Reading the tea leaves in the bottom of an empty cup

The big free agent signing is no signing at all
The first thing that went through our head when we heard of the Matt Clement signing yesterday was "Jaime Navarro". The Jays signed him in December of 2000, and after a couple of Spring Training outings, he never threw a pitch in anger for the Jays. We're assuming the same fate for Clement.

The triumphant return of Cody Heather Hatheer Haerther
The Jays are apparently smitten with Cody Haerther, seeing as how they plucked him from the Cardinals for the second straight year in the Rule 5 draft. Which is a little puzzling, seeing as how he posted a .658 OPS in 100 games at Triple-A Memphis last season. If nothing else, this pick up provides the Jays' PR team with a do-over after mangling his name in successive press releases last season.

Harbingers of doom, courtesy of Bob Elliot
Sun Media's veteran baseball scribe raises the spectre of the Jays being put up for sale in the wake of Ted Rogers' passing. Our thoughts: no one at Rogers is going to make a decision this quickly on the team, because they've put to much time and effort into integrating their media properties and marketing initiatives into the Jays.

Some of the signs that Elliot points to have less to do with the team preparing to be sold than they have to do with the team battening down the hatches for the financial decline that is sure to have a significant impact on them for the 2009 and 2010 seasons. Sadly, for us Jays fans, there are forces in the world working against the team's ultimate success that are bigger than the Yankees and Red Sox.

Why are we reading the National Post?
It took us a while to come around to it, but we have to admit that the NatPost's Jeremy Sandler did a pretty good job with his reportage from Vegas. We've been dismissive of some of his writing in the past, but we found his work to be frequent, informative, fair-minded and entertaining throughout the Winter confab. We still miss the Globe's Jeff Blair (come back Blairsy!), but in his absence, Sandler probably did the best work on the Jays' beat over the past week. Huzzah!