Happy Birthday Scott Rolen

Former Blue Jays fan favorite, Scott Rolen turns 43 today.

Scott’s had a terrific 17 season MLB career. He hit .281/.364/.490 with 316 home runs, 19 of which he hit in his season and a half with the Blue Jays. He was Rookie of the Year back in 1997, has played in 7 All-Star games and has 8 Gold Gloves.

With us, his defensive play was one of the best parts of watching the team. We weren’t a great team but we had some very good players. He was also pretty good at the plate, particularly in his second year with the team.

But the best thing he did was when he asked to be traded. We traded Rolen to the Reds for Zach Stewart, Josh Roenicke and, some guy you likely never heard of, Edwin Encarnacion.

Stewart didn’t really turn out to be what we hoped, We traded him to the White Sox, along with Jason Frasor, for Edwin Jackson and Mark Teahen. Jackson was flipped, with 3 other guys, for Colby Rasmus, Trever Miller, Brian Tallet and P.J. Walters. Since then, Stewart has been in the Red Sox and Braves organizations. And he spent two years in the Korean baseball league. He was pretty good there, going 20-10 in 46 starts. Last year he was back in North America, in the Orioles system. I don’t know if he’s still in their organization.

Roenicke pitched in 29 Blue Jays games over the 2010 and 2011 seasons, and then was lost off waivers to the Twins. After that he bounced around. He had a good 2013 season with the Rockies, 3.25 ERA in 63 games. In 2013, he pitched another 63 games, but not with the same success, as a Twin. He hasn’t been in the majors since.

Encarnacion....well you know.

Rolen was on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time last year. He received 10.2% of the vote. I’m hoping his numbers get better as time goes on. It takes the Writers longer with guys like Rolen, who do everything well, but don’t have any one great stat.

I miss watching Rolen play. He was one of those guys, who made it worth watching games all by himself.

Happy birthday Scott. Hope you have a good one.