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Cardinals slugger Oscar Taveras killed in auto crash in Dominican

Big League Stew
(AP)
(AP)

The St. Louis Cardinals hoped slugger Oscar Taveras would become a star in Major League Baseball. Instead, at age 22, his light has gone out forever. Taveras died after a car wreck in his native Dominican Republic, a report confirmed Sunday night by Yahoo Sports' reporter Jeff Passan.

Several outlets in the Dominican, notably El Nuevo Diario, reported the news.

 

 

Details of the crash are still coming in, but Taveras's girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo, also died. This, reportedly, is a photo of their car:

 

Fox's Ken Rosenthal reported that Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak has expressed his condolences to the Taveras family. MLB acknowledged his death, too:

 

And his teammates are finding out as well:

 

Taveras, rated the No. 3 prospect in the majors before the season, was said to have hitting talent comparable to that of Albert Pujols — but he had a rocky rookie experience with the Cardinals in 2014. Struggling at times with the demands of the major leagues, Taveras batted .239 with a .278 on-base percentage and a .312 slugging percentage after making his major league debut May 31.

A positive lasting memory of Taveras will be the home run he hit in Game 2 recent National League Championship Series against the San Francisco Giants.

His tying blast helped the Cardinals rally to win. He went 3 for 7 in the playoffs, a tiny sample but a promising one for the future.

Taveras is the third active Cardinals player to have died since Darryl Kile in 2002. Josh Hancock was legally drunk when he crashed his car into a tow truck in 2007. Greg Hallman of the Mariners in 2011, and Nick Adenhart in 2009 — killed by a drunken driver — are the most recent major leaguers to die.

Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote Friday about how the Cardinals were disappointed in Taveras' overall results, but excited he would get better this offseason:

“Frankly, the last two months for Oscar were probably his best two months,” Mozeliak said. “And, now, I know he didn’t play a lot. But I think he learned a lot. I think he now understands the ownership he needs to take moving forward. The game is pretty simple. You either do or you don’t. When we get to Jupiter (Fla.) next year, we’re going to know what he did and we’ll know if we can count on him or not.”

Chances were, he was going to get better, and maybe become an All-Star-caliber player. All we know for sure: He seemed to have a significant major league career ahead of him. And now it's all gone.

MORE MLB COVERAGE AT YAHOO SPORTS: 

 

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David Brown is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rdbrown@yahoo-inc.com and follow him on Twitter!

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