Quickly on a Sunday: end of Juan

If "Who is Juan Rivera?" was the question on Jeopardy, then the category had to be "Obvious Blue Jay DFA's" (with apologies to Jayson Nix, natch).

And so it ends, the Juan Rivera era. Through minimal (ok, some....) fault of his own, he just never seemed like he was long for the organization; a placeholder until management deemed the younger bats were ready, or more likely, until there were no further excuses readily available for not handing all those at-bats to players who could be the future. Travis Snider handling his demotion to AAA with grace and implementing all the changes asked of him, plus Eric Thames producing huge in his limited major league life had to be the final nails in the coffin.

For the record, I never find joy in a player losing his job. It's part of the reason I sometimes contemplate quitting The Twitter - it's just soooo easy to say shitty things about people - people! - you know nothing about other than a glimpse into what you want to believe that person is like viewed through a three hour window of baseball nightly. I'm sure Juan Rivera isn't a loafing loner who cares nothin' about nothin' "in real life", even if I've backhandedly expressed as much in 140 characters or less. That makes me the asshole, not him.

But Juan is gone, and gawdammit... I'm pretty excited about it.

Not (so much) because I wanted him off the team, but rather, because we're getting closer to the team we (if I may be so bold) all wanted to see coming out of spring. But is it false hope?

Do we risk having our collective dreams shattered if these baby Jays - with everyday at-bats given to the likes of Snider, Thames, Arencibia, and eventually Lawrie - go out and massively disappoint in the second half? Then what?

That's part of religiously following a baseball franchise, maybe (probably?) moreso than any other sport. The best team always seems to be the next crop coming up.

Let's just hope this version of the club is the one that keeps our attention on Toronto and not Las Vegas.

Three Up, Three Down - Heroes and Goats of the Season (So Far)

We're a bit past the 1/8th mark of the season, which to our minds provides enough just enough context to start to make judgments on who's been awesome and who's been awful thus far. Ergo: Three Up, Three Down. (New feature! Soon to be abandoned! Oh look...shiny!)

When you're up, you're UP...

1. José Bautista: This offseason's biggest signing and the most contentious talking point through most of the Winter (Sign him! Now! No, later! Too much!), JoBau has rewarded the Jays by being the best hitter in the American League thus far. ESPN's Eric Karabell, on yesterday's edition of the Baseball Today podcast, compared him the Albert Pujols, and while he acknowledged that sounded like "blasphemy", it's hard to argue with his excellence when Bautista leads the league in OBP and SLG, as well as homers. You can't ask for much more than that. (Though a little help would be nice...more on that later.)

2. Ricky Romero: But he's only 1-3! (And if we thought that the kids reading our blog were the "Jack Morris was a winner" types, we'd prattle on a bit about the meaning of pitcher wins. But that shit's boring to you and to us. The point's been made. The new orthodoxy has won.) RickRo is third in the AL in strikeouts with 33 (versus 10 walks), and aside from one blow up appearance against the Red Sox, he's posted quality starts and looked every bit like an ace and a Cy Young candidate.

3. Marc Rzepczynski: The Father-in-Law won't stop complaining that Rzep has been relegated to the bullpen, and to be honest, we tend to agree at this point. Of course, if Rzep is starting, who's the killer lefty in the pen? He's held the opposition to a .118 BA against in 11 appearances, surrendering four hits against in 10.2 innings, with 10 Ks versus 5 BBs.

...And when you're down, you're DOWN.

1. Aaron Hill: Hill's now hurt, and wasn't exactly killing it when he was in the lineup. A .265 OBP before the injury (lower than two other guys who you're more worried about) goes alongside three doubles and no homers so far this season. Those option years? They're not looking particularly appealing right about now.

2. Juan Rivera: He may have emerged from the crypt in the past few days (the prospect of a future without baseball may have awakened the corpse), but he still has a fair bit of digging to do to extricate himself from the early hole he's dug. Posting a meagre .270 OBP and a flacid .207 SLG thus far. He's not a slap hitter, but those are the numbers of a player who is having the bat knocked out of his hands.

3. Travis Snider: A couple of good at bats in recent days, and an OBP (.271) that sits above that of Hill and Rivera (and Patterson, and Rajai Davis)...and yet, The State of the Great Big Giant Pasty White Hope/Rosy-Cheeked Phenom remains an ongoing concern. This hasn't been the most exemplary start to the season, but there are 141 games remaining to pull it together.

Connective Tissue: The Link Between Snider and JoBau
There's no one getting on base in front of José Bautista, nor is there much going on behind him. So he's not getting pitches to hit, and has been walked more times than anyone in baseball (21). Of his 11 RBI, 10 have come through home runs (7 solo shots! And one three-run dinger).

On the other hand, Travis Snider has little going on ahead or behind him, and has been dealt a steady stream of breaking balls. And so he's walked nine times (okay) and struck out 21 time (aie yay yay.)

The point here is that the go-go Jays who were going to burn up the basepaths are sitting in the mid-pack in terms of getting on base in the first place (.320 OBP, 14th in MLB, 7th in AL). The 2011 edition of the Blue Jays might not be the one that is supposed to compete for a postseason berth, but eventually, this team is going to have to get runners on and create more of a threat than JoBau can muster up by himself.

Whipping Boys: Someone to Despise

We get it: Juan Rivera's body language sucks.

His swing looks as though he's wielding a 20-pound bat, and it looks as though someone has slipped five pounds of sand in each of his cleats. He looks as though he's not necessarily thrilled to have been moved to Toronto, and from the tenor and tone of the tweets and emails we receive, the feeling is mutual.

(All of this is compounded by the fact that John Farrell has used him too high in the batting order at times, making his lifeless corpse smell that much more noxious.)

We also get that Edwin Encarnacion has had a less than stellar start to the season, both in the field and at the plate. (Though he's made a couple of nice plays in the field lately, which don't seem to stand out to the cynical braying hordes.)

But here's the thing: Like all players, these guys are assets, and right now, they have a depressed value. But if you're at all smart at playing a market - or frankly, if you're not completely brain dead - you don't sell off assets at the bottom of their value. And there remains some upside for Rivera and a lot of upside for Encarnacion that needs to be explored before the team casts them off without anything in return so as to speed the arrival of Gordie-Dougie Baseball Canada Man.

(And while we're dropping our oblique reference to the third baseman of the future, let us note that we probably shouldn't be quite so coarse in blaming him for the expectations that people have placed upon him, lest his older sister come kick our ass or strangle us with a hair band. And the truth is that we're as geeked to see him get here and contribute as any of you, but we also know that his development and the team's is best served with him getting some time in at the Triple-A level.)

We're going to repeat this mantra often in the next few weeks, so get used to this: It's a long season. We're six games in, and people are already referring to players as "garbage", which seems like a pretty harsh way to speak of your fellow human beings. (They are people, you know.) Let's just calm down, and observe the first month so that we can get a truer sense of what this team is, and what sort of value these pieces have.

It doesn't make any sense to heap scorn on players and boo your own guys in the first weekend of the season when they've barely had the chance to create an impression for this year.

And by the way: EE had a better season at the plate than Travis Snider last year, and has a higher career OPS than Aaron Hill. So before you send him packing because he got eaten up by two balls on Opening Weekend, you might want to see if he has something to offer in the 25 weeks of baseball that remain.