Reflections on a Winning Streak

Photo courtesy the outstanding @james_in_to's Flickr stream.

It would be redundant to re-hash all the super duper great things that have been happening during the Toronto Blue Jays' current 11-game (!) winning streak.  They've hit the ball well, they've fielded it well, and they've pitched well.  They haven't necessarily done all of those things at the same time in eleven straight games, mind you, but in instances where one of the legs of that precarious three-legged stool has wobbled a bit, the other two legs have been more than sturdy enough to keep things upright.

Good lord, it's been a blast, hasn't it?  I like to think I'm generally a pleasant person regardless, and I've learned over the years that loyal support of a baseball team that usually loses more than it wins is not a good reason to allow a sunny disposition to be disturbed.  Still, over the last couple of weeks, even knowing a streak like this won't last, I've gone from cheerful to being about two steps removed from skipping down the street like a giddy schoolgirl.  

If you wear your fandom on your sleeve, on your head, on your desk, on the bumper of your car and everywhere else, you've probably suffered through much of the same mix of mockery and sympathy that I have since the beginning of April.  "What's wrong with your boys?" they asked.  "Worried yet?" they asked.  You try to keep a brave face, you try to convince yourself it's early and they'd at least make things interesting at some point.  But when you were honest with yourself, you accepted what seemed to be staring you in the face -- the disappointment of a likely third or fourth place finish in the monstrous American League East, by virtue of a brutal start to the season from which the team was unable to recover.

And now it's all changed.  On June 21, as the season turned officially to summer, the Jays won the first game of an eventual sweep of the division-rival Baltimore Orioles, their third consecutive such sweep to open what was anticipated to be an angst-ridden ten straight within the division.  They've crept to within five games of the division lead  (not just the Wild Card, mind you).

There are nearly three full months ahead of us before the calendar tells us it will be fall, and the nip in the evening air reminds us playoff baseball is on its way.  Three full months of streaks to begin and end, for the ebbs and flows of a long Major League Baseball season to separate the real talent from the pretenders of April and May.  Injuries, substitutions, stars emerging, veterans fading away, brilliant plays and boneheaded mistakes -- all of the things that make every baseball season intriguingly unique.

It's been a helluva long time since the Jays have well and truly been in the mix to emerge at the end of a long, hot summer with a chance to experience what the fall has to offer.  Yet here we are, fans riding the euphoria of the the longest winning streak in franchise history (tied, yes, I know... come talk to me tomorrow night).  The caps and jerseys are worn a little more proudly; the water-cooler chatter is a little more confident.  It's true that the Jays haven't won anything yet, but it sure feels better to know they haven't lost it all yet either.

The Last Samurai

Photo courtesy the outstanding @james_in_to's Flickr stream.

Every now and then, I'll do a quick search through the MLB.com archives and re-watch John McDonald's Father's Day home run in 2010.  If you're not familiar with the story behind it, you can do it now.  I'll wait here.

I love that moment.  In the middle of June, a Sunday afternoon that saw Jays pitching give up homers to Aubrey Huff, Freddy Sanchez and Pat Burrell in a 9-6 loss, many fans were given a poignant reminder of why for so long, they were so attached to a good-field-no-hit utility infielder.  Even knowing his bat was more likely to be knocked out of his hands than to produce runs, many of us still swooned over the surprising range and lightning-quick hands he displayed in a Jays uniform.  It was the unlikeliness and unexpectedness of that homer, the fact it came from John McDonald, that made it so special.

If you understood his limitations, you might be willing to look past them.  If you didn't, you might be easily persuaded he was a better player than he was.  When pressed into something close to full-time duty, he was frequently adequate, occasionally dazzling, and usually made us happy even in failure.  When he left because he wasn't needed anymore, as players like John McDonald inevitably do, all it did was raise questions about if he would come back.

But Toronto was shopping for something better in the middle infield, and particularly at shortstop, which had been a bit of black hole for a decade or so until Yunel Escobar landed in their laps and seemed to have put things in a more stable state.  When it was discovered last year that the words "Yunel Escobar" and "stable state" should never appear in the same sentence together, they traded up to the dynamic Jose Reyes, who promptly maimed himself.

All of which brings us to the inimitable Munenori Kawasaki.  I'm not sure Kawasaki has quite earned the "journeyman" tag the way McDonald had, given his long prior career in Japan and only one full MLB season under his belt.  Yet here he is, 31 years old and pressed into something close to full-time major league shortstop duty for the first time, in the absence of any better options.  John Gibbons, who was around during part of John McDonald's Toronto tenure, has run him out there regularly, I'm sure knowing full well that this is a player who, albeit in only 226 plate appearances entering today's game, has posted an OPS 46 points lower than our offensively-challenged Johnny Mac.

And yet, he continues to fascinate.  That's the right word, I think.  I can't say "amaze", because his actual performance falls well short of that.  I can't say "surprise", because while his numbers are a little better than what he showed last year in Seattle, we're still not within a large enough sample to determine what the mean is, and whether he needs to get better or worse to regress to it.

I'd resisted writing a post about Kawasaki, despite my enthusiasm for him.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but my enjoyment of his presence was mostly because he was a .gif-able novelty.  But as time has progressed, I didn't want to fall into a trap of thinking he's something he isn't, or make a case for him to stick around much longer than it takes for Jose Reyes' ankle ligaments to heal.

Non-baseball fan the Org Wife, on the other hand, is going to be crestfallen when, as players like Munenori Kawasaki inevitably do, he leaves because he isn't needed anymore.  She loves the guy.  Today, after he cracked a slicing double to cap a dramatic walk-off win, and then went viral with the goofiest, most charming, most incredible post-game interview you could imagine, it's hard not to find myself inching closer into the Org Wife's camp, and I suspect I'm not alone.  Something tells me in three years, I'll be searching through the MLB.com archives for video of that inside-out drive into the left-centerfield gap, and that celebration.  His teammates loved it.  The fans loved it.  I loved it.  How could you not?

He's probably going to be gone soon.  It would be easier to not miss our replacement/utility middle infielders if we picked them more like the way we should pick out our neckties:  noticeable, but not memorable.  But what fun would that be?

Stop Digging

The last time I showed my face around these parts, it was to be as cautiously reassuring as possible about the lengthy injury the Toronto Blue Jays starting shortstop had just incurred.  That was a simpler time, wasn't it?  It really was early then -- a mere ten games into the season, when we all innocently believed a slow start would right itself quickly, and that despite the departure of an offensive catalyst at the top of the lineup, the remaining talent on the roster would shine through.

It's been a bit of a blur for me since, I'll confess.  Even if I hadn't watched the previous evening's loss, the day in, day out jabs from co-workers about whether I was worried yet served as reminders that the team was still struggling to string anything positive together.  I'm a guy who spends way more time than is healthy paying attention to the things that happen with this team, and it's even been hard for me to grit my teeth and shake off another series dropped.  My alternative has been to simply zone out a little bit.  I'll go play for my own softball team or get some yard work done and not feel too terribly if I've happened to choose to do so on a day when they decide to take a 10-run shit-canning.

But they do have a way of pulling you back in, do they not, these Jays?  This frustrating, fascinating team provided yet another glimpse on Sunday of just what they can bring to the table.  Brandon Morrow went eight innings and had one rough one among them, from which he escaped admirably.  They hit line drives and deep flies, they ran the bases relentlessly, and they came away with ten runs.

So, you know, "Today was a good day," he said to nobody in particular, ironically in the same manner of the spouse of a terminal patient providing comfort to visiting relatives.

But recoveries, even the unlikeliest ones, all begin with a good day.  What you're hoping for is for the good days to start outnumbering the bad days, and for the bad days to get a little more bearable each time.  One good day isn't enough, but it's better than the alternative and better still if the next day follows suit.

Jesus, that sounds pretty melodramatic just reading it back to myself, but here we are.  The 2013 Toronto Blue Jays aren't a terminal patient just yet, but the vehicle that hit them wasn't just a freakin' Smart Car making a slow right turn through the crosswalk either.  They've been thumped handily on at least four separate occasions, and when they've been close, as Jose Bautista said, every little mistake they've made seems to have cost them a game.  They consistently leave themselves very little margin for error, which can make life in the big leagues pretty difficult.

While I'm on a roll with the overwrought metaphors:  you can subscribe to the theory that they've dug themselves a bit of a hole from which they can climb out.  Maybe you're more extreme -- maybe it's a canyon  in your view, from which they may only hope to scale their way to some middling plateau.  Maybe you think they've crashed to earth with such velocity that the resulting wreckage is not only incapable of emerging from the smouldering crater it created, but that any salvageable bits should be sold for scrap.

Me?  I just want them to stop digging.

Next Man Up

Image via www.kansascity.com

Believe it or not, I follow other sports besides baseball.  I love hockey, golf, rugby, and I can even get myself interested in soccer during World Cup or Euro time.  And like millions of other red-blooded North American males, I love football too.

There's a fascinating book called Next Man Up, written by John Feinstein, in which the author was given nearly unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to a full season of an NFL team -- the 2004 Baltimore Ravens.  The title is a reference to the philosophy that permeates football teams when it comes to injuries.  Here's how Feinstein prefaces the book and the reason for the title:

"Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, and every NFL team prepares constantly for the likelihood -- the certainty -- that even franchise players can go down at any time.  Someone new must always be ready, trained, and primed to step in at a moment's notice.

 "In the NFL there is only one sure thing:  every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up."

In a football application, it's a cruel yet efficient philosophy.  Football is a game in which a hundred moving parts interact with one another on any given play from scrimmage, and even a dozen small individual failures within a play can still produce a successful team result, if the other team has more of those individual failures on that particular snap of the ball.  So outside of some key positions, a starter can be injured, and his small part in the offensive or defensive scheme can be assumed by an inferior player. You can lose a starting left offensive guard, and his backup might not be as capable, but you can adjust blocking schemes to ensure the center and the left tackle help him out in pass protection.  You can lose a first string wide receiver, and adjust by running the ball a bit more, or throwing more passes to other receivers.  There will be an impact on team performance, but the system is designed to absorb that impact. 

The difference in baseball, of course, is that every play on the field really only involves a few people at a time.  The outcome of each -- or more pertinently, the aggregate outcome of all of them over the season -- can be more significantly affected by the skill levels of those involved.  That is to say, 550 plate appearances from Jose Reyes are far more likely to contribute more to the success over the course of the year than the same number given to, say, Pete Kozma.  An entire area of study has in fact been dedicated to understanding and quantifying these contributions.

Replacing regular, outstanding contributors in baseball is tough, because not only are you replacing them with inferior players -- usually of the dreaded "replacement level" variety -- but the players remaining can't just cover off the gap created.  Those teammates are what they are and they contribute what they contribute.   You can't game plan your way around a significant injury by putting a greater emphasis on other talent.  You still only get to bat once out of every nine spots, and balls are still going to get hit to the area that's been vacated by the injured starter.

So what do you do if you're a baseball general manager to prepare for the eventuality of injuries to your starters?  You can't stockpile first-tier players three deep at every position throughout your organization.  Your replacement players are, more often than not, going to be replacement level.

But what you can do is endeavour to make sure the rest of the roster is as thoroughly well-constructed as possible.  You can build in versatility in the infield with veterans, perhaps not all-stars but solid major leaguers, who have played all positions in case one goes down.  You can make savvy free agent signings and secure contract extensions for run producers in the heart of your lineup, ensuring that in the largest number of spots in the order as possible, players will be getting on base, hitting for power and scoring runs.  You can remain vigilant on the waiver wire, and execute cheap acquisitions of players that can potentially fill a key role either temporarily or longer term.  You can accumulate the kind of prospect depth that allows you to trade for proven, high-level pitching talent, making your starting rotation superior to most competitors and putting your team in a better position to win games day after day.  You can bring in a manager who understands how to maximize the impact of the talent you've assembled, with smart use of platoons and the bullpen.

You're not going to prevent the worst from happening, but you can prepare for it and insulate your team from its worst potential effects.  You control what you can control, and plan for what's quantifiable.

And then, at a certain point, you leave it in the hands of the team you've assembled.  You count on what isn't quantifiable -- the mental strength to play three months without a key offensive catalyst and thrive under the challenge; the drive of your players to be better than they have been because now they need to be; the ingenuity of your manager to put the best shine possible on the gold he has, and spin a little bit more gold from the straw he has alongside it.

Three months without Jose Reyes is a brutal blow.  I'm not trying to sugarcoat it.  But all the things Alex Anthopoulos did right to prepare the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays for success are still, mostly, there.  This injury is exactly why, if you're going to make a serious push, you don't go halfway.

Fact or Faked: Position Battles

I'm a fan of spring training.  I really am.  It may not seem like it based on how infrequently I've turned up for my weekend blogging duties since the annual pre-season ritual has gotten underway (sorry 'bout that), but I've been enjoying the fact that there's even the most meaningless of baseball games being played in Florida and Arizona.  You can't get to the real games until you play the fake ones.

Before spring training got underway, I wrote hereabouts that there really was surprisingly little left to settle with respect to the roster that would head north for the Toronto Blue Jays.  There was the backup catcher situation to sort out, and the question of choosing between Emilio Bonifacio and Maicer Izturis as the predominant second base option.  These position battles, such as they are, have actually unfolded pretty quietly:  looks like Henry Blanco will get the nod to try and track R.A. Dickey's knuckleball every fifth day, while John Gibbons may have chosen not to answer the second base question definitively one way or the other.  Which is well within his rights, and might be the wisest course of action anyway.

There's a pertinent question to ask, though, about to what extent these position battles were ever a real thing at all.  It's entirely possible the team knew exactly what the answers to these questions would be long before the beat writers and broadcasters gathered in Dunedin started to pose them in the media.

I was listening to the second edition of "Behind the Dish", Keith Law's excellent new podcast from ESPN.com, in which he interviewed former Washington Nationals and Cleveland Indians manager Manny Acta.  Acta had some very interesting things to say about the number of roster decisions most organizations have basically predetermined prior to spring, if not carved in stone, then at least written out in permanent Magic Marker.

The truth is there are very few real competitions in spring training, to hear Acta tell it.  He wasn't revealing some earth-shattering behind-the-scenes truth, but his discussion of organizational expectations of players coming into camp went beyond the standard "spring stats don't mean shit" that we all understand intuitively already.

Acta also talked a bit about the difference between coaches making mechanical changes with a player who is more certain to be on the Opening Day roster, as opposed to one who is legitimately fighting for a spot on the team.  In short, if teams want a clear picture of what a player can do against various qualities of competition in camp -- from major league talent to A-ball fodder -- they tend to leave his mechanics alone.  This gives the organizations a sense of where he truly is in his development, and it's fairer to the player, since he's not struggling with consistency due to tweaks to his batting stance or pitching stride.

Bearing all of this in mind, even if most players in major league camp can't really do anything to play themselves into the opening day roster, can they do enough to play their way off of it?  Or, to make it more applicable to the media narrative du jour, what's it all mean for Ricky Romero vs. J.A. Happ for that fifth rotation spot?

Romero has struggled badly in spring, after a horrible 2012 season.  Yet if you follow the Acta logic -- which actually makes some sense to me -- if Romero were really in a battle for his big-league spot, most organizations wouldn't start monkeying around with his delivery.  In fact, the logic would say the exact opposite:  it's because Romero's spot is relatively safe that the organization isn't worried about the results he's putting up while he works through his mechanical adjustments against minor leaguers on the back fields.

Now, granted, the mechanical intervention with Romero is coming awfully late in camp.  And while the question of whether there's a fifth starter battle might not have generated an actual fire yet, there's a helluva lot of smoke.  In any case, I found Acta's insights interesting if you're really looking for another way to analyze this from a distance (or over-analyze, if you like).

Even as an anonymous blogger literally writing this in his basement, I don't have the guts to make a solid prediction one way or the other, but gun to my head, I still think Ricky Romero is going to get some rope at the back end of the rotation.  While it may look to the outside world like he's put his rotation spot in jeopardy and he's got a week to put a stranglehold back on it, it's just as likely that the decision to bring him north has already been made. 

Playing Nice With Others, Part II

Last year, Bryan O'Connor at the Replacement Level Baseball Blog asked me and three other bloggers who follow AL East teams to submit a little preview of the season as part of a collaborative effort to get a handle on the division as a whole.  We're doing it again, so I hope you don't mind if I use this space to take a short break from Tao's commendable 37 Jays in 37-ish Days series to take a look from 30,000 feet instead.  Zip over to Bryan's blog for the whole thing in the days ahead.  In the meantime, here's what I came up with for the Jays in 2013.


What is your team’s ceiling? What has to go right for your team to win the AL East?

It's an odd feeling for Blue Jays fans to consider the ceiling of their chosen team and realize that for the first time in, oh, 15 years, that ceiling is a season of 90 to 95 wins and an American League East title.  It's an odd feeling because for the last decade and a half, the best fans could do was hope for a bunch of things to break just right, and if they did, then maybe -- MAYBE -- the team could sniff the post-season.

You have to live north of the border to have a real sense of just how different things feel about the 2013 Blue Jays.  Sportscasts and talk radio shows throughout the fall and winter are usually dominated by hockey, whether it's the NHL or lower-level junior competition.  Baseball is the afterthought.  I don't need to recap all the acquisitions and departures for you, but not only did Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos completely revamp the major league roster this off-season; he did it in a way that made a largely dormant fan base sit up and take notice.  People are paying attention to the Blue Jays again in Canada.

Sure, during the 20-year dry spell we've endured, Jays fans have seen big names come to town before -- Roger Clemens, AJ Burnett, Frank Thomas -- but it never felt like it was part of a real plan to solidify the major league roster in a way that was intended to do anything more than just get some more butts in seats for a while.  This off-season has appeared to be more of the culmination of a plan, such as it is, than previous efforts that seemed a lot more like flying by the seat of our pants.

Yet for all the talk about how Anthopoulos made his move for 2013 sensing weakness in New York, Boston, Tampa and Baltimore, he's been the first to tell anyone who ascribes that motive to him that they're off base.  The East will be an enormously tough division in which to put up a 90 win season.

To do it, the Jays have to stay healthy.  This seems obvious to the point of cliché , but Jays fans are pretty neurotic when it comes to injury after watching 60% of the starting rotation go down in a five day period last summer, watching a rogue's gallery of relievers parade through the bullpen and losing the likes of Jose Bautista and Brett Lawrie for extended periods.  But health won't be enough.  They can't afford for many players on the roster to take steps backward.  A team that gets the best of R.A Dickey, Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, and Melky Cabrera, just to name a few, will be competitive.  A repeat power performance from Edwin Encarnacion and another MVP-caliber season from Jose Bautista would help immensely too.  But none of those things are certain.  They have to play the games, they tell me, and you don't get any pennants for winning the off-season.

What’s the floor for your team this season? What has to go wrong for them to miss the playoffs?

Perhaps it's 20 years of having cautious pessimism drilled into me when it comes to them, but despite the hype, there actually doesn't seem like that much at all that has to go wrong for the Jays to miss the playoffs and hit a floor of another 4th place finish.  Some of that relates to the quality of the division, but some of it relates to lingering questions about the team.

There's a flamethrowing bullpen -- made up of a lot of guys who've only been successful for extremely short periods, if at all.

There's precocious talent in Colby Rasmus and Brett Lawrie -- talent that hasn't burst onto the scene the way many would have hoped in their respective tenures of fewer than two full seasons in Toronto.

There's a bit of pop in the DH and catcher positions with Adam Lind and J.P. Arencibia -- but serious concerns about their ability to get on base.

There's a core of upper-tier talent on the roster -- a core that's barely played together, to say nothing of the fact that many members of that core haven't played in the American League at all.

Negative outcomes  in more than a couple of those little dichotomies could make all the pre-season love for the Blue Jays turn sour in a big hurry.

How do you see the division playing out? Is there one team you’re particularly afraid of?

This might be the first time in a long time that I've actually been afraid of the Yankees, Red Sox or Rays, because I'm far more accustomed to being resigned to their superiority and anticipating tough games and a losing record against them.  Now I'm scared of all of them (maybe even the Orioles) because I feel like they can very easily take a sledgehammer to my hopes and dreams of post-season baseball whenever they meet for a series.

But spring is when we're supposed to be optimistic, so I'll make my prediction of a first place finish for the Blue Jays in 2013, with 93 wins.  I'll pick the Yankees second, the Rays third, Red Sox fourth and Orioles fifth.  Fortune favours the bold.

Spring Depth

This is happening.  Actual baseball players are playing actual baseball on actual baseball diamonds.  Now, those players may be major leaguers half-assing it in the early spring, or minor league scrubs whole-assing it with no hope of making an Opening Day roster.  But it's baseball all the same, and it's a glorious thing.

Besides, there are at least a few things are already in mid-season form, like Prince Fielder's bat-flip, for instance.  Is it important that one of the premier sluggers in the game zeroed in on a Brandon Morrow offering and lit him up like a senior citizen's birthday cake?  Of course not.  To me, little tidbits of entertainment like these are the things that makes the otherwise tedious spring training experience more fun.  Even in the earliest games, we get a glimpse of the kind of best-on-best match-ups that keep us watching through the dog days.

Of course, we also get to see some of the kinds of plays that will eventually get real prospects into the majors one day, like Anthony Gose robbing Austin Jackson of at least one extra base, if not two or three.  Seeing Gose zoom straight back off the crack of the bat and track that fly ball perfectly got me thinking about depth on the Blue Jays roster for 2013.

While it's a given that Gose is slated for AAA Buffalo to start the year -- I mean, they aren't even pretending otherwise -- it bears repeating that he racked up a surprising 189 above-replacement-level plate appearances in the big leagues in 2012.  Even the most optimistic Colby Rasmus boosters (and I count myself among them) have to feel more comfortable knowing such a capable defender is available in case he struggles or takes a step backward.  With what should be a more potent lineup in place for 2013, even if Gose brings a bat that... um, let's say "needs maturing", he provides enviable depth in the outfield.

Add to Gose the fairly canny signing of Ryan Langerhans (despite his apparent maiming of Mike McCoy in an outfield collision on Saturday), bringing Adam Loewen back into the fold as a 1B/OF, and hell, maybe even Lance Zawadzki , and you have the makings of a respectable set of AAA outfielders who could be called on in a pinch as a fourth outfielder for -- picking a number out the blue here -- 15 days.

(EDIT: only took me a day or so after posting to realize Zawadzki is actually an infielder, but the broader point about depth in Buffalo stands.  Plus, Moises Sierra is still a thing that exists, so I guess you could throw him into the AAA mix of outfielders.)

Speaking of depth, I might be overreacting to a pretty minor feature of the defensive lineup John Gibbons fielded on Saturday at Joker Marchant Stadium, but I was intrigued by his decision to start the game with Emilio Bonifacio at shortstop and Maicer Izturis at second base, and even more intrigued when he flip-flopped the two of them a few innings in.

We're not quite in Tampa Bay's shortstop-at-every-position territory just yet, but it speaks well of the potential versatility of the infielders available that least three of them can play passably at the toughest spot.  If the withered corpse of Mark DeRosa can log a few innings a week at third, second or a corner outfield spot, there should be more than enough defensive options for Gibbons to spell Brett Lawrie, Jose Bautista, and Jose Reyes, maybe give them a half-day off as the DH, and keep them fresh over the 162-game grind.

What To Expect When You're Expecting Spring Training To Start

You all know me as a person who steers clear of hyperbole, so you know I'm serious when I tell you there's 23 feet of snow in my yard and the idea that baseball is starting soon is the only thing keeping me from an irrevocable descent, Jack Torrance-like, into despondency and madness.

Alright, so maybe it's not as bad as all that.  Regardless, with Spring Training opening this week as pitchers and catchers report over the next several days, it's a bit dispiriting that without the means to jet off to South Florida and catch a few games, the rest of February and March are likely to be only slightly less baseball-free than the last few months have been.

That's not to say I'm not at least mildly excited.  There's plenty of time in May and June to fret about what the real world brings us, but in the meantime, Jays fans haven't had this much to look forward to in many years.  And one of the best things about spring is that it's not a time for tempered expectations or appeals to reason and realism -- even if the entire exercise is usually considerably less interesting once it starts than it felt like it was going to be in the period prior.  

One of the big differences in Dunedin this year as compared to years past is the fact that when it comes to competing for space on the plane going north, there aren't many open questions.  For instance, last season, John Farrell (bah! *spits*) was forced to piece together a starting rotation nobody truly expected to see when camp got underway, including a start from Joel Carreno in the third game of the season when Brett Cecil didn't make the Opening Day roster.  In 2013, if there are any questions about who will comprise the Jays' five-man rotation as the calendar turns to April, something will have gone dreadfully, horribly wrong.

Similarly, on the offensive side, any remaining areas of uncertainty relate more to the style of the roster than the substance.   The infield and outfield are largely set, save for sorting out the backup catcher battle and the Bonifacizturis situation at second base.  And as much as I'd have liked to see it, a right-handed DH platoon partner for Adam Lind is not walking through that door, so the approach to assembling the starting nine against left-handers still remains to be seen.  I've been keen on the notion of cycling some of the more capable right-handed bats -- Jose Bautista, Brett Lawrie, Rajai Davis -- through the DH spot on those occasions as a half-day off.  The more flexible makeup of the bench would allow for it defensively, and I think it makes sense.

With all these questions mostly answered, though, and the prospect pipeline not gushing with as much must-see talent in the big league camp this year, it could make for -- dare I say it? -- a boring Spring Training this year.  But boring works.  Boring is good.  Embrace the boring, I say.

Besides, even a boring Spring Training is better than nothing.  The snow and the cold are starting to get to me.

Things That Happened More Than Twenty Years Ago

Alright, so maybe it's been three weeks since I've put some baseball thoughts together for inclusion on this here blog.  I haven't been particularly engaged in baseball comings and goings of baseball for the 2013 season lately, spoiled as we Jays fans have been with getting so much of the important heavy lifting in improving the roster so early in the off-season.  Notwithstanding a Henry Blanco here or a Mark DeRosa there, it does look like we're into hurry-up-and-wait time for the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays.

And hey, what better way to fill in those dismal winter weeks leading to Opening Day than with full-blown nostalgia and pining for the past?  Via the 24-hour news feed that doubles as an excuse to display photographs of our breakfasts, Twitter, we learned today that our benevolent corporate overlords at Rogers Sportsnet will follow up on the apparently successful showing of the 1992 World Series before Christmas, by running the 1993 Fall Classic on the network at some point next month.

UPDATE!  INTRIGUE!!  CONSPIRACY???

The tweet cited above from Jamie Campbell of Sportsnet has been deleted.  What does it mean?  Maybe there's something planned but not confirmed over at the network, or maybe Jamie Campbell was speaking out of turn, or maybe the Illuminati have decided that giving Blue Jays fans too much excitement at one time would be detrimental to the New World Order they're bent on establishing.  Whatever the circumstances, it's made this blog post moot.  Go ahead and throw your own conspiracy theories into the mix in the comments.

Maybe it was because I was a year older, or maybe it was because the '93 team had the benefit of being defending champions and the resulting national attention that created at the time.  Or maybe it was because the characters and the moments of the '93 series were more compelling.  But my memories of '93 are much, much more vivid than they were of '92.

I was frankly a bit surprised by how little of the '92 series rung a bell with me when I watched them again this winter, apart from my visceral hatred of Otis Nixon and all he represented.  But 1993 was different.  There was Rickey Henderson and Paul Molitor.  Tony Fernandez was back.  There was the opposition -- the ragtag Phillies of John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra and Mitch Williams -- who stood out far more to me than the nondescript Sid Breams and Damon Berryhills of the '92 Braves.  And of course, there was the iconic Joe Carter home run to end it all.  So much more of '93 stands out to me.

In any case, if you're going to fill the frigid February days or nights with programming that isn't hockey or basketball, you could do a hell of a lot worse than re-running the 1993 World Series.  This is particularly true if, say, you're a network that has a certain vested interest in ratcheting up interest for an upcoming Jays season and might be looking for a natural platform through which to get potential viewers excited about some big acquisitions that are going to cost a pretty penny more than the team has spent in years past.  But maybe I'm being too cynical.

Chances are, you'll know exactly where to find me when the series is re-broadcast.  And some of the best fun I've had on Twitter recently has been while those '92 games were on.  It's been a great warm-up for if (when?) we get our playoff games this fall.

I'll save the analysis for after the games are over... er, again.  Or maybe I'll just watch and reminisce.  But if we're stuck in the dead of winter with no new baseball, I'll settle for old baseball.

Hockey Is Back, And Maybe We Should Care Or Maybe Not

Addendum after posting: The Org Wife points out that in this photo, the umpire looks a lot like Joe Paterno. I don't know if it's him, but if so, my inclusion of him was unintentional. I just liked the shot of Gretzky playing baseball.

I used to be an enormous hockey fan.  Or to be more accurate, I was at least an enormous fan of my favourite NHL and major junior teams.  But nearly a year ago, I posted a piece about how getting older seemed to have made me a bigger fan of baseball than I was of other sports like hockey.  As an Edmonton Oilers fan, I had a rejuvenation of interest in the sport in the wake of their amazing 2006 playoff run, but since then, the game and I grew apart somewhat (I blame Ty Conklin).  The space between us got even wider as the NHL lockout  killed off the better part of the 2012-13 season.

Unless you've been living in your tool shed with no television or internet access, you'll know the heretofore-intractable labour dispute between the NHL and its Players' Association came to an end this weekend.  It was the first news that greeted me when I woke up this morning, and even after wall-to-wall media coverage since, my reaction hasn't changed a great deal from when I heard it:  stoic indifference.  Everyone sort of knew a resolution was coming soon.  The fact it came Saturday night/Sunday morning didn't put an exclamation point on the proceedings.  Not much really changed for me, although I realize I'm probably in the minority of Canadian sports fans in that regard.

Now, you might be asking: why is he mentioning all this on what is ostensibly a baseball blog about the Toronto Blue Jays?  Well, it's not like nothing has changed.  For the first time in I don't know how long -- 20 years, I guess? -- the Toronto Blue Jays were the most compelling story in the Canadian sports scene in the months of October, November and December.  Great things were happening with my favourite baseball team, and with the hockey media milling around the lobbies of New York hotels writing stories about make-whole provisions and disclaimers of interest, people were noticing the Jays. It was fun to feel special for a while.

The state of play today, in terms of media exposure and fan interest for the Jays, is different than it was yesterday now that the lockout has been resolved (and to a lesser extent, with the NFL playoffs underway).  Even with the game-changing moves the team has made this off-season, they face stiff competition for eyes, ears and dollars from a finite pool.  Even if you believe the odd rumblings from fans saying they won't come back -- and no doubt, the NHL has some relationship-mending to do with its fans -- I firmly believe Canadian support isn't going to see a substantial downturn.  Hockey will always be king of the Canadian castle in the competition for sports fans here.

I don't mean to be a Negative Nancy here.  To the extent we can measure these things or have access to data on them at all, the Jays are going in the right direction in terms of fan interest, ticket sales, TV ratings and revenue.  Anecdotally, I can go back to my experience when the team barnstormed through Ottawa last winter and know that interest and support for the team, and for baseball in general, is alive and well here.  Today, 12 months later, you can look up the Twitter timeline of our old friend The Ack in Winnipeg to see that the story is playing out similarly on the frozen prairies this weekend -- big lineups, lots of young and old fans.

The people heading to shopping malls to meet Jose Bautista and other Jays aren't all just looky-loos, and they're not all hardcore fans either.  Regardless of their dedication level, the trick now is to keep them and add more in the face of stiffened competition -- and with the off-season they've had, this team is going in the right direction to do that too.

Squibbers Up The Line

The Broadcast Booth:  It won't quite be the same listening to a game on the radio without Alan Ashby in the booth along with Jerry Howarth.  I'm a massive Ashby fan, and Houston is lucky to get him back.  Nobody is going to fill his shoes in the broadcast booth. My personal wish, though, is that Mike Wilner gets a crack at a more prominent in-game role with Ashby gone.  I realize Wilner rubs many the wrong way, and not everyone is a fan, but he's done a difficult on-air job for a long time, and has paid his media dues.  There's a lot to be said for that.  And while it's easy to rag on media personalities (fun too!), it's not easy to go onto the radio or television and be interesting and original a couple hundred times a year.

Oliver:  It's a distasteful bit of business Darren Oliver is engaged in right now with the Jays, isn't it?  I've read plenty on the subject and still don't know whose side I'm on (and if Twitter has taught me anything, it's that we absolutely must take sides on every issue. There is no middle ground).  I don't think the team will trade him to Texas just because he asked, which leaves retirement or a raise.  Part of me says Alex Anthopoulos should tell him to go pound sand, and run J.A. Happ and Brett Cecil out as the lefty relievers to start the season alongside Sergio Santos, Casey Janssen, Brad Lincoln, Steve Delabar and Esmil Rogers -- with Aaron Loup and Jeremy Jeffress a short car ride away.  But then sometimes I think this instead:



Put it this way:  whatever Oliver gets at the end of this -- retirement or a raise -- he'll deserve it.

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.

Music City Mundanity

For as many years back as I can remember, the annual Major League Baseball Winter Meetings were something I anticipated with a sense of both optimism and dread.  Optimism, because even if the actual track record says otherwise, the impression that the meetings are where the off-season dealing takes place can give the fan looking forward to roster improvements a reason to think they may be coming soon.  Dread, because a lot of the time (at least for the Toronto Blue Jays), the rumours and speculation flying around the Twitter-sphere and whatever southern town was hosting the meetings usually ended up bearing little to no fruit for my team of choice.

As the buzz around the team confirms, though, this year is a little different, with so much of the off-season dealing seemingly already done and roster holes fairly nicely filled going into 2013.  Alex Anthopoulos has already been a busier GM than most would be in an entire off-season, in keeping with his well-cultivated industry persona as a enthusiastic, thorough, and diligent baseball man.  But it's that same persona that leads most to believe he isn't about to coast into Nashville this week just to sit in a corner booth at the Bluebird Cafe, sip Jim Beam and pat himself on the back.  Most of the flapping jaws and twittering thumbs that feed the baseball rumour mill from November through March believe that AA isn't done, and that there are at the very least details left to attend to.  So what could our man be up to in Music City this week?

More Pitching

Much to AA's credit, the scrambling for major-league bullpen arms that is likely to preoccupy some of his colleagues is not on his to-do list.  But more pitchers that can carry a larger load than the 60, 70 or 80 innings the team would ideally ask from its confirmed stable of relievers would remain a welcome addition.

Much of the talk of starting depth has boiled down to whether the team can land an arm that would push J.A. Happ to 6th-starter status.  But slipping into AA's brain for just a minute, I don't think he would be entirely dissatisfied opening the season with Happ in the rotation.  I have a feeling Anthopoulos acquired Happ for a reason, and that he has been keen on him for a long time, if the rumours we heard around the time of the Roy Halladay trade have even a kernel of truth to them.  And frankly, at this point, are there that many reasonably-priced pitchers out there, at least in the free agent pool, that would without question be upgrades on Happ?  I suppose it depends on what you'd consider to be a reasonable price, but with the payroll the team has already added, I'm guessing they're shopping at Dollarama for now, as opposed to Holt Renfrew.

That doesn't preclude another out-of-nowhere trade going down that brings back that fifth member of the 2013 rotation (and perhaps beyond).  Speculation persists that Toronto matches up well with the Mets in a potential deal for National League Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey, for instance.  I think the uncertainty about whether Josh Johnson will be a Blue Jay beyond next season might preclude the team from acquiring another pitcher who comes with some-assembly-required from a contract point of view, however.

Besides, we need look no further than the words that actually came out of the GM's mouth in the above-linked article, where he says that he's more likely to be looking for Buffalo-type depth via the minor-league free agent route, as an insurance policy against injury to the current batch of Johnson, Happ, Brandon Morrow, Ricky Romero, and Mark Buerhle (not necessarily in that order).  If there's anything one might expect as a signing out of Nashville's meetings this week, I'd bet on an Aaron Laffey type like that.

Platoon Partner at DH

To put things charitably, Adam Lind has been not good against left-handed pitching for the better part of his career.  I mean, over the last couple years, he hasn't exactly been a superstar against right-handers either, with sub-.800 OPS numbers in 2011 and 2012.  But barring a more expensive 1B/DH acquisition before spring, he's notionally still penciled in as the every-day guy at one of those two positions.  I'll restate the blatantly bleedin' obvious here and say that the words "Adam Lind" and "every day" shouldn't find themselves in the same sentence anymore, and having him face left-handed pitching in anything but an emergency should be avoided at all costs.

Thankfully, with the re-installation of John Gibbons as manager, there's evidence that the smart use of platoons will once again enter the strategic picture in Toronto.  Now they just need the personnel to make it happen.  But cheap lefty-mashers don't necessarily grow on trees -- while there are some out there who could be useful, those that are most useful tend to get snapped up for seemingly more prominent roles (Jonny Gomes) or have questions about age, health and/or bat speed (Andruw Jones).  Scott Hairston would seem to be a reasonable fit to partner with Lind in the DH spot and take some reps in the outfield occasionally.

But it's also not as though there aren't right-handed bats on the roster as currently constructed that would make the old "half-day off" routine a viable route for Gibbons to go when facing southpaws.  The added positional and switch-hitting versatility that the acquisitions of Melky Cabrera, Emilio Bonifacio and Maicer Izturis bring could make it feasible, for instance, for the likes of Jose Bautista or Brett Lawrie to cycle through the DH spot, with one of Bonifacio and Rajai Davis moving to the outfield, or one of Bonficacio and Izturis moving to third base.

All of this is to say that there's really very little pressure for Anthopoulos to get something done in Nashville beyond poking around for what might be available and checking on price tags.  It's a nice situation for him to be in, I'm sure, and it's definitely a change of pace for fans like me.

A Whole New World

Well, then.  We've had ourselves quite a couple weeks as Blue Jays fans, haven't we?

Between the Maicer Izturis signing, and then THE TRADE (TM) and most recently the Melky Cabrera signing, your humble correspondent has barely had time to catch his breath.  There's been lots of smart, passionate and well-written stuff put out there -- both online and in the good old MSM -- about what's been going on, and I don't want to rehash it too much here.

So without getting too philosophical about what's transpired, and what might still be coming down the pipeline, I have a few short thoughts.

I've been a fan of this team for a long time, but only for the last, say, six or seven years have I followed personnel changes closely enough to form strong opinions about them.  I was a much younger man in the early 1990s, and the significance of the Joe Carter/Roberto Alomar trade, or the Paul Molitor or David Cone or Dave Winfield acquisitions, or the others that turned a good team into a great one, were mostly lost on me.  I was happy that my team was getting better and ecstatic that they won two championships, but I didn't spend much time thinking about how all that was happening, at what cost, or about whether it would last.  I was mostly thinking about who might be able to get me booze for the weekend without getting carded.

Now, I'm an older, more dedicated, (I like to think) more informed, and more opinionated fan than I was in those days.  I've tried to recognize the team for what it was for several years:  a usually good, never great, fairly entertaining bunch that kept my attention and made me appreciate baseball a little more all the time.  At the same time, I understood and accepted that there was a difference between the way they approached the business of the game and the way teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and other big spenders did.  I could still enjoy them for what they were.

The past seven to ten days may not have completely turned that whole paradigm on its head, but it's as close as we've seen to that happening.  Whether the Toronto Blue Jays, and their corporate ownership at Rogers, now intend to remain a top-5 or top-10 payroll in baseball for perpetuity remains to be seen.  But for the time being, the franchise has cast their lot with the big boys.

The expectations are different now, and they might not live up to them.  And even if they don't, we'd all be well advised to think back to how we felt this week -- this dizzying blend of optimism, anxiousness, hope and a bit of fear -- and remember that it was still about as good as we've felt about this team for roughly a generation.

Best week ever?  Best week ever.

"Hello, Jays Shop? I'd Like to Return This Mike Aviles Jersey."

Hey, remember last week, when I looked ahead to how a new manager might make use of a player like Mike Aviles, holding out hope for some creativity and ingenuity with respect to platoons and defense and what-not?  Yeah, never mind about all that.
 
Alex Anthopoulos flipped Aviles quicker than a downtown Toronto real estate speculator, albeit perhaps with less expectation of profit.  Any added middle infield flexibility Aviles' presence on the roster represented evaporated quickly in favour of yet another hard-throwing righty reliever in Esmil Rogers, who (for now) joins Steve Delabar, Brad Lincoln, and some others of that ilk in a somewhat crowded bullpen.

It's a curious deal for a bunch of reasons, the first of which is related to the deal that brought Aviles to Toronto in the first place.  I remain of the view that getting a viable, versatile middle infield piece in return for a manager with a middling track record was a bit of a coup for Anthopoulos.  In fact, the GM himself seemed to envision some kind of 2013 role for Aviles too, based on his comments to the media after the trade was finalized. Yet here we are a week later with the same questions about second base that were there at the end of the season. There's obviously a lot of off-season left, with time to answer the infield questions and others, and we can't know which players the organization might be targeting as potential fits.  But it's certainly frustrating as a fan to see a roster gap partially dealt with, and then thrown back into uncertainty within a span of days.  And as Colin Wyers of Baseball Prospectus pointed out on Twitter yesterday, while two data points don't make a trend, this practice of appearing to win a trade, only to quickly move the most useful return piece elsewhere for a relief pitcher, does look to be a bit of an Anthopoulos specialty. 

If all that wasn't troubling enough, I had an even more uncomfortable thought yesterday as I mentally digested this deal:  what does it mean for Sergio Santos?  Or more to the point, is it possible that the team remains pessimistic about Santos coming back healthy enough in 2013 to be effective in the late innings?  Santos is surely Exhibit A for why accumulating bullpen depth is a good thing, because you never know how hard-throwing, maximum effort pitchers who tend to find careers in relief will hold up.  Santos certainly has the potential, as well as a short but impressive track record, to be a shutdown reliever for the Jays.  But shoulder surgeries are a tricky business, and despite reports that he'll have no problem being ready for Spring Training, it's interesting that Anthopoulos continues to accumulate right-handed relief regardless.  I mean, maybe I'm being paranoid and Santos will show up to camp buckling knees with a slider and blowing a fastball past batters like nothing ever happened.  I'd love if that were the case.  It's just... does that really seem like the most likely scenario?  And isn't it better to prepare for the possibility that he might not be the same pitcher again?

If there's a saving grace in this whole business, it's that the Jays are rid of Yan Gomes, a player for whom my dislike grew with every appearance.  I don't have anything against the guy personally, and he seems like an earnest enough ballplayer.  But frankly, there was no reason to think Gomes had a future as even a borderline utility player for the Blue Jays, and I'm relieved that the organization will no longer have to deal with the temptation to pretend he might.  At whichever positions he might have been expected to fill in, I truly think the team can find plenty of other options who can do the job more effectively at the same price.  I wish him well, but packaging him in a deal for a living, breathing major-league baseball player of any kind was probably a best-case scenario.

Farrell And Everything After

Photo from the wonderful @james_in_to. More of his great stuff here.

I had counted myself among the horde who didn't believe for a second that if and when the Toronto Blue Jays traded their manager, John Farrell, to the Boston Red Sox, they would receive anything more than an above-average prospect in return.  Barring the inclusion of a higher-level player from Toronto's side, I was fairly certain that a major-league player would not be coming back north of the border.

Here we are more than a week later, and things obviously shook out much differently than I had expected they would.  Frankly, I'm pretty happy with how things transpired.  I didn't actively dislike John Farrell as a manager, really, but I also didn't put him on any kind of pedestal either.  For two years, he was just kinda there, inspiring mostly indifference in me, despite my protestations on Twitter against his daily inclusion of Adam Lind as his cleanup hitter or some other passing transgression.

The trade, in which Toronto acquired Mike Aviles in return for their erstwhile skipper, opens up a couple of key questions for GM Alex Anthopoulos and the rest of the organization to address (to go with a pile of others the team will need to address this off-season, but we'll get to those later in the fall and winter).  The answers to those key questions are going to have a material impact on the approaches the team might take in 2013 and beyond -- although those impacts might not be immediately evident.

The first question, obviously, is who will replace Farrell as manager.  Anthopoulos has had one crack at picking a manager and landed, after much careful consideration, on Farrell.  Along with that choice came a particular approach to in-game strategy, clubhouse management, and all the other things a manager can influence.  Now, if the Road to Contention in the AL East were a video game, this represents a chance to at least re-start the current level.  You may have to start again a little further back than you were, but at least you have a sense what's coming at you and what you did wrong last time. Picking another manager now, after an abbreviated stint like Farrell had, gives Anthopoulos an opportunity to re-assess what it is he wants from his manager.

If there really was a disconnect between Farrell and Anthopoulos (I'm not sure there was), or if Anthopoulos has a firmer idea now of what kind of manager he needs than he might have had the first time around (I have to think he does), the GM will now get to pick a manager that he expects will fit his vision, strategy and resources better.  But there's still a huge element of guesswork involved, since it's not until the manager is in the job -- and has a roster to work with -- that results will even start to be evident.

The new manager's approach will become evident not through an introductory news conference, but rather through the dribs and drabs of information that show themselves through the course of a season.  One of those bits of data will be the way the manager utilizes a player like the freshly-arrived Aviles.

Here's a reasonably versatile middle-infield type, with a little bit of pop and a little bit of speed, and a sizable platoon split in which he's a career .344 wOBA in his career against lefties, versus a .297 against righties.

Could Aviles play every day at second base or at shortstop with numbers like those?  Sure, I guess.

Would he make a better strict platoon partner for, say, a Daniel Murphy, who bats from the other side and hits righties better than lefties, and who has been reported to be on the trading block for some time, including this past summer?  Or perhaps as a utility guy, filling in where and when his particular skill set matches best -- like starting against lefties, pinch-hitting against them when they come out of the bullpen, and being an important asset in case of injury?  Absolutely yes.

I'll concede that to use Aviles in such a way would necessitate some other upgrades to the roster in the middle infield, in particular at second base, with everything else remaining equal (that is to say, with Yunel Escobar remaining a Blue Jay or a reasonable facsimile of a starting shortstop taking his place).  That's going to be on the General Manager's shoulders.

In the optimum situation, though, I hope a new manager will be the kind of guy who isn't necessarily glued to an every-day 1 through 9 in the batting order and in the field.  I'm not talking about Joe Maddon's mad scientist routine here, which despite the accolades it gets, can also get in the way of itself.  But given this team's resources, and the talent it has now and can reasonably be expected to add in areas like the middle infield, it wouldn't hurt at all to show a bit more creativity where it's warranted.

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:

@the_org_guy Since @taoofstieb is a dad it inspired me. Who on the jays would be the best dad, worst dad, craziest dad, and so on etc...
— Chris Foster (@CFoster92) October 11, 2012

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:

@the_org_guy Who's going to play 2nd base next year?
— Adam Padfield (@adamtherealtor) October 11, 2012

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:

@the_org_guy Would you be okay w/ AA trading away pretty much all top prospects to get good at LF, 2B, DH, and P x 2 to go for it in 2013?
— Matt Sullivan (@sporkless) October 11, 2012

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:

@the_org_guy you think AA will trade away Lansing guys/Marisnick for a major leaguer? Or wait them out to develop?
— Jack Cekovic (@JackCekovic) October 11, 2012

@the_org_guy Big 3 in #Lancing - The #Jays future or #trade bait? #TBJ #Lugnuts And how do I get my grass its greenest?#lawncare
— Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson7) October 11, 2012

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_org_guy oooo! i need help on what i should put on my lawn now, so it's in good shape in the spring! #notjoking
— Luke DeWitt (@whatadewitt) October 11, 2012

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:

@the_org_guy Guitar Town, Copperhead Road or I Feel Alright?
— D.C. McCloskey (@_LeftField) October 11, 2012

and @NicholasDeRosa asks:

@the_org_guy how come telephone road wasn't more popular? It's an awesome tune
— Nicholas DeRosa (@NicholasDerosa) October 11, 2012

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.

Angst Now, or Angst Later?

The last time I blogged hereabouts, I was railing against the dying of the light, refusing to go gentle into that good night, swearing I would enjoy the last few weeks of the Blue Jays' disastrous 2012 season.  It's been a challenge, friends.

Since then, out of thirteen games, they've won... [counts]... TWO?  Two goddamn wins?  Yes, that's apparently accurate.  I've tried to focus on the positive -- the settling in of Adeiny Hechavarria, the emerging adequacy of Aaron Loup, I'm sure there are one or two others -- but losing sucks.  The fight to finish fourth in the division ahead of the equally discombobulated Boston Red Sox has been as dreary an endeavour as you might expect.

I think it's jealousy that I'm feeling, actually.  I've taken to cursing the improbable Orioles every time they pull another extra-inning win out of their hindquarters, because I refuse to believe the talent they've assembled there is better than what Toronto has on a position by position basis, yet there they are, challenging for the division lead in late September.  We haven't seen that for two decades as Jays fans, and to see another long-suffering AL East franchise enjoy such a stretch now makes me envious.

On the plus side, though, this ugliness has probably provided me with a certain amount of objectivity I didn't have before about some players on whom decisions will need to be made in the off-season.  As a fan, I want them all to succeed, and even when they don't, I often look past their flaws or assume they can be easily rectified with some off-season coaching, adjustments, and presumably pixie dust.  But this season's struggles have led me to question whether I'd be prepared to see even some of my favourite players be moved in off-season deals if it meant an upgrade.

I think it's healthy to begin to re-evaluate which players are untouchable when it comes time to address the needs that Alex Anthopoulos has candidly identified.  Last off-season, I was singing Yunel Escobar's praises as a long-term solution at shortstop.  Now, given his dismal offensive season, to say nothing of his other issues, I wouldn't hesitate to include him in a trade (even if that's admittedly selling low on an asset).  But the Escobar situation is pretty much self-evident by now.  Who else on the roster is untouchable now -- or more to the point, who would you have considered a longshot to be traded six months ago that now might be more realistically on the block?  Does Colby Rasmus still get the benefit of the doubt after what we've seen apart from one strong month?  Is next year's 23-year-old version of Brett Lawrie more valuable as a trade chip than he will be over the long term as the Blue Jays' every day third baseman?

I expect the Jays' marketing department and/or the Mounties to show up at my door at any moment for daring to suggest that the Blue Jays could trade Brett Lawrie.  And I'm not even saying they should.  Maybe it's just this bleak, brutal September that has me thinking things are worse than they are, and players that were once seen as cornerstones could now be trade bait.  Thankfully there are people who actually get paid to think about baseball making these decisions on a more informed basis than me.

But I do believe there are some surprises in store this off-season with respect to what the team will have to give up to get those much-needed upgrades.  Some prospect-porn types on whom we've been dreaming might end up on some other team's Eastern League affiliate.  And yes, even some big-league players to whom we've become attached will change uniforms too.  The last couple of off-seasons have been filled with one kind of angst:  the kind that comes from the team perceived to be doing little or nothing to improve.  If Anthopoulos starts dealing, we might be faced with a whole different kind of angst this time around.

What Remains

Hey, a sweep's a sweep, right?

In the flickering, dying light of a season that has gone all kinds of wrong in all kinds of ways, it still puts a smile on my face when the Blue Jays can head into a division rival's stadium and take three out of three games over a weekend.  Yes, I know it's a sweep of the smouldering crater that remains of the 2012 Boston Red Sox we're talking about. But anything the Jays can do to contribute to the ridiculous soap opera that organization has become should be something we welcome unconditionally.  So give me my moment, would you?

There are some good things happening again, at least.  Brett Lawrie is back in the leadoff spot, and J.P. Arencibia is back behind the plate.  Adeiny Hechavarria and Anthony Gose look like they may have a little more to offer than they showed when they first arrived in the big leagues.  Edwin Encarnacion continues to shine.

Rather than spend the rest of September obsessing over how the team is going to fill second base and left field next year, or which starting pitchers might be available on the trade market, I'm going to try to enjoy what little baseball we have left -- Blue Jays games or otherwise.  I"m going to ENJOY watching Gose and Hechavarria trying to prove they deserve spots on the 2013 team.  I'm going to ENJOY watching Encarnacion try to finish as the home run leader.  I'm going to ENJOY watching Brandon Morrow mow down opposing lineups, and Steve Delabar striking out hapless batters with nasty splitters, and Rajai Davis wreaking havoc on the basepaths.

No, this isn't what we wanted.  Nothing can replace the excitement of a pennant or wild card race, and I don't have to remind fans how long it's been since the Jays have been a part of either of one of those.  I'm not saying it's good enough.  There's work to do on this team to get it healthy and to add the necessary pieces for it to be the playoff contender we want.  It's going to be a fun, long, interesting, infuriating, disappointing and/or redeeming off-season, depending on your perspective.

But I got leaves falling off the tree out front of my house, here, people.  Let's not forget just how close we are to not having ANY BASEBALL TO WATCH AT ALL.  They started freakin' FOOTBALL today (in case you were living under a rock or aren't on Twitter).  If it weren't for a labour dispute, the first twenty minutes of your sportscast would be dedicated to showing a couple AHL hooligans duke it out in an intra-squad Maple Leafs scrimmage.  I know that we've all clamoured for "meaningful games in September" for as long as we can remember, but try to bear in mind that meaningless games are still games, goddammit.