Happy Birthday Marco Scutaro

Marco Scutaro turns 44 today.

We picked up Scutaro in trade from the A’s back in November of 2007. In the post about the trade achnegy said:

I am not surprised at who this trade partner is as it’s again the Oakland A’s which is Riccardi’s old boss.

Scutaro is a light hitting SS that many compared to John McDonald. Scutaro does have some power, hitting 7 home runs last season but bats a career average of .259. Scutaro is arbitration eligible and will make somewhere around $2 million. He has a good chance of starting as he is a slight upgrade with the bat at SS. He can give whoever days off as well. They also make a very good platoon option with McDonald hitting well against lefties in 49 games with an .818 OPS and a .329 BA. Over his career (.257/.306.645) he is considerably better against southpaws.

The prospects we gave up, never featured in my top 20 prospects. Kristian Bell and Graham Godfrey are two 23-year pitchers in A ball.

Kristian Bell is the type of arm that seems expendable. Bell has really struggled with his control and seems a bit too hittable with a career WHIP of 1.43 in A ball.

Godfrey had a 3.98 ERA for Lansing and didn’t light anything on fire in his professional debut. Solid numbers but had a high hit rate and K rate that wasn’t anything special.

Overall another decent move by Riccardi I would say. Scutaro is a very cheap option (was hoping for a Crosby trade) and is at least slightly better then McDonald with the stick. The players we gave up were expendable as all had considerable questions about them and were all the way down in A-ball. The likelihood they make to the show is slim. For Oakland this is clearly a salary dump and utility players aren’t hard to come by when it comes to minor leaguers anyway.-

Kristain Bell never made it to the majors (though I do enjoy her in The Good Place). Godfrey appeared in 10 games over two seasons with the A’s

It was a good trade, but, a year later, JP oversold it saying that Marco was our 2008 MVP. I politely disagreed:

JP said Scoot was our team MVP. This should be added to our reasons to fire JP. I mean if you have such little understanding of what goes into winning baseball that you think a guy who’s OP+ is 86 is your MVP then you have no business running a team. Frig....putting aside that Doc is the team MVP, offensively who comes in front of him? Hmmmm Wells, Rios, Overbay, Inglett, Rolen, Lind, Barajas.

Marco hit .267/..341/.356 in 145 games mostly at shortstop in his first season with the Jays. But, while JP may have been wrong about him being MVP, I was wrong about him too.

And if he hits at the top of the order more than a few times next year, well then you’ll know we haven’t learned anything from this season.

In 2009 he would hit .282/.379/.409 and he was great at short and as our leadoff hitter and I grew to really like him.

He was a lot of fun to watch play and watch on the bench. I remember him (when noticing the camera was on him), kissing his bat after a home run.

And there was this:

He only played for us the 2 seasons, signing with the Red Sox after the 2009 season. From there he went to the Rockies and then the Giants, picking up a World Series ring in S.F.

In all Marco had a 13 season MLB career, hitting .277/.341/.388 in 1391 games. His 2 best seasons were with the Jays. He had bWARs of 4.5 and 5.5 with the Jays. His career bWAR was 22.1.

Happy birthday Marco. I hope it is a good one.

Also having a birthday today, former Jays pitcher Joe Johnson turns 58.

Joe came in a trade from the Braves, in July of 1986, with Jim Acker going to Atlanta. He had a very good finish to the 1986 season, going 7-2 with a 3.89 in 16 games, 15 starts for us. 1987 wasn’t as good. He had a 5.13 ERA in 14 starts, before being sent to the minors.

We lost him in the Rule 5 draft, after the season and he never pitched in the majors again.

Happy birthday Joe.