It is John Olerud's first time on the Hall of Fame ballot. John had a 17 year major league career, 8 of those were with the Blue Jays. We traded him for, well, nothing really, Robert Person. He was never a favorite of Cito's and Carlos Delgado forcing his way onto the team, John or Joe Carter had to go. You'd think getting rid of the 36 year old Joe Carter would have been the easy choice. Gord Ash didn't see it that way.
Olerud was a first baseman in the Lyle Overbay mode, except better. He didn't have a lot of home run power, but hit lots of doubles, took lots of walks and played good defense. He hit 255 home runs, 500 doubles, 1275 walks and had a .295/.398/.465. He won 3 Gold Gloves and was on 2 All-Star teams. He had a couple of terrific seasons, 1993 for the Jays, when he hit .363/.473/.599 and 1998 for the Mets, when he hit .354/.447/.551. The rest of the time he was just good.