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Poll Time: Most Pleasant Surprise of the Blue Jays Season

Brad White

Our Pitcher of the Year votewas the closest one we've had so far. Casey Janssen won with 46% of the vote. Mark Buehrle had 22%, Brett Cecil 12%, R.A. Dickey 9%, Aaron Loup 6%, Steve Delabar 4% and the ever popular someone else got 2%.

We did a biggest disappointment poll, let's do the opposite end and vote on the biggest positive surprise (not that there are a lot of candidates):

  • Munenori Kawasaki: When we picked him up, after the Mariners released him, we had no idea he would become a fan favorite. I really didn't understand why the Mariners gave up on him after just 104 at bats, it seemed like a hasty decision. Anyway, when Jose Reyes hurt his ankle and Emilio Bonifacio and Maicer Izturis proved to be, what's the word, awful, Munenori was called up. He was fun, something that was severely lacking in our season.
  • Ryan Goins: It says something about our season that someone with a .264 OBP was a happy surprise. The real surprise was that he played great defense and since we really didn't have anyone in the middle of the infield that was playing decent defense, so when Goins was good with the glove, it it was such a switch, he really stood out.
  • Todd Redmond: Redmond was so far down the starting pitcher depth chart, at season start, that I don't think many of us considered it a possibility that we would see him in Toronto. When he did, he was pretty ok. 4.32 ERA. The real surprise was the 8.9 k/9 innings. Admittedly, he seemed to either get a strikeout or get hit hard, but he was a surprise.
  • Brett Cecil: Brett major league career seemed to be flaming out, and, at spring training, he was on the bubble to make the team. Well he did make the team he had such a great season that he was named to the AL All-Star team. I thought, at best, he could become a LOOGY, but he was much better than that (at least for the first half of the season). The big surprise were the strikeouts, 10.4 per 9 innings.
  • Moises Sierra: He just played in 35 games, but who would expect him to put up a .290/.369/.458 line. Yeah, it does how bad the season was that his 35 game could rank as one of the more pleasant surprises of the season.
  • Adding Colby Rasmus.

And well that might it for happy surprises from this season, so give us your vote.