Part 3, following up on earlier posts here and here. I’ve been looking at the near-decade that the Dodgers’ infield of Garvey/Lopes/Russell/Cey was able to stay intact as a unit, wondering if that could conceivably happen today. I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that I was a Reds fan when L.A. was putting their streak together (and then, when the Reds fell off a bit, rooted for the Yankees over L.A. in the ‘77 and ‘78 World Series). From ‘72 to ‘79, the entire duration of Joe Morgan’s tenure in Cincinnati, the Reds’ infield was also unusually stable, anchored by Morgan and Dave Concepcion in the middle. They never made more than one change from year to year, most famously moving Rose in from left field in ‘75 to play third. Starting in 1972-’73, the Reds line reads 0-1-1-0-1-0-1; 4 changes over 7 seasons vs. the Dodgers’ zero changes over eight-and-a-half. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the second most stable infield of the past 75 years over a seven-year stretch.
1977: as the Reds took a step back and the Yankees took over as the best team in baseball, that’s also when the Jays came into the league (delayed by a year, as Toronto’s attempt to move the Giants here collapsed at the last minute). So I thought that would be another way to look at the question, to study one team for the entirety of their existence. The Jays, besides soon becoming my favourite team, of course (how soon? not until 1983, when they started winning; bandwagonism is wired into my DNA when it comes to sports), present a couple of other advantages as a test case. First, with a lifetime lasting exactly 50 years (48 for the purposes of what I’m doing, lopping off 1977 and the current season), you get a sample size larger than the more recent expansion teams, but not as daunting as the teams that go back 100 or more years. That’s good; I’m lazy. Second, the Jays have been about as close to a .500 team over the long haul as you can get. Going into play tonight, they’re 3,862-3,866, four games under (but rounded to .500). They first reached .500 on April 9, 1977 (1-1),* again on April 27, 1977 (9-9), then it took them until September of 1993 to get back there. They’ve crossed over and under a few times since…the point being, looking at the entirety of their existence, they’re neither noticeably good, like the Yankees (.570 going into the 2026 season), nor noticeably bad (the Rockies/Marlins/Padres are all under .470; among older franchises, the Orioles--because of how bad the St. Louis Browns were--are at .475). So that shouldn’t tilt their ability to retain players in one direction or the other.
The Toronto Blue Jays’ yearly infield turnover from 1978-2025:
1) for the 48 seasons, the Jays have averaged 1.77 infield moves per year. Divided into three windows of 16 years each,** the number of changes have steadily increased (what I suggested in the previous post, that players simply move around more today than in the past), and the increases don’t march in lockstep with overall winning percentage: 1.38 for 1978-93 (.512), 1.69 for 1994-2009 (.492), 2.25 for 2010-25 (.508).
2) five times (1984, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2007) the Jays were able to keep their infield completely intact; once (2006) they changed everybody. (Odd--whole new infield in 2006, exactly the same four players in 2007.)
Five times in 48 seasons...5/48 raised to the seventh power is 78,125/587,068,342,272, or about 7.5 million to one. Much, much less than what I got looking at all 30 teams for the past five seasons--20 billion to one--but still: it just ain’t happening. I’d say the same thing of the Dodgers’ infield streak that I would about Cy Young’s 511 wins: unless the game were to change drastically in some fundamental way--pitcher usage for someone to take a run at Young’s record, player movement in the free agency era for some team to match the Dodgers’ streak--it’s a record that simply won’t be threatened. (I’d also note that all the zeros for the Jays came in 2007 or earlier; since then, they’ve averaged 2.28 changes per season, even higher than the MLB average for 2021-25.)
It was fun scrolling through all those long-gone seasons. Since Toronto’s ‘83-93 heyday, when they were in contention every single year (including ‘84, yes; even with the Tigers’ 35-5 start, the Jays had closed the gap to 3.5 games on June 6, and to 7.5 games as late as Sept. 4…no wild card then), I’ve followed closely and watched games when they win, tuned out when they don’t. So I’ve missed a lot of team history, especially during that middle 16-year window. As I looked at the yearly turnover in the infield, it was funny coming across names I drew a complete blank on: Chris Gomez…Russ Adams…Joe Inglett…Juan Francisco. It’s not even that I can’t put faces to the names; I can’t put names to the names.
Twenty billion to one, 7.5 million to one: I began by wondering if the sky is blue, and three thousand words later, I have my answer. Yes, the sky is blue.
*Actually, they won their very first game, so that's the first time they reached .500.
**I’m providing a question to fit the answer, but I like how each arbitrarily drawn block of 16 years tells a story:
1978-1993: from expansion to the back-to-back WS
1994-2009: the wilderness (zero playoff appearances)
2010-2025: rejuvenation (the Bautista/Vlad years)
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