Four Center Fielders and a Funeral (Without the Funeral)

It wasn’t until I was reading our most recent Blue Jays Week in Review that I realized how interested I was in the fact that the Jays used four different center fielders in a game last week.

On Tuesday, June 17, the Blue Jays welcomed the Diamondbacks to Toronto. When Chris Bassitt threw the first pitch of the evening, a sinker to Corbin Carroll, Jonatan Clase was standing out in center field. Yet, in the bottom of the fourth, D-backs starter Brandon Pfaadt hit Clase in the knee with a pitch, and the young outfielder dropped to the ground in pain. He would eventually take his place on first base, but the following inning, it was Myles Straw, not Clase, jogging out to center field.

Straw’s stint in center that day would prove to be even shorter than Clase’s, and before the fifth inning was up, John Schenider was forced to make another defensive change. While running down a fly ball from his former teammate Josh Naylor, Straw missed the catch and ran right into the wall, injuring his ankle. So, it was then Alan Roden’s turn to put on a glove and head out to play what was starting to seem like a cursed position. (Thankfully, neither Clase nor Straw landed on the injured list. If there ever was a curse, it was brief and benign.)

Roden managed to last two whole innings, and when he exited, it was only because Scheider wanted to replace him with a right-handed pinch-hitter. However, that pinch-hitter, Davis Schneider, has never played center field in his career, so when the Jays returned to the field, Schneider took over in left and Will Robertson slid from left field to center, becoming the fourth center fielder of the day. None of them just stood there either. All four of Toronto’s center fielders last Tuesday had to make at least one play. Here’s a little compilation of Clase, Straw, Roden, and Robertson all manning the position:

There’s no doubt this was unusual. Indeed, Blake Murphy of Sportsnet pointed out that this was the first time in franchise history the Blue Jays had used four different center fielders in one game. But I wanted to know more. 

Armed with a thirst for knowledge and a subscription to Stathead baseball, I started digging. I found that no other team has used four center fielders in a game this season, but the Royals used four different right fielders and four different left fielders in the same game on May 9. In addition, the Padres used four different hitters in the DH spot on April 27. No team has used more than three different players in one game at any of the four infield spots, and we have yet to see a team use more than two catchers in a single contest.  

Interestingly, while four different players at one position in one game is quite rare, it is surprisingly common for a team to use three separate players to field the same position. Between every position combined, it has already happened 148 times in 2025. The Jays are responsible for five of those cases: once at first base (Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ernie Clement, and Anthony Santander on May 25), once at second base (Clement, Straw, and Michael Stefanic on May 25), once at shortstop (Bo Bichette, Clement, and Stefanic on May 25), and twice in center field (Nathan Lukes, George Springer, and Straw on March 31; Lukes, Roden, and Straw on April 19). 

Looking beyond just this season, the idea of using four center fielders in a game isn’t quite as unusual. It’s happened on 15 separate occasions in the last 25 years. However, only once in recorded history has a team used more than four center fielders in one contest: the 2000 Detroit Tigers, who used five different players in center field during the penultimate game of their season on September 30. 

Meanwhile, the record for the most different players at any one position in one game is six. The 1972 Oakland Athletics used six second basemen on September 19, the 1965 Kansas City Athletics used six right fielders on September 8, and, much more recently, the 2016 Cubs used six left fielders on June 28. The record at every other position except for catcher is five, while the highest number for backstops is four. 

As for the Blue Jays, this isn’t the first time they’ve used four different players at one position in one game, but you have to go all the way back to the '80s to find another. On September 25, 1985, the Blue Jays used four separate first basemen: Cecil Fielder, Rick Leach, Al Oliver, and Willie Upshaw. One season earlier, on May 15, 1984, the Jays used four different third basemen: George Bell, Kelly Gruber, Garth Iorg, and Rance Mulliniks. A few years before that, on August 28, 1980, they played a game in which four players manned left field: Bob Bailor, Joe Cannon, Garth Iorg, and Dave Stieb. (That was the only non-pitching defensive appearance of Stieb’s career.)

None of those games takes the cake, however. On September 3, 1979, the Blue Jays used five different players in the DH spot: Joe Cannon, Rico Carty, Craig Kusick, Tony Solaita, and, once again, Dave Stieb. Of course, DH isn’t a defensive position. What’s more, two of those “designated hitters” were really just pinch-runners – Stieb ran for Solaita and Cannon ran for Carty – and neither even took an at-bat. Nonetheless, they’re listed as having played DH in the box score. So, that Monday afternoon contest from the 1970s still stands as the only game in Blue Jays franchise history in which five different players shared one position. 

After learning all that, I can’t help but wish that John Schneider had made one more defensive substitution last Tuesday. He couldn’t have moved George Springer into the field without sacrificing his DH, but what if he’d given Ernie Clement a chance to add center field to his defensive resume? I know, I know, big league managers don’t consider the potential for a good fun fact when they make their decisions, but a trivia-loving baseball writer can dream! 

Stats updated prior to games on June 23.