Wow! To have carter on the bench... There has to be a better choice than clancy.

Eichcorn has to be in the bullpen

If MLB is allowing players on multiple teams (it would be more fun if they didn't), then I agree that not having Clemens on the team makes absolutely no sense. He had two years in Toronto and was phenomenal in both! And had a pretty fine career, too.

John, I'm puzzled by your choice of Gruber over Mulliniks. Why do you value positional flexibility in the abstract over more superior hitting skills and experience at the position where this team needs a backup?

I'm not sure if we are supposed to be evaluating their time as a Blue Jay or their career. Either way, Gruber had a career OPS+ of 102 and his OPS+ with Toronto was 102 (he only spent one season with California). Mulliniks had a career OPS+ of 107 and with the Blue Jays it was 114.

As for the claim Gruber has more positional flexibility, that may be true, but Mullinks has more experience at SS, which is exactly what this imaginary team needs. Mullinks started 134 games at SS in his career and amassed over 1,400 innings there, as well as nearly 100 innings at 2B. Gruber has experience at all three outfield positions (I had no idea), which Mullinks doesn't, but this team already has three outfielders on the bench. And Gruber accumulated 117 innings at 2B, so that's marginally more than Mullinks' 91. But Gruber has only 120 innings at SS.

Mulliniks is the better hitter and has 10 times more defensive experience at the exact position this team lacks a backup, which is why he's think a much better choice than Gruber.

By the way, Mulliniks had three plate appearances for the 1992 Blue Jays. Does anyone know if he got a World Series ring? I hope he did.

No room for Molitor on the team? Ah well, first-division problems :)

J Williams tried G Bell as a DH and it did not work out.

The current team, 2020, does not have an adequate CF IMO. Many Bauxites agree with me on this point. So in our CF history, up to and including Pillar who does "not" stack up as "adequate".

S Stewart had a weak arm IMO.
Pillar had a very poor OBP.
Bosetti? I don't know.
Reed Johnston also not sure.

You cannot have everything but IMO Fisher and maybe T Hernandez may be too poor at catching the ball when hit to them, so far, it seems to me. Although 30-40 Hr & 100+ RBI from T Hernandez may be worth his catching flaws.

Fair points, John, although I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion.

My retort would be that you are overselling the difference in platooning considering Mullinks was the heavy side of a platoon. Sure he struggled against LHP, but most left-handed batters do. He's the heavy side of a platoon and he compliments an otherwise mostly right-handed bench, except for Olerud. And I don't prioritize range quite as much as you do, given Donaldson's ability to go to his left.

Agree to disagree.

No problem there.  We each view things differently.  To be honest I was surprised when I looked up games at SS and saw how many Gruber had.  I totally forgot he played there so much in '87.  The Jays had Fernandez and Lee to cover SS so what was Gruber doing there during a year when he didn't hit that well?  I figure we can write it off to more Jimy Williams nonsense.  What a disaster as manager he was.

I dunno JohnBut the defense would have to be pretty bad for me not to want Gruber's bat over Lee's in 87. I'm assuming he played most when Fernandez was injured.

The Jays had traded Damaso Garcia away and handed the second base job to Mike Sharperson, who was found wanting after little more than a month, and banished forevermore. They would eventually trade him to the Dodgers for a wild right-hander named Guzman. Both Sharperson and Guzman would play in the 1992 All-Star Game. How about that?

Anyway, Iorg took over at second base and was, as many have noted, terrible. The Jays eventually solved the problem in the middle of the diamond by summoning Nelson Liriano from Syracuse to be the team's third different regular at second base in the same season. Williams would also spend 1988 changing his regular second baseman every few weeks or so. Strange times.

1987 was Gruber's first full season, and most of his work came after he took over Iorg's job as the RH bat in the third base platoon. All his action at SS came during a two week period in August when Fernandez was in and out of the lineup for reasons that have long since escaped me.

Moving along - there's a very fine interview with Carlos Delgado in the Athletic. (Can't do hyperlinks in Chrome, sorry.) Highly recommended. He has, as you might expect, some interesting things to say about hitting. He's a little disappointed at his one-and-done showing on the HoF ballot, hopes the Veterans Committee will give him a look. But he's pretty cool with everything. (Me, I think he's got the Tony Oliva problem - he got started a little late, and injuries finished him a little early. It all took a big bite out of the numbers that get added up, from HRs and RBIs to WAR.)

I suspect that the reason it was Gruber filling in at shortstop in August 1987 was because Fernandez was day to day (he didn't go on the DL) and Lee was in Syracuse at the time. He spent about half the year there. He was with the major league team from the end of May through the end of July, and again as a September call-up.

Lord knows I'm as willing to pile on Jimy Williams as the next fella, but Kelly Gruber was not regarded as a good, or even competent, hitter in 1987. Much of his September action came as a pinch runner, but he did hit a lusty .107/.286/.286 down the stretch.

It's rather telling that none of these pitchers played here in the last ten years, and few played on the team since the 80s or 90s.

I concur on the recommendation for the Athletic interview with Delgado. I only subscribed to The Athletic a few months ago due to all the recommendations that I'd seen on this site, and have to say that despite there being no baseball (or other sports) and thus there being likely less things to produce material, and despite the fact that I've only had time to read only a subset of the articles, I've really enjoyed the articles I've read quite a lot and am enjoying the subscription. In addition to the Delgado interview, I also liked the Lott article on John Lannan on mental skills, psychology, and resiliance.