Jays extend Mcgowan

The Jays have announced that they've extended Dustin Mcgowan for two seasons, with the option for a third, according to Jim Bowden of ESPN, via MLBTR.  I don't know why, but they did.  I can't imagine that this is for too much money, since Mcgowan is obviously a pretty huge injury risk, and as of now, I'm not entirely sure as to whether the first year of the contract replaces his current 2011 contract or not, but whatever.  I'm sure we'll know more soon.

Mcgowan is out of options, but it would appear that he's going to get the 5th spot in the rotation to start the season.  Hopefully, by extending him at this juncture of his career/comeback, they can write some hilarious clause in to his contract the way Theo Epstein did with Andrew Miller, where Miller would earn a split salary based on minor league and major league time, but if, at any point during the season, he was DFA'ed and claimed on waivers by another team, a $3MM club option would become guaranteed.

Mcgowan was to be a free agent at the end of the season, which would have been kind of a slap in the dick to the Jays organization, considering the way that they've stuck with him over the last 3 years of injuries and surgeries and setbacks.  I still don't see a ton of reason for the Jays to do this, but we'll see how this one works out.

[Update]: The deal is worth $1.5MM for 2013, $1.5MM for 2014, and has a $4MM club option on 2015.  I mean, it's not so much money that it would ever come anywhere close to doing anything near approaching handcuffing the team, but this is still really weird.  I just kind of assumed that they were going to replace his 2012 contract of $600k, but I guess not.  I dunno, meh.

Stuff
Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star has a piece on Adam Lind that I probably wouldn't have read.  No disrespect to Griffin, but the title of the piece is "Adam Lind needs to step it up at the plate" or something like that, and I already knew that (so did DJF). Anyway, the only reason I read it was because someone told me that he basically talks about Cito Gaston a whole bunch, and I guess it kind of makes sense of his last two seasons, at least a little bit.

Lind mentions that Cito wanted him to get in there and hack away, instilling that mindset on him literally the day after Cito got re-hired, which is when Lind was called up and given the everyday LF job.  So far this spring, Lind's been a lot more patient at the plate, and actually had two 10-pitch at-bats the other day against the Braves.

Something that I had missed until reading this was the following quote from John Farrell, about Lind and his spot in the order:

On Saturday morning, prior to the Jays’ 9-0 spanking of the Braves, manager John Farrell suggested the 4-5 batting spots against lefties in those situations may go to Edwin Encarnacion and Brett Lawrie.

 John Farrell was on The Jeff Blair show this morning.  I haven't gotten around to listening to that one yet, but here's the audio file.

Up Close with Jose Bautista and Ricky Romero is on tomorrow night on SN1, and will probably air repeatedly over the week if you miss it.  The one with Snider, JPA and Lawrie was just on like half an hour ago on SNW.  It was also on sportsnet.ca somewhere, so I suppose you can expect that to happen.