Toronto Blue Jays: How John Olerud learned he would not be a two-way player

Shohei Ohtani has taken Major League Baseball by storm in recent seasons, dazzling on the mound and at the plate while becoming a potent two-way player, a rarity in today’s MLB game. However, looking back, could John Olerud have been not only a potent hitter for the Toronto Blue Jays, but also a solid pitcher as well?

Could John Olerud have succeeded as a two-way player with the Toronto Blue Jays? He answered that question recently.

Long before he was terrorizing American League pitchers, John Olerud was doing the same in the Pac-10 Conference, hitting and pitching for the Washington State Cougars. During his three seasons at Washington State between 1987 and 1989, Olerud posted a .434 batting average and also hit 33 home runs. While he was putting up those eye-popping numbers at the plate, he was also dominating on the mound, logging a 26-4 record.

"“You would prepare for a series against Washington State by saying, ‘OK, we know John Olerud’s going to get his three hits, so let’s just try to minimize the damage he can do with those hits,'” Mark Marquess, Stanford’s head coach from 1967 to 2017, told ESPN for this article. “Then you had to remind everyone that, ‘Oh, by the way, he’s also pitching Friday night and he hasn’t lost a game all year.'”"

Just how good was Olerud at Washington State? An award now given annually to the best two-way collegiate player in the country is named after him.

Olerud flashed so much talent during his time at Washington State that, even though the Blue Jays took him in the third round of the 1989 MLB draft, he spent no time in the minor leagues, heading straight to Toronto to make his MLB debut on September 3, 1989.

The big question, however, is exactly how Toronto would use him? Would he hit? Would he throw? Would he do both? Olerud said the answers to those questions was a mystery to him for a short time as well.

“I remember, coming into my first spring training, that I wasn’t sure what the team wanted me to do,” Olerud said during a conference call introducing him as one of the latest members of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. “I knew they (the Blue Jays) were mainly interested in me as a hitter. So we get the introductions in spring training and they say, ‘Pitchers on the half diamond and position players on the main field.’ Nobody told me where I was going, so I stayed with the position players. I figured they would call me if they wanted me to pitch. They never called me, so that was kind of the answer.”

With that answer, Olerud focused on becoming the best MLB hitter he could be (including a run at .400 during the 1993 campaign) while further realizing exactly how hard pitching is at the highest level of the game.

“Most of the time, it’s trying to find out what the person is best at how he can help the team the best,” Olerud said about the decision for him to focus on hitting. “Pitching was always fun. There is always the challenge of getting the guy out, trying to set up hitters, make good pitches, and all that kind of stuff. I just didn’t have great stuff. I had good enough stuff to throw strikes and make people put the ball in play, but to really be at that top level, you had to have good stuff, and not just good control, but you had to have some good movement and good offspeed pitches.

“It was definitely a good decision by the Blue Jays to help me be a position player.”