I like it when that happens. All it took was a month of suck and the Yankees entire bench to play.
And Adam Lind is good again... Well, probably not, but still. Two taters is pretty good.
Uhh, it's Monday morning. There's never anything to write about on Mondays.
MLBTR has a bit of Jays news. The real meat of the post is a quote from AA saying that they wouldn't be doing much searching on the free agent market, as he prefers trade-rapes. Within the comments, idiots shine. I'm kind of wondering how anybody can question the fact that this team is at least kind of close to getting good. It's not like they wouldn't win or at least be in the race in the AL Central, AL West, NL Central or NL West, and are pretty much taking 2 of 3 from everyone despite this being the hard part of the schedule. I mean, there are still a bunch of teams that are better from a true-talent perspective, but I don't really think that we can just look at the 77-75 record and say that they're anywhere near the 14th best (or whatever) team in baseball, considering the Corey Patterson/Jojo Reyes/Juan Rivera factor. Just gotta spend $30MM on free agent closers in the offseason and we're all set!
Of course, we already knew that AA wasn't going after Fielder or Pujols, since there are no 6 or 7-year deals coming this offseason for Toronto. Of course, there's nothing written about 8-year deals for Brett Lawrie.
Anyhoo, the Vernons are coming to town now for a 4-gamer, so uhh... yeah... whoopty fuck.
I think the best storyline going on in baseball right now is how terrible the Red Sox have been these last couple weeks. They're 4-13 in September, which has seen them turn a multiple game lead in the division to fighting just to hold on to their wild card spot against the Rays. They lost 3 of 4 this weekend against TB after getting swept last week. Schedules favor the Sox, since they play 7 of their last 10 games against Baltimore and 3 against the Yankees, while Tampa has 7 against the Yankees and 3 against the Jays.
That Red Sox rotation is some kind of combination of terrible and depleted, with Tim Wakefield, Andrew Miller, Kyle Weiland and Jon Lackey starting a bunch of games lately. Erik Bedard isn't a huge upgrade, but he is scheduled to be put in to the rotation this week, and Josh Beckett is set to return as well, but Boston is playing some really bad baseball, and Tampa is playing pretty damn good. At least this is entertaining.
Warning: this is kind of rambly, and will end up being pretty controversial. If anyone completely disagrees with what I'm saying, you have every right to. Frankly, I'm not even completely sure that I agree with myself.
All too often do we hear casual sportsfans, who don't know anything about anything, make a wild claim about their team upon realizing that there's not much chance at a playoff berth (i.e. Jays fans circa each of the last 20 years). They'll say stuff like "They should just lose the rest of their games on purpose so they can get the first overall pick," or something along those lines.
Now of course:
It's obviously an incredible shit in the mouth of your fans and players to just go out there and fuck off for the last 2 months of the season, which explains why nobody goes to Marlins games.
But the Bluejays are in a pretty unique situation, and I'm not sure it's a complete accident. Thanks to the perfect storm of affairs going on with this team, including but not limited to:
Their incredibly tough division, and thus, incredibly tough schedule,
Injuries to their starting (and backup) CF,
Poor performance by supposed impact guys Kyle Drabek and Travis Snider,
Several potential Type-A and B free agents,
The strength and hype of the farm system,
The willingness to spend, and the availability of money from ownership
The Blue Jays can actually get away with playing guys like Jon Rauch and Frank Francisco as often as they have, despite how terrible they've been, since they're both close to free agent comp status. They can also have a guy like Darin Mastroianni starting in CF at times, because OMG PROSPECT! and thus, not necessarily going out there and putting the best lineup forward everyday, but without slapping fans in the face. On literally every Bluejays telecast, we get a "farm report", exaggerating just how good some of these guys within the system really are.
This isn't to say that the Jays farm isn't as good as advertised, because it definitely is good, a consensus top-5 system based on several different opinions. Unlike most teams, however, we (the fanbase as a whole, not necessarily people who go out of their way to read stuff about the Jays and advanced stats and whatnot; I mean your average Jays fan who catches 50 games a year on TV) are getting a very good idea of not only who these people are, but also how close they are to making it to the bigs. Brett Lawrie got his balls waxed by Sportsnet literally all season long, as did Eric Thames before his callup. Drew Hutchinson and Nestor Molina have been getting a ton of attention since the Henderson Alvarez callup, and Marcus Knecht is Canadian (!!!!!) and tore up single-A this year.
Most people who only watch a couple of games a week (read: most Jays fans) now actually know who some of these guys are, which gets them excited, since every team who ever hears anything about any of their prospects assumes that they're going to be an all-star in 3 years. For example, remember that time David Cooper hit a homerun this year? 8 years, $120MM at least. Remember that time last year where Brad Mills went 8 innings allowing 2 hits against the lowly Baltimore Orioles, or the fact that he's torn up AAA each of the last two years? He's Shaun Marcum! Travis d'Arnaud won the AA MVP award! Bautista 2.0!
What's my point, you ask? Well, we all know how AA loves his draft picks, which explains why Jon Rauch keeps getting a chance to close despite how terrible he's been. That's because saves count more than they really should when it comes to free agent compensation. Well the thing with free agent compensation is this: It's great to get compensation for losing your guys, but something that the Jays haven't done in a long time, but could very well do this offseason (*cough* Prince Fielder*) is actually acquire one of these free agents that could cause them to lose a draft pick.
Question: But wait a second, Grady. Wouldn't losing more game just mean that the Jays are giving up a better draft pick?
Answer: No, you fucking idiot. The 15 teams with the worst records in baseball are protected from losing their first rounder if they sign a Type-A. Currently, those teams include all the embarrassments of the league, plus the Rockies and Jays. Cleveland and Chicago have a better winning percentage as of right now, but there are still about 25 games left in the year, and lots can change in that time. The Jays are tied at the moment with the Reds for the 15th worst record, thanks to the recent skid, despite Cinci's schedule being way easier. The tie-breaker is determined by last year's record, which the Jays win against CIN and CHI, but lose to both CLE.
I submit that if the Jays are going to make a serious run at any type-A's, thus forfeiting a draft pick, it's not a terrible idea to get some AAA and AA players up as some September callups, and let them play in a bunch of games. This gets them time in the bigs to see what's to be expected in the near future, it doesn't alienate the fans because prospects are making their major league debuts, and all prospects are as good, if not better than, Brett Lawrie despite being Americans/internationals.
They don't necessarily have to do it everyday, and are still trying to win games. It's not like fans will be be pissed with a 6-man rotation comprised of whatever they have plus Brad Mills or Kyle Drabek or whatever the fuck, or giving Adam Lind a coupla days off a week[sidenote: can Cooper be as bad as Lind has been over the last two months? Might even be an improvement].
The Jays' current draft picture for next year includes the 15th overall selection, the 21st overall as compensation for failure to sign Tyler Beede, and a pick or two (maybe more) from guys like Kelly Johnson, Jose Molina, Jon Rauch, and Frank Francisco, plus the 15th pick of each subsequent round. By having a protected pick in the first round, the Jays could conceivably sign a guy like Prince Fielder, plus have 6 of the first 50 picks, on top of having a top-5 farm system.
The best (worst?) part? The Jays don't even need to tank all that bad. They pretty much have to play as they've been playing, considering their last 28 games are made up of a schedule that leaves 6 games with Baltimore, and 22 others against teams with better W-L records, including 15 against the Yankees, Red Sox or Rays. Of these 28 games, the Jays could seriously play some good baseball and lose 15+ without the bat of an eye. It's not like Baltimore or Chicago are an automatic sweep, nor are the TB/BOS/NYY series an automatic get-swept, but .500 for the rest of the year, given the schedule, is probably a bit ambitious. Especially with NYY, ANA and BOS fighting for the division, plus CHI has an outside shot of making their division semi-close with a win streak.
Is there really a big difference between a 2nd rounder and a 1st rounder? Well, probably not big enough to justify intentionally losing any games, given the volatility of the MLB draft (that is, first rounders sometimes flame out and never become big leaguers, 15th rounders sometimes become superstars). But on average, according to some guy, a pick in the 10-20 range of the draft is worth just over 4 WAR, whereas the 50-60 range is worth 1.4 WAR, which is a difference of about 2.75 WAR. This seems like an "extra 2%" situation, where you have to capitalize on every edge you have, no matter how small.
Basically, what I'm saying here is that I wouldn't be all that upset if the Jays got some September call-ups in to the lineup a couple times, as they probably will do anyway, and just lie to us and say "we want to see what some of these guys can do" with regards to their prospects, instead of saying what they mean, which is "Yeah, we wanna tank a couple games to stay behind Cincinnati in the standings because we want to have Prince Fielder, but also a first rounder."
Then again, they got Daniel Norris with a third round pick so I'm just talking out my ass here.
The other day some lady came to my door asking for a Kristina. She was dressed in a long black coat and boots, and was holding some books. No Kristina has lived in this house for at least 40 years, maybe more, so you can imagine my surprise when, after I told her just that, she asks me "Are you sure?" Yes, I'm sure, but also curious as to whether I'm about to get robbed, annoyed, pitched to, or whatever.
Well it turns out that she was a Jehovah's witness (boring!). "Oh ok," she says, with fake surprise at my Kristina-less home. "Let me show you what I was going to show her." She opens a bible (or the Jehovah equivalent, I guess?) and starts reading a passage about peace on earth or something along those lines that I wasn't overly paying attention to since the dog was freaking out.
Well my friends, I let her have it. Before she was finished I interrupted "Wait a second. You're really going to show up to my house unannounced like this, and blatantly lie to me about your intentions of being here and then try to talk me in to a religion that I know and care nothing about? Don't get me wrong, even if I did give half a shit about religion, which I don't, this wouldn't work, since you showing up here and lying to me gives me all the evidence that I need to believe that this Jehovah nonsense is nothing but a by-any-means-necessary money-grabbing pyramid scheme. I understand that this [going around door-to-door bothering people] is part of the religion, so I commend the balls that it must take to go around getting yelled at all day by strangers, but that's not even what I'm appalled at. Straight-up lying to people in this fashion is probably a bad business model for getting people to convert. And if do you insist on lying to people like this then at least learn how to fucking lie without being this see-through." Or something along those lines anyway.
The point of my story is that if you lie to others, then you're lying to yourself. Take Adam Lind for example. That dude did everything in his power last year to convince us that he couldn't hit left-handed pitching. Yeah, well, last night Lind chose to take a break from being the guy that high-fives Jose Bautista after he homers, and chose to actually hit 2 of his own last night. Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but he's just hitting all line-drives off lefties this year. I, for one, welcome our new leftymashing DH-turned 1B overlord. So much so, that he has earned the first-ever EITS "Crudely cut-out Zaun-head", the award earned for being the player of the game. Kudos!
And shit, how about that game last night? Adam Lind had a sexy little 3/5 night with a coupla taters as the Jays put up 5 in the 1st and 10 total. Gingerballs was pretty good, save for one bad inning, going 6 innings scattering 7 hits and 3 runs. He ended up walking Chris Davis after getting squeezed pretty hard, leading to a little rally that may not (read: would not) have been. I was going to get the pitch f/x graph for that AB but it's not working for me right now so fuck it. Either way, good to see the bats going. And fuck knows that they've gotta keep going considering JoJo Reyes gets the start tonight for Toronto.
What else is in the news?
John Lott tweeted this during the Jays game yesterday:
Brett Cecil in 1st start for Vegas: 4.1IP/13H/11R-10ER/3BB/2K/3HR. Left after 3-run HR.
That, for those of you who are either my girlfriend or have stumbled upon this blog accidentally but are still reading for some reason (or maybe both?), is not a very good performance. But before you get your vaginas (vaginae?) all tangled up with uhohs, it's not as bad as it sounds; this game was played in the snow. 16 degrees fair-in-height, whatever that translates to after the exchange-rate (it's like -4C I think). And another thing: Why the fuck are we playing baseball in the fucking snow? What is this? Opening day 1977?
Anyway, Cecil tweeted last night after the game that he was all out of whack and that it was going to get worse before it gets better. Heaven help us if that's the case. Then again, I know of a certain Roy Halladay, who was older than Cecil and pitching in AAA-ball, and then subsequently AA and A, after a stint in the majors, so who knows? All he did was become the best pitcher of his generation.
Jays centerfielder Rajai Davis made another rehab start yesterday, playing the whole game this time instead of getting beaned in the hand and being pulled. I expect him back with the big club before the weekend and possibly as soon as tonight. And really, I'm praying to the nearest god (which is apparently Jehovah) (badum-psssh) that he does come back tonight, because, Corey Patterson is not good. I think Stoeten over at Drunk jays fans hates him about 10 times as much as I do, and he's hit a little better over the last couple games, but I still think that dude is a waste of space (see: fringe 4th OF and not #2 batter).
Elsewhere around the league, Ryan Braun is going anti-Vernon, signing a deal that guarantees him a bunch of money for life, but mysteriously continuing to be awesome. That dude hit HR #9 lat night, 1 more than Barry Bonds 2.0 Jose Bautista, and has an almost-as-good slash line of .372/.466/.721. If you somehow missed it, Braun was signed through the 2016 season, but signed an extension for some reason to take him all the way through 2020, his age-35 season, matching Troy Tulowitzki's deal. Defense tho.
Andre Ethier extended his hit streak last night, and has hit safely in every game the Dodgers have played this year. That's good for a new record, passing Joe Torre's 22-gamer from like 30 years ago or something. Torre was Ethier's manager last year, which makes this a neat little story for people who care about useless shit like that.
And finally, Eric Almonte made major league history yesterday, becoming the first ever player to be placed on the 7-day disabled list reserved for concussions and other head-traumas. Link
Edit-> Here's one more for ya. Apparently Jose Bautista is good at hitting.
Lineups later.
