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RAYNARD CORDELL, 1ST APBL PotY, RETIRES
4x ALL-STAR WENT 26-10 IN INAUGURAL SEASON FOR ORANGE, WAS 8x 20-GAME WINNER

WOONSOCKET, R.I. (June 6, 1878) - Raynard Cordell, the inaugural A.P.B.L. Pitcher of the Year, has retired from baseball at the age of 38 after failing to find a new team to play for during the initial weeks of the new season.

Cordell first entered league baseball as a 26-year-old Greenhorn with Orange B.B.C. for the 1866 N.B.B.O. season. He immediately became their #1 and went 19-13 with a 3.86 ERA and 3.3 WAR over 286.2 innings.

Two years later Cordell had his best N.B.B.O. season, finishing 27-8 with a 2.35 ERA and 7.9 WAR for an Orange side that went on to win 1868’s Tucker-Wheaton Cup, also going 4-2 with a 3.22 ERA in the Round Robin cup.

Three years later (1871) Cordell you have arguably his best season, finishing 26-10 for Orange with a 3.12 ERA and 5.1 WAR in the inaugural season of the A.P.B.L. while pitching for the first Founders’ Cup runners-up and taking the A.P.B.L.’s first Pitcher of the Year award when it was presumed by pretty much everybody that it would go to either Jim Creighton or James Goodman.

After a rough 1872, Orange let Cordell leave and he went on to spend the last five seasons of his career in Pittsburgh as a regular pitcher for Alleghany, where for whom he would pitch in the Founders’ Cup twice and in the first of the two series lose to his former team.

Cordell’s career in full:

• 1x Tucker-Wheaton Cup champion (1868)
• 3x Founders’ Cup runner-up (1871, 74-75)
• Inaugural A.P.B.L. Pitcher of the Year (1871)
• 4x All-Star (1x N.B.B.O., 3x A.P.B.L.)
• 1x Golden Glove (1876)

Cordell won 20+ games in a season eight times over his twelve-year career, and his 255 victories works out to just over 21 per season. He might not have been a dominant pitcher, but Raynard Cordell made his mark on the sport.