Grilli posted a record of 1-2 for Detroit that season with an earned run average of 4.83, even starting two games while throwing a career-high 72.2 innings.
Ironically, he pitched less the season before yet was given a Topps card in the 1977 set. Go figure.
However, after being purchased by the Toronto Blue Jays just before the 1978 season, he’d spend the entire year in the Minors, not getting back to a Major League mound until 1979, and even then it was for one last game, pitching 2.1 innings of scoreless ball as a late-September call-up against the Red Sox before spending the next two years in the Minors.
He’d play out the rest of his Pro career in the Toronto and Baltimore Orioles organizations, retiring as a player after the 1981 season.
Years later, his son Jason would begin a much longer and successful Major League career, still going as of this writing, pitching 15 seasons as a reliever, with just under 600 appearances on a Big League mound.
