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MINNEAPOLIS All of the roster chaos created by the pandemic-impacted 2020 season had one interesting side effect: unusual uniform numbers became more prevalent around the Majors as clubs dug deep into their depth to call up players who, in many cases, had those extra numbers assigned to them in Spring Training.
In fact, baseball finally saw every jersey number from 0 to 99 worn in an MLB game when the Yankees assigned No. 89 to Miguel Yajure on Aug. 20. The Twins narrowly missed being part of history, as Minnesota right-hander Edwar Colina was one month too late to become the first player in MLB history to wear No. 86.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Earlier in this series, I profiled 2021 Hall of Fame candidates Tim Hudson and Barry Zito, who together made up two-thirds of the “Big Three” starters who helped the