So Adam Lind looks good.
September callups are one of my favourite things about baseball.
They're a whole new (or not so new) set of toys for the ballclub to
play with, a fun suddenly-available bag of tricks to dip into in the
late innings when things get tough. They're like when your elven cleric
finds a chest full of potions, and you don't know what they're going to
be or how useful. Is that middle infielder from Double-A going to be a
potion of Extra-Healing or just Marsupial Control?
Lind, so far, seems useful. (Potion of Invisibility, maybe.) His
career's only 13 games old at this writing, but in it he's gone 18 for
48 with 2 walks, 8 doubles and a home run, for a quite corking 1004
OPS. I'd take that. Now, obviously, those are just September numbers,
and only two thirds of September numbers at that. So I don't want to
get too excited about it.
What I do want to do is look at some other Jays hitters who've made
their debuts in past Septembers to see how they compare to Lind. Give
us a bit of a context. The players I want to look at:
a) are hitters
b) who came to the big leagues for the first time as a September callup
c) with the Jays, and
d) played well.
My sources include my own memory, a stack of old media guides, and the internet. I can go back as far as the '84 season.
Our first candidate is Nelson Liriano. Now technically Liriano wasn't a
September callup when he made his debut in 1987. The Jays brought him
north right at the end of August so he'd be eligible for the postseason
(which of course turned out not to be an issue). Up to that point, the
Jays hadn't been able to find a second baseman that year, futzing
around with Mike Sharperson and Manny Lee and Garth Iorg. For a while,
Liriano looked like he had the position locked up. From this vantage
point, his numbers don't look so hot (.241/.310/.342) but he started
with a bang and then tailed off. Detroit manager Sparky Anderson said
about him, "Every time I look up, he's on base." He was a really
exciting player (at his best), and everybody figured he'd be the second
baseman for a long time. Didn't happen. Liriano never really put it
together, and bounced around to four other teams before calling it a
career. But, hey, look at this: his only sniff of the postseason was in
the '89 LCS against Oakland, and he went 3 for 7 with 2 walks, an RBI,
a run scored, and--holy Moses!--3 stolen bases. That ain't bad at all.
There are a lot fewer of these guys than I thought there'd be. Next one
is John Olerud in '89. Olerud is I guess roughly comparable to Lind; he
was only 20 when he made the bigs to Lind's 23, but they're both corner
types not known for speed or defense (although Olerud's defense
eventually got pretty good). Olerud was just a baby in '89 and only
played in 6 games, but in those 6 games he hit .375 (just like Lind!)
and impressed everybody on his way to a fine career.
Do I want to count Tom Quinlan's 1-for-2 in 1990? I do not.
Oh, here we go: Domingo Martinez in '92. I was rooting for Martinez; I
thought the Jays should have given him a better shot. At the time I
thought that, anyway; I realize now that he was just a slow first
baseman who didn't hit quite enough and was caught behind Olerud to
boot. The Jays gave him a couple of sniffs in consecutive Septembers
and he chipped in okay: 5 for 8 with a homer in '92 and then 4 for 14
with another homer in '93. Hope you enjoyed your career, Domingo; I
sure did. (If anybody's wondering where Delgado and Shawn Green are in
this little history, they both got cups of coffee in September '93 and
combined to go 0 for 7 with a walk.)
Shannon Stewart and Howard Battle were called up at the end of '95,
which was of course one of the two worst years in the history of the
Jays. You remember Stewart, of course, and Battle was a third base
prospect. Neither one really burned down any buildings but there was a
bright spot: they drew 9 walks between them, which was a significant
portion of the team's 12th-in-the-league total.
Amazing what you forget. I wouldn't have known this if I hadn't written
this article. In 1997, Tom Evans (third base prospect) and Rich Butler
(of the Fabulous Butler Boys) got called up and actually played all
right. Evans went .289/.341/.421 in 12 games, and Butler was
.286/.375/.357 in 7 games. I had no idea. I mean, I remember their
names, but those are pretty good Septembers for a couple of guys who
never really had big league careers.
In 1999 it was Casey Blake's and Vernon Wells's turn. Neither of them
embarrassed themselves (Wells: .261/.293/.352 in 24 games--he was 20
years old; Blake: .256/.293/.385 in 14 games) but clearly they weren't
ready for prime time.
For the next batch I have to rely on my memory that these guys all
debuted as September callups. 2002 brought us Jayson Werth, who looked
at the time (.261/.340/.348 in 15 games) like he might be a player
someday, but what he really turned out to be Werth was Jason Frasor, so
so much for that. In 2004, we saw Guillermo Quiroz arrive on the scene
and not hit very much, while Eric Crozier (remember him? First base
quasiprospect who came to town in return for Josh Phelps?) hit two
homers, drew a short stack of walks, and made a nice catch. And then
last year John-Ford Griffin hit .308 with some power in 7 games.
And that's it. Looking back at these guys, a couple of things strike
me. First, most of them didn't get much playing time. Not surprising;
typically there isn't an open position waiting to be filled by a
September callup, so they have to scramble for opportunities. Looks
like Lind is going to end up playing more than most of the ones I
mentioned. Second, really good performances over more than just a few
games are not common. Who did I mention who played fifteen, twenty
games and hit really well? Nobody, I guess. Lind's ahead of them all.
Except one. There's one guy I didn't mention. I left him out on
purpose. He and Lind may well be in competition for the best-hitting
September callup the Blue Jays ever had. Some details on our mystery
date:
He made his debut as a 23-year-old one September, and there was
definitely a position waiting for him. He played 22 games that month,
and claimed that position as his own by hitting a lubricious
.306/.359/.528, with 4 home runs, 10 runs scored and 10 RBI. Obviously,
a young man with a bright future. Anyone guess who he is? If so, would
you care to speculate on whether Lind is going to match his career?
(Something is wrong with me. Going through all these old rosters... I
didn't expect to come across any names I didn't recognize. I'm sitting
here, "Mark Dalesandro? Who? John Hudek, is that the Atlanta guy? He
was never with the Jays, was he? Really? Mike Romano, sure, he was the
guy in the Cone trade, but I don't remember him actually making it to
the majors!" How can there be Blue Jays I don't remember at all?)
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