I dunno man, looks like a good hitter to me.
My jaw about hit the floor this afternoon when I read that Chad Mottola wasn't going to return to the Jays staff in 2014. I thought he had done a pretty good job with what he was given-- some pretty big strides with Colby Rasmus being my main evidence, but Adam Lind seems to like working with him too, and his numbers, while a bit babippy, since going down to Vegas last season to work with Mottola, are above replacement level. Not exactly something that he can tout since 2009.
If anyone was going to wear this season by way of losing their coaching job, I figured it would Pete Walker, given how terrible the performance of the rotation was this year, but both Walker and Pat Hentgen will return to the coaching staff.
Anthopoulos discussed the coaching change on PTS today, and kind of explained himself. AA viewed Murphy and Mottola as a tandem, so with Dwayne Murphy stepping down, AA viewed it as a transitional period. He told Mottola that he still has a job in the organization if he wants it, but given the partial change, AA felt that the full change was the way to go.
Elsewhere, Gregor had a mailbag posted either yesterday or today, in which he points out that "Washington's Wilson Ramos is known to be of interest to the Blue Jays," which is news to me, but I suppose it makes sense. Ramos is a career .270/.325/.445 hitter over three seasons, though 116 games is the most he's had in a year. He's certainly had some injury issues over his career, and you'd love to see him walk more, but you could certainly do worse from a 26 year old catcher. The Nats would definitely be selling low on him, given his recent inability to play a full season, and the relative lack of decent available catchers at the moment.
The big issue for the Nats, as far as getting something done on that front, is that there's no really clear replacement from within their roster if they were to trade Ramos, which means that it behooves the Nationals to keep Ramos, not trade him. Of course, if they decide to go ahead and sign a Brian McCann or even a Saltalamacchia/Pierzynski/Ruiz kind of guy, you never know. I'm not sure the latter trio is an improvement over a healthy Ramos-- healthy being the operative word.
Ramos will be arbitration eligible for the first time this offseason, so he'll have three years of team control remaining, which certainly adds to his value.
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