Top 60 All-Time Greatest Jays: #22 Ernie Whitt
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Ernie Whitt was born June 13, 1952, in Detroit, Michigan, not far from Tiger Stadium. The
Red Sox picked him in the 15th round of the 1972 amateur draft, one pick before Jason Thompson, a terrific first baseman for the Tigers and
Dodgers. Ernie was blocked from making the Red Sox by future Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk and was left unprotected in the 1976 expansion draft, and we grabbed him up.
Whitt got 41 at-bats in our first season and got into a couple of games in 1978. In 1979 he spent the whole season in the minors, then in 1980, he was finally given a role in the majors at the age of 28. Ernie was the left-handed half of a catching platoon with
Top 60 All-Time Blue Jays: #28 Rance Mulliniks
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Steven Rance Mulliniks | 3B, DH | 1982-1992
Rance Mulliniks was born on January 15, 1956, in Tulare, California. The
Angels picked him in the 3rd round of the 1974 amateur draft out of high school. He moved quickly thru the Angels minor league system and was called up to the majors in June of 1977 and was the regular shortstop for the rest of the season. He was ok, but he didn’t play much in the next couple of seasons, and they traded him to
Kansas City before the 1980 season. After two seasons and very little playing time, they moved him to the
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TORONTO When you scan the crowd of a baseball game at Rogers Centre, you see jersey numbers that define eras of Blue Jays baseball.
There are plenty of No. 19 and No. 20 jerseys for José Bautista and Josh Donaldson, with the postseason runs of 2015 and ‘16 still fresh, while Roy Halladay’s No. 32 and Roberto Alomar’s No. 12 the only two numbers retired by the organization remain a staple.
As the next generation of Blue Jays stars begin to lay claim to their own numbers and climb the ranks of franchise greats before them, here is a look back through club history at the best player to wear each:
30 years ago today,
John Cerutti was newly a free agent by virtue of having not been tendered a 1991 contract by the Blue Jays before the midnight December 20/21 deadline to do so. As a result, Cerutti holds the distinction of being the first player in franchise history to be non-tendered, a list which has expanded over the years and earlier this month reached 25 when A.J. Cole and Travis Shaw became the latest.
Interestingly, though non-tenders for economic reasons began to occur as a strategy by the mid-1980s to counter players receiving huge raises through the arbitration process from the 1970s onward, that was not at all the case here. The Blue Jays were actually doing him a favour.