2018 National VIP Signer - Jose Rijo

One of the free VIP signers during the 2018 National was Jose Rijo.  He was a pretty dominant pitcher when I was growing up, and I was happy to get his autograph on a few cards.

I was even happier that he was one of the signers there who was in the 1987 set, so this was another card I could knock off of my checklist.

Rijo (b. 1965) played in the majors from 1984 to 1995 and 2001 to 2002 for the A's and Reds.  He had a record of 116-91 with 1,606 strike outs and a 3.24 ERA.  He led the league in strike outs in 1993 (NL) with 227.  He won the World Series with the Reds in 1990.  His best finish in the Cy Young Award race was 4th in 1991.  He was an All Star in 1994 and finished 19th in the 1990 NL MVP voting.  He was the MVP of the aforementioned 1990 World Series when he went 2-0 with a 0.59 ERA.  He appeared on two Hall of Fame ballots (2001 and 2008) but only received a high of 0.2% of the vote.