How will you remember 2010?

Addressing a week's worth of inactivity - sorry friends. Between Christmas and holidays and kids and seasonal illness and mandatory visiting and.... well, you get the picture, I assume. Believe me, I'm with you - hoping Tao returns sooner than later to end this amateur-hour shitshow I've been (sporadically) running.

I mean.... I could have addressed the Octavio Dotel signing, musing (ineffectively) that Dotel is just a low-rent version of Kevin Gregg (is that even possible?) - a one year Type-B hedge until a more worthy, long-term, homegrown solution at the almighty closer position can be found. David Purcey? Josh Roenicke? Zach Stewart? Asher Wojciechowski? Remains to be seen.

Or I could have arrogantly pointed out that this is what happens when you let the market "sort itself out" before jumping into the fray.

But no, it is what it is, and perhaps Dotel will borrow some of that magic pixie saves dust that allowed Gregg to wriggle out of so many nervous ninths. Or maybe he completely implodes and loses the closing job by June. Either way, it's a one-year deal for reasonable money that gives Anthopoulos & Farrell another year (yeah, I know...) to find The Guy.

But enough about that
Let's talk about 2010.

Is there any reasonable argument against calling the calendar year set to expire an unqualified success for the Blue Jays organization? For the fans?

2009 ended with many among us in the depths of despair - Doc was gone and so was much optimism. A new GM, another rebuild - er, "build" - a system whose best prospects had just arrived in trade, and a lame-duck season by a manager not looking to do much of anything new.

But then.....

The rotation, opening the season full of questions, closed the year full of possibility.

Jose Bautista never cooled off and blew shit up for 162 games.

Vernon Wells had a nice season.

Bargain-bin free agents John Buck and Alex Gonzalez both became best-case scenarios: outstanding play for 2010 parlayed into future assets.

The organization as a whole continued to get stronger, to the point of being ranked #4 (from #28 - h/t Bob Elliott) by Baseball America in their upcoming Prospect Handbook.

As a team, the Jays hit more bombs than any other. Sure, a few walks and singles here and there would have been nice....but HOW MUCH FUN WAS THAT?

A new manager with a much-respected pedigree bought into The Plan and came aboard, promising to change the same-old way of thinking from the bench.

.....and as we stand today, not much has changed from the major league roster. Good thing or bad , take your pick. But make no mistake, the organization is well-positioned. The debate as to whether or not the mother corp will allow for the next step (playyyyoffffs) is for another time..... but for now, bring on 2011.

Can't wait.

A little perspective, if you please

The nice thing about unplugging yourself and getting away for a breather is that it allows you a certain amount of time to reflect and reassess. With the benefit of some time to quietly reflect, you can strip away some of the axiomatic thinking that creeps in and takes over when you are locked into the day to day grind of it all.

We highly recommend it. In fact, we'd especially recommend it to those in the comments sections of this blog and others who have started to freak out at the seeming disparity between the Jays signings and those of other teams, notably the Yankees. Because it's patently ridiculous the way that some are even trying to make some sort of point by comparing the Sabathia-Burnett-Teixeira signings with the Jays' scouring of the fringes to sign a handful of minor league free agents.

"They get C.C.! We get Mike Maroth! Fire J.P.! Fourth place! Gargggrggrghrghr!"

The Yankees, you have to remember, are in full restocking mode. They've lost a number of aging players with big contracts, so they can make all of these signings and maybe more, and still be under last season's payroll number. That's what they are doing now, and they are setting the market for the rest of the league, because they always have. There shouldn't be any cause for alarm.

The Jays' are on minor-league and marginal signings at this point, likely because are waiting (like everyone else) for some more movement in the free agent market amongst the more austere teams. There are lots of big names still on the board, and our guess is that some of them will be left scrambling for dance partners by the time February rolls around.

Besides, the Mike Barrett signing is a greatish one, both for the Jays and for the player. He gets the chance to get out of PetCo Park, and the Jays get a guy who was a Silver Slugger winner as recently as 2005. The signing also provides insurance in the event that Rod Barajas turns into a tubby pumpkin again.

We could definitely see Barrett taking playing time away from Barajas, especially if the latter backslides as he did in the final six weeks of last year.

That's a wrap on 2008
As 2009 lingers alluringly on the horizon, we look forward to turning over the calendar page and taking on another year. Have a great New Year's celebration, and we'll see you on the other side.

Happy Freaking Hangover! Welcome to 2008!

Ouch. Is it 2008 already? Maybe it was the Chicken Bone shots (Fireball and chocolate syrup...ganongy!), but we're having a hard time coming to grips with the transition into the New Year. You'll hve to excuse us if we sign our posts with 2007 for the next few days.

No news is...well, it's no news
While it's been a while since the last post, we have been combing around looking for something resembling news to comment on. Mostly, we're seeing a ton of year in review stories (yawn), pontification on Mitchell (blergh) and news about Canseco's sequel (ugh). We just can't get that interested.

Reaching all the way to Guam for anything resembling news
Pacific News Daily has brief on John Hattig, the corpulent Jays farmhand who in 2006 became the first player from Guam to get the call to the bigs. As you would expect, the hometown press is nicey-nice about why Hattig spent the year in Syracuse, and why he was removed from the 40 man roster. We, on the other hand, can tell you that from seeing Hattig play seven or eight times this year that he's fat, slow, and swings at just about anything thrown between first and third and the earth and the stars, and is a lousy fielder at either first or third. Still, you gotta root for the guy, don't you?

Great off-season blogging

• Tip of la casquette to the Fan 590's Mike Wilner, who shrugged off the MSG headache and dug into the mailbag on Christmas Day. Wilner, as ever, gave rational, thoughtful responses to questions...we're looking forward to seeing his blog in the mix in 2008, even if he does have a bit of a man-crush on John McDonald.
• The Drunk Jays Fans shamed us into getting off our fat duff with two monumental posts over the holidays. We're talking two posts of Brattainian length, covering a full breadth of topics, from the Doors to drunken meandering on empty Christmas streets. We laughed, we cried.

Wii Baseball News
While we spent a good part of the holidays getting our ass handed to us at Wii Sports by blog co-conspirator Shortwaveboy, we managed to avoid any nastiness like you see below.



(Thanks to Home Run Derby for the video)

Happy New Year!