Splish Splash - This Is What You've Wanted All Along

Hey look, it's Emilio Bonifacio!

You wanted a splash, and you got it. In fact, it's hard to conceive of a move more splashy than this. Twelve players - Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck in one direction, and Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Adeiny Hechavarria, Jeff Mathis, Jake Marisnick, Justin Nicolino, and Anthony Desclafani in the other - along with tens of millions of dollars in salary shifting north. Not to mention the deep impact on the psyches of the two fan bases.

Big names. A much bigger payroll. It's precisely that for which so many of you - fans and media alike - have clamoured over the past few years. It's a demonstration of might. A show of strength. And as such, I hesitate to dampen the expectations or somehow speak ill of this pending mega-deal.

And yet, here I stand with a bucket of cold water weighing heavily in my hands, the weight of which is dominating my thoughts at the moment.

Okay, let's take a step back. Let me splash a bit of that bucket's contents on my own face to snap myself out of this odd funk, and to accentuate the positives of this proposed deal.

The Blue Jays come out of this deal with a pitcher who can pitch like a legitimate staff ace, and another starter who has traditionally been reliable for more than 30 starts and 200 innings per season. plus an All-Star offensive talent at a premium position who has put up WARs around 6.0 in multiple seasons. Plus, they get a versatile switch-hitting utility player and a veteran catcher who returns to the fold, and who remains a pretty good catch and throw guy.

If that's where the Blue Jays netted out at the end of the offseason, you would have probably been pretty satisfied that they were living up to their promises of adding big league players to the 2013 roster. And maybe more importantly, you would have been happy to see the payroll's "parameters" - collect yourselves, it's gonna be okay - broadened somewhere closer to the $120 million mark.

If seeing "proven veterans" added to the 25-man roster and a substantial amount to the payroll is your thing, you're understandably over the moon today. I can't blame you, either. The notion that the club has more resources going forward expands my notion of what will be possible in the coming years, and that maybe the Blue Jays will settle into life as a top-10 payroll. This is all good, and the sort of thing you can dream on.

Now, here come the bucket.

Let's not mistake this trade for a long term solution to the Jays' woes. Because the Jays are trading for a single season of Josh Johnson (or his pursuant value) this trade is completely oriented towards success in 2013. The Blue Jays needed two starters to plug into their rotation while they wait on the development of the next generation and the convalescing masses, and in order to get that, they needed to take two bad contracts - Buehrle and Buck - and one very expensive-if-defensible contract in Reyes.

The Jays also moved five players under the age of 24 to Miami, and while upsides of Alvarez and Hechavarria seem to be as something less than All-Stars, they are still in their ascendance. The Jays' system doesn't seem to have been overly culled in sending Nicolino (perhaps the most movable of the Lansing Three) and Marisnick (who struggled in a year in which he was pushed through two levels), but there's plenty that is going in the other direction.

And all of that is wagered on Josh Johnson being healthy and having a good season next year. That's the bottom line.

Certainly, the notion of José Reyes as a fixture in Toronto is an attractive one, even at that price point, but by this time next year, people will be judging this trade on two levels: Did the Blue Jays make the playoffs? Or did they retain Johnson beyond 2013? Otherwise, you're staring down the $39 million left on Buehrle's deal and hoping that it is offset by Reyes' performance, minus the $82 million he'll be owed from 2013 through 2017.

And don't forget that the mere presence of these players by no means guarantees a good outcome. As much as the Marlins were pushed to the forefront at the beginning of last season, let's take a moment and recognize that the same players we're gleefully taking in are the ones who were heralded as missing pieces which would put them over the top in the NL East last year.

Our splash? It's last year's splash in Miami.  

There's plenty of downside to this deal, but if I'm going to be optimistic about it, I'll recognize that a bigger payroll permits the Jays to make some mistakes and sit on them if they need to. If Buehrle's contract turns into Barry Zito's in two years' time, it's possible that this newly flush front office can swallow it and go about their business. 

Again, let me be clear: It's really fun to envision all of these players wearing blue next year. Also, this move is probably a much better one than overpaying for one or two starting pitchers. Would I trade this package for Zach Greinke and Anibal Sanchez or Edwin Jackson? Probably not, especially when you consider the years and annual salary they'd have commanded if they even deigned to come to Toronto.

Ultimately, the team is better today than they were at lunchtime yesterday. If I feel somehow as though I have to begrudge the mechanism that got them to that place, then let me at least acknowledge that there's a reason to be excited about the team on the field. And that should be all that matters.

But if this goes completely pear-shaped, keep in mind that this is the game that many of you implored the Jays to play. You want this? You got it. 

The Catchers Market, or All the Familiar Facemasks

It's the darnedest thing about finding a catcher. Everybody's always sure that there's a more productive catcher on the market, or that they've got one on the way that's sure to be an improvement on the fat, slow bum with marginal offensive abilities that they've already got.

But take a look around the free agent market for catchers this offseason, and you realize that there's not a lot out there that you haven't already seen before.

With Cito essentially stating that Rod Barajas has already punched his ticket out of town, and the Jays demonstrating their disappointment with the performances of J.P. Arencibia and Brian Jeroloman, the spot behind the plate is up for open auditions.

So who's going to come in to improve on Rod the Bod's 18 homers, 64 RsBI, .704 OPS?

A glance through MLB Trade Rumo(u)rs' list of available catchers shows that there's not a lot to choose from out there that we haven't already seen and run out of town. The two best options for the Jays might be Gregg Zaun (6 HR, 23 RBI, .752 OPS) or Bengie Molina (17/70/.710), neither of whom would provide a lot more than Rod. (Although Zaun is probably the strongest OBP catcher on the market.)

We've been a big proponent of Miguel Olivo before, but again, he's going to bring the same low OBP (.279) that people have identified as a problem with Barajas. Brian Schneider used to be a guy that we'd favour, but he's rocking a .602 OPS this year and generally making Raul Chavez (.664) look like a viable full-time option.

Ramon Hernandez is hurt. Josh Bard might be an upside play, but not a major improvement. Ivan Rodriguez is mostly getting by on reputation these days.

Then, there's Jason Varitek, who may be too washed up to continue on in Boston, but who could bring his flattop haircut and bag full of intangibles to another AL East team and provide some significant knowledge of the teams in the only division that really matters for the Jays. However, his relatively strong .731 OPS is bolstered by his home numbers in the only stadium that could make Jim Rice a Hall of Famer. (Varitek's road OPS is .611. Yikes.)

Frankly, the catcher market is just a mess, so we're not clear on the rationale for sending Rod Barajas on his way when there is little else out there to replace him.

100 Million Dollar Dreams Aren't What They Used To Be

To be honest, we hadn't really given much thought to Bob McCown's recent assertion on his afternoon gabfest that the Blue Jays would jack up their payroll to the $100 million level for 2010.

While McCown is connected within Rogers and would have some access to information emanating from the executive suites of the corporation and the ballclub, there was something about the notion that made us shrug it off. Maybe we were still reeling from the Alex Rios waiver claim, and maybe we've just stopped believing any assertion that comes from Paul Beeston.

Or maybe we're just waiting until this team has a full time President and CEO and a new General Manager before we start considering the possibilities.

And even if the Jays are to have an extra $20 million in payroll next year versus their Opening Day payroll this year, they've already got close to $65 million of that already committed to existing contracts. And that figure doesn't include money that will need to be doled out in arbitration cases. Next offseason, according to the invaluable Cot's Baseball Contracts, the Jays will have nine arbitration cases to settle, and 14 arb cases coming up before the 2011 season.

It's all enough to make us rescind our offer to serve as the Jays' President once Beeston decides to give up the post.

Over the next week, we'll begin digging in to the Jays' payroll commitments for next year, the likely departures, the gaps that will need to be filled and the possible solutions for who could step in. It's a whole heckuva lotta speculating and wishful thinking, and is probably the sort of thing that we'd usually do once the season is over.

Speaking of which: While they're still playing the games, this season is pretty much over. So let's get the hot stove revved up now.