Rosterbatory ramblings

Hey, rosterbation!

Believe it or not, we didn't have much in mind when we casually tossed out a notion on Twitter that Kyle Drabek might not make a return trip to Toronto as a Blue Jay. But now that we've seen what a reaction that we received, it strikes us that stirring the pot is kinda fun. Move over, Damien Cox and Steve Simmons! There's a new coy/cynical/smug shit-disturber in town! Idle speculation kills more trees!!!1

We can't precisely recall who had put the notion in our head that he might be in play, but given what happened with Bret Wallace ("Where's Wallace, String! Where's Wallace!") this summer, we wouldn't be surprised to see the Jays most marketable trade chip move in the offseason.

Which is not to say that we have any sense of what the Jays would be looking for, or who they might target, or what their offseason agenda might be. Although if the Gose trade is anything to go on, we could see AA moving today's future front of the rotation arm for tomorrow's future ace, dealing a 2011 promise for a stronger 2013. (In theory.)

We actually don't think that moving Drabek is the smartest move for the Jays this winter, and we'd prefer to see him as the fourth or fifth starter next season. But the most positive note that we can take out of this hot stove wankery is that the Jays have plenty of good options next season to help build a stronger rotation.

A rotation which, it should be noted, shaved .36 off its starters' ERA this year, even without what's-his-ginger-beard there to lead the way.

Working for the weekend

Hey kids. Remember us? Your somewhat-less-than-dutiful-blogger? Yeah, that's us. Nice to see you again.

So, it's been one of those weeks, where suddenly just about every free hour of our day gets sucked into some sort of vortex of consultative stratgery and mid-management monkeyshines. Working for a living is a drag, and we keep pulling our eyelashes out to wish upon them that one day, a big sports-media conglomerate will come and whisk us away from all discussions of business plans and outreach and stakeholder relations.

(Although some relations with stakeholders sounds fun on a Friday night, youknowwhatI'msayin'?)

Anyways, we'll try to squeeze in some extra work this weekend so that we can get some regular infotainment posted throughout next week. We wouldn't want to have you all start coming to your own conclusions about the state of the Blue Jays, because what use would we be to you then?

There's a post on the staff ace, which has probably totally changed by now, although likely for the better. It seems like folks are already picking their sides, and aligning themselves behind one of the top three starters, but we really want to see someone make the case for the fifth starter, whoever that is this week.

Speaking of rotations...
The Jays miss Tim Lincecum in this weekend's series, which we suppose is a good thing. But instead, they run into Barry Zito (3.10 ERA, 4.71 xFIP), Matt Cain (2.05 ERA, 4.54 xFIP) and Jonathan Sanchez (2.78 ERA, 4.13 xFIP). That's pretty scary, and we don't even know what the hell an xFIP is, or where it grazes in the winter.

Moreover, the Jays will counter with Brandon Morrow (who's been better over the past month, with a 3.60 ERA), the Pasty Ginger Ghost of Jesse Litsch (we can't bear to watch, so we'll be FFing through his innings) and Team Marcum (who we encourage to make his case for acedom).

There's a part of us that wants to think that this weekend, those three Gigantes pitchers get their comeuppance, and start to realize that pitching in the AL East is different than soft tossing into the 7-8-9 hitters in a Quadruple-A lineup and in a cavernous NL West ballpark. We'd really love to see a few of the Jays scuffling hitters (JoBau, Hill and Lind, in particular) get dialed in and start peppering the 200 level outfield seats with scorching hot projectiles.

More xFIPpery
Did you know that RickRo is seventh in the Majors in xFIP? He trails only Cliff Lee, some cat named Holiday or something like that, Frank Liriano, Lincecum, Wainwright and Josh Johnson. Which is some pretty elite company.

More over, he's far ahead of chuck-and-duckers like Chris Carpenter, King Felix, Ubaldo Jimenez, or C.C. Sebaceous Glands.

A few more advanced metrics like this, and we just might find ourselves on Team RickRo by the end of the weekend.

A Friday Rock Out for Jonah Keri
The wise and sage Mr. Keri noted his undying devotion to Loverboy to us over Twitter last month, so we figured we'd make his day with an utterly appropriate Rock Out. Because when it comes right down to it, we have to concur with the words of Mr. Mike Reno:

Everybody's working for the weekend
Everybody wants a little romance
Everybody's goin' off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance

Have a great weekend, y'all.

This rotation is doing just fine without what's-his-name

It's probably easy to forget this after the shit kicking that the Jays took in the first two games of the Rays series, but their rotation - or, at least 60% of it - has been something to behold thus far into the season. Take a gander through the league leaders, and you'll find three Jays starters in the top 20 of the ERA, WHIP and Ks.

Ricky Romero is currently sitting in third in strikeouts (86), ninth in ERA (3.06) and 17th in WHIP (1.20), while Shaun Marcum is 15th (65), 16th (3.38) and 7th (1.13) respectively. Brett Cecil doesn't have the innings to rack up the counting stats, so he's sitting back in 39th overall in strikeouts, but his 3.22 ERA is good for 13th while his 0.99 WHIP places him third. (And if you need him, Brandon Morrow's 74 Ks are good enough for 7th. So there.)

Maybe this has crept up on some of you who were inclined to follow along with the notion that the absence of Roy Halladay was going to create a giant sucking vacuum in the rotation, and that the 100-loss season would certainly ensue because one-fifth of the starting corps was gone. "A bunch of guys named 'Who?'" is the laugh line that we seem to recall.

But last night's awesomely manly performance by Cecil brought us back to remembering how much we've enjoyed the pitching performances from the top three so far this year, with the occasional quality start from Morrow tossed in for good measure. The Jays numbers as a starting rotation sit in the middle in both the AL (6th of 14) and MLB (16th of 30) in terms of ERA, although with the improvement seen in Morrow, the expulsion of some of the lesser lights and reinforcements on the way (Litchtits!!!1), we're cautiously optimistic that the starting pitching can actually improve.

With a team that is sitting three and a half games back in the Wild Card chase in a season that was supposed to be lost before it got underway, we really hope people start to recognize how much great baseball our guys are playing, and how close this team is to making the next step.

(And yeah, we're a hopeless booster for this team. We wouldn't have poured all of these hours and all of the effort into this little ratfuck of a blog if we weren't hopelessly devoted to this team. If you want someone to be cynically aloof about the Jays in 2010 and in the future, there are an infinite number of options out there for you.)

Speaking of next steps...
It's the National League for the next two weeks, and we have a whole lot of stuff to say about the Rockies, Padres, Cards and whoever. But we'd rather leave The Ack something to talk about this weekend.

Accentuating the positive

We're nothing if not a beacon towards positivity, right?

(And those of you who know really me are probably trying to figure out if that's a laugh line or not...Although we'd point out that in the cynical, angry world of sports blogdom, we're pretty happy, sunshiney and positive. Or at least we look that way in comparison to others.)

So, if we were to be something less than positive, we'd point out that in two key series this week, the Jays walked away having not made up any ground, and find themselves tied with the resurgent Red Sox. So there's the missed opportunities.

But since we're eliminating the negative and latching onto the affirmative here, let us point out that our boys hung tough in every game against the two best teams in the league, and were in a position to win each and every one of them. And with some bullpen work that was a little more assertive or better orchestrated, they may well have done it.

All of which augurs well for the last three games of this nine-game stretch, which was supposed to tell us something of something about this team. Maybe it's telling us that they're worth watching, and that they're not that far from actually carrying this sort of performance through the entire season.

And now, a few quick hits...

Wilner's unplanned vacation
We were as shocked as anyone when we heard that the Fan 590 bounced Mike Wilner out of his seat for the weekend, ostensibly to remind him to play nicer with The Manager. We have no doubt that Wilner can abrasive to some, and his confidence in his arguments can be read as arrogance by some. But the "suspension" or spanking and or whatever this is makes us wonder what they are thinking at the Fan.

They should probably understand what they have in Wilner, and why his stubborn dedication to reason and his unwillingness to buy into mawkish cliché is precisely his appeal. Tamping that fire down in order to keep The Manager happy is a recipe for boring, awkward radio.

(Which supposes that this was a Fan 590 call, and not from somewhere above. We'd love to hear Handsome Tony explain this as all a part of his master plan.)

(Also, check Neate Sager's take over on Out of Left Field, which is a nicely nuanced analysis of the situation.)

On book reviews
If you are planning on buying any particular books that we're perhaps reviewed around here, and you'd like to hold us to account for our overly generous estimations of a particular tome, we'd suggest that you perhaps take a read through this post. We pretty much put all of our cards on the table, and fessed up to being an entirely unreliable critic. So don't come looking for an explanation for our bad taste in athlete memoirs.

On the rotation (which is awesome) and the bullpen (which is less so, we think)
Before the season, some folks wanted to tear down the Jays' post-Doc rotation as a bunch of no name chuck-and-duckers, which might have been more of a reaction to the lack of a certifiable ace than the actual talent available to the Jays.

But after watching the Jays' top four hurlers shine against two of the best offenses in the game, we'll have to admit to getting way ahead of ourselves in considering the possibilities in the coming years. Marcum, Romero, Cecil and Morrow are all young, and may well have their best years ahead of them. And when we rattle the names off in our head, and consider the possibility of adding another quality arm to that list (Drabek? Rzep? Mills?), we'll confess to getting ahead of ourselves, and envisioning their names being pored over across the continent as a playoff team's probable pitchers.

(And really, Shaun Marcum was born to pitch in the playoffs, wasn't he?)

It's really to bad that we end up crashing back to earth when considering the performance of the bullpen. It's not that they've been awful: Kevin Gregg's actually been pretty good, notwithstanding his game of footsie with the strike zone against Tampa the other night, and we've officially come around on Shawn Camp. But Scott Downs continues to look as though his best days are behind him, and Jason Frasor hasn't yet shown the velocity or movement that made him a success last season.

Meanwhile, The Manager continues to mismanage his assets, and treats his seven man relief corps as though he has only four arms out there. Rommie Lewis, David Purcey and Casey Janssen are given as much rest as most of the starters while the other four relievers are run into the ground.

Even with the economical performances put on by the starters, that sort of wear and tear on the pen is going to catch up with this team, if it hasn't already.

The Draft
We'd totally forgotten that the MLB draft kicks off tonight. In previous years, we may have spent the whole afternoon poring over names and the possibilities for the Jays' four early picks. But given that player development is a gruesomely tiresome and long process, we'll just sit back and let the names of the prospects wash over us this evening, while we consider the progress of Kevin Ahrens.

Left-handed compliments on the rotation

So the final cut-down came down, and the Jays are ready to head to Texas with a rotation that, according to Bastian, looks a little like this: Marcum, Tallet, Romero, Morrow and the Wild Card, Dana Eveland.

You have to admit that no matter what Eveland's performance in the spring might have been, he had a couple of pretty strong things in his favour: He's a lefty, and he's a gingerish, and the Jays can't ever seem to get enough of either.

(And somewhere, David Purcey sits sullen, applying SPF 160 sunblock, feeling less like the beautifully unique southpaw-gigner-snowflake that his momma always told him he was.)

We're actually kinda glad to see Eveland make the team out of camp, even if it means sending two other non-ginger lefties (Cecil and Rzep) to Vegas. We're big on both of those guys, and we're pretty certain that they'll be back and be better at some point this season.

But we're all for the Jays at least have a look in real game action at Eveland to see if they might have something of value in him. It worked okay in the case of two other scrap heap lefties (Scott Downs and Brian Tallet), and Eveland's run through the Fake Game schedule was pretty stellar, after all (1.23 ERA, 16 Ks vs 6 BBs in 22.1 IPs).

Speaking of Tallet, there has already been some discussion as to the order of the rotation, and where the lovable lug belongs in it. Bastian noted that, according those people he could catch up with (a very select group for the slow-of-foot beat writer), Tallet is, in fact, the number two pitcher in the rotation coming out of the Spring.

Our guess on this is that this reading of the situation is a bit too literal. We doubt the brain trust actually considers Tallet as the second best starter, but rather, the Jays would prefer to line up Ricky Romero a little further down the rotation. Dropping RickRo down a slot ensures that the Jays won't have many series in the early going where they go without a start from their two best pitchers.

Because as much as we might root for Tallet, Morrow, and Eveland, the notion of heading into Fenway or New Yankee Stadium with those three as your scheduled starters is more than a little scary.