Joe Blanton
American baseball player
Joseph Matthew Blanton (born December 11, 1980) is an American former professional baseball pitcher, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Oakland Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Washington Nationals.
After playing college baseball for the University of Kentucky, the Athletics selected him in the 2002 MLB draft and later made his MLB debut in 2004. While pitching for the Phillies, he was a member of the 2008 World Series championship team. Blanton continued to pitch in MLB through 2013, when he retired in 2014. Blanton returned from retirement to pitch in MLB from 2015 through 2017.
Amateur career
Joe Blanton was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but grew up in Chalybeate, Kentucky. He graduated from Franklin-Simpson High School in 1999. He attended the University of Kentucky and played college baseball for the Kentucky Wildcats, with a 13–12 record from 2000 to 2002, and led the Southeastern Conference with 133 strikeouts in his final season, finishing with a 4.59 earned run average (ERA). In 2001 he played collegiate summer baseball in the Cape Cod Baseball League for the Bourne Braves.
Professional career
Minor leagues
The Oakland Athletics selected Blanton in the first round of the 2002 Major League Baseball draft using a compensation pick from the New York Yankees for the signing of free agent Jason Giambi.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Joe Blanton” as american baseball player. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american baseball player. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2747053. VIAF identifies the subject as 4594150032993911180007. The Library of Congress control number is no2017087323. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2002, 2004 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joe Blanton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.