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Luke Maile turns 31 today.
Luke was our backup catcher for three seasons. The Jays picked him up off waivers from the Rays in April of 2017.
He had an incredibly poor 2017 season with the bat, hitting .146/.176/.231 with 2 home runs in 136 PA. Luke’s wRC+ was a 1, and believe it or not that represented an improvement from when that post was written midseason. Matt wrote about where his season fit with the worst hitting seasons of the 21st century and then compared it to the worst seasons of the modern era.
It wasn’t just Maile in 2017. At the end of the season Matt also wrote about how the back-up catchers, led by Maile, were the worst performing group in Blue Jays history.
Luke hit a much better .248/.333/.366 with 3 home runs in 231 PA in 2018. That was enough to get Minor Leaguer to campaign for Luke to get voted onto the AL all-star team (surprisingly enough he was unsuccessful), despite this video.
In 2019, with Russell Martin traded to the Dodgers, Luke became backup to Danny Jansen and his bat regressed to 2017 levels, hitting .151/.205/.235 with 2 home runs in 129 PA.
Maile’s glove was made him a major leaguer. He has a good arm, ranked well at framing and was pretty athletic behind the plate.
He did have the odd good moment at the plate for us, getting a walk-off single in the 19th inning against the Royals on April 17, 2018 and hitting two, including a walk-off in the 12th against the Red Sox on May 11, 2018.
Maile got into 15 games with the Brewers last season (because the Brewers needed to use every former Blue Jay who could still fit into a uniform). He’s listed as a free agent now.
Happy Birthday, Luke.
David Paulino turns 28 today.
Paulino came to us as part of the Roberto Alomar trade to the Astros in 2013 (along with Ken Giles . He was a pretty good prospect but ended up pitching just 6.2 innings with the Jays. He got into a game with the Phillies last year.
Chad Girodo turns 31 today.
Chad was a 9th round pick in 2013 and climbed up to Jays for a few games in 2016.
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