I've Got a Theory...

... and it's that Jason Hammel is both an idiot, and not a very good pitcher.  I suppose you could classify this as a hypothesis, since there is definitely some evidence that proves my side, but I've never met the dude, and before last night (more specifically, after last night's game, where Hammel made some truly brilliant* comments), I had never really heard of anything that suggested anything in either direction about his intelligence.

Well.  After giving up 4 solo HR's (and 5 other hits), Hammel, in his post-game media scrum, blathered the following nonsense:

I don’t think you can take swings like that, not knowing they’re coming. There’s rumours and things like that, I don’t know. I can’t speak on that but they were taking very, very strong hacks on breaking stuff. It’s something I’ve never seen before.

Yeah, well our good friend Abe Lincoln once gave us this gem:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Allow me to elaborate; Hammel was worried about a 4th place team stealing signs, a story that he probably got by reading through some hearsay evidence that has been more-or-less completely disproven, and is worried about them knowing when his breaking ball was coming.  He allowed two hits all night on his breaking pitches, meanwhile giving up 4 HR's, all on fastballs.  He threw 42 curveballs and sliders (combined), and allowed hits on two of them.

And then there's the idea that a hot streak of 7 nice starts where you pitch way over your head might not actually make you a good pitcher.  A look at his career stats (and let's not forget that there is a lot of Coors Fieldness going on in these) would suggest that Hammel is nothing more than a below-average starter, so maybe that little homer-binge has more to do with Hammel being a shitballer, and less to do with sign-stealing.  But you know, make excuses and don't be a fucking man about it.

Oh, by the way, you got swept. Fuckers.

Morrow gets the Zaunhead for his performance last night, but also for "get well soon" purposes.  Lawrie gets one for Tuesday's game, by the way.

*- "truly brilliant" with the exaggerated bunny ears of sarcasm.

Stuff
The Jays optioned Aaron Laffey back to AAA after last night's game, since they no longer need the extra pitcher, though, as far as I can tell, they haven't announced who will be coming back up to the big club yet, just that it will be a position player.  Yan Gomes can't come back up yet, since it has been fewer than 10 days since his demotion, and the same goes for Eric Thames.  I'm scared that it's going to be Adam Lind, but there are other possibilities.  Travis Snider could come up if his wrist is good to go, Adeiny Hechavarria could be the guy if Kelly Johnson or Yunel Escobar need some more time (they wouldn't call him up just to sit on the bench), or it could simply be Vlad.  They don't need to announce the move today, since they have an offday.

If you missed it, Brandon Morrow was hit with a line drive last night, but X-rays came back negative, and he was diagnosed with a shin contusion, which, I think, is fancy talk for a bone bruise.  Day-to-day.

Sergio Santos might throw a bullpen at some point over the next few days, according to CBS Sports.

Nowhere Plans power rankings are up (finally).  I wrote my part Sunday, whereas the other two contributors wrote their parts either Monday or Tuesday, due to them being lazy American fucks (well, either that, or the fact that Monday was a holiday in the states).  Either way, I've already been scolded for having Baltimore too high, but they had only lost two in a row at that point in time so whatever.  Also at Nowhere Plans, Dan has a bit about the Adam Jones extension.

And finally, today in "LOL Padres", Carlos Quentin has only played three games, but he's already tied for third on the team in homeruns.

What the Hech?

 Mike Cormack of Sportsnet is giving us some treats today.  The following is three of his tweets all smushed together:

Farrell says he wanted to give Johnson two days off to rest hammy. Should be fine for Friday.Something very weird is up with Hechavarria. Still can't get US citizenship sorted out allowing him to travel to Canada.Farrell could not elaborate on Hech's status, seemed as confused as us. Hinted he may have been called up had it been sorted out.

So yeah, I think we can safely say that this is about Kelly Johnson's hamstring and Yunel's groin issue.  More when it becomes available, I guess.  Johnson is out of the lineup tonight, which, combined with the offday tomorrow, gives him back-to-back days off as a rest.

Update:  John Lott of the National Post tells us that Hech is cleared to enter Canada, and has been since before the end of spring training, at least.  The obvious caveat is that they want him to keep getting AB`s, so maybe if either Johnson or Escobar needed to be DL'ed for any stretch of time, this might be a bit of a different story.

Stuff
Jonah Keri's power rankings for Grantland are up.  Among other things, he notes that Henderson Alvarez has the worst k/9ip in all of baseball for qualified pitchers.  Yeesh.

There were rumblings of the Jays skipping some starts at some point in the rotation, with the upcoming days off, but apparently not anymore.

Farrell says he won't skip anyone in rotation, the two off-days notwithstanding.
— John Lott (@LottOnBaseball) May 30, 2012

I think this means Drabek is going to pitch against Boston. Crikey.

Jon Morosi of FOX.com writes about Alex Anthopoulos, and the likelihood of moves this summer.

Roy Halladay is going to seek a second opinion, but he's probably going to be out for 6-8 weeks with a lat issue.  Apparently this won't affect the Phillies' desire to extend Cole Hamels,  Sorry, Jays fans, but that trade isn't happening.  Extension talks between Zack Greinke and the Brewers appears to be non-existent though!

Morrow is looking to get back on track tonight.  Regression on a stick (a.k.a. Jason Hammel) goes for the Orioles.  Nick Markakis will miss tonight's game with a hand issue.  X-Rays were negative, but meh.

Lineups
Jays
Escobar SS
Rasmus CF
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Lawrie 3B
Cooper DH
Arencibia C
Vizquel 2B
Davis LF

Morrow P

Orioles
Chavez LF
Hardy SS
Davis DH
Jones CF
Weiters C
Reynolds 1B
Betemit 3B
Flaherty RF
Andino 2B

Hammel P

Blue Jays Draft Review, Part 1

I don't really know exactly what I'm going to be doing with this series, or how many pieces it will entail.  I'm probably just going to try and do a new post or two every day about a few years until the day of the actual draft this year, and then just be done with it.  I doubt I'll spend too much time looking over the last two or three drafts, since there are so few major leaguers from them and we have no idea who should have went where in hindsight.  What I am sure of is that there is going to be an awful lot of me shitting on JP Ricciardi's draft strategy, or at the very least, the poor job the Jays did at drafting and developing quality prospects during his regime.

I'd like to point out that there isn't really a whole lot of sense in looking back and saying stuff like "Ugh, I can't believe Toronto was so dumb taking Russ Adams [or whoever, depending on the year/round] when Cole Hamels, Matt Cain, and Joey Votto [or whoever] were still available," because I'm sure they looked at all of those guys and decided that Adams (in this particular example) was the best player available, especially when you consider the fact that Votto went in the 2nd round, and practically every team passed him by in the first round.  Having said that, I'm totally going to say stuff like "we drafted Russ Adams, but could have had Jon Lester instead."

2010 and 2011
These drafts saw the Jays load up on some high school pitchers, who, at this point, look like they should develop in to something.  Obviously, they won't all be superstars, but the fact that they went and got 6 arms in the first three rounds of '10, and 5 more in the first three rounds of '11 (not counting Tyler Beede, who didn't sign) makes it a lot more likely that they will get a few useful major league arms.  Obviously, allowing type-A and -B free agents to walk has earned them this type of a system, and trading pieces like Roy Halladay, Scott Rolen, etc. has helped.

Anyway, it appears that the 2009 draft isn't going to pan out, for the most part (with a few notable exceptions), mostly because we don't really hear a whole lot about it, since the 2010 and '11 picks (notably the pitchers) and Adeiny Hechavarria seem to get most of the attention.  There are definitely some nice pieces that came out of that draft though, so let's have a look.

First, I think we should mention that the Jays' 2nd, 3rd and 4th overall selections of this draft ended up not signing, which scored the Jays 3 extra picks in the 2010 draft, and that class was deep as fuck.  I'm sure this was intentional-- I wouldn't necessarily say that they picked guys that they knew they couldn't sign, but instead took guys, similar to what they did with Daniel Norris last year, that were going to be tough guys to sign.  They knew that if they didn't sign Paxton, Eliopoulos and Barrett, that they would get compensation picks for the 2010 draft, which landed them 3 guys who are all performing very well in the minors right now.  Obviously, getting a guy like Paxton (ranked as the #52 overall prospect by Baseball America) would have been nice, but Noah Syndergaard is the alternative.  The point remains, however, that when 3 of your top 4 picks don't sign, the chances of success from that particular draft class is diminished incredibly.

Second, and just because I'm going to do it with all the other years that we actually kind of know the results from, I'll include how many WAR came from each class.  Drew Hutchison is the only one from 2009 to see the bigs, and most of the '07 and '08 class either haven't seen the bigs yet, or have only played as rookies/September callups, which makes the WAR totals pretty deceiving and almost irrelevant.  This will be a better experiment once we get to the 2006 (and prior) draft.

2009: 52 players, -0.2 WAR 
Chad Jenkins (1st round-20th overall) was the first pick of the Jays in this draft.  He's currently in AA New Hampshire, and is there, I guess.  He's not exactly lighting it up, but minor league numbers don't really translate all that well to figuring out who's going to do what in the bigs, especially in the AL East.  He doesn't walk many, at least, but that's really about it.  Mike Trout was taken by the Angels 7 picks later.

Jake Marisnick (3-104) is one of the best prospects in the Jays' system.  He was taken as compensation for the Yankees' signing of AJ Burnett.  Scouts and writers just verbally blow Marisnick all the time (example, example 2, example 3), and it seems like a borderline consensus that Marisnick is some kind of 4.5-5 tool monster-in-training.  If, at any point, you feel angry with AJ Burnett for leaving, and I'm not sure why you would, since it was a perfectly reasonable thing for him to do and he sucks now, but uhhh... this guy is going to be really good.

Drew Hutchison (15-460) and Yan Gomes (10-310) both went in this draft, and are the only two members of this draft class to appear in the majors for the Jays.  Again, we're pretty early in to the lifespan of this draft class, so we'll obviously have to wait a little while to see how this one turns out, and a lot of the 2010 draftees are directly related to the Jays' inability to sign three guys from this draft, so the success of the 2009 draft is, in a way, tied directly to the success of the 2010 draft.

2008: 44 picks, -3.1 WAR
David Cooper (1-17) has had a pretty sexy minor league career, but seems like one of those guys who just won't ever do much of anything in the majors. He was the AAA MVP in 2011, and won himself a batting title as well, but did so while playing half of his games in an inflamed run environment.  To boot, he doesn't really have any defensive value.  He'll never be a star, but he might have a career in front of him as a AAAA guy, a bench player, or maybe a starter for Houston.  I'm more interested in the guy who was drafted by Milwaukee directly before him, who just happens to be the Blue Jays' starting 3rd baseman.  Brett Wallace was also a part of that draft.  Anthony Gose went 51st over

Tyler Pastornicky (5-159) was traded to Atlanta as part of the Yunel Escobar deal, and has been worth -1.3WAR so far this year for the Braves.  Pretty much no defensive skills when compared to other shortstops, and his bat is so bad that he pretty much has to stay at short to be serviceable.

Eric Thames (7-219) has had some time with the Jays over the last two years, and, to me at least, it seems like pitchers have pretty well figured him out.  He also looks like a baby deer out in left field.  Anything I`ve ever read about him projects him as a 4th outfielder/bench type going forward.  Thames gave us 95 games of -0.1WAR last year, and has been worth another -0.8WAR over 160 AB's this season, even though he's getting platooned against LHP.

Others include Evan Crawford, Danny Farquhar, and Michael Crouse.  Some early Blue Jay pick from that draft that haven't really panned out include Kenny Wilson (2-63), Andrew Liebel (3-95), and Mark Sobolewski (4-129).  Wilson is 22 and is in his third run of A-ball, Liebel is no longer in the Jays` system, and Sobolewski is struggling in AA.

2007: 35 picks, 4.2 WAR
Kevin Ahrens (1-16) was taken as compensation for the loss of Frank Catalanotto, and hasn't really done much. At 23, he's still in high-A, and has been nothing special, especially since it's his 4th try.  Could have had Jordan Zimmermann or Giancarlo Stanton, who both went in the 2nd round, but as a whole, this is a pretty weak draft class.

JP Arencibia (1-21) has settled in as the everyday catcher, providing some nice power, choppy on-base skills, and unspectacular defence behind the plate.  His defence actually looked pretty good early this season, and he can certainly still improve, but with Travis d'Arnaud waiting in the wings, I'm sluggish about his future as an everyday catcher going forward.  I doubt the Jays trade him, since it's hard to have too many catchers, especially given the attrition rate of catchers, and the way the Jays eased JP in to his current role.  His bat, doesn't play anywhere else (i.e. first base) unless his on-base skills improve, so we'll probably see JPA and d'Arnaud split time for a while, then maybe move JPA to a backup role, getting him some days at C and giving d'Arnaud half-days-off, where he can DH instead of being behind the plate.

Brett Cecil (1-38) was taken as compensation for the loss of Justin Speier.  He looked like he was going to be good-- 2 WAR over 172 innings in his first full season, as a 23 year old in 2010-- but he's lost some velocity and has no command within the strike zone, to the point where he needed to be demoted to AAA halfway through 2011.  He's currently in AA, and, unsurprisingly, has some decent numbers so far this year.  Having said that, I don't really know what kind of velocity or command that consists of, especially since he doesn't really have to worry about people smashing every belt-high fastball out of the park the way he would in the bigs. Travis d'Arnaud went one spot before Cecil.

Marc Rzepczynski (5-175) was drafted by the Jays, and offered up 1.9WAR in 176 inning for the Jays before being sent to St. Louis in the Colby Rasmus trade.

Other selections include Justin Jackson (1-45), who is hanging around AA and might be Mike Mccoy, Trystan Magnusson (1-56), who had a cup of coffee last season with Oakland before being re-acquired by the Jays, and Brad Mills (4-145) of 82MPH fastball fame.  Alan Farina (3-115), Mike McDade (6-205) might somehow make some kind of mark in the bigs yet, and then there's Darin Mastroianni (16-505) and Brad Emaus (11-355), who saw some big league time and were confirmed to be AAAA players.

Matt Moore (8-245) and Brandon Belt (11-348) were bargains in this one.

Eric Thames to AAA

According to the Jays' Official Facebook page, which I cant link from my PS3. Cool. I personally have had enough of this experiment, especially now that the formula for getting him out has been derived and published league-wide for quite some time now.  Mike McCoy has been recalled from AAA, presumably to help fill the infield roster crunch that the Yunel and KJ injuries caused, though he can play some outfield with alittle more grace than Thames as well.  I still expect Rajai Davis to get the bulk of the time in left with the current roster formation, with McCoy serving as a backup and utility bench dude, but he's gotta be a better option than Omar Vizquel for pretty well everything, no?

And is it finally time for Travis Snider to come back up full time? I figure they're looking to give him a few games of rehab to take care of his wrist issue, but this could very well be the beginning of part two of the Snider era in Toronto.

Aaaand I think I'm just going to turn this into today's post.  Kelly Johnson, huh?  Drew Hutchison too.  I didn't give out Zaunheads for at least 2 of those blowouts (I think?), and I really can't decide who did better between an injured Johnson and an impressive Hutch, so they can just both have one and we'll be done with it.

Speaking of being done with it, Francisco Cordero is pretty bad, huh?  I'm sure I freaked out about Dotel or Francisco last year when they eventually offered some decent production, or at least weren't as bad as I was making them out to be, but uhh, Cordero really sucks.

Stuff
The new CBA is out for the public.  311 pages.  Prospectus has a summary of it behind a paywall here.

Grantland has something about the funnest team in baseball.

Kill. Destroy.

Stuff
Doing something different today.  Stuff first, actual post later.  Desert, then the meal.  Sex, then the foreplay. Roll, then the rock.

Sergio Santos threw from 120 feet today, and he'll throw from a mound either Wednesday or Thursday, says Shi Davidi.

Kelly Johnson is apparently good to go, as he's in the lineup, but Yunel Escobar won't play, and is apparently day-to-day, according to the little yellow thing on my fantasy baseball rosters.  I'm wondering if Johnson is sucking this one up for a game or two with Yunel out of the lineup and nobody else to take over. I'd be shocked if he was at 100%

Also from Shi Davidi, the Jays have recalled Aaron Laffey to be a longman out of the bullpen, just in case.  I'm not sure who is available and who isn't tonight, but the Jays bullpen really got used quite a bit this past weekend to the point where some guys are definitely needing multiple days off.  As a result, Chad Beck was sent back down to Vegas, without even appearing in a game.

Fangraphs looks at Miguel Montero's extension.


Motivational Speech
Alright, you ragtag bunch of misfits.  You're opening up a 3-game set at home, against the apparently first-place Baltimore Orioles, the worst team in the division, no matter what their record says about them.  It's time to get your spray paint cans out and jetpack yourself above the fold, back to where you belong.  It's not funny anymore; it's time to fucking do this.

And you, Ricky.  I've got a bone to pick, good sir.  You're the ace.  You're the slumpbuster. This is your team, and you're the guy that goes out there when the team needs it and throws an 8-inning 3 hit shutout.  You're the guy that goes out there and fucks a fat chick to break that dryspell, and you're the guy that leads march back in to Shelbyville to get that fucking lemon tree and brings it back home to where it belongs.  Fuck those turnip-juice drinking cousin-marriers.

Let's. Fucking. Do this.


Lineups
Jays
Johnson 2B
Rasmus CF
Bautista RF
Edwin DH
Thames LF
Lawrie 3B
Cooper 1B
Mathis C
Vizquel SS

Romero P

Orioles
Avery LF
Hardy SS
Markakis RF
Jones CF
Weiters C
Betemit 3B
Davis 1B
Reynolds DH
Andino 2B

Hunter P

Update: Hey so that's fucking embarrassing.  Romero isn't actually pitching tonight, as I'm sure anybody who has already read this has figured out by now.  I mean, I'm going to leave it, because who gives a fuck, and I can just use it tomorrow too I guess, so uh... yeah.  Go Hutchypoo.

Fan on a Ledge

If Sam Worthington's photoshopped arm looks like it's coming out of his belly button, it's because his actual right arm is at his side, and needed to be covered up.  If Elizabeth Banks looks weird in that hat, it's because I was going for a Fernando Rodney look that doesn't exactly translate to my photoshop skills (which are minimal, based on nothing more than Sam Worthington's belly button arm).  Otherwise, this was actually a halfway decent movie, in my opinion.

Anyway, the Jays have lost 5 in a row, and gave up like 34 runs in a 3-game set this past weekend.  I'm here to talk you off the ledge that is the Blue Jays season that you're about to jump off of.  It isn't that they're playing well but still losing, because they got blown out of the water in two of three, and haven't had a really good pitching performance in about two weeks now, it's just that 5 games, over the course of a season, really isn't all that much.  And it's not like Minnesota walked in to Toronto and swept us away; we lost 5 of 6 against the two best teams in the AL in their parks, and without a bullpen for half of it.

Beyond that, injuries are creeping in, and if there was someone around to take over for Eric Thames' sad excuse of himself, that probably would have happened already.  As is, though, the Las Vegas 51's can't beat the Rangers or the Rays, because most major league teams can't do so either.  There are obviously some things that need to change (the aforementioned Thames issue, Kyle Drabek can't throw strikes again, there is apparently no middle infield anymore, etc.), but every team is going to go through these stretches over the course of a 162 game season.

And let's not forget, it took 5 losses against 2 really, really good teams just to get back to .500 in a difficult division.  This team is good enough to turn back around and win 5 in a row and get right back to where they were... fuck, the White Sox have won 9 of 10 or something like that.  Good teams go on 5-loss stretches all the time, and bad teams go on 5-win stretches just as often.  This is a good team that went on a 5-loss stretch; let's give it a while before panicking.

Just Got Home

Went to the beach.  Did I miss anything?  Darvish is pitching?  7-1 after 3?  Yeah, fuck this, I'm going to go drink and eat meat.

The Jays called up Jesse Chavez yesterday, which probably explains why they weren't interested in whichever Japanese team's offer to buy Chavez.  Yan Gomes has been optioned to AAA Las Vegas to take his place.

Kelly Johnson got a cortisone injection in his hamstring on Friday, and wasn't able to play today, even after a day off yesterday.

Sergio Santos' shoulder doesn't appear to be healing as well or as quickly as first thought.  He's yet to do longtoss, and definitely can't start a rehab assignment until that goes down.  That rehab assignment is probably going to be long too, since the injury happened so early in the year.  I'm kind of thinking that it might be time to cut him loose from my fantasy teams, mostly because between my 6 teams, I have 20 guys on the DL, and not nearly enough DL/bench spaces.

Is it almost time for the Jays to check in on Roy Oswalt?