Lansing Roadtrip!!! Go Nuts!

Sure, there's been plenty of malarkey about the Blue Jays' top farm team setting up shop in Ottawa. Meanwhile, back here on planet Earth, the team has re-upped with their minor-league affiliate in New Hampshire for four years, and signed two-year agreements in Auburn (the Doubledays of the Single-A NY-Penn League) and Lansing (the Lugnuts of the Single-A Midwest League).

We know SFA about Lansing aside from the fact that Magic Johnson was born there, and that it's home to Michigan State University, but the ballpark looks like a great place to spend a summer night. We were going to suggest a road trip to the see the Jays of the Future this year, but Lansing's just about 100 miles further into Michigan than we would dare venture.

We're way too soft and would be too much of an easy target to last more than 15 minutes west of Flint.

To put this whole Scott Downs contract in context

The White Sox just handed $11 million over two years to the perpetually injured and mostly ineffective Octavio Dotel, ostensibly because he has "closer stuff". Downs managed a 2.17 ERA in 81 appearances last year, while Dotel has pitched in 62 games since 2005, putting up a sparkling 5.63 ERA for Oakland, the Yankees, Kansas City and Atlanta.

So Downs is a relative steal at those numbers.

This is Kenny Williams' second high-priced middle relief signing this year (after Scott Linebrink's slightly more palatable 4-year $19 million deal), and we're rooting for this to blow up good in his face. (Our antipathy towards the South Side's GM hasn't diminished a bit in the years since the Sirotka heist deal. )

Hey, if nothing else, this is the sort of move that's surely going to result in Ozzie Guillen flipping his lid at least a few times this year. And who can put a price on that sort of entertainment value.

His name is Rios and he dances on the sand

What was all this 4-year/$40 million tomfoolery we were spreading last week? That's the last goddamn time we quote the National Post on anything.

We know we're the last to mention this, but Blairsy reported on the weekend that Alex Rios (seen above with noted artificial turf expert David Beckham) is looking for $5.65 million for 2008, whilst the Blue Jays are offering $4.535 million in return.

Obviously, with those sorts of numbers on the table, there's no great impetus for the Jays to break open the bank for the second time in as many seasons on an outfielder. Because it worked so well the first time around, right??

Neate-O Linkage
Out of Left Field's Neate Sager (who is retiring from sports blogging, just as soon as Jay-Z lives up to his retirement announcement) has two great posts up today. The first is an email exchange with the Great Wizard of Brunt, who 'splains hisself for not voting for nobody in this year's Hall of Fame balloting. (And as per usual, Brunt's email was engaging, poignant, and challenging...we bet that dude's post-it notes and grocery lists are better than our blog posts.)

The other is a takedown of an Ottawa Pet Trainer Citizen columnist who is perpetuating the myth that the Jays' AAA franchise has an icicle's chance in hell of moving to the Nation's capital next year.

Now, we'll admit that we've advocated for this in the past, and we'd love to see the Jays set up their AAA shop in Ottawa. But as Neate astutely points out, that would only work if Rogers were willing to cough up the cash to buy the International League franchise, move it to Bytown and eat the losses. That becomes much less likely when you consider that the very successful AAA franchise in Buffalo will likely need a dancing partner in 2009, and the Buffalo market would be as attractive (if not more so) than Ottawa to the pointy heads at Uncle Ted's Inc..

There's an argument to be made that moving a Blue Jays affiliate to Ottawa would work. (A New York Penn League team, perhaps.) But unless there's someone in the International League that is looking to unload a franchise - and remember that there was a franchise to be had on the cheap in Ottawa for the past five years! - there's no chance that the "Ottawa Blue Jays" will ever take the field on Coventry Road. No matter what sort of facile spin the crayon-eaters at the Citizen and the Sun try to put on it.

Gettin' Real Paid

In addition to Scott Downs' gulp-inducing deal, the Jays also announced deals to avoid arbitration with Marco Scutaro (two years, but cheap!), Brian Tallett (who now only has the second-best mutton chops on the team), Gustavo Chacin (the Machine returns!), and Jason Frasor, who will get paid $1.25 million to sweep up the sunflower seeds in the bullpen.

Surely, the Jays could find some NL team to take Frasor off their hands. There's a buttload of bullpen arms right now, and Frasor could move to the more delicate league to pick and nibble and throw sliders in the dirt and still be considered an asset.

Scott Downs has 10 million reasons to smile

True story: when we were 13, we broke our right arm on the first day of the summer holidays. Two days before we were supposed to go to baseball camp. It sucked.

But since we couldn't toss the old horsehide around with our right arm, we taught ourselves to throw lefty. Suprisingly, we managed to figure it out, and ended up able to play a half decent game of catch with the wrong arm. If we'd really worked on it, we might have been able to make the switch permanently.

Of course, when the right arm returned to health, we ditched tossing lefty and never really gave it much thought. Until last night. When Scott Downs signed for three years and $10 million.

Damn it all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So who's laughing now?

Technical Difficulties - Please Stand By

We'll admit it. In our haste to make some subtle changes to the blog's layout, we've goofed.

It takes a certain level of cranial slowness to mess up a Blogger template, but everything looks slightly wrong to us right now.

The content should all be there, but don't mind the mess.

UPDATE: ...and we're back. Kind of.

Wrapping up Rios

In what is a bit of a non-news story, the National Post's Jeremy Sandler reports that the Jays are looking at signing Alex Rios to a deal that will buy out a couple of arbitration years.

Numbers like "four years" and "$40 million" are tossed around, but there's no real there there. J.P. said of the contract talks: "I wouldn't say they're going great, I wouldn't say they're going bad."

Let's read too much into one press conference

It's probably wrong of us to look at yesterday's presser and confer meaning onto Scott Rolen's yuks-per-minute quotient. But we'll do it anyways.

There's something in Rolen's tone which seems to balance his commitment to winning along with a sense of levity, and that's something that the old third baseman didn't have. Glaus was a batting helmet chucker who shouted expletives most every time he wailed and wiffed with men on. We got the message: Troy Boy was INTENSE. He CARED. Didn't you see and hear it?

We got caught up last year in the whole idea that the Jays locker room was too loose (as though we even had a clue what we were talking about.) Who knows, maybe Rolen will be the lead goofball soldier, manning the Nerf dart gun into battle with aplomb. On the other hand, maybe he'll be the guy who can turn to the jokers in the locker room and say "You guys are having an awful lot of fun for a team in third place."

Maybe he'll punch out one of those racing chili peppers while he's at it.

Or maybe it doesn't even matter. But it's January, and we need to believe in something.

Enter laughing

The Wit and Wisdom of Scott "Shecky" Rolen:

"I did bring a tie, but I didn't want to show up J.P.."

"Me and my family, we're gonna tear this place up."

"My daughter told me I was gonna wear 'firty free', so that's the number I'm gonna wear: firty free."

"I can't believe I passed my physical."

"You guys have turf?"

"I'm thinkin' (Gibbons) might be from the South, right?"

Here's the link to the shenanigans.

Two important questions

• Would it kill J.P. to ditch the gum before he went on camera?
• Why does Paul Godfrey even need to be there?
  

Put your hands together for your new third baseman...

The Jays have announced a press conference for 5:45 Eastern tonight to introduce the second coming, Scott Rolen. We'd presume that Rogers customers should be able to see this in full on that JaysVision barker channel.

If they put him in the powder blues at the presser, we'll crap our pants.

"If" is the operative word
Fox Sports' Dayn Perry continues a trend that has been taking off in recent days. Take a look through the clippings over the past week, and you'll see the word "if" dozens of time. If Rolen is healthy...If Wells hits like Wells...If Overbay is able to swing the bat...If A.J. Burnett pitches the whole season...If B.J. Ryan is able to return...If Roy Halladay stays healthy...If Marcum and McGowan pitch at the same level.

Obviously, it means that there is room for optimism, but as has been the case since 1993, that optimism is tempered by a whole lot of caution.

The worst part of this trend: it's left a really bad song by Bread stuck in our noggin all afternoon.

(Officially) Hello, Goodbye

With the health and economic issues resolved, we can officially look forward to Scott Rolen donning the silver and black (groan) of the Blue Jays this year.

What's particularly fun about this trade is the fact that it is a good old fashioned fantasy league challenge trade: your guy for our guy, and let's see who does better.

Not that we want to start making excuses already, but before anyone (looking your way, Professor Griff) starts to compare Glaus and Rolen's power numbers this year, let's remember that Glaus is a mistake hitter who crushes pitches that errantly wander into the strike zone. Playing in the NL Central, he'll get his share, and will (if his health accommodates) hit 30 bombs or more in Saint Lou. (He might hit 30 off the Pirates' Zach Duke alone.)

Of course, we'll have to factor in the the magical healing power of Busch's natural grass surface, which will not only make Glaus run like the wind and slug 150 points higher, but will also make him six inches taller. And when he runs on said magical grass, he'll make that Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin ch-ch-ch-ch sound.

Rolen's contributions will be a little harder to measure at first blush. He'll get to more balls at third and he'll run the bases far better than Lurch could with his plantar fascism. He'll be lucky to hit 20 homers, but he'll also be vaguely useful against right-handers.

Reactions from both sides

• The Drunk Jays Fans have a good wrap up on the trade, which elicited barely coherent comments from a few vaguely literate Cardinals fans.
• Deadspin empresario and Cards apologist Will Leitch said goodbye to Rolen, which opened up the Gawkerblog's comments to the barely literate hipster bourgeoisie that skulk around those parts. (Sample comment: "Troy Glaus just reinjured his shoulder while patting himself on the back for getting out of Canada.")
• Viva El Birdos (shouldn't that be los birdos?) have already indexed the seasons for each player's new ballpark, and have figured out that Rolen is going to slug .319. So since that's settled, we might as well shut down the blog until next year.
• The Post-Dispatch's Jeff Gordon has turned on Rolen, essentially calling him a malcontent and ne'erdowell who wrote his ticket out of town by not bowing to the superior knowledge of Tony "Red Light" LaRussa. (What's especially rich is the "why would anyone want to go to Toronto?" comment...oh, who knows? Maybe he'd just like to get the hell out of the Midwest. It's not inconceivable.)
  

Duelling Mailbags

Blue Jays fans ask MLB.com's Jordan Bastian: "Why would the Jays trade Glaus for Rolen? It's not that great an upgrade, is it?"

Cardinals fans ask MLB.com's Matthew Leach: "Why would the Cards trade Rolen for Glaus? It's not that great an upgrade, is it?"

UPDATE: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Derrick Goold reports that doctors have examined both players, although there is no news on whether if either team's doctor performed the "old finger trick", as Karl Pilkington would call it. Now it all comes down to a few games of three-card monte to determine the financials, and the deal is done.

The turf was the least of Glaus' problems

A quick note of clarification to the Cardinals Diaspora (and every baseball writer who attributes injuries to the state of Toronto's artificial turf): It's not Astroturf. It hasn't been for several years, and Troy Glaus never played an inning on Astroturf as a Blue Jay.

We've actually had the opportunity to scamper and jump and slide on FieldTurf (which was installed in 2005 at SkyDome/Rogers Centre), and it is no worse that the natural grass surfaces or the dirt cutout in most baseball stadia. So don't go thinking that Glaus' joints are suddenly going to regenerate because of the healing powers of Busch Stadium grass.

It wasn't the playing surface that caused Glaus' injuries, but rather, his Lurch-like physique.

UPDATE: Let's throw the Sporting News' Sean Deveney under the bus while we're at it, as he notes in his latest blog posting that the turf "exacerbated" Glaus' foot problems.

Doctor and the Medics Evaluate Trade

And now, we wait for the respective medical staffs to sign off on this whole mess, which the Star's always well-dressed Cathal Kelly reports should happen today.

Not to send bad omens out there in the universe, but we'll just mention that when off-season deals involving guys with dodgy shoulders are mentioned, there's one word that floats and bobs through our mind like a turd in hot tub: Sirotka.