Top Blue Jays Player #30: Shannon
Stewart
Position: Left-fielder
Seasons With the
Jays: 10 (1995-2003, 2008)
Stats: Games Played 907 Batting Average .298
Base Hits 1082 Runs
Scored 595
Home Runs 74 RBIs 370
Doubles
222 Triples 34
Stolen Bases 166 Walks 337
Shannon Stewart was one of those
players who performed well for the Jays when the team seemed to underachieve in
the late 1990s and early 2000s. A consistent .300-hitter for the latter half of
his first stint with the club, Stewart patrolled left field while providing
speed at the top of the batting order. He was drafted by Toronto in the first
round (19th pick overall) in the June draft in 1992.
He played a handful of games in
1995 and 1996 before finally finding a permanent spot in the lineup by the end
of the 1997 season. In 1998, the Jays made their first attempt at a playoff
spot since the World Series Championship in 1993. They finished in third place
after fading in September, but Stewart, in his first full season in the Majors,
had an outstanding year. In 144 games, he batted .279, hit 12 home runs and
added 55 RBIs. His 51 stolen bases would be the highest he would achieve in his
career and would help set the table for sluggers Carlos Delgado, Jose Canseco
and Shawn Green.
Stewart would improve in 1999
(.304 average, 11 home runs, 67 RBIs) but his stolen bases dropped to 37 and he
was caught a league-leading 14 times. His most productive year at the plate
would come in 2000 when he hit a career-high 21 home runs, added 69 RBIs and
had a career-best average of .319. But the team was stuck in third place,
unable to win more than 83 or 84 games in the AL East, the division that was
being dominated by the New Yankees’ last dynasty.
He would continue with the same
type of numbers over the next two years (.316, 12 homers, 60 RBIs in 2001, and
.303, 10 and 45 in 2002) but the team couldn’t make any impression in the
division, falling below the .500 mark for the first time since 1997.
Finally, in the middle of July
of 2003, Stewart was traded to the Minnesota Twins for Bobby Kielty (not
exactly one of the finer trades made by the organization), as one-by-one, the
players who had come up together and had formed the core of a possible play-off
contender (Delgado, Green and Alex Gonzalez) were leaving Toronto for success
with other teams.
Stewart played three and a half
years with the Twins before joining the Oakland Athletics in 2007. In February
of 2008, Stewart signed a minor-league deal with Toronto with an invitation to
Spring Training. He only played in 50 games, was not the player he had been in
his first stint with the club, and was released in August.
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