1996 The Up and Down Season

1996: Another up and down season for Green. April was a good month for him. He hit .407 . Was this to be his big season as predicted? After all he had now proved he could hit Major League pitching, could he repeat what team mate and friend John Olerud had done in ‘93 and win the batting title? Of course there was plenty of time for things to change and they did, although he did homer in back to back games on April 24 and 25 against the Oakland A’s off of Jim Corsi and Todd Van Poppel.

May was different story where he hit just .189. and did not hit a single homer and only managed to knock in 6 RBI’s.

June started off just as bad the media was saying it was only a short matter of time before Green would be wearing that Syracuse uniform again just as they had said the previous season. On June 7th he was batting just .211 but then things started to look up.

For the rest of the season he hit .324 . It was the second half burst that seems to be his thing that saved the season for him. The second half was good to him just like the previous season. On June 9th he had a three RBI game to tie his career best, two of them coming off a home run. He also had 7, 2 RBI games in the second half.

July 21 was another big day for him when he recorded 2 outfield assists to tie the Major League record. He also went on to steel five bases after not recording a single steel in the first half of the season. His tenth home run of the season was against Boston and also marked the 25th of his career. It was also a career first as it was his first off of a left handed pitcher. He managed to have a nine game hit streak three times that season.

August was his real hot month when he seemed to hit everything, accumulating to a .380 month.

September was once again a different story when his average dropped to .284 against right handed pitching but he did manage to up his totals against lefties by going 3 for 3 on September 25 against the Tigers to bring his total to .254.

He led the team in outfield assists, (ten) and tied for 8th in the AL. He ranked 3rd in the AL in fielding percentage amongst right fielders. He started 115 games in all in ‘96 with 114 of those starts being in right field and one on September 23 at DH.

1996 MAJOR LEAGUE STATS: TORONTO BLUE JAYS

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