Saturday, October 13, 2012

The Org Guy's Paternity Replacement Tweet Bag

It's a Tweet Diaper Bag! Get it?
Friends, our blogging pal the Tao is now a proud papa.  Now, those of us who have been through those whirlwind first few weeks of parenthood will likely sympathize with his plight.  I wasn't yet a blogger when either of the Org Kids came along, but if I were, my posts would have been few and far between (Ed: so what's changed?), lost in a fog of sleepless nights and laundry.  In a spirit of solidarity and goodwill while Tao tends to his growing brood, I volunteered to pinch hit for a Tweet Bag, answering your baseball and non-baseball related questions.  Without further ado:

@CFoster92 asks:
Sometimes it's easy to forget how young most major league baseball players are.  I know for a certifiable fact that I was nowhere close to being ready to be a dad until I was over the age of thirty.  Your decline years as a player happen to coincide with what I'd consider to be the best years to start a family.  It's a bit on the nose, I realize, but my "best dad" vote would probably have to be Darren Oliver.  Calm, serene wisdom dispensed in single-inning sized chunks.  If he were my dad, he'd probably just have to snap his fingers and I'd fix him a scotch, and be damn glad for the opportunity.

As for the worst dad, I feel like I'm being a bit unfair to some of the really young guys by throwing them into the mix.  Most of the under-30 set would probably be really cool to have as uncles.  But my "worst dad" crown goes to Mike McCoy, because that guy's on the road more than Willy Loman.  "You were NEVER there for me!"

@adamtherealtor asks:
We had plenty of Tweet Bag questions about potential 2013 acquisitions.  Me, I have an unnatural desire, growing stronger every day, for the Jays to sign Jeff Keppinger to play second base next year, or at least fill out a utility role as Tao discussed a couple weeks ago.  It doesn't pain me to say it now as much as it might have in, say, July, but Adeiny Hechavarria does still seem to have the inside track right now for second base.  The Keppinger and  Hechavarria scenarios are more a reflection of the weak free agent class at the position than anything else, which is why I think if they look outside the organization for second base, they'll go the trade route.

And if you allow yourself to dream big for just a minute, there are some intriguing possibilities out there.  Why, the Philadelphia Phillies traded almost all the rest of their big-money guys as their season circled the drain, so surely they could be coaxed into moving Chase Utley north of the border, right?  Two seasons left on the contract at $15 million per, at which point he'll be entering his age 35 season. I could get behind taking that off Ruben Amaro's hands (although Utley does have a limited no-trade clause and I think is closing in on 10 and 5 rights, thanks to the indispensable Cot's Baseball Contracts).  I'm not saying it would be easy.  But it would be fun if Alex Anthopoulos were to shoot for the stars, and hopefully hit the moon.  They certainly have the prospects in the system to make some big deals, if they decide that's the direction they want to take.

Speaking of which, @sporkless asks:
And this is where things get trickier.  Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.  I like the idea of trading prospects now to improve for 2013 -- I just don't think the idea of going "all in" for one season should override the need to maintain a system-wide strength for years to come (a point I've made in the past), because there are never any guarantees it will work, and the ensuing years can be pretty painful if it doesn't.  So how many prospects is too many prospects?

Or, as @JackCekovic and @scottrobinson7 ask:
I think one or two of the the "Lansing Three" -- Noah Syndergaard, Aaron Sanchez and Justin Nicolino -- will be in the mix for deals this off-season.  I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one of them traded away, in particular if packaged in return for a starting pitcher that can slot is as a #2 or #3 type.  There's been some indication already that Anthopoulos is willing to part with prospects and understands the perilous attrition rate for even the best prospect talent out there.  And as much as the Lansing Three are excellent prospects, the idea that there are three Roy Halladays lurking within the organization at low-A ball is just as absurd as it sounds.  There's a chance -- a remote one -- that those kids will all turn out as above-average starting pitchers in the major leagues, but the more likely scenario is that one or none of them does.  "They're not all going to play up here."

Now, I did indicate that I was an expert in lawn care, as well as the works of Steve Earle, when soliciting questions for this little segment.  I may have been overstating things with respect to lawn care.  Nevertheless, to answer the question above, and that of @whatadewitt:
The most useful things I've learned about actually getting your grass to look good are:  aerate (both in the spring and the fall); fertilize (both in the spring and fall); seed (both in the spring and fall -- don't bother in the middle of the summer because it's too hot for the seed to properly germinate and take root); and water the hell out of it all summer long.  Get a good fall fertilizer now, and spread it after you've given one good last raking for the fall and aerated it.  It's probably too late now to try to seed anything for fall.  But both in the spring and fall, if you have bare spots or things are just a bit thin, lay down a thin covering of topsoil and peat moss mixture, spread some quality grass seed on it and keep it nice and moist for a good couple weeks.  As long as the temperature is somewhere between about 15 and 25 Celsius, this is a good time to thicken things up.

Onward!  @_LeftField asks:
and @NicholasDeRosa asks:
These questions refer to my encyclopedic knowledge of the Steve Earle catalogue.  To the first, of those three, my pick is Guitar Town.  It's a fine album that holds up incredibly well despite being more than 25 years old, but my pick here is a little sentimental.  This was the first CD I ever purchased, and I did so before I even had a CD player.  I bought a CD player just so I could listen to Guitar Town.  Earle's music has progressed in a dozen different directions since then.  I like the question about Telephone Road because it references probably my favourite album of all his standard "Steve Earle & the Dukes" efforts -- El Corazon.  Telephone Road is a terrific, very underrated song, and it's not even close to the best one on the album.  I could listen to that album every day and not get tired of it.  Fort Worth Blues will haunt your dreams.

Alright, I know I got a lot more questions than these, and I wish I had time to get to more, but this is getting awfully long already and a lot of it isn't even about baseball.  Just trying to ease you into the off-season, I guess.  Enjoy the playoff baseball, everyone, because once it's gone, baby, it's gone.
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