Former Seals players in independent baseball

Yesterday, we gave you an update on two former Victoria Seals who are still pitching in affiliated baseball (Austin Bibens-Dirkx and Dane De La Rosa). Today we check up on some ex-Seals who are playing in independent baseball leagues this season.

Since he sported a nasty 7.44 ERA in 2008, Anthony Pluta has improved on his indy numbers each year. This year, Pluta is pitching out of the pen for the Newark Bears of the Can Am League and he currently has a nifty 1.00 ERA.

After being released by the Leones de Yucatan of the Mexican League, Jeff Duda signed with the Can Am League's Quebec Capitales. Although he was originally rumoured to be the Quebec closer this season, Duda has pitched in middle relief and has made a couple of spot starts recently.

After a solid 2011 season with the now defunct Calgary Vipers, Chris Bodishbaugh signed with the Sioux City Explorers of the American Association. Bodi was named the team's closer and so far he's posted two saves in eight appearances for the Central Division cellar dwellers.

Former Seals ace Isaac Hess was traded by the Winnipeg Goldeyes to the Bridgeport Bluefish of the Atlantic League in April. Unfortunately, Hess has fallen on hard times with the Bluefish and has given up at least four earned runs in his last six starts.

Here is a statistical summary of these four former Seals:

Player	Team	League	Record	ERA	SV	G	IP	K	BB	WHIP
Anthony Pluta	Newark Bears	Can Am	2-1	1.00	0	9	9	12	5	1.00
Jeff Duda	Québec Capitales	Can Am	2-0	4.40	0	4	14 2/3	10	7	1.30
Chris Bodishbaugh	Sioux City Explorers	American Association	0-1	4.50	2	8	10	8	3	1.60
Isaac Hess	Bridgeport Bluefish	Atlantic	2-3	6.35	0	7	39 2/3	33	15	1.66

Ex-Seal Brett Flowers had a successful 2011 campaign with Bodishbaugh's current team, the Sioux City Explorers, hitting .329 with 4 homers and 38 RBI. He is now playing baseball in Japan for the Ehime Mandarin Pirates of the Shikoku Island League. Click below for an interesting "highlight" video of one of the Mandarin Pirate's recent games. Brett appears at both the 1:57 and 2:22 mark of the video. Flowers is wearing jersey number 88 with the name "BRETT" on the back.



Apparently, Wilver Perez is also playing in Japan this season, but I was unable to confirm this. If you are aware of any other former Seals playing professional baseball this season, please don't hesitate to leave a comment to this blog post.