Happy Birthday Troy Glaus

Troy Glaus turns 45 today.

The Blue Jays traded for Glaus in December of 2005. He and Sergio Santos came over from the Diamondbacks for Miguel Batista and Orlando Hudson.

At the time, we had a glut of middle infielders, and Corey Koskie didn’t have a good season in 2005. The trade opened room for Aaron Hill at second base. We figured he and Russ Adams would be the middle of our infield for years to come. Miguel was a decent pitcher. He lost his spot in the rotation in 2005 but had 31 saves (with 8 blown saves and a 4.10 ERA).

Troy had 2 good seasons with us. He hit .256/.360/.496 with 58 home runs, good for 39th on our all-time list (he’ll drop to 40th with Vlad’s next home run). He was an All-Star in 2006 and was 30th in MVP voting. He also won the All-Star Home Run Derby that year.

After the 2007 season, and after Troy’s name appeared in the Mitchell Report on PEDs. His and 88 others.

As that offseason, the Jays traded Troy to the Cardinals for Scott Rolen. Troy missed a fair bit of the 2007 season with plantar fasciitis, which he blamed on the hard surface at Rogers Centre. From the St. Louis side, Rolen wasn’t loved by Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa. They had some disagreements over an injury during the 2007 playoffs.

It was a trade of stars who play at the same position, which doesn’t happen all that often. GMs hate deals like this because they are too easy to call a winner and a loser (we were the winners).

Glaus had a good season with the Cardinals, hitting .270/.372/.483 with 27 homes. Next season he played 14 games, and after the season, he signed with the Braves. He had an ok year there, and that was the end of his career.

I enjoyed watching him, but we did trade him at the right moment.

Glaus played for 13 years, hit .254/.358/.489 with 320 home runs (122nd on the all-time list for home runs). It was a good career, short of the Hall of Fame, but squarely in the Hall of Very Good.

Happy Birthday, Troy. I hope it is a good one.