Kyle Drabek has Stuff

So i was lucky on wednesday as Shaw added SN1 to my viewing list and I was able watch some of Drabek's debut in HD even! Yeah me! Although I still intend to be very bitter when I start getting charged for this channel, and actually haven't completely decided what i'm going to do when that day comes, but i digress.

My impression was that I don't quite remember seeing stuff like Drabek showed in his debut from any Jays pitcher in their rookie debut before. Dustin McGowan certainly looked that good in 07 and 08 when he had it going, but before that his stuff never had that look. Brandon Morrow didn't have stuff like that in his first start, though he has of course shown it since. I don't remember Halladay's stuff looking so wicked in his first start, or really even the second one. I can't remember Steib's debut at all. Maybe Kelvim Escobar is the only one I can think of, his stuff may have actually looked better. Juan Guzman perhaps.

Either way Drabek certainly has the stuff to pitch in the major leagues, there is no question. That combination of moving fastball, killer hard curve and cutter/slider/whatever? is certainly going to get people out. And he's trying to add a change too. The only question is going to be how long it's going to take him to roll that up into a package that can start consistently, or if he doesn't just how good a closer he could be. A WHIP of 2.0 isn't going to get you anywhere, but that can't last. If he doesn't come to camp as a total mess next season he is in the rotation, there have to be no questions asked. There is nothing for him to prove at AAA unless he's horrible in the mlb.

If McGowan could somehow come back to what he was, I cannot imagine a starting rotation of Romero, Cecil, Morrow, McGowan and Drabek going at their best one after the other, it would be unbelievable.

Something to Care About!

So the season is grinding to a sort of satisfactory yet boring end. And while it's certainly ending off way better than anybody could have predicted before it started, the fact that the season was going to end positively was established a long time ago now. So the recent news that Kyle Drabek is going to some up and start 3 games is very welcome. Hopefully he can look impressive and pitch really well and even win 2 of 3, but as long as he doesn't fall on his face, it should be a nice story for the offseason. The other positive stories would of course be familiar boring faces like Cecil, Romero, Marcum, Batista etc, but we all know them so they can't actually be any good or exciting

Anyways, I am looking forward to Drabek's first start, however as I just noticed on the schedule that game has now flipped from being a sportsnet game to a sportsnet1 game. Kind of like last thursday's game switched all of a sudden. Maybe I don't care anymore now.

What I did on my Summer Vacation

So summer is turning into fall, and the kids are back in school and the seasons in it's last month. Where have I been? Well basically i took a months hiatus and stupidly put my efforts into being a regular commenter at djf. This was a dumb thing to do on my part, I should have known better, as I have been there before.

Basically it all started ok, just the occasional comment, then more comments, then baiting a troll or 2 for entertainment. Before i knew it was anxiously awaiting replies to my comments so i could smack down idiots. anyways it culminated on sunday with me trying to post some really concise replies destroying some idiot who thinks travis snider can't hit a fastball, on an ipod touch. thing was the touch kept posting my replies before i could finish them, and i was also supposed to be enjoying friends and family and beers, and i suddenly thought to myself: "what are you doing, you know better than this, this guy will never agree with you no matter how right you are, go enjoy your life". and so i did, and here i am back posting on my own blog, not caring whether or not anybody comments or not.

I would be lying if i didn't credit this post and this one at obsidian wings with helping to turn me around. Always remember the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

It was nice to be able to swear liberally though.

Happy Stories

2 of 3 at LAA was great in and of itself, but the excellent start by rzep and then the extension of the worst draft pick in history and his own great start sunday was a fantastic topper. 62-55, I never would have thought it. I honestly didn't think they would be 55-62 before the season started. So now it's 3 against the sub-500 A's (who always seem tough on the jays especially recently in oakland). They could actually have 10 wins more than losses by the end of the week and maybe all over boston too for 3rd place.

This of course on either side of the Rogers Sportsnet 1 mess, but whatever, let's not let it drag us down.

Why no Drabek?

I'm jumping to conclusions of course, I have no idea that we aren't going to see Kyle Drabek (or Zach Stewart for that matter) making starts in MLB this season. But I have to say I would really like to. I see that Cecil is going to be held back a couple of days and Morrow is going to skip a start, so Mills will make one more and then go back down and Rzep will come back up. I have also heard rumblings that a 6-man rotation might be possible at this point. I think this all makes perfect sense. Other than Romero I don't think you can just let any of the starters keep pitching until the end of the season without having a plan to limit their innings, including Marcum. But at the same time just shutting them down isn't any better. I'd rather they mix in some of these guys and let them finish off their seasons with some big league experience.

I can see an argument I suppose for keeping down the service time, and preserving minor league options, but Stewart and Drabek are really to good for that. They can't reasonably go back to AA, and AAA makes no sense for a season next year unless they legitimately can't win a job on the MLB team next year. And if that's the case then you have to start looking a trading some of the "extra" pieces you have to get the pieces you need.

UPDATE: Stop him before he hurts himself again!


h/t djf - apparently cecil is getting held back because he cut open his knee climbing the dugout stairs and required some stitches. This after of course carving himself up cutting up some chicken in spring training. What can come next? one of those accidents where you get sucked into a treadmill...

Greatest. Weekend. Ever.

Well not really, but it was pretty damned good, as has really the last 6 games. It looked like the good times were going to stop rolling after 6 games with the yankees and tb. 5 wins later, great starts by romero and cecil, an unbelievable debut by arencibia and 1-hit, 17 K magnificence by morrow, they just keep rolling.

So rather than go on about the bizarre fact that arencibia sat yesterday or brett wallace's 400OBP lets just celebrate the fact that they Jays are still above .500 with 51 games to play and might even run down the red sox for 3rd place.

I would never, ever have thought it.

Beating a Dead Horse with Very Little Enthusiasm

So I did something today that I wasn't looking forward to all weekend, I read this article on BlueJays.com about Gose. It wasn't as bad as I thought and worse than I thought all at the same time. All it says of course is Gose is somebody atos really wanted, and that he's not doing so great in High-A but they have high hopes and Wallace is really great but that's the price you have to pay. I then went and read this blog entry by Wilner on the trade and got the same feeling. Add that to all the entries at djf and tao of stieb, including this one about the lack of action and at the trade deadline and well....

Look it's all great to feel good about the future, but you know whats always true about the future, it's coming. So what are you planning to do about it? Because I see some nice talk about how all this is going to come together some day, but nobody at all is putting any how or when to it. It's all beginning to sound very Underpants Gnomelike to me. Draft Picks->?->Contention!!!

Something I keep seeing and hearing coming up in defense of the Gose trade is that all the scouts and advisors agreed that he was just super, so that makes it ok. What I don't hear or see anywhere, and maybe I'm just missing it, is that any of the scouts and advisors thought it was a great idea to trade Wallace for Gose right now, and that really is the issue isn't it?

And here's the "little enthusiasm" part of the title. I really don't have it for going on an on about these things, and I'm open to the fact that I might easily be wrong about this. Maybe atos is some kind of genius who can build a contender in the next 2 seasons while still trading away some of the parts to do it for players who may not be ready for 4 or 5. It just seems to me that if you want to make a team competitive in the near term, you should mostly ignore the long term and focus all your efforts on that near term. Part of doing that is actually putting parts of that plan to the test, making decisions on them, and adjusting accordingly. Yes the whole idea of this blog is that I don't pay attention to the media, but if It is important to this team to say that they have some kind of timetable they are working on, you'd think I would find it when i went looking for it.

Or to put it another way, atos seemed to keep saying that he had to act on Gose now because in the future he would not be able to get him, because he would be too expensive. I think this is a little bit ridiculous and proves too much. After all if Wallace is as good as you keep saying, maybe you could have just traded him 2 years from now straight up for Gose anyways once he actually starts to prove it.