A Note On A Quote

"Do they all pan out? Do they all do well? Who knows? But I'm not opposed at all to taking prospects and trading them for big-league players.

"They're not all going to play up here and part of drafting and signing and developing these players is to use them to supplement the big  league team. I think the depth is certainly there to make a trade, and it's something we'll look at if we think we can get a player who can be part of this."

I've thrown those words around on this blog a number of times, and I'll be damned if I don't keep coming back to them.  That was Alex Anthopoulos in November 2010, just over two short years ago.  The context then was different than it is now for the Toronto Blue Jays.  At that time, acquiring "a player who can be a part of this" sounded tantalizing, despite the fact that many of us didn't have a clue what "this" was.

We had an inkling that we were in the early stages of a plan; Anthopoulos has always seemed to have a plan.  Or maybe we just needed to believe he had a plan to help us sleep at night.  In the autumn of 2010, the notion of trading large swaths of the still-under-construction prospect base was more far-off fantasy than immediate option to create a contending major league roster.

As a result, two years ago, I was probably spending more time trying to sort out whether departing players were Type A or Type B free agents under the old collective agreement than whether incoming players were any damn good.  The idea of bringing in-their-prime, elite talent to Toronto was fun to think about, in the same way that buying a winter home in the Cayman Islands is fun to think about -- maybe one day if things break right, but not really in the cards right now.

Still, I (and many others) clung to the "They're not all going to play up here" quote, through the strange ride that saw marginal relievers and backup-turned-starting catchers cycle through town as part of the Anthopoulos quest for supplemental draft picks.  I told myself it's all going somewhere, that watching Kevin Gregg walk three or four guys in an inning was just the price we were paying to stock the prospect pipeline.

Then something funny happened along the way:  I got to really like some of those prospects.  I read all the analysis, and then the analysis of the analysis, of all the annual Top 100 prospect lists, upon which more and more names from Lansing, Dunedin, New Hamsphire and Las Vegas seemed to turn up every year.

I still kept the quote tucked in my back pocket, ready to pull out when Anthopoulos made a deal that made me squirm a little bit because I'd invested a few hopes and dreams in a kid I'd never really seen play.  Sure, Alex, move one or two of those stud prospects, you know, if you have to, but don't trade the special ones.

Turns out none of them were special.  Or, more accurately, even the most special ones weren't immune to what was foreshadowed of November 2010.

I can't claim any deep inside knowledge of the character or intentions of the GM of the Toronto Blue Jays.  I can only take what he says, compare it to what he does, and see how they match up.  And even though he seems to talk in circles that leave the kind of wiggle room any politician would envy, I've found that he generally does what he says.

So long, then, Travis d'Arnaud.  Be well, Jake Marisnick.  Go get 'em, Noah Syndergaard.  You were fun to read about.  You're probably going to be fun to watch for other teams.  But then again, "Who knows?" Right?

But we should have known all along you weren't all going to play up here.

Friday Buffet - A Little of This, A Little of That

We could have offered up another long, ponderous discussion of the relative merits of prudence versus boldness, but it's Friday, and you deserve better. Follow along as we dip our tongs into some tasty morsels.

All the Young Jays: We're not sure where in recesses of our memory last year's rookie familiarization tour has gone to hide, but we were pleasantly impressed to be reintroduced to the concept once again for the first time yesterday. (For more of the particulars on who came and what they had to say, see Mike Cormack's piece on Sportsnet.ca, and hear some of the audio gleaned from the players by Mike Wilner and Kayla Harris on Fan590.com.)

There's a reality to being the lone MLB team outside of the U.S., which is that few young players have a clear sense of what sort of city Toronto is, and what it truly means to play in Canada. For many young men who have never left their home country before their first trip across the border, demystifying the process and letting them get a taste of what awaits them when they make it to this side of the great frontier might be just enough motivation to focus their minds in the final year or so of minor league ball.

It's one thing to have a great system, but we're impressed by the forethought the Jays' management is showing in preparing the next crop of players before they get their call to The show. If nothing else, it seemed to work well for Brett Lawrie and Eric Thames last year, neither of whom would have been counted on to contribute double-digits in homers last January.

The Next Johnny Mac?: Stemming from his invitation to the Rookie Orientation, there's been a bit of chatter about Jonathan Diaz, who garnered comparisons to John McDonald for his defensive prowess.

(Which, if you think about it, is just about the highest praise that can be doled out in this part of the baseball world.)

It seemed to us as though Diaz has been scuffling around the Jays' system since our blog was in short pants, and though we remember Diaz looking good in the field in a few Spring Training contests last season, it wasn't enough to make his name pop into our head at any point in the interim. Upon a glance at his Baseball-Reference.com page, and we've come to find a different comp for Diaz: He might just be the next Mike McCoy.

Diaz is already 26 (turning 27 by the opening week of the season), which puts him into the same category of "late bloomer" as McCoy. Moreover, Diaz has shown a significant skill in getting on base (.363 OBP in six minor league seasons, .357 at Double-A and .343 at Triple-A), but he seemingly gets the bat knocked out of his hands when bringing it through the zone, slugging at a .296 clip over his minor league career.

He's managed eight homers in those six seasons and 78 doubles over those six seasons, and his base-stealing tool doesn't seem refined enough to compensate for the lack of pop in his bat (31 career steals versus 25 times caught). For comparison's sake, Mikey Mick put up a .375 OBP and .369 slugging in ten minor league seasons, getting his first taste of MLB action at the age of 28.

The Jays aren't especially deep up the middle, and one collision in shallow centrefield could see them starting McCoy and Luis Valbuena for an extended period of time next season. In that context, we could see dropping Diaz into the number nine slot and letting him bunt people over for a few weeks. Just like Johnny Mac did.

Wow...did our generalize anxiety just crank up a notch or what?

The Yoenis Cespedes Myth Machine: We have a theory about Cuban cigars, and it goes like this: Dominicans are often better, but the mythology that's built around Cubans because of how unattainable they are to Americans makes many over value them.

(Which reminds us: We really shouldn't compare human beings to tobacco products, should we?)

We'll confess to having been sucked into the hype around Cuban outfielder Yoenis Cespedes in recent months. His bizarre showcase videos (replete with Christopher Cross musical interludes, leg pressing a full stack plus two grown men, shout outs to Ahman Green and his mom and the roasting of beasts) were amusingly amateurish, and yet, they sold us.

As Cespedes saw his first action in the Dominican Winter League yesterday (three strikeouts in three at bats), Clay Davenport worked through a rough estimate on his blog of how Cespedes' Cuban league stats would translate into the Major Leagues. The article is interesting for those of you who statistically inclined, but for those who'd prefer to cut to the chase, Davenport figures Cespedes' Equivalent Average (EqA) would be around .267. (This would be an OPS around .774
with somewhere between 25 and 30 homers.)

What's intriguing to us about this is that even if the Jays were to throw themselves into the Yoenis Sweepstakes, he's likely find himself in the crowded competition for the starting left field spot, up against Eric Thames, who is two years younger (so far as we know) and posted a .263 EqA last season. Cespedes would seem from some descriptions to be a much better fielder than what we've observed from Thames, but considering the hefty price tag that the Cuban is looking to have met, this is just another expensive free agent deal that the Jays would be wise to pass up.

A Bird in the Hand

As the Texas Rangers made their postseason run, a friend of mine asked me, in all seriousness, whether the Mike Napoli – Frank Francisco trade was going to become the second-most regrettable Blue Jay trade in history. Now, given the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that stemmed from that deal for the better part of 2011, I was almost relieved to hear that he would only consider it the second-most regrettable.

After a less-than-inspired effort to talk him off the ledge, I started to wrap my head around the trade he considered to be the most regrettable, which also happened to involve the Rangers: Michael Young for Esteban Loaiza.

Even if you rightfully believe Michael Young has been overrated for a large part of his career, it’s still tough to defend the trade from the Blue Jays’ perspective (though it can be done, based on the fact that they were only 1.5 games back of the first-place Yankees, and thought they might catch them with another arm in the rotation to complement David Wells, Kelvim Escobar and Chris Carpenter, while a 23-year-old Roy Halladay sported a 10.90 ERA. There’s a fine recap of the trade here). A great many fans have pined for a decade over the All-Star, batting champion middle infielder the team let get away for a second-rate starting pitcher that never helped them reach the postseason promised land.

The Young deal is probably just the most glaring example of “the one that got away” for Blue Jays fans. It’s hardly the only one. In the above-linked article, it’s pointed out that the Jays traded away three other middle-infield prospects in the system at the time in Felipe Lopez, Cesar Izturis, and Brett Abernathy. There’s obviously been varying degrees of big-league success amongst those erstwhile Jays prospects, but the returns were indisputably slim, including the likes of Steve Trachsel, Mark Guthrie and Luke Prokopec.

I think my friend who still rues the Young trade to this day uses it as a proxy for what he would perceive as the team’s tendency to get very low value back for its prospects. Young is his talisman, representing the what-might-be for every Jays prospect past and present, the upside realized, every last drop of value squeezed from the talent the player possesses.

I can pretty much guarantee you, though, that in 2000, my friend wouldn’t have had a sweet clue who Michael Young was. The fact is, even today when minor league stats, scouting reports and video are more readily available than ever, most fans have a familiarity level with their favourite team’s prospects that’s comparable to my grandparents’ familiarity level with programming the clock on their microwave.

But if hindsight is 20/20, then prospect hindsight is, like, 20/10 – and everybody has it, even Frank Costanza. That’s because prospects develop actual track records over time, across whatever organizations hold their rights, and we can see perfectly how they developed and what they accomplished after the fact. But the ones we remember are the ones that actually develop into big leaguers. Fans can be forgiven for feeling like we’ve seen way too many of them go on to bigger and better things for other teams, even if it’s just patently not true. We still don’t want to let ours go.

It does seem that at least among a more modern generation of Jays fans, the tendency to overvalue the team’s own prospects is beginning to wane. We can be forgiven for harbouring an unhealthy prospect infatuation here and there, but many of us are coming around to the idea that some prospects just aren’t going to be Blue Jays.

Maybe our added peace of mind with trading prospects comes from knowing that it’s Alex Anthopoulos who will be doing the trading. Before he’s done as General Manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, he’s going to make some bad trades (and it can be argued he has done so already). But for now, he seems to be pretty good at it, and he gets the benefit of the doubt more times than not.

That might be something we should all bear in mind this offseason. One thing I’ve noticed about Anthopoulos is that, while his forays into the media are occasional and vague, he usually does what he says he’s going to do. If he says he’s not going to break the bank for a top-tier free agent, I’ve seen nothing in his work as GM that should lead a fan to not believe him. Conversely, if he says he’s going to explore the trade market, and that not all the elite prospects in the system are going to be Toronto Blue Jays at the big league level, I believe him there too. He’s already shown he’ll make those moves. So we better not get too attached to those prospects as we get ready for more deals.

It’s entirely possible that this off-season, Alex Anthopoulos will trade another Michael Young out of the Jays’ farm system. Some fans, two or five or ten years later, are still going to have big problems with that. That’s fine – second guessing the GM is part of the fun of being a fan. But we should probably at least mentally prepare ourselves for the possible departures of our prospect man-crushes, and even the guys that we didn’t think would amount to much (the same way the Jays saw Michael Young back in 2000), and be reasonably comfortable that the Jays’ GM isn’t going to move any of them for another Esteban Loaiza.

Opening Day, Snow Day

Even the cold, damp temperatures and snowflakes the size of big fluffy white kitties won't dampen our enthusiasm for Opening Day in the 2009 Blue Jays season.

Nor will the inundation of naysayers who are lining up to talk in funereal tones about the state of baseball in Toronto now that the team seems - to them, at least - somehow down and out before the opening bell has rung. While some writers, like the Globe's Stephen Brunt, wonder what Jays fans have to root for this year given the strength of the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays in the powerful AL East, we think this is one of the most exciting years in recent memory.

This is a transformative year for the franchise, where many of the faces that will make up the next wave of the team's successes will begin to appear on the scene. This is the year where some of drafting decisions of J.P. Ricciardi and his staff will begin to bear fruit. At the outset, we will see Travis Snider and Adam Lind installed as regulars in the lineup and Ricky Romero in the rotation. By year's end, we will see Brad Mills and Brett Cecil take their turns in the rotation, and J.P. Arencibia should get at bats in the late summer. We may also see Robert Ray, who we still have pegged as the surprise arm who will emerge this year.

Catcher Brian Jeroloman and pitcher Zach Dials will also be worth tracking throughout this season, as will be first baseman David Cooper, making the quick jump to Double-A after being drafted last year. Brad Emaus - who was essentially an anonymous low-level prospect a year ago - is a year or two away, but offers extraordinary promise for the future.

In a way, this year's team reminds us of the 1984 team, where a group of players under the age of 25 began to emerge as the team's core for the better part of the next decade: Barfield, Bell, Moseby, Fernandez, Key, Gruber. The Jays were still Canada's second best team at that point, but the blueprint for the teams that would win pennants and compete every year for the next decade was set that year.

Certainly, if you are focussed on the the short term, and the wins and losses in the next six weeks or six months, you may be disappointed by the latest incarnation of the Blue Jays. But for those of us who have been following this narrative word for word, line by line and chapter after chapter, this is an incredibly exciting time.

Now, we watch the next heroes step out of the shadows and into the limelight. And if that is not the fodder for the fondest of dreams, than what is?

Hey Everybody! Let's Rush Travis Snider to the Bigs Just For the Hell of It!!

So now that we're a man down in the outfield, idle minds have turned to The Great Big Giant Pasty White Hope^TM Travis Snider. The Jays should think about calling up the top prospect says the Sun's Mike Rutsey. Why not bring him up? asks the Globe's Robert McLeod (who, it should be noted, has doubled back to fix his erroneous info in the first version of that article which stated that Snider was hitting .286 in Syracuse when he is actually hitting .268 with New Hampshire FC.)

Even the Oracle of Jarvis Street Mike Wilner has raised the prospect of raising the prospect to the Majors.

To be honest, we'd love to see him there, but then again, we'd love to a lot of things just for kicks. Thankfully, our sense of reason and judgment steps in and sets us straight.

Essentially, there are three reasons that we don't want the Jays to call Snider up.

Reason the first: Because it will start his clock in terms of Major League service time. We'd rather have that year tacked on at the end when he'll be 27 and hopefully leading the powerhouse Jays to another playoff berth as opposed to now, when he'll be thrown to the sharks in a meaningless season.

Reason the second: Because while he is showing some power and ability to produce runs in Double-A, he still has a sub-.800 OPS in the Eastern League (.794). We don't anticipate that he would up that number against big league pitching.

Reason the third: Because there are other options. Notably, Buck Coats or Kevin Mench, who are already on the 40-man roster, and who could step in and park their asses on the bench to watch the ongoing adventures of Wilkerson in Whifferland.

Hey man, we're just like you. It's a shite state of affairs in a shite season, and maybe we just want a little joy to help us forget about all the pain. Maybe we just want a sniff of something new and young and vibrant to help put a spring in our step. But sometimes, you gotta push those feelings way back in your mind, because that way leads to oblivion.

Or so we hear.

(Photo: Dean Lima/HardballWarriors.com)

Whither Sergio Santos ?

Even with the news that utility infielder and slap-hitter Ray Olmedo was banished to Pittsburgh last week, the Blue Jays have a veritable mess o' infielders on the 40-man roster. Somewhat lost in the shuffle amongst all these marginal major leaguers is Sergio Santos.

Santos, who came to the Jays in the Troy Glaus trade two winters ago, acquitted himself well in this year's Arizona Fall League (5 HRs, 20 RsBI, .922 OPS in 24 games for Scottsdale). He subsequently played winter ball in the Mexican Pacific League for the Yaquis de Obregon. Santos told Baseball America (registration required...sorry) that he wanted to play in Mexico to see tougher pitching, to work on his footwork at third and to improve his Spanish (no, really). Unfortunately, he was limited to just 14 games and was off the roster by the time the playoffs came.

Santos will turn 25 this July, and is on the cusp of becoming a "former prospect", if he isn't there already. He's dropped off of most publications' lists of top Blue Jays prospects, and he didn't handle the jump to Syracuse especially well this year. With Marco Scutaro, Russ Adams and Joe Inglett muddying up the Jays' infield picture, 2008 looks to be Santos' last chance to establish himself.

The Road to Third Place Is Paved With Catchers of the Future

We've got catchers on the brain today, what with the to and fro regarding whether if J.P. said he was going to look for a backup catcher in the coming weeks. (The Nat Post says yes, as mentioned in the comments from yesterday, but Jon Hale says J.P. said no such thing. And that the Post is full of shit.)

You have to think that this team doesn't see Gregg "Let me write you a cheque for that" Zaun and Sal Fasano as the long term answers behind the plate. Both are getting older, and let's be honest: Fasano's offensive prowess lingers somewhere around the Huckaby level.

There are options on the way, with both Curtis Thigpen and Robinson Diaz on the horizon. But having watched both youngsters last year, we don't get that "ready-for-prime-time" vibe off of either of them.

The same said Mr. Hale has also posted a link on his Mockingbird (Let's! Get! Mocking!^TM) blog to the Jays' non-roster Spring Training invitees, Among the catchers showing up in Dunedin (if only to catch soft-tosses) are 2007 first-rounder J.P. Arencibia (pictured above), Pal Sal, and Brian Jeroloman, a walks machine who posted a .421 OBP in the Florida State League last year.

There's catchers everywhere you look...so why are we still worried? Likely because we've seen one too many Jays Catcher of the Future turn to dust as soon as they get the call to come north. It's almost uncanny. (Maybe Ernie Whitt's sabotaging these up comers as a part of his evil plan to make Blue Jays fans eternally nostalgic for his squatting prowess and his extreme pull uppercut swing.)

The Graveyard of Catching Dreams
Check out the roster of the 2002 Syracuse SkyChiefs, which is a veritable smorgasbord of lost souls when it comes to the Jays future backstops: Josh Phelps? Check. Kevin Cash? Check. Jason Werth? Guillermo Quiroz? Joe Lawrence? Check, check, check. They may not have projected to be stars, but they were all supposed to be full-time Major League catchers at the very least.

(And Ken Huckaby is in there too, even if he was never a prospect to do anything more than separate Derek Jeter's shoulder.)

In the end, two of them (Werth and Lawrence) switched positions and never caught a game in the bigs, while Phelps caught four games this year. It was the first time in six seasons that he donned the tools of ignorance, but we suppose that when you're a marginal player on the Pirates, you do what you gotta do.

Guillermo Quiroz and Kevin Cash are now both doing the organizational two-step, hopping from one team to another. Cash did manage to land in Boston when the music stopped last year, just in time to bask in some of the refracted glow of the Sox' World Series glory.

So who's laughing now?

Belong to Rios Announces Jays Top Ten Prospects*

(*with an assist from Baseball America)

All Your Base Are Belong to Rios (the Scrappy Doo of the Blue Jays blogosphere) has the rundown of Baseball America's annual list of the top ten Blue Jays prospects, complete with some insightful commentary and illustrated with candid shots of the same said prospects. (Check out Litchsy flashin' gang signs, yo!)

Fun on the Farm...woo woo!

It's not that we're giving up on the big club's season. At least, not as much as some of the Jays players seem to have. (Zing!)

But with the Syracuse Chiefs pulling into the capital over this fine long weekend, we'll be taking in the full series. If only so that we can mercilessly heckle Russ Adams.

All kidding aside, this is (for once) an intriguing Chiefs club that will be coming to town, with several actual real live prospects in the lineup. With Royce Clayton's recent DFA (or is that PFO?), the Jays have promoted Sergio Santos to AAA just in time for the weekend series against the Lynx. Santos tore up the AA Eastern League this year (17 HRs, 55 RsBI, .814 OPS), so it will be intriguing to see what the future holds for the former first round pick of Arizona, who came to the Jays in the Troy Glaus deal.

Also, while we love Sal Fasano as much as the next dude, we're looking forward to seeing Robinson Diaz catch. Also a recent callup from AA, the 23 year-old Diaz is (excuse the trite phrase) the "catcher of the future" for the Jays, and has hit well for average thus far.

Finally, it is at least plausible that everybody's favorite chili racer, A.J. Burnett, will jet in on Monday for a rehab start. No word on if his wife will hop in a Town Car for one of her dozen or so contractually mandated limo rides to offer moral support.

Oh yeah: Halladay versus Millwood. Can we get a "woop woop".

J.P. drafts J.P.

After spitting the bit this afternoon against the Devil Rays (Carl Crawford eats the Jays for breakfast, AGAIN!), the Jays have made their first two picks of the draft.

Kevin Ahrens, a switch-hitting high school 3B/SS went first (16th overall), followed by U of Tennessee catcher J.P. Arencibia. (Not only is he another J.P., but in both cases, it stands for Jon Paul. For real.)

We're no draft expert, so we leave you with those links, and the next three years to decide if these were wise choices.

BTW, MLB.com has been running the ESPN2 coverage of the draft all afternoon, and contrary to what we had expected, it has been interesting and informative. It always helps to have Peter Gammons on the set.

Afternoon Delights

It’s A.J. versus the Rays at 12:37, the Draft at 2:00. How are we supposed to concentrate on work today?

Scratch another pitcher off our list: Jordan De Jong, who was included in our Armchair GM pitching column back in April, looked great in his first inning of work for the Blue Jays, striking out the side in the ?th last night. De Jong’s numbers in the minors have been great so far this year (1.69 ERA, 2 saves, 43 Ks vs. 13 BBs in 37.1 innings between New Hampshire and Syracuse), and seeing him for the first time, we were impressed with the zip and the movement on his pitches.

De Jong’s a bit old (28) to be considered a prospect, but his deliberate progression through the ranks since being drafted as an 18^th rounder in 2002 is instructive when considering the goofiness and hyperbole (both positive and negative) that will be attached over the next few years to the Jays early round picks from today.

Litsch get it on

According to Sean McAdam's big sloppy wet-kiss to J.P. on ESPN.com, the Jays call up AA phenom Jesse Litsch to pitch tomorrow against the Orioles.

The 22 year-old righty is putting up monster numbers in AA (5-1, 0.96 ERA, 28 Ks/7 BBs and a 0.77 WHIP), so we'll be watching with some anticipation to see what he does against an AL East rival.

And no offense to Ty Taubenheim, but we're relieved that we don't have to see him back in a Jays uniform yet.

Also in the McAdam article, J.P. - obviously feeling comfortable yakking it up with a fellow New Englander - lets fly on all of the stupid Jays fans and media who dared question him:

"What bothers me most is the wins and losses and how we play the game. I don't really care what the media thinks of me, especially people who don't know what's going on."

Not that we were really that put out by J.P.'s fibbing, but maybe if he didn't obfuscate on these issues, we'd "know what's going on."

Bring out your dead!

Let's get caught up, shall we?

On the Jays' 40 Man roster, there are currently nine players on the DL, and that's not counting Ol' Gimpy Glaus. Glaus limped off the field tonight, and was brought directly to the rendering plant where he's being melted down into glue as we speak.

Davis Romero. John Thomson. League. Johnson. Ryan. Chacin. Zaun. Zambrano. Halladay.

Maybe we should all look at the positive: if this season is shot anyway, why not unload a couple of salaries, and rebuild as best as you can on the run?

As far as possible replacements for the pitching staff, look for either Josh Banks (4-0, 3.57 ERA, 15 Ks/4 BBs, 1.02 WHIP) or Ty Taubenheim (2-2, 5.34 ERA, 22/12, 1.56) to move up from AAA, as they are already on the 40 man.

Our guess is that Taubenheim gets the call, if only to keep Banks' service time at zero for a little longer.

Oy vey.

Compare and contrast - McGowan vs. Lincecum vs. Hughes

It looks as through the Jays will skip Dustin McGowan's turn in the rotation against the Red Sox, and let him pitch later in the week against the Devil Rays. Because clearly, Victor Zambrano is the answer to a six-game losing streak.

We think that when considering McGowan's first start of the season, it might be worth comparing them to the top pitching prospects to get called up so far this year.

• Phil Hughes - April 26 vs. Toronto, 6-0 loss - 4.1 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 5Ks, 1 BB
• Tim Lincecum - May 6 vs. Philadelphia, 8-5 loss - 4.1 IP, 5 H, 5 R (4 ER), 5 Ks, 5 BBs
• Dustin McGowan - May 3 vs. Cleveland, 6-5 loss - 5 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 4 Ks, 5 BBs

Not a great start for any of them, but we can at least say that McGowan pitched on par with the top prospects in their first game. So let's hope the Jays treat him like something more than a burdensome child as they set their rotation in the coming weeks.

Scratch one potential call-up off the list

The AP is reporting (see the story posted here on Globesports.com) that Matt Roney, one of the pitchers whose praises we sang (or at least hummed) in our Armchair GM post on Saturday, has been sent away for 50 games to feel shame for testing positive "for a drug of abuse". (Which sounds like a bit of a doubletalkish way of saying a drug that's not a performance enhancer, but we certainly can't confirm that.)

Armchair GM - Looking for pitching from within

Some helpful advice for J.P..

The Jays are not in a position to go get a Major League arm for either the bullpen nor the rotation, and it remains to be seen if shifting Towers to the pen and starting Zambrano will help.

With this in mind, let's take a look at who could possibly be ready this year to step in from the system.

Bullpen
Brian Wolfe, AAA, RHP, 26 years old - 11.0 IP, 0.82 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 11 Ks/3 BBs
Matt Roney, AAA, RHP, 27 years old - 10.0 IP, 0.90 ERA, 0.80 WHIP, 12 Ks/3 BBs
Jordan De Jong, AA, RHP, 28 years old - 11.2 IP, 0.77 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 16 Ks/5 BBs
Jo Matumoto, AA, LHP, 36 years old - 10.2 IP, 2.53 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, 8 Ks/4 BBs
Lee Gronkiewicz, AA, RHP, 28 years old - 10.1 IP, 2.61 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 12 Ks/2 BBs, 3 Saves
Connor Falkenbach, A, RHP. 25 years old - 9.1 IP, 0.96 ERA, 0.54 WHIP, 8 Ks/1 BBs, 6 saves

Starters
Dustin McGowan, AAA, RHP, 25 years old - 22 IP, 1.64 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 29 Ks/9 BBs
Geremi Gonzalez, AAA, RHP, 32 years old - 16.2 IP, 3.78 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 20 Ks/8 BBs
David Purcey, AA, LHP, 25 years old - 25.2 IP, 2.81 ERA, 0.67 WHIP, 28 Ks/4 BBs
Jesse Litsch, AA, RHP, 22 years old - 17.1 IP, 1.56 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 13 Ks/5 BBs
Michael MacDonald, AA, RHP, 26 years old - 24.2 IP, 2.19 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 10 Ks/4 BBs

Now, obviously these stats are from a very small sample size, and these numbers would not translate to major league performance. But there are clearly some arms in the Jays system that may warrant a look, especially give what has happened late in games all season long.

So what should the Jays do?
-Give a good look at Gronkiewicz, who has closed successfully at AAA.
-Roney has MLB experience (with Oakland last year and with the 2003 Tigers), and might be a reasonable extra arm should Towers flame out.
-McGowan likely needs a few more starts at AAA, but he will need to be ready to pitch for the big club within the next 12 months, so why not now? It's not like rushing young prospect to Show, since McGowan has pitched in the bigs before, and is likely mentally ready for the challenge.
-Purcey might have to wait until next year, but should be moved to AAA soon to challenge him.

Now, we're not experts. We just know that we can't continue to watch the Jays saunter out to the mound in late innings, gas cans in hand.