The Decade’s Best: No. 46 Ryan Patterson

AW_RyanPatterson.jpgRyan Patterson
Brewster 2003 & 2004
Outfielder
LSU

In 2003 and 2004, the Cape League’s best hitter was a Brewster Whitecap from LSU.

It wasn’t Ryan Patterson both times — that would have put him a little higher on this list — but Patterson still had himself a really solid Cape League career.

In 2003, while his Brewster and LSU teammate J.C. Holt won the Cape League batting title with a .388 average, Patterson hit .288 and led the Whitecaps in doubles with eight and RBI with 24. He also struck out just 19 times in 118 at-bats.

The next spring, in his junior year, Patterson emerged as a bona-fide star for LSU, hitting .341 and leading the team in homers, doubles and RBI.

He picked up where he left off in the summer of 2004.

Back with Brewster, Patterson won the batting title with a .327 average. He added six doubles, five home runs and 25 RBI. He finished third in the league in slugging percentage.

The race for the batting title came down to the season’s final day. Three players — Patterson, Jordan Brown and Pat Reilly — were within nine points going into the games of August 8. Patterson ended up going 1-for-4, Brown went 0-for-4 and Reilly went 2-for-4. Patterson’s average turned out to be five ten-thousandths of a point better than Reilly’s.

After the Cape

After hitting 20 homers for LSU in 2005 and earning a host of All-America nods, Patterson was drafted in the fourth round by the Toronto Blue Jays. He played four seasons in the Blue Jays’ system before he was released after spring training in 2009. He signed on with the independent Fort Worth Cats and hit .284 with 12 home runs and 27 doubles.

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