Best and Worst Seasons For Jays Second Basemen by WAR

We did this with catchers yesterday. I was going to do first basemen today, but for some reason I started on second basemen instead and decided to stay with it.

So we are listing our best and worst second baseman by fWAR. I’m sticking to guys who were either our starting 2Bs or had a lot of playing time at the position, staying away from the ones that only had a few games. It does mean there could be some different guys at the bottom of the list, but less than 200 at bats doesn’t make for a great sample size.

• It won’t surprise anyone that Alomar is at the top of the list. He also owns the 13-14 spots on the list. He was a bit of a front runner, when we were crappy, in 1994-95, he slumped (for him). Went to Baltimore and he was back in the pennant race and put up great numbers again, helping the Orioles to the playoffs for two seasons. Slumped a bit when the Orioles fell to below .500, in 1998. Went on to Cleveland and was great there again, helping them make the playoffs a couple of times.
• Homer Bush is on both the top and bottom list. He was terrific in 1999, .320/.353/.421 with 32 steals. In 2000 he hit .215/.271/.253. I wonder what happened.
• Aaron Hill had some very good and some very poor seasons. Second is a position that leads to a lot of nagging injuries. I wonder if that has something to do with the up and down careers many of our 2Bs have had.
• Alomar, Hill and Hudson fill 8 of the 11 spots.
• Garcia played 7 seasons at second for us. 1982 was by far his best season. His next best fWAR was a 1.9 in 1984. He has our 15, 19, 20, 24 and 37 spot, as well the one each in the top and bottom 10. A while back I heard that Garcia was very ill, in hospital with a brain tumor. I don’t know how he is now.

The bottom end:

• Carlos Garcia must be up there with the worst pickups in team history, though I guess we didn’t give up much for him and Orlando Merced and Dan Plesac came with him. Carlos hit .220/.253/.309 in 103 games. He’d play only 25 more MLB games after that.
• Danny Ainge should have stuck to basketball. It was, in part, the Blue Jays fault, to keep him from playing basketball the Jays promised he wouldn’t spend long in the minors. He was doing on the job training in the majors. Since he spent more time, when he was younger, on the basketball court than on the baseball diamond, he really needed time in the minors.
• McKay makes the list for playing the position in our first season. He played 645 MLB games, a pretty lengthy career, considering he hit .229/.266/.313. He must have been a heck of a good guy. Course, being Canadian, he was required by law to be a good guy.
• I don’t remember Domingo Cedeno.
• Nelson Liriano also holds the 12th spot too. He had four seasons with the Jays, one was good, the others weren’t.