Southpaws on the Move (Or Not)

Finally.

Johan Santana is on the move, and it is out of the American League. And moreover, he's not headed to the Yankees or Red Sox, which allows us to breathe a little easier. For now.

Meanwhile, Canadian-Ontarian-Blue-Jay-Fan-By-Birth Erik Bedard was supposed to be headed to Seattle, but meddlesome owner Peter Angelos is on the cusp of nixing the deal. Because that's how he rolls. We have no complaints, though, because the comically inept Angelos regime in Baltimore has given the Jays lots of leeway over the past decade to maintain their mostly-annual third-place finish in the AL East.

Erik Bedard will be a Blue Jay. Oh yes. He will be ours.
While we're talking nixed deals, Jeff Blair blogged that Angelos has put the kibosh on any discussions of a Bedard trade to the Blue Jays. Clearly, the man aspires to finish third in the East at some point before he rolls over and croaks, or before Omar Little gets him.

We've been down this road of Bedard becoming a Jay before. Several times. It's getting to the point that if Bedard does actually sign with the Blue Jays for the 2010 season, it will be completely anti-climactic. (Maybe they can invite Jason Dickson and Corey Koskie to the news conference, just to remind us all of how well this gambit has worked in the past.)

We're tempted to declare a moratorium on all Bedard-to-Toronto posts. But we know that at some point in July, the lack of realistic trade news and speculation will drive us back to this non-story.

Looking for High Quality CanCon (Celine and Nickelback need not apply)

Let us begin by acknowledging two things:

• That the Celine/Nickelback joke was way too easy.
• That we are about to do that Canadian media thing that we hate.

And yet, heading into the Winter Meetings in Nashville, there are rumblings that both Erik Bedard and Jason Bay may be available for the right price. So would either of them be a fit for the Jays?

The O's are apparently looking for two young Major League ready players and a prospect for Bedard, which might be a bit too much to hand over to a division rival, while the Bucs might be ready to unload Bay and build around some of their own young prospects.

With so much emphasis being placed on teams pursuing Johan Santana this winter, Bedard's price might go up when teams fall out of that race. Still, we're guessing that it wouldn't take as much to pry him out of Baltimore, nor will he cost anything near the $25 million over five years that Santana is seeking. A quick look at their numbers, and it is hard to find why the gap between the two would be so great. (Bedard: 3.16 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 221 Ks versus 57 BBs; Santana: 3.33 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 235 Ks versus 52 BBs.)

Bay might come cheap, but he's 29 and coming off an awful 2007 season that was eerily similar to Vernon's (.746 OPS, 21 HRs, 84 RsBI, 4 SBs). The question with Bay is whether if that was a harbinger of things to come, or if his knee injuries held him back that much.

Maybe the most important question is whether if we'd give a flying fadoo about either of these guys if they didn't have a maple leaf on their passport.

Where's Corey Koskie these days?

Does Erik Bedard have the homesick blues?

Bugs and Cranks’ Orioles poster Patrick Smith has asked the following question:

“Does Erik Bedard want to pitch in Canada or is he just an asshole?”

This is what we might refer to as a false dichotomy.

Bedard has been notoriously persnickety with the press in Baltimore, giving monotone and monosyllabic responses in post-start scrums. We’ve always attributed this to the fact that Bedard is a francophone, and might not feel 100% comfortable in English when dozens of microphones and camera lights are foited upon him. Moreover, Bedard usually has the local press descend upon him right after he has pitched, and we would imagine that fatigue might have something to do with it.

Smith posits that Bedard wants to pitch in Canada for the Blue Jays (a theory floated by Jamie Campbell earlier this year), and that is contributing to his crankiness. Then he runs completely off the rails:

"But unless Navan, Ontario gets an expansion team, that means Bedard is stuck in Toronto, 300 miles from Erik’s hometown. And while Toronto is a great city, who thinks Bedard would prefer pitching there? Terrible ballpark. Lukewarm fans. High taxes."

As a Canadian, we're sure that Bedard gets the same palpable feeling of relief that we do when he steps back onto Canadian soil, whether if it is in Navan, or Montreal, or Toronto, or Vancouver. You can feel it, and you'll never be able to explain it, because it defies reason. But we'd feel more at home thousands of miles away on our side of the border than we would if we were just the other side.

Whether if Toronto's fans are lukewarm or not, we'd like to point out that there are an extra 1,500 of them per night showing up to that "terrible ballpark" than the number of "hardcore" fans showing up at the faux-traditional Camden Yards. And we'd add that Rogers Centre has been improved immeasurably in the past three years.

Taxes are not nearly the issue that American sportswriters make them out to be, and Canadian sports franchises have worked hard over the past decade to make that point.

We don't actually think that it is a slam-dunk that Bedard ever becomes a Jay. Jays fans love to dream about the Great Canadian Hero who is going to come and sell Blue Jays' baseball to your average xenophobic Joe Hockypuck, even if past history of our native sons has been decidedly mixed (Cory Koskie, anyone?) And if Bedard were ever to play in Toronto, we'd guess that there would still be issues with the media.

We're just at a loss to explain why Orioles fans are crucifying him for not being a better quote when he's leading the league in strikeouts, and is really the only sign of life on their franchise.

Rumor Mill: Bedard a Jay?

Sportsnet's Jamie Campbell reports in his "blog" that an executive from the Orioles believes that Erik Bedard will make a run for the border when his current contract is up. In 2010. While we would love to see this happen, we find it pretty hard to get excited about a rumour that (a) is only supposed to happen three years from now (what could change in three years), and (b) was probably based on smalltalk from an exec who knew that Cambpell, like Bedard, is from Canada. Kind of a change of pace from the normal, "You're from Canada? Do you know ...[insert name here]."

One thing that has always bothered us as Jays fans is the dearth of actual insider info about the team. The blame is probably evenly shared by the secretive management of the Jays in conjunction with the Toronto baseball press. Let's just say that if the Jays played in Boston or New York, we'd know why John Gibbons keeps benching Alex Rios.