Jays Acquire Esmil Rogers for Mike Aviles and Yan Gomes

When did this shit happen, like, Friday?

Anyway, yeah, that's about the end of that batting stance.  The Jays have shipped Yan Gomes and newly acquired Mike Aviles to Cleveland for reliever Esmil Rogers.

The Jays had traded David Carpenter and John Farrell to Boston to get Aviles last week, in what we all thought was a move that was meant to solidify the middle infield situation, but I suppose not.  As a result, the bullpen is now solidified, at least to a degree, just in case one of Darren Oliver, Jason Frasor and Brandon Lyon don't return.

For his part, Rogers had been really shitty as a starter (Coors Field though), before being DFA'ed last year by the Rockies.  The Indians picked him up and sent him to the bullpen, which seemed to work wonders, as he posted a 3.06 ERA (3.12 FIP, 3.24 xFIP) over 50+ innings.  So basically, he's got half a season of non-suck over his career.  He's still cost-controlled, making the league minimum this year, before becoming arbitration eligible next season.

And that's the real thing that I'm taking from this whole story; Rogers is going to make $500k this year, and a slight bump over each of the next three, whereas it would cost the Jays at least $3MM each to lock up Frasor and Lyon for the year, probably more.

As for what's going the other way, Aviles is your standard utility infielder who is probably a little better than advertised.  Strikes out a lot, doesn't walk much, and plays good defense all over the infield.  He was worth 1.8fWAR this season, a win of which was tied in to his defense and baserunning. He batted .250/.281/.381 and played all over the infield for the Red Sox.  I was kind of looking forward to giving him a shot at 2B, but this trade makes it increasingly more likely that Adeiny Hechavarria will play 2B to start the season.  It's still early.

Gomes was drafted by the Jays in the 10th round in 2009, and he made his MLB debut this year, batting .204/.264/.367 with 4 HR's in 111 plate appearances.  He can catch and play the corners, but will probably never amount to much of anything.  He pretty much needs to catch in order for his bat to play in the bigs, so he could find himself backing up Carlos Santana every now and then.

Update- And since I'm not making a new post just for one item, Marc Hulet of Fangraphs has a list of the Jays top 15 prospects.  It looks promising.