Happy Birthday Aaron Hill, Luis Leal and Anthony Kay

Aaron Hill turns 40 today.

I wonder how Hill’s career would have been if it wasn’t for the concussion he suffered in 2008, but his best season came the following year. Many players have a ‘what if.’

We did get the best part of his career. Aaron played seven seasons of his thirteen-year career with the Jays. With us, he had a 17.1 bWAR. The other six seasons added up to 7.3 bWAR. So I’d say we traded him at the right time, but then we didn’t get that much from Kelly Johnson.

By WAR, he was the Jays’ second-best second baseman, number 3 on the list is Orlando Hudson. And his 2009 season, where he had a 5.8 bWAR, was the best by any Jays’ second baseman not named Roberto Alomar or Marcus Semien (Alomar had a 6.6 in 1992 and 6.1 in 1993. Semien had a 7.3 in 2021).

Happy Birthday, Aaron, though I’d imagine he won’t read this. There is a post-career interview where he said he stays off social media.

Luis Leal turns 65 today.

Leal was a pretty good pitcher for us back in the early 80s. He pitched for us from 1980 to 1985. Career, Luis pitched in 165 games 151 starts. He had a 51-58 record and a 4.14 ERA in 946 innings.

His best season was 1982, when he had a 12-15 record and a 3.93 ERA in 38 starts with 10 games and 249.2 innings pitched. He’d throw over 200 innings in each of the next two seasons. In those 3 years, he made 108 starts and threw 689.1 innings with a 38-35 record and a 4.03 ERA.

On our franchise leader board, Leal is 14th in bWAR at 10.6, 9th in innings pitched and 11th in wins.

Happy birthday, Luis. I hope it is a good one.

And it is Anthony Kay’s 27th birthday. He pitched in yesterday’s game.

Happy birthday Anthony.

It was also my brother’s birthday yesterday. I meant to call, but the day got away on me. He’s 12 years older than me. I’m sure having him soured my parents on the idea of children, but after I come along, they didn’t wait near as long to give me a little sister.

Happy Birthday, Robert.