With Shane Bieber's Toronto debut set, what are the other most hyped Blue Jays debuts?

Brett Lawrie

Despite some impressive individual performances, including the emergence of Joey Bats, there wasn't a whole lot to get excited about when it came to the 2011 Blue Jays.

Keeping fans hyped through that slog of the season was the fact that one of their top prospects - perhaps the best Canadian prospect in franchise history (at the time) - was on the verge of a call-up. Brett Lawrie, acquired in the off-season for starting pitcher Shaun Marcum, finally reach the show on August 5, 2011.

Batting 9th and playing third base, Lawrie would single twice, and commit an error en route to a 5-4 victory over the Orioles - kicking off an impressive first month in the majors that saw the BC native slug six homers in 25 games, along with three stolen bases and a 1.056 OPS.
Had Lawrie kept that production up, he may well have been known as more than simply the centerpiece of the Josh Donaldson trade.

R.A. Dickey

The 2013 season proved to be an unfortunate lesson for Jays fans - that winning the off-season ultimately means nothing if the stars on paper don't perform, and that you should never trust the Miami Marlins if they offer you several stars in a blockbuster trade.

Before those lessons were learned, though, fans had spent most of the off-season dreaming on just what all those big names - Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, et all - would look like in a Blue Jays jersey. And the cherry on that off-season sundae was supposed to be reigning NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey - who would get the opening day start against Cleveland.

Despite the Jays acquiring Josh Thole from the Mets to ensure they had a catcher comfortable with the highly unpredictable knuckleball, the afore-mentioned J.P. Arencibia insisted that he'd spent the off-season perfecting the craft and deserved the game one start. Three passed balls later, and Arencibia would never catch another Dickey start - while the veteran knuckler would tough out six innings, coughing up 4 runs (3 earned) en route to a 4-1 loss.

While it's not Dickey's fault that he was likely acquired to be someone he wasn't, that debut proved to be a harbinger of things to come throughout a season only salvaged from complete irrelevance by the emergence of cult hero Munenori Kawasaki.