Happy Birthday Aaron Hill, Luis Leal and Anthony Kay

Mar 21, 2023 - 12:42 PM

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Aaron Hill turns 41 today.

How would Hill’s career have been if it weren’t for his concussion in 2008? 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 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 66 today.

Leal was a good pitcher for us back in the early 80ss. 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 leaderboard for pitchers, 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 28th birthday.

I had high hopes for Anthony, but he only pitched in 28 games for the Jays, for a total of 70.2 innings.

He’s now a Cub. They took him off waivers in December. So I wish him the best there. Hopefully, he’ll get an opportunity to show what he can do.

Happy birthday Anthony.

It was also my brother’s birthday yesterday. So I’ll celebrate his birthday with a Fosters or, hopefully, some Australian beer that doesn’t taste like sewer water.

Happy Birthday, Robert.