Happy Birthday Joey Hamilton

It is Joey Hamilton’s 50th birthday today (it is also my middle son’s birthday. Happy Birthday Tommy).

Joey came to the Jays in one of the worst trades of the Gord Ash era. The Jays traded Woody Williams, Carlos Almanzar, and Peter Tucci to get Joey from San Diego. Dave Stewart gave him a strong recommendation after coming to the Jays to be assistant GM, having been the Padres pitching coach the season before. Stewart had played with Joey and saw something in his eyes or some stupid thing like that, and figured he would be a star.

In their defense, in his 4 full seasons with the Padres, Joey had averaged over 200 innings a season, putting up a 55-44 record and a 3.83 ERA with them.

On the other hand, the season before the trade, Joey led the NL in walks, and he never did strikeout many. Ash should have been able to see that a pitcher with a 1.39 strikeout to walk ratio didn’t profile as someone who would do well in the AL East.

His first year as a Jay, he went 7-8 with a 6.52 ERA in 18 starts. The next season, 2000, he was on the DL most of the year, making only 6 starts for the team. In 2001 Joey was 5-8 with a 5.89 ERA when the team released him on August 3rd. It is tough to release a guy you are paying $7.25 million to, but JP had no trouble admitting Gord Ash’s mistakes.

All in all, the Jays paid $17 million for 14 wins. Not exactly what you would want from someone you figured would replace Roger Clemens.

“I think he’s just coming into his own,” Stewart said. “What I like about Joey is that he is a real, real strong competitor. And, I still think there’s room for growth.”

“We have in Joey Hamilton, a pitcher who can go in the front end of our rotation,” Toronto general manager Gord Ash said.

Woody Williams went on to win 104 more games in his career. Almanzar had a couple of decent seasons in an up and down career, and Tucci never made the big leagues. And Gord Ash was fired.

The Red picked Joey up. He pitched there for the rest of the 2001 season. In 2002 he went 5-12 with a 5.90 ERA in 39 games, 17 starts. He made 3 appearances in 2003 and was released. He signed back with the Padres for 2004 but didn’t make it back to the majors.

For his career, he was 74-73 with a 4.44 ERA in 242 games, 209 starts. All in all, a pretty good career, just that the good times happened before the Jays got him.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Joey. Hope it is a good one.

Edwin Jackson turns 37 today. I thought he would be older.a

He was a Blue Jay last year, pitched in 8 games, making 5 starts with a 11.12 ERA before getting his release.

And, he was a Jay for about 10 minutes, back on July 27th, 2011. We picked him up from the White Sox, along with Mark Teahen, for Jason Frasor and Zach Stewart.

Then he was flipped to the Cardinals, along with Octavio Dotel, Corey Patterson and Marc Rzepczynski for Colby Rasmus, Trever Miller, Brian Tellet and P.J. Walters.

I’m sure Minor Leaguer still has his jersey, with NTBD (number to be decided) on the back.

Edwin played for a lot of teams. 14 MLB teams. None of them for more than 3 seasons. In total he pitched in 412 games, 318 starts, with a 107-133 record and a 4.78 ERA.

Happy Birthday Edwin.