in 2011 and he came off the ballot after one year, which for 211 wins and that strikeout total is a low figure and is not entirely explained by the pitching.