Out with the old and in with the older

After spending most of the day on the road and incommunicado, we were greeted at home to a frantic voicemail from Shortwaveboy, giving us the 411 on this whole Glaus for Rolen tomfoolery.

(Funny side note: we just got back from a late Christmas gift exchange with the in-laws, which included a Jays t-shirt emblazoned with Troy Glaus' name and number. Seriously. What are the odds?)

So what the hell does it all mean?

We'd tend to side with the G&M's Jeff Blair, who writes that if Rolen is healthy, this is a much better deal for the Jays. Of course, we'd place some real heavy emphasis on the IF, because Rolen's last four seasons have been plagued by a litany of injuries, both small and large. He's also two years older than Glaus, so the end of the productive portion of his career might be closer than we think. (Then again, Glaus looked like an eighty year-old on the basepaths last year, so many those two years aren't as big a deal as we think.)

There is a concern with the fact that Rolen has yapped his way out of two cities, although the two managers (Larry Bowa in Philly, Tony "Red Light" LaRussa in STL) that got under his skin were meddlesome egomaniacs, and geniuses in their own minds. And we can all agree that whatever Gibby is, he isn't any of those things.

There's many a slip between a cup and a lip, and finishing this deal off will require waiving no trade clauses and clear physicals, the latter of which would be a minor niracle for these two rustbuckets.

But thank the lord, we've got something to write about this week!

Jonesing for some ball

Last night, while staring at the ceiling, bored out of our frigging skull, our mind turned to Roy Halladay.

We pictured him striking some chump out, then walking coolly off the mound, as he's want wont to do. We pictured him swearing at himself into his glove, as he's also want wont to do.

God almighty, we're going through withdrawal. And it is still more than a month until pitchers and catchers report.

Occasionally, we'll tune into ESPN Classic to see if they might be showing a baseball game just to get us through the winter, but usually, they're running old episodes of Kiana's Flex Appeal. (Which is satisfying in its own way, but hardly a substitute.)

And seriously: Do we really need the "Pub Night" Fridays? Is there any such thing as "classic" darts?

We'd settle for Halladay throwing darts. Hmm...let's see what happens when we Google "Roy Halladay Darts".

TA-DAA!


Speaking of Pitchers and Belly Itchers
Belong to Rios basically wrote the post that we were going to write about the Jays' stockpiling of dubious bullpen arms. There's not much there to get excited about, but then again, guys like Scott Downs didn't have a ton of cachet as off-season signings, and they turned out to be pretty useful.

Blue Jays Fan of the Day: Mike Williston

Cheers to Mike of Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia for being brave enough to step into the breach, and represent the Jays in the midst of a Red Sox Nation celebration in Halifax yesterday. (Also, there's video!)

The BoSox brought the World Series trophy to the Maritimes to recognize the team's rabid fan base in the region. And believe us when we say that some of them are literally rabid, frig wha!

Our hero Mike attended the celebration (at Boston Pizza, natch) in full on retro Jays gear. And if history is any guide, we're sure that he's still wringing the beer out of it today.

Cheers to you Mike Williston for brining the noise and representing. You done us proud.

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!)

Back to the Grind

It seems like we've been out of our routine for months, what with our extended holiday break. We're finding it hard to find the motivation to get up and take on that world again, and somehow, our mantra of "pitter patter, let's get at 'er" just isn't as effective as we would have hoped.

Roger Clemens: Wordsmith, Vioxx victim
We hadn't intended to watch the Rocket's lame denials on 60 Minutes last night, but we're glad that we did. We were getting a little soft on the big Texan, sensing that he was going to become the media punching bag for much of the misdirected rage about PEDs.

That was until Clemens spat out that first line: "I'm angry that what I've done for the game of baseball, and what I've done in my private life, that I don't get the benefit of the doubt."

Without question, Clemens career performance (enhancers aside) is amongst the most exceptional in the history of the game. But if you were to remove Clemens entire career and indeed his existence from the history of baseball, the game would have proceeded along pretty much as it did. He's not that important, nor is any single player. The game is much bigger than "all he's done for it". Arrogant prick.

Amongst Clemens other bon mots:

• "If (MacNamee)'s putting that stuff in my body...I should have a third ear coming out of my forehead. I should be pulling tractors with my teeth."
• "I was eatin' Vioxx like it was Skittles! And now, these people who were supposedly regulatin' it tell me it's bad for my heart!"
  
• "I understand that as a public person, you're gonna take some shots. The higher you get on the flagpole, the more your butt shows."
  

(Quick question on that last one: does Clemens generally climb flagpoles while wearing a skirt?)

And now, in a heart-warming turn, Clemens has announced his intention to sue McNamee.

Reed Johnson will run like a girl in a Blue Jays uniform for one more year
Maybe it's the economy of baseball, or maybe it's the Canadian dollar, or maybe someone out there thinks that Reed Johnson's varied facial hair exemplifies his "heart". That's about the best that we can come up with to describe why Johnson got a slight raise after doing poo-poo and pee-pee in the bed all last year. Which isn't to say that we're not rooting for him...it's just that, you know, Josh Towers had one good season too.

We're opening up the comments...let the madness begin

It's the New Year, so something's gotta change, right?

We've decided to turn over a new leaf, and allow random yahoos to post comments on the blog. We might be getting ourselves into a serious shitstorm, but frankly, we know you're out there reading, and we want to hear what you have to say. As long as it is coherent(ish).

Mind you, we do actually have a vocation and a life beyond the blog, and we're not about to sit around all day moderating the comments. Be nice, for Chrissakes, or we'll turn this goddamn car around and go home, and then you'll have something to cry about.

One thing, though: While you can now post anonymously, do us a favour and leave your name or come up with some sort of clever identifier so that we can tell who's posting. We don't want to try to figure out which "Anonymous" is which.

Shea's ship is sunk

Douchey ex-Blue Jay and Accardo trade bait Shea Hillenbrand is having a hard time getting any contract offers, what with his .599 OPS and all. The LA Times (via MLB Trade Rumours) reports that only the Giants (desperate, much?) have contacted the free swinging animal lover and clubhouse whiteboard poet.

And it looks really good on him, doesn't it?

Happy Freaking Hangover! Welcome to 2008!

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

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

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

Great off-season blogging

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

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



(Thanks to Home Run Derby for the video)

Happy New Year!

It's time for hanging balls

We've been just about nogged out by the pre-Christmas party season. So many office parties, so many subesequent awkward apologies. But at least we closed them all down with a flourish.

We've made our escape to the hinterlands, and the intention is to spend a little quality time with the family, gorge out on tourtière, and pray for J.P. to deliver a nice little Christmas gift like he did with Troy Glaus a couple of Decembers ago. (And THAT worked out well, non?)

Whatever happens over the next week or so, we hope that everyone finds retro powder blue gear under the tree, and maybe a flex pack in their stocking.

Oh, and peace on Earth and good will towards men. All that good stuff.

Bonus linkage for the Holiday Season!
Did anyone realize that Eye Weekly had a sports section? We found this article from this week's edition, where Shane Cuneo (who dat?) regurgitates a Jason Stark ESPN.com piece on how some of the mid-range teams in the AL are trying to get over the BoSox-Yankees hump.

Another voice of the Blue Jays falls silent

The Globe's William Houston is reporting that Don Chevrier passed away yesterday. Chevy was the first TV play-by-play man for the Blue Jays, and a truly underappreciated gem in the Canadian sports media landscape.

We recently heard his voice while viewing a classic Jays game (actually, Nolan Ryan's 7th no-hitter), and we were struck with just how good he was. Chevrier was blessed with an amazing set of pipes, and he used them judiciously through the game. He never prattled on, but conveyed the action succinctly and with a fan's knowledge and passion for the game.

Sal's a pal and all, but...

...do we really want him as an everyday catcher when (not if) Zaunie goes down for a few weeks?

We've become increasingly fixated on Miguel Olivo, the free agent former Marlins catcher who swings and misses like nobody's business (.262 OBP, 123 Ks versus 12 walks in 122 games), but also has some pop (16 HRs, 60 RsBI) and can catch and throw.

Maybe Olivo isn't the linchpin to winning the division, but we clearly remember the weeks on end of watching Jason Phillips as the starting catcher, and we don't care to relive it.

The Boston Globe has J.P.'s cell number

And Richard Griffin is, like, soooooo jealous. Eat your heart out, Dick.

J.P. spoke here to the Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo (scroll down) on Mitchell, Eckstein, Johnny Mac and A.J.. For those of you too lazy to click on a link, we've summarized below.

J.P. on Zaun and Glaus' status post-Mitchell Report: "We expect they'll be playing for us...I'm sure it's as tough on them not knowing."

J.P. on signing Eckstein: "He's a gritty guy, a high-chemistry guy who we think will fit onto our team quite well...If it works out, we'll hope to keep him around."

J.P. on Johnny Mac: "John is still very much in our plans."

J.P. on the likelihood that he'll move A.J.: "Not really discussing anything like that."

Requiem for a Gas Can

It's old news by now that the Jays, after five seasons worth of service, have kicked the Gas Can to the curb.

We decided to keep our distance from this story in part because we were preoccupied by the avalanche of Mitchell Report related news. Mostly though, we did it because we wanted to allow the Drunk Jays Fans' Bergkamp an opportunity to mourn the loss of his favorite Blue Jay, and to eulogize him appropriately.

And now that that's done, allow us one last kick at the Can.

It's almost hard to believe the steep decline that Towers' reputation took after a perfectly respectable 2005 season (13-12, 3.71 ERA). Towers promptly cashed in with a two-year deal, and then proceeded to have one of the worst seven-game stretches ever seen by a Blue Jays starter. Dude just flat out blew: 10.09 ERA, with batters putting up a Bonds-esque 1.084 OPS against him. A WHIP over 2.17. The era of the Gas Can had begun.

Or maybe the point was that he always the Gas Can. Maybe his prolonged stints in Rochester and Syracuse weren't just a matter of old-school baseball types working against him because he wasn't a big strapping strikeout pitcher, but rather, that they recognized the fact that one day, teams were going to stop letting him throw that BP junk over the plate, and start to hammer him into oblivion.

Of course, Towers was one of the last to recognize this trend, even as his head was being wrenched off his neck, checking to see just how high and how far his last pitch had been cranked by some marginal fourth outfielder. As Jeff Blair noted in his G&M blog, Towers "spoke like a 20-game winner but couldn't back it up on the mound in the past two years".

We'd tend to agree with Blair's notion that Towers will end up somewhere in the NL, where the level of play is just that much lower, and the ball parks are just that much bigger. Who knows: one season in San Diego, and Towers might be able to spew insolent I-Told-You-So's back at T.O..

If nothing else, we'll miss him because without him around, the Gas Can label of our blog will go silent next year.

Mitchell Report: It's all Toller Cranston's fault

Remember when Toller Cranston was on Off The Record with Roger Clemens shortly after he came to the Jays, and the figure skater asked him why baseball players were so fat?

And then around the same time, the Rocket starts getting testosterone shots in the ass at the SkyDome Hotel from Brian McNamee.

Coincidence?

Mitchell, Infinite Redux - Butter chimes in

Cheers to newly elevated Blue Jays bench coach Brian Butterfield for laying it all out when talking to the Bangor News on the Mitchell Report.

"It’s old news. The whole problem has been in baseball for a long time. Baseball let it happen in the 1990s. It was right in front of them. You had guys who would hit single-digit home runs one year turn around and hit 30-40-50 home runs the next year. Now they’re strong-arming it. Let’s move on."

Amen to that, Butter.