We shouldn't like Endy Chavez, but...

If you know anything about your good friend the Tao, you should know how much we hate small ball and the scrappy, slappy players who play that game. Small ball is for mosquito leagues. Or tee ball. Or the league-mandated women that you must carry on your co-ed, modified slo-pitch softball team.

It's not for a team looking to hang in the AL East.

But for whatever reason, we kinda can't help but like Endy Chavez, in whom JP Morosi of FoxSports.com (via MLBTR!) says the Jays have some interest. Sure, he's got a career OBP of .312, and slugs a not-so-mighty .367. And for a guy who puts up those sorts of numbers, he doesn't exactly leave a charred path in his wake on the basepaths, posting stolen base numbers of nine, six and five over the past three season. (Albeit in limited time.)

Chances are, we just like this guy because we still think fondly upon the 2002 season that he put up with the Ottawa Lynx, where he tore up the International League with an .858 OPS (and a .343 AVG, which probably matters for a slap hitter.) Also, he sports some pretty impressive numbers in the realm of defensive metrics (how did we live before Fangraphs?), with a career 15.7 UZR/150 in the outfield (24.8 in LF, 10.7 CF, 19.8 in RF).

Maybe the best thing for us is if the Jays don't go ahead and sign him, so that he can remain a hero in our mind's eye. If we ended up watching him for a full season, it might start to dawn on us that he's the Latin Reed Johnson. (Although Endy doesn't run like a girl. Which is an important distinction.)

The Tao's Links in Bulk

(Oh Sour Jubes...you are our kryptonite.)

Tim Johnson Rides Again
The disgraced former Jays manager has caught on with the Tuscon Toros of the Golden League. (Or so he claims.) For some reason, the independent league team decided to literally parade Johnson through town on a horse.

(And BTW...how good does Tim Johnson's 88-win season look now?)

Ernie Whitt for Manager! (Of Clearwater!)
The Phillies named Ernie Whitt manager of their Single-A affiliate in Clearwater. The Drunks mocked. Anonymous commenters went apeshit. Hilarity ensued.

Speaking of Anonymous Whingeing
In an article titled "All I Want for Christmas...for the Sports Fan" and credited to "Sun Media", some anonymous and angry copy desk jockey takes two gratuitous swipes at J.P., but refrains from telling Parkes to fuck off. (Not that there's anything wrong with anonymity, right?)

Cathal Kelly: Friend of P, Not of A.J.
It's a few days old now, but Cathal Kelly's takedown of A.J. in last weekend's Star is a dilly of a mythbuster on the enigmatic hurler. The Ghosties quite rightly noted that this is the sort of piece that we would like to see written when the malingerer is still in town, but never will.

Putting A.J.'s Departure in Perspective
Jon Hale talks Jays fans off the ledge at the Mockingbird.

Reed Johnson: Still Super-Awesome
Or so says MLB.com, as they use the signing of the diminutive outfielder with the effeminate gait by the Cubbies last March as a shining example of the sort of remainder bin shopping that many teams (like the Jays!) will have to do this spring.

Our Saviour: Rick Ankiel
The Southpaw makes the modest (and somewhat reasonable) proposal that the Jays trade closer B.J. Ryan to the Cardinals for Rick Ankiel. If nothing else, the trade would exponentially increase the likelihood of Will Leitch sightings at Blue Jays games.

....aaaand Wrigley goes dark

There's no way I could post about this without coming across as a massive sarcastic dick to Cubs fan(s)....but seriously - that has to hurt. Swept out of the playoffs by the Manny-led buzzsaw Dodgers, and the drought continues. You shoulda' shaved the goat off, Reeder.

Speaking of which - Dodgers/Red Sox World Series.....that would be fun, wouldn't it? Unless the Sox ultimately prevailed, of course. I don't need that kind of fun in my life.

We know why the Cubs are about to be swept

It's because Manny is more awesome than awesome, and Reed Johnson is just a guy.

You can't argue with that logic.

Jeff Blair would like to reignite the rage of Reed Johnson fans

If there is one thing that was missing in our obsessive following of the Blue Jays this year, it was our best pal Jeff Blair's insight on the comin's and goin's on. Being otherwise engaged in serious business in Beijing and the hinterlands of Hamilton, Blair's input on the Jays in the Globe this year has been somewhat minimal. And it has been missed.

In Blair's absence, we've just been re-reading our own hackish blog posts about how the Jays' performance makes us feel. It's like taping a therapy session, then watching it obsessively. Blair's return has come in a nick of time.

Which is why it is a little disappointing to see one of his first columns back on the baseball beat is a big wet sloppy somethin'-somethin' for Reed Johnson. It's an outright paean to Reed's gritty gutsy gamitude, and frankly is going to reignite the flames of misguided passion that was only recently extinguished in every Dougie and Gordie in the GTA. Thanks for that Jeff.

Maybe the excessive rage over Reed Johnson's release has faded in Blair's memory because he was on the other side of the world when it finally petered out.

We, on the other hand, had just finally reached a point where anonymous commenters had given up on bitching and moaning about what a horrendous error in judgment this was, and how J.P. should be fired for this roster move alone. We'd even gotten used to listening to JaysTalk and not hearing Reed Johnson's name mentioned obsessively but the goofballs and drunken security guards venting at Wilner.

Blairsy, we beg of you: Stop feeding the animals and stop rattling their cages.

It's oh so quiet on JaysTalk
Speaking of peace in the valley, we had figured that every J.P. hater was going to read Dick Griffin's speculative article yesterday on the Jays' GM return for 2009 and totally lose their shit on the Wilner-Ricciardi Fan 590 Hoe-Down last night. Instead, we had an episode so genteel and polite that it has already been optioned to be a Merchant-Ivory film. (Colin Firth plays Wilner, Alan Cummings plays J.P., and Emma Thompson plays Lady Steeles from the North of Marcum).

We though for a minute that we were hearing crickets chirping on the air until we figured out that it was J.P.'s Blackberry going off.

Adam Lind is ridiculously awesome

There's some spooky numerological stuff going on with Adam Lind right now.

In 22 games since being recalled on June 22, Adam Lind has 22 RsBI. Weird.

Lind also has five homers, a .361 OBP and a .641 slugging percentage. Which adds up to a 1.002 OPS...which is really good. (Small sample size or not.)

In those 22 games since being mercifully brought back into the fold, Lind has one fewer homer than Alex Rios has in 94 games this season.

If Lind were to maintain that pace over a full season, he'd drive in 162 runs, hit 37 homers, and generally make everyone forget about whatshisname with the stupid chin hair and old creaky legs from the days of old.

(BTW, for those of you who are still pining for Reed Johnson, we'd note that the boy has a .717 OPS in 65 games with the Cubs. So stop.)

All of this raises two questions for us:

1) Who's idea was it to send Adam Lind down for more seasoning?
2) How can you trust the talent evaluation skills of someone who can make such an egregious error?

Mrs. Tao's Baseball Analysis
Our better half, upon seeing Brad Wilkerson's diving catch in the nervous ninth last night: "Holy shit! That's the second time this week that he's made an awesome catch like that! Why doesn't he play more often?"

We love her dearly and admire the straightforward simplicity of her assessment of Wilkerson. She might just be ready to be a JaysTalk caller.

Here's a challenge for the logicians

So we're catching up on our podcasts today, listening to McCown and Brunt talk to Dan Shulman on PTS, which we figure should be gold. But then the conversation turns towards Reed Johnson, and the everlasting mancrush that all three gentlemen have for him.

That's when it got strange. Shulman said the following in comparing Reed Johnson to his putative replacement Shannon Stewart:

"Shannon Stewart doesn't have the intangibles that Reed Johnson does."

We had to stop the podcast, sit down on a rock like Rodin's Thinker and figure this one out for ourselves.

If intangibles are things that you can't quantify or measure, then how can we judge whether or not if one person has more immeasurable qualities than another? How can we assess the relative value on things which have no palpable value?

Maybe Shulman (along with the two ditto heads in the Fan 590 booth) should have dropped the voice authority and pseudo-expertise and just said flat out "I like Reed Johnson better." Because how ever much you want to pretty it up with false analysis, that's exactly what he was saying.

And really, there's really no shame in that. Except for the fact that Reed Johnson runs like a girl.

What's the Jays' Scrappy Grit Quotient?

So let's see. They add scrappy gamers Eckstein and Rolen, but they release gutsy heart-filled scraptaculous gamers Reed Johnson yesterday and Sal Fasano today. Which should just about even things out, right?

Funny, but for all of the pissing and moaning about this team lacking guts or heart, you never seem to hear anybody calling Wilner to complain that the Jays don't have enough skill.

The Cubs just increased their Scrappy Grit Quotient
So Reed Johnson is on his way to the North Side of Chicago. We wonder what the fans there will make of the peculiar, goatish looking facial scruff he sports. Somehow, we doubt that will go over well.

At $1.3 million for one year, Johnson makes a fine low-risk signing for the Cubs, who'll use him as a supersub. We'd wish Reed well, but we know that any success that he has will be followed by a litany of Griffin mailbags second-guessing the move: "You see! I'm more smarter that J.P., because I would have kept Reed Johnson, who's killing it in the weakest division in baseball! I'm totally more smarter and more popular than J.P.! I give out my cell phone number to everyone! I don't have a plan, and everything that I say with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight works out totally perfectly! Did you know that I used to work for the Expos?"

So long, and thanks for all the grit

Our compadre Shortwaveboy once said that the Jays will never win anything as long as they continued to give regular playing time to Reed Johnson. That was before RJ's big year and run at the batting title 2006, and for a time, it was easy to write it off. But the comment stuck in our head ever since.

If there was any truth to that statement, then yesterday's news that the team had cut the "gritty" and "scrappy" outfielder loose is truly a happy moment, and a turning point for the team. You'd never know it to read all of the maudlin eulogizing of Reed's time in Toronto, but the truth is that he's been living on borrowed time for as long as he's been a Blue Jay.

Plus, he runs like a girl.

We've noted before that with a bit of digging, you'll find that Johnson's brilliant career with the Jays was comprised of a lot of replacement-level, marginal performance with the exception of about nine weeks of good fortune.

Sure, he's a gamer who runs hard (if not fast or in a masculine manner), and he's a guy who'll lay out for balls in the outfield. He's got spunk, but to quote Lou Grant, we hate spunk.

If you're feeling down about Reed Johnson's fate today, just take a moment and compare the man'd performance to any of the outfielders on the Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, Tigers, White Sox or Mariners. Those are the teams the Jays are going to have to beat if they expect to make a run at anything meaningful this year, and Reed Johnson wouldn't rate a bench spot any of their rosters, much less the starting left field job.

Other thoughts that percolated whilst we were in self-imposed exile:

Ouch!
The story about Scott Rolen's fingernail grosses us out too much to discuss. Yeesh. Of course, it is another hand injury to a hitter, so if Rolen is hitting .247 with 4 homers in mid-July, we're sure we're going to hear about this mangled digit lots this year. Or we'll get to know Marco Scutaro really well.

There's no good story that can't be ruined by a Paul Godfrey quote
We were really excited to hear the news that Toronto will be hosting first round games in the World Baseball Classic, and were trying to figure out how we get tickets. Then we read this quote in a Blair article about the forthcoming tourney from our old pal Godfrey: "(Y)ou'd like to think that you'll be able to attract fans from some of those baseball cities in the northern U.S.," Godfrey said. "I mean, you see a city like Detroit and with Magglio Ordonez likely to be with the Venezuelans, that would be a draw."

Jeebus Cripes on Segway, Godfrey! Can you stop fixating on bringing fans from outside of Toronto to the city, and start thinking about your own fan base?!

Travis Snider skips a grade

Travis Snider is not going to take up a long term residence in Dunedin this year. According to the Manchester Union-Leader, the 20 year-old hitting phenom is on his way to the Eastern League this season, perhaps a bit ahead of schedule.

Given his importance to the franchise, Snider's progress will likely be monitored very closely this summer. If he hits AA pitching well (and his AFL performance would seem to indicate that he will), his ticket may be punched for the big club for April of 2009.

Speaking of left field...
With the moves made by the club and those thrust upon them in the past week, the roster seems to be in place for the the start of the season, with the notable exception of left field. The Reed versus Shannon battle hasn't exactly been cleared up, although if, like the Sun's Mike Rutsey, you're reading the tea leaves, we can expect to see Stewart in left and Reed in limbo on opening day.

Two more weeks of fake games?
God almighty...save us now.

Blue Jays offense continues to struggle. Litsch is a bum. All is lost.

The Jays' offense (led by leadoff-hitter-on-the-way-out Reed Johnson) was anemic in yesterday's 4-1 rout at the hands of the Detroit Tigers. These guys can't come through in the clutch, and they don't got no heart. (You can check out the carnage here.)

Travis Snider's hitless performance likely bumps him pack into the lower tier of prospects, and he's likely to become a career minor-leaguer.

Jesse Litsch also has got to be better than that if the Jays are going to compete with the Rays for third place. Heck, he might not even help the Fisher Cats at this rate.

This team, after one fake game, is in shambles. Gibby and J.P. had better start packing up their offices.

(Too strong? Too soon? What can we say...we're trying to work on our doom and gloom posts in anticipation of the long season ahead. We're still working out the kinks, but we feel like we're in the best shape of our career.)

Shannon Stewart's signing does not guarantee a World Series berth

Let's be clear: the Shannon Stewart signing is good in as much as it provides some extra insurance for the Jays' left field situation.

Yeah, there were a pile of guys at that position, but they consisted of a 40 year-old whose 2007 season may or may not be a mirage, a mid-range prospect who hasn't exactly lit it ablaze when he got the call, and a goateed short white guy. So, you know...nothing exceptional.

Frankly, Stewart is a guy who has aged quickly, has a fraction of the power you'd hope for from a corner outfielder, can't reasonably play any other outfield position, and has hamstrings that could spontaneously combust at any moment. So we're not printing up the playoff tickets quite yet.

Reed Johnson - Gutsy Gamer, Pouty Pouter
Granted, it's hard to read the tone of a newspaper story, but here's Johnson's first reaction to the signing (as told to Robert MacLeod, who's showing grit and giving 110% himself this spring) :

“I'm going to play somewhere...Whether it's here or for another team I just want to play baseball. I want to get out there ... and work on my swing and try to become a better player. If it's here, great. If not, I'll move somewhere else."

Sounds like someone's got a case of the Mondays!

UPDATE: The Blair Chimes In
Jeff Blair blogs that interest around the league in Reed is "non-existent", according to a front office source.

We come to bury Reed, not to praise him

Okay, maybe it's a little cheap to spit on the casket of Reed Johnson's career with the Blue Jays before they even lower it into the ground. Still, with the news of Shannon Stewart's signing, you can't help but dig a little deeper into Johnson's career numbers and find him wanting.

Last year, just by eyeballing through the cathode ray tube, we saw Johnson standing further back from the plate and using a longer bat. (He can deny it, but we'd like to think that our seat six feet away from our 27" Toshiba makes us the authority.) We saw Johnson unable to get to pitches on either the outside or inside corners, and we rarely saw him hit anything with a great deal of authority that wasn't a mistake pitch from a bad pitcher.

Plus, he runs like a girl.

The first half of Reed Johnson's 2006 season was extraordinary, if not extraordinarily flukey. His batting average on balls in play in those first 68 games was an absurdly high .409, which likely means that Reed got more than his fair share of seeing-eye squibbers. In the second half of that season, his BAbip dropped more than 80 points, and it has continued to decline in every half-season since.

Granted, he was hurt last year. (Where have we heard that before?) Still, we respect the fact that the Blue Jays' front office is at least taking out some sort of insurance against a further decline.

And as far as the other half of the game goes, Reed has engendered an awful lot of good will for himself by laying out for catches, and for generally being "gritty", "scrappy" and "full of heart". (Cripes, did we even need to bring in Eckstein? We already had a short white guy!)

Don't fret for Reed, though. This season was likely to be his last with the Jays anyways, with Adam Lind and (eventually) Travis Snider coming up quickly from behind him. He managed to cash in on those 12 weeks worth of excellent fortune, and will find a National League team to take him on as a supersub next year, if not sooner.

Back to the Grind

It seems like we've been out of our routine for months, what with our extended holiday break. We're finding it hard to find the motivation to get up and take on that world again, and somehow, our mantra of "pitter patter, let's get at 'er" just isn't as effective as we would have hoped.

Roger Clemens: Wordsmith, Vioxx victim
We hadn't intended to watch the Rocket's lame denials on 60 Minutes last night, but we're glad that we did. We were getting a little soft on the big Texan, sensing that he was going to become the media punching bag for much of the misdirected rage about PEDs.

That was until Clemens spat out that first line: "I'm angry that what I've done for the game of baseball, and what I've done in my private life, that I don't get the benefit of the doubt."

Without question, Clemens career performance (enhancers aside) is amongst the most exceptional in the history of the game. But if you were to remove Clemens entire career and indeed his existence from the history of baseball, the game would have proceeded along pretty much as it did. He's not that important, nor is any single player. The game is much bigger than "all he's done for it". Arrogant prick.

Amongst Clemens other bon mots:

• "If (MacNamee)'s putting that stuff in my body...I should have a third ear coming out of my forehead. I should be pulling tractors with my teeth."
• "I was eatin' Vioxx like it was Skittles! And now, these people who were supposedly regulatin' it tell me it's bad for my heart!"
  
• "I understand that as a public person, you're gonna take some shots. The higher you get on the flagpole, the more your butt shows."
  

(Quick question on that last one: does Clemens generally climb flagpoles while wearing a skirt?)

And now, in a heart-warming turn, Clemens has announced his intention to sue McNamee.

Reed Johnson will run like a girl in a Blue Jays uniform for one more year
Maybe it's the economy of baseball, or maybe it's the Canadian dollar, or maybe someone out there thinks that Reed Johnson's varied facial hair exemplifies his "heart". That's about the best that we can come up with to describe why Johnson got a slight raise after doing poo-poo and pee-pee in the bed all last year. Which isn't to say that we're not rooting for him...it's just that, you know, Josh Towers had one good season too.

The dizzying heights

Wow. So this is what five games over .500 feels like.

Soothsayers soothsaying: Back in July, we participated in a bloggers' roundtable over at Jays Nest, where we predicted that the Jays would end up with a record of 84-78 when it all played out. With today's 5-3 win over the Rays of Sunny Goodness, the Jays need only to win tomorrow to prove us right. (Otherwise, it will be the Drunks, who predicted 83 wins, who will look like the clairvoyants.)

Reed who? We still figure that John-Ford Griffin will be a cog in someone else's system next year, but seeing both he and Adam Lind tag a couple of balls today had us wondering whether Reed Johnson really has what it takes to stick in this lineup next year. (Especially since he runs like a girl.)

Sweep!

With Sunday's 6-4 win over Seattle, the Jays moved four games over .500 for the first time this season.

Now that they've gotten over that hump, could a bit of a winning streak be far behind? It would likely be too late to really make any September noise, but it would at least make us feel a little better for next year.

Gregg Zaun, masher
Two homers in two days. Zaun rules. Now please give him a day off.

A study in contrasts
As we zipped through yesterday's game on the PVR, we noticed the stark difference between Matt Stairs (hitting one into orbit for his 18th homer of the season) and Reed Johnson (waving weakly at strike three in his only at bat). One has to wonder how you can keep running Reed out there if he is either not healthy enough to perform, or if his top level of performance is this low. His .302 OBP is killing this team at the top of the lineup.

At last, our long national nightmare is over
After going stale for 12 days, Jeff Blair finally dropped some lineup card related knowledge on the Globe's baseball blog. Its about time.

Zaun, re-reconsidered

We were listening to Sunday's game, only a few short hours after having praised Gregg Zaun, and praying that the goateed one didn't make a fool out of us.

So much for that.

Zaun popped up with runners in scoring position and a prime opportunity to put the Jays up, then fired a throw into left field, allowing the insurance run to score in the Angels 3-1 victory.

It's probably worth asking why Zaun was playing on a day game after a night game. Let's face it: he's an old man, and the Jays should be making use of Curtis Thigpen for more than just the occasional pinch running assignment.

Other lineup questions
Now that we've officially began our efforts to run Reed Johnson out of town, we have to wonder why Gibby (who's been monumentally sharper in the second half) decided to play the diminutive outfielder with the microscopic OPS versus righties (.521) against a tough right-hander like Kelvim Escobar. Matt Stairs (15 HRs, .924 OPS versus righties) shouldn't be used exclusively as a pinch-hitter, or to sit on the top step of the dugout to intimidate Alex Rodriguez. He's proved his worth.

Let's push things forward

With the Jays' roll-over-Rover routine this week at the Rogers Centre pretty much ending their postseason hopes, sights are beginning to be turned towards next year's edition of the team.

We've heard J.P. say all year that he "likes this team", and that there likely isn't a lot that needs to happen to put this team into contention next year. As Jeff Blair noted in his column this week, we should expect the team to return pretty much intact, for better or for worse.

More over, the hue and cry from the fans (or at least the mental midgets who call in to espouse conspiracy theories on five-year plans to Mike Wilner) seems to be that the key to this team's future rests in the hands of John McDonald, Reed Johnson and Gregg Zaun.

(We won't even touch Dick Grffin's idiotic column on how the Jays are treating Reed poorly at this point, because others - OoLF and the DJF have already done an excellent job of taking him down.)

But here's the thing. As much as you can enjoy Johnny Mac's defense, or Gregg Zaun's grit, you just have to ask yourself: are we settling? Are we accepting a better than expected performance from mediocre players? Are we ready to go into next season with this same lineup, conscious of the fact that 75% of the other teams in the AL will be improved from last season?

And really, as much fun as it was watching Reed Johnson battle for a batting title (for whatever that's worth) and getting plunked a few dozen times per year, the guy runs like a girl and gets on base like our grandma these days. Have you noticed how far RJ stands away from the plate these days? Are we really willing to pay more than $3 million for a .320-something on base percentage just because we like his "grit" and "tenacity".

Seriously, given your choices between standing pat because Reed and Johnny Mac are gamers, wouldn't you rather see the Jays find a way to get an Adam Dunn in the lineup every day?

We can guarantee you this, if mashers like Dunn or Jose Guillen or (let's get fucking crazy here) A-Rod are available, then Boston, the Yankees, the Orioles, Cleveland, Anaheim(ish), Detroit and the White Sox will all be stumbling over one another to try and find a way to fit them into their lineup. If the Jays aren't amongst those off-season players, then they shouldn't be surprised to be looking upwards at them in the playoff race.

Let's hope that J.P.'s musings of complacency aren't indicative of his true intentions this winter. It's time to step on the goddamned gas and run some teams down.

A tear is a sprain is a tear is a sprain

The incomparable Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus breaks down the Jays injury woes in his "Under the Knife" column today.

On Ryan, Carroll says:

Finally, B.J. Ryan has a mild sprain of an elbow ligament. It's safe to assume it's the UCL, though it was never named. Of course, in the same article, they pointed out that it was "sprained not torn." Once again, a sprain is a tear.

Will figures the ETA for the three injured players will be

• Glaus: Could be any day, but really, who the hell knows?
• Ryan: June 1
• Johnson: All-Star Break.

The first cut is deepest

They're gonna cut open Reed Johnson's back, and make some adjustments so that he stops running like a girl.

Maybe it's his ZZ Top Special Edition Soul Patch that threw him out of alignment.

UPDATE: Buster Onley at ESPN is reporting that BJ Ryan will be out 4 to 6 weeks with a strained ligament, which we assume means that they won't be cutting into his arm. Yet.

Meanwhile, Troy Glaus will hit the 15 day DL with a sore left heel.

We've said before that whatever enthusiasm fans have in March, the outcome of a season is usually determined by a team's ability to field their optimum lineup for the most possible days. But it's only two weeks into a 26 week season, so let's not throw in the towel quite yet.