Professional
Niemann was the Rays' first-round draft pick out of Rice University in 2004 as the fourth overall pick. He signed a major league contract in January 2005 worth $5.2 million. Niemann opened the 2005 season at Single-A Advanced Visalia, where he went 0–1 with a 3.98 ERA in five starts. After a promotion to the Double-A Montgomery Biscuits, he went 0–1 with a 4.35 ERA in six appearances, including three starts. He had offseason surgery in 2005 to shave the joint between his collarbone and shoulder and returned to Montgomery in 2006. Flanked in the rotation by starting pitchers Andy Sonnanstine and Mitch Talbot during the Southern League playoffs, Niemann helped lead the Biscuits to the 2006 championship. Following the 2006 season, Baseball America named Niemann the Rays' fourth-best prospect, following Delmon Young, Evan Longoria, and Reid Brignac; they also said Niemann possessed the best slider of any pitcher in the Rays' organization.
Niemann spent the 2007 season with the Triple-A Durham Bulls. In 25 appearances, all starts, he compiled a 12–6 record and a 3.98 ERA. He was selected to the All-Star Futures Game.
Niemann made his major league debut on April 13, 2008, against the Baltimore Orioles, pitching 6 innings en route to his first career win.
Niemann's team leading 13–6 record and 3.94 ERA in 2009 earned him a place in national AL Rookie of the Year Award discussions. The Tampa Bay Chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America named him the Rookie of the Year for the Rays for the 2009 season in a unanimous decision by the voters.
In 2012, Niemann got hit with a come-backer by Adam Lind of the Blue Jays on May 14, 2012 which fractured his leg. He was placed on the 60-day disabled list by the Rays.
Read more about this topic: Jeff Niemann
Famous quotes containing the word professional:
“We have been weakened in our resistance to the professional anti-Communists because we know in our hearts that our so-called democracy has excluded millions of citizens from a normal life and the normal American privileges of health, housing and education.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather than achievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.”
—Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)