Another Italian club signs another player from the Dutch Kingdom. Most of the time these players come from the Dutch Caribbean Islands Aruba or Curaçao but this time the player comes from the Dutch mainland: Victor Draijer.
Born in Heemstede, Draijer made his first steps in the Dutch hoofdklasse in 2015 at the age of twenty-two. With Corendon Kinheim, Victor played twenty-three games and batted .284 in his rookie year. In the year, he debuted with Kinheim, Victor also played for the Quachita Baptist University of the Great American Conference, where he posted a .281 batting average.
After the 2016 Holland Series, Corendon Kinheim collapsed as most players left the club. Draijer moved to L&D Amsterdam Pirates, where he played for two seasons before moving to Hoofddorp Pioniers for the 2020 season. In that season he would be crowned the MVP with a batting average of .500(!). With that average, he became the sole Dutch player with a batting average of .500 or more. Thus far, Wim Crouwel had the highest batting average by a Dutch player for a season with .490, which he batted in 1967. With his .500 average, Draijer became the only player to hit in all 21 hoofdklasse games, during a 2020 COVID-19 shortened season.
After just one year with Hoofddorp Pioniers, Draijer moved to HCAW for the 2021 season. With the club from Bussum, he batted a “modest” .328. Compared to his batting average, his fielding percentage stayed a bit behind with .917.
In Victor Draijer, Italy’s oldest baseball club will get a solid batter, who doesn’t aim for the fences but who is a contact hitter. His 2021 numbers refelect this: fourty-four basehits, seventeen doubles, a triple and a home run.
Dutch Baseball Hangout 