This article celebrates the birthdays of former Blue Jays players J.P. Arencibia and Nori Aoki. It recounts Arencibia's journey with the team, his struggles, and his later career as a baseball analyst. It also highlights Aoki's brief stint with the Jays and his impressive performance.
Former Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia turns 39 today. Arencibia was a first-round draft pick by the Jays in the 2004 draft, number 21 overall. He quickly became our top prospect and hit #43 on Baseball America’s top 100 prospects list before the 2009 season. Then, he came up to the Jays and played his first MLB game on August 7th, 2010, and it couldn’t have gone better. He went 4 for 5, with 2 home runs and a double. We thought we had our catcher for the next ten years.
It didn’t work out that way. He had more trouble with the bat than we thought he would, and he took those troubles with him behind the plate. JP played four seasons with the Jays. He hit .212/.258/.408 in 380 games. Over the years, we talked too much about his shortcomings, but he seemed like a good guy. He was great with fans and great with kids. He came to Calgary with the Jays’ winter tour several years ago, and I got to talk to him a little bit. He was very nice. I didn’t notice how good-looking he was until later when I saw pictures that a friend of mine took for me, and I noticed how many photos she took of JP. From the Jays, he went to the Rays (and had a poor year) and then the Rangers (and hit well, .310, but in 73 PA). Then he played in the Phillies and the Rays systems but didn’t return to the majors. Since then, he’s worked as an analyst for Marlin games (I thought he was pretty good in the role). He married and divorced Kimberly Perry of the Band Perry (who wrote a song that wasn’t very complimentary about JP) and has married Fox broadcaster Tomi Lahren (who, to my knowledge, hasn’t written a song about him). Happy Birthday. JP. Nori Aoki turns 43 today. Aoki came to us in trade from the Astros for Francisco Liriano at the deadline in 2017. Nori played in 12 games with the Jays, hitting .281/.294/.594 with 3 home runs. Looking at the stat line, I wonder why we gave up on him so quickly, but we released him on August 31s
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