Scott Stratton

Chilton Scott Stratton (October 2, 1869 – March 8, 1939) was an American pitcher and outfielder in Major League Baseball from 1888 to 1895. He played for the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Colts.

Biography Stratton was born in Campbellsburg, Kentucky, in 1869. He started his professional baseball career in 1888, when at age 18 he walked into the Louisville Colonels spring training camp and asked for a tryout. He performed so well that he was immediately given a contract.

Scott Stratton is featured prominently in this book, which acknowledges that his performance was a major factor in the Colonels' success. Only 20 years old at the time, he had 431 innings pitched, a 34–14 win–loss record, a 2.36 earned run average (ERA), a 164 ERA+, and 207 strikeouts. He led the American Association in Wins Above Replacement, ERA and ERA+, and he set a major league record by starting 25 consecutive games that his team won. If there had been a Most Valuable Player award at the time, Stratton would surely have won it.

Unfortunately, by the end of the 1890 season, overwork had damaged Stratton's pitching shoulder. A physician who examined his shoulder after the season stated that Stratton would probably never be able to pitch again. That proved incorrect, but it was true that Stratton was never again as effective as he'd been in 1890, though he did win 21 games in 1892. His major league career ended in 1895 with a 97–114 record, a 3.87 ERA, 570 strikeouts, and a .274 batting average. Afterwards, he played in the minor leagues as an outfielder until 1900.

Stratton courted a young woman named Bessie Anderson as a teenager. Her father disapproved of the relationship, even after Stratton managed to talk the Colonels into letting Bessie's brother, Bill Anderson, pitch a major league game in 1889. Scott and Bessie therefore eloped on 26 January 1890.

Stratton died suddenly of an apparent heart attack in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1939.