Happy Birthday Marco Scutaro

Marco Scutaro turns 45 today. We have hit a stretch of a number of my favorite Jays having birthdays.

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 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 slightly better than McDonald with the stick. The players we gave up were expendable as all had many questions about them and were down in A-ball. The likelihood they make to the show is slim. For Oakland this is 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 she was good 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, he was great at short and as our leadoff hitter, and I grew to like him.

Marco 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. He had his 2 best seasons with the Jays. He had bWARs of 4.5 and 5.5 with the Jays, with a career bWAR of 22.1.

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

Also, having a birthday today, former Jays pitcher Joe Johnson turns 59.

Joe came in a trade from the Braves, in July of 1986, with Jim Acker going to Atlanta. He had a perfect finish to the 1986 season, 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.

After the season, we lost him in the Rule 5 draft and never pitched in the majors again.

Happy birthday Joe.