Wednesday 13 November 2013

Did You Guys Really Fall for That?


So everyone's believing all they read now, huh?  Are you guys for real?  I came home from work today, and, like I do most days, checked bluejaysaggr and MLBTR to see if anything was up, only to see post after post and link after link suggesting that the Jays are going to trade Bautista?!

Come on, guys.  Let's use our brains on this one, yeah?

Obviously it wasn't going to be straight up, but the rumored deal was Bautista for Dom Brown, because we're apparently in the business of conveniencing the Phillies.  Bautista is infinitely better than Brown, is coming off a year that he missed a pile of games with injuries (i.e. selling low), and still has three years of team control.  Brown is quite a bit cheaper, is worse than Bautista, and comes with only one more year of control.  This one would be sort of dependent on what the Phillies would be throwing in.

The Jays are in need of-- in no particular order-- a catcher, starter, and second baseman.  The Phillies "don't have" a catcher at the moment (Carlos Ruiz is a free agent) so we can omit that one.  They have a recently extended Chase Utley at 2B, which doesn't preclude them from trading him per se, but obviously they want Utley around or they wouldn't have extended him, right?  Probably.  I also doubt the Phillies go Utley-and-Brown for Bautista if the situation even arose, though the more I think about it, it might make a bit of sense if you throw in a bullpen piece here and a prospect or bench player there.  But that's not the point.

Starters in Philly include Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels, and then a few dudes that the Jays couldn't possibly have any interest in trading Jose Bautista for.  I doubt the Phillies are overly interested in moving Hamels or Lee, given their strategy the last few years.

So yeah-- it's a Bautista-for-Utley type of thing, or it's nothing.

Don't believe everything you read.

No comments:

Post a Comment