A Blue Jay from the Past: Greg Myers

Do you remember Greg Myers?

This is “A Blue Jay from the Past”. Each week, I’ll spin every Blue Jays’ season in the Wheel of Names and pick a player who played a significant number of games for the Toronto Blue Jays, ideally a full season. This week, the Wheel of Names landed on the 1992 season, with the player we’ll look at in today’s article being Greg Myers. Last week, we looked at Mike McCoy.

The Blue Jays drafted Myers in the third round of the 1984 draft from Riverside Polytechnic High School in California. After three seasons in the minor leagues, Myers made his big league debut in 1987, registering nine plate appearances while spending most of the season in Triple-A. The entirety of the 1988 season was spent in the minors, and 1989 saw Myers register just 46 plate appearances.

He finally earned a full-time roster spot in 1990, slashing .236/.293/.332 with five home runs in 277 plate appearances. The next season saw Myers slash .262/.306/.411 with eight home runs in 333 plate appearances. Myers registered just 68 plate appearances in 1992, before being traded to the California Angels for Mark Eichhorn.

The catcher spent parts of four seasons with the Angels and signed with the Minnesota Twins after the 1995 season. Myers spent parts of two seasons with the Twins before being traded to the Atlanta Braves. After the 1997 season, he signed with the San Diego Padres, where he spent parts of two seasons before being traded to the Braves for a second time on Jul. 26, 1999.

His entire 2000 season was spent with the Baltimore Orioles, where he spent parts of two seasons before signing with the Oakland Athletics after being waived. Myers’ final season in Oakland was in 2002, where he slashed .222/.341/.382.

Before the 2003 season, Myers was a journeyman backup catcher who slashed .250/.307/.384 with 72 home runs in 2,950 plate appearances over a 15-season career. Now in his late 30s, Myers returned to the Blue Jays in 2003 and had a career-best year as a 37-year-old.

In 369 plate appearances as a starting catcher, Myers slashed .307/.374/.502 with 15 home runs in 369 plate appearances for a 127 wRC+ and a 1.7 fWAR. Those were career-highs across the board

Over the next two seasons, Myers only had 33 plate appearances after suffering an injury early in the 2004 season. He retired after the 2005 season, with his last game coming on April 22, 2005.

Although he was a journeyman backup catcher for much of his career, Myers is in the history books. Nolan Ryan registered a record-high 5,714 strikeouts in his 27-season big league career, a record that will likely never be broken. In 1993, Myers was Ryan’s final strikeout of his career.