Top 60 All-Time Greatest Jays: #25 Roger Clemens
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William Roger Clemens | SP | 1997-1998
We might as well get the bad stuff out of the way right off the start; Clemens is mentioned 82 times in the Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball. Did he start using in Toronto? Roger did have a jump in performance when he hit Toronto. Clemens met his soon-to-be personal trainer and later-to-be accuser
Brian McNamee in Toronto. McNamee is known to be a supplier of steroids and human growth hormones. Clemens hired McNamee as a personal trainer in 1997, his first year in Toronto. McNamee has stated that he injected Clemens with steroids. It seems beyond the standard suspension of disbelief that Clemens would hire a trainer who supplied steroids to others without using himself. I guess it is worth noting that Roger denies that he used steroids or human growth hormones. Of course, Roger has denied many things over the years, and often those denials have rung more than a lit
Top 60 All-Time Greatest Jays: #33 Shawn Green
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Shawn David Green | RF | 1993-1999
Shawn Green was born November 10, 1972, in Des Plaines, Illinois. He was the 1st round of the 1991 amateur draft by the
Blue Jays out of high school in Tustin, California. Manny Ramirez was picked two spots before him. We got the draft pick from San Francisco as compensation for their signing of our free-agent
Bud Black. Green received a $725,000 signing bonus.
Shawn quickly rose thru the Jays’ system, becoming the Jays’ top prospect (well, it was a tossup between him and
Carlos Delgado) from the moment he signed. In 1992 he made the Florida State league’s All-Star team, his first full season in the minors playing A-ball. The next season, playing in Double-A, he broke his right thumb in June. Recovering from the injury, he was called up to Toronto near the end of September and was hitless in 6 at-bats. He sat on the bench during our World Series win, getting himself a
Happy Birthday Dan Plesac
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Blue Jay,
Dan Plesac turns 59 today. Plesac had an 18-year MLB career, pitching in 1064 games (all but 14 as a reliever). He finished with a 3.64 ERA and 158 saves. Dan spent five seasons as a closer, at the start of his career, for the
Brewers
. In 1989 he set a career-high with 33 saves and a career-low with a 2.35 ERA.
For most of the rest of his career, he was a setup man or a LOOGY. He played five seasons with the Jays, in two stints: 1997-1999 and 2001-2002. In total, he had a 4.21 ERA in 262 games, with 6 saves. His first go was the interesting one or at least the trade that brought him to us.