Pedro Martinez is headed to another Hall of Fame - this time, north of the border.
Martinez, who starred on the mound for the Montreal Expos in the 1990s, was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame on Thursday, headlining a three-man Class of 2018.
Joining Martinez are former Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Lloyd Moseby, and Canadian baseball historian Bill Humber. The trio will be inducted in a ceremony at the Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ontario, on June 16.
"Although I only played four seasons with the Expos, the fans always went out of their way to show how much they cared, appreciated, and loved me. There is a huge amount of love and respect between me and the Expos' fans," Martinez said in a statement released by the Hall of Fame.
Though Martinez is best known for his years with the Boston Red Sox - he represents that team on his plaque at Cooperstown - it was while pitching in Quebec that he first became a star. During his four-year Expos career from 1994-97, Martinez went 55-33 with a 3.06 ERA, 1.089 WHIP, and 843 strikeouts, along with eight shutouts - matching his entire total in a Red Sox uniform.
Martinez was a key member of the famed 1994 Expos, who had the best record in baseball at the time of the season-ending players' strike. He won his first Cy Young Award with the Expos in 1997 after leading the league in ERA (1.90), ERA+ (219), WHIP (0.932), strikeouts per nine (11.4), and complete games (13), while also striking out 305 batters. His 9.0 bWAR in '97 remains the Expos/Washington Nationals single-season record for pitchers.
The Expos traded him to Boston days after he won the award, but Martinez never forgot his roots. While celebrating the Red Sox World Series victory in 2004 - only a month after the Expos had announced their move to Washington - Martinez shouted out fans in Montreal, and said he was sharing the victory with them.
Moseby played 12 seasons in the majors, 10 of which were spent with the Blue Jays, where he was one-third of a star outfield trio in the 1980s. A Silver Slugger winner in 1983 and All-Star in 1986, he helped lead the Blue Jays to their first two AL East titles and remains the franchise's all-time leader in stolen bases with 255.
Humber, a Toronto native, is the author of four books on baseball and is the only Canadian to have served on the board of directors of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR).
