Mega update in a small package

Been too busy unfortunately to blog here, got a new blog i have been working on here, and have been very busy with actual work work. Anyways, my quick take on recent events:

This team is going to loose 100 games, simple math tells me they won't win more than 62, therefore in a 6 month season they will win an average of 10 games a month. Ergo, this is what a team that loses 100 games looks like. If you are somehow shocked or surprised by this you might be a really good jays fan, but you are a lousy baseball fan, because you can't tell a lousy team when you see one when it doesn't have a KC or a Pirate on it's jersey.

Don't thank me i'm happy to be of help.

The starters that matter (not looking at you Tallet or Eveland) are showing tons of promise or just being downright awesome (looking at you worst draft pick ever). And Lind is mashing, Wells is showing what he can do when healthy, the only real concern might be Hill but I doubt it. Let the bullpen-minors merry go round run all season. Everything else is essentially irrelevant. I'm just hoping Brett Wallace gets here soon.

Who's in the What Now? - Fred Lewis edition (addition)

I think I will start a new feature where when atos makes a bewildering move I refer to it as a "Who's in the What now?". It will get it's own label. Eveland and Gregg also would have fit into this.

I'm not really sure what to make of this as I'm not sure what role he's supposed to have. He could be a cut rate lead off guy, some power and less than embarrassing career OBP numbers and supposedly good speed (though not great steal numbers). I think this will become a lot clearer to us when Aaron Hill comes back in about a week. Maybe there's going to be some competition over the next week among the McCoy's, Bautista's and Ruiz's of this team to see who doesn't get bumped by Lewis. Maybe this has something to do with Overbay or Encarnacion? Don't know, but I think things will be clearer, or murkier once Hill comes back.

Anyways, since they didn't give up much for him, as long as they don't lose anything more valuable by acquiring, him no big deal.

What I do know is that "Fred Lewis" rates very low on the awesome baseball name ranking, and if you aren't going to have superstar skills that name isn't going to do too much to help build your cred.

Addie watch the final day

It is over, it is officially official. Now we can find out if this guy really is Soriano with a glove or just another gumby. No more Addie watch, I might even forget he existed if he doesn't do newsworthy stuff, which is probably how it should be anyways.

5 Game Re-cap

So unfortunately had many much bigger fish to fry since Friday and haven't had a chance to comment on what's been going on, let alone actually watch much of the games. This is a shame because I have been missing out on some unexpectedly good baseball, which could end at any time not to return for quite a while.

So let's re-cap and comment:

Orioles Series: HaHAHahHahahahahaHahahaHaHAHahHahahahahaHahaha

Look i'm going to stick to my guns that the Jays are going to finish behind the Orioles this season, but get swept at home in your first series by a team that is supposed to be terrible and not trying when you are supposed to be on your way to awesome? I'm not going to cry for you. Anyways this is supposed to be a Jays blog.

Everything has been very positive from the all important starting pitching standpoint, as far as what matters goes. The only thing disappointing in the past 5 games was Tallet, and the only thing really disappointing in that was he messed up the home opener. All I want is for this to be over one way or the other quickly. Please don't make me sit through explanations of why it's "gritty" to give up six runs in 7 innings. Cecil can do that and give us hope for the future too.

Romero - what can you say except that he is clearly the worst pick in the history of the draft and proves it every time he goes to the mound.

Marcum - that's what gutting it out actually is

Morrow - Given that he was still really in spring training, not bad, tonight will shine some more light, i hope i can actually watch some of this one

Eveland - intriguing - he pitched like that on occasion in 2008, so if he is back to that form he might make some pretty good trade bait, or better. but i remember this guy named josh towers....

Bullpen - If both Gregg and Frasor continue to be unexpected in their performance then at least you get 1 good pitcher out of it. Janssen continues to be lights out. Did anybody else even pitch?

Postion players - Vernon is reminding people that he is actually pretty good when healthy and proving the point about how when (usually) underpaid white guys play through pain and suck they're "gritty" and when anybody else does it they aren't. Lind is just grooving along quietly, it will be scary when he gets hot. Gonzalez is out of his skull, who know how long it will last I just hope it comes and goes, and doesn't just go. Bautista isn't a disaster, he is working in the walks so I think we should see this to the end of the month. Snider, from what I've seen it looks to me like he's unlucky. He's striking out but he's walking too, and what he hits hard seems to find a glove. Other than that SAMPLE SIZE baby! Even the best hitters tend to throw in at least one lousy month in a season, and this one isn't half over yet. Timely is the word so far.

Defence - Ugghhh is the word i think so far, i would call it average overall at best. That throw the PMoD made to the plate was an embarrassment.

So all in all 4-1, you can only say yay. It's a product of great pitching and luck of course, and it can't last. But it's great while it does and it shows that there really can be a brighter future. Because it's mostly about the starting pitching.

Above .500 - No I never would have thunk it

Nice win yesterday, and the Jays go over .500! I would have thought for sure that Texas would take 2 of the first 3 at home, but they didn't (the lack of Kinsler may have had something to do with it). As long as the starters rack up the quality or better starts, then the team will have a chance to win some games. The problem comes of course when the starters rack up some just less than quality starts. The losses are going to pile up fast at that point. If Romero had given up even 3 runs instead of just 1 in his 7 innings yesterday then I think you see a Jays loss, despite the better than quality start. Don't get me wrong, 3 runs in 7 innings from Romero would have been fantastic, but we would have had a different team result.

Anyway today is Brandon Morrow's regular season Blue Jay debut, and I'm a little pissed that I can't watch this on TV. I don't exactly expect big things today, as he's being held to an 85 pitch limit apparently and I doubt he's really in form yet. Over the long term though, every glowing expectation that has been applied to Dustin McGowan should be applied to him. Brandon was a higher pick, their travels through the minor leagues are very similar (Dustin was drafted out of High School of course), they have very similar stuff. I think this trade could be the defining one of atos's early career if it works out like it could. Unless League or that other prospect turn into some kind of superstars, this one could be a clear win. I think we may remember this before He's Gone. No pressure Brandon, maybe 3 starts from now though.

On another issue, the Orioles start the season 1-2 and from what I can grok everybody was a little high on the idea that they might actually be turning it around and could finish ahead of the Jays this season for the second time in like what, 12 seasons? Especially since the Jays are not trying at all this season. I wonder how depressed the fans over there will get if the Jays leave town with a sweep? I'm pretty sure by the end of the season the Baltimore will be ahead, but if the Jays start off the season with a bunch of wins against the O's it could take a while for them to catch up and pass. Not that this matters, but as I am a Jays fan I have to view all the other teams in the AL East as incarnations of evil and wish them only ill fortune.

Jays Win! You'll only see it happen about 60 more times this year

All in all an encouraging game. Lets admit it, Harden was not good, but the Jays managed to work him to 90 pitches in his 3-2/3 innings, and that's an important thing. There aren't many times a starter is going to have a good outing against you if he's throwing 100 pitches in 4 innings, and most of the jays batters didn't let him off the hook. Tallet repaid management's faith, but he had good outings last season too as a starter. Hopefully he can put enough good ones together to generate some trade interest before the bad ones start piling up. Vernon positive of course. Errors were a big negative, as well as multiple strikeouts and some other things, but that's what's going to happen with a team that's going to loose around 100 games. 60 times a season you are going to overcome your general crappiness and 100 times you aren't.

Today Romero continues his quest to prove that he is not the worst draft pick in history, I like his chances. Texas counters with their own lefty, but Cito won't be changing up the lineup from what I have gleaned. I think that makes sense for the first 15 games or so. I would like to see them get Ruiz in sometime sooner rather than later though.

2 afternoon games in a row, and then a saturday evening game. That kind of sucks.

Update: Hill is out for this game and McCoy makes his Blue Jays debut. How exciting! Hill has some hamstring tightness and is day-to-day.

Update II: How does Jose Molina bat ahead of Travis Snyder? Are the lineup cards already photocopied for the season with snider marked in for 9th everyday of the season and it would just blow the budget to get another one fresh one so you could move him?

Addie watch day something or other - could there be a resolution in a month or less?

According to this on Bluejays.com it might be close. I will not start holding my breath. Given how long this has all seemed to take it might be mid summer before the guy actually reports anywhere. He might just swim from Mexico for all we know.

A weak-ass defense of the Tallet in the rotation decision

Ok so I touched here on why I think the Tallet decision might be defensible from a team perspective, and it's a pretty weak structure holding it up. So i thought lets pack in some cooked pasta around the foundation and add some gum to the joints and use some duct tape sparingly where i think it can go and, voila:

Kenny Rogers

David Wells

See here's some historical proof that a left handed pitcher can make himself a starter late in his career.Of course these guys got regular starts in their late 20's and Tallet was still trying to stick in his late 20's. I'm sure I could find some better examples if I could bother to think about it. But I don't really believe in this argument. Further to support my argument Tallet was drafted 2x, in the 2nd and 13th rounds. Rogers was drafted in the 39th round. Yeah that doesn't really help at all. I'll just stop now.

I think I'm going to give this 2 bad starts before i stop trying to make even lame arguments to support it. I'm just hoping it doesn't take the Jays 10 bad starts to give up on it.

Are Lind and Hill for Real? Pt 1.

Here's some thinking on Lind and Hill that I have been working on for months


Both of theses guys had breakout seasons in 2009, proving themselves to be capable of top offensive output. But will they do it again? That has to be the $100mil question because it's the kind of money they'll be earning if they keep this up. The Jays should thank their lucky stars neither is up for arbitration or FA this off season, because players having a career year in their mid 20's never to repeat the feat are a terrifying proposition (see Hinske, E. and Rios, A., let alone Beltre, A.)

I'm not sure what the popular opinion on this issue is, but my impression was that people seemed to think Hill was more likely the fluke than Lind, I'm not sure I would agree. If anything I think Hill is going to use this season to really take off to a Hall of Fame type career. With Lind I think that he is going to be a very good player that touches this level a couple more times, and probably stays close to it over his career, but I don't think you can expect even another leap from here. 

To come to my conclusion I went back and did my research with players that i thought were similar to Hill and Lind, and drilled down into their break out seasons.

For purposes of keeping posts from being gigantic, I'll do Hill in this one. Here's a comparison page at baseball-reference.com.

From the first time I saw Hill in 2005, I thought: "this guy is either going to be Jeff Kent maybe without the power or Paul Molitor without the speed." I'm pretty sure now he's going to be Jeff Kent with the power.

Both of them got rushed to the big leagues after 3 seasons in the minors at 23 due to injuries at the MLB level, and if you compare those stats they come out about the same. Kent showed more power, though Hill had a better OPS by 100 points. Kent never saw AAA, while Hill was only there for 38 games. 

Hill has completed his 5th season, and though Kent never played more than 140 games in his first 5 their totals are pretty close because Kent never had the lost season that Hill did due to his concussion in 2008. That's as far as you can directly compare them as of course, Hill has only played those first 5 season. In the years after that 5th season Kent kept moving around and didn't really break out like Hill did this season until he played 150+ games for SF and hit 29HR's, he still only posted a .789OPS. The next season he really hit his prime and his OPS didn't go below 860 until he turned 40 in his final season and posted a 745 in 2008. 

Can Hill do what Kent did. I think so. If you look at them historically the had developed on pretty similar paths to this point with the main differences being Hill playing more regularly, Kent's power surge not coming so much out of left field and Hill having his first truly huge season at a younger age (which might be a function of Kent never playing as much as Hill has, I can't remember why that was). They both had the same main problem in their offense at this stage, OBP, and if Kent could overcome it there is no reason to believe Hill won't or can't.


What I think is important to remember about Hill in the regard is that from here he could just take off and have an incredible career. The other likely outcome is that his power could dip again and some of the HR's could go back to being 2B's, but if his OBP does rise, that will still be one hell of a player.

Are Lind and Hill for Real? Pt 2.

Guessing where Adam Lind may go from here is a lot more confusing to me than what the future holds for Hill. If you look at his stats in college and the minors you could definitely see there was a lot to be optimistic about. His struggles in his first 3 part seasons showed promise and frustration, the disaster his first trip up in 2008 turned into was scary.

But still the year he had in 2009 was pretty remarkable for a breakout season by a player with a little over  a seasons experience over 3 years. He was just so damned consistent, always producing something the whole way through the season. He had one month with an OPS below 800, but still had 18RBI. One month of an OBP below 300, but again drove in 18 and had a SLG of 581. Yes he did have a great last month of the season when the team faced a lot of lousy opposition, but given that he had such a consistent year before that, why would it be disappointing to get better in those situations, he SHOULD get better. If he had put up huge numbers through april and may, and then slumped away the summer only to pick it up in september I would worry about the future. But that isn't what happened at all.

It's hard to want to be as positive about a player like Lind as you think you could be. Could he really be as good as McGriff or Delgado? The main problem here is how do you get past the fact that he was a 3rd round draft pick and has always been questioned as to what he could actually become. I mean JP sucked at the draft didn't he? I don't want to turn this into a rant on these subjects, so I won't. But I think that's a big part of the doubt around Lind. Just how good can the guy be? Delgado-McGriff-Olerud-Green good? 3 of those 4 players left pretty early in their career (and Delgado eventually left too) to continue their greatness other places. Am I worried that Lind may do that too? Given the new contract he just signed the chance are reduced.

It's hard to imagine him being consistently as good or better than 2009. In his first full season he posted a 932OPS, 15th best in MLB right between Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Howard. He could lose 100pts off that and still have a really good season. So I don't think it's unreasonable to believe in an 850-950OPS from him every year. Probably we are looking here more at a Justin Morneau than Ryan Howard. One year he'll probably go over 1000 and make a run at an MVP (Delgado Olerud and McGriff did it 5 times between them, Green topped out at 972).

So in my opinion yes Lind is for real. 2009 was a consistent year for him in that he produced all season long, and what he produced was well in line with his minor league career. Given that new contract, I think the Jays agree too. And if he does spend seasons dipping into the 750OPS range, at least it's not killer money, like somebody else's long term contract.

Get ready for about 100 more of these, but it was still good

Well that went like I expected, a 1 run loss. Marcum was really damn good, and they manged to score some runs! Frasor was sure a dissapointment although as the tv told me rangers ballpark is not his friend. Hopefully he gets some good outings in quickly and bumps up the trade possibilities again and this is all forgotten. There was a lot too like here:

-Clutch 2b by the 2b, and just general ability to get something going against feliz
-Great hitting by Lind
-Great hitting by Wells
-Great inning by Downs - get that trade value up!
-very good outing by Marcum

This is a good way to loose a lot of games for a season. It shows you've got some stuff that can be built on. It would be pretty disappointing to loose 100 games a year like that  for more than a season though.

Let's hope the Tallet starts don't run things down too much.

Thoughts before the season starts

I didn't keep my blogging up the last couple of games because basically, i lost interest in the last 3 or 4 games of spring. The only really interesting thing to happen was that Brandon Morrow threw very well, regularly getting the ball up to mid-90's speed and no reported pain. I still need to do a longer post on him, maybe before his first start, but basically I think he's got the potential to be everything that McGowan was supposed to be. If McGowan ever makes it back to be what he looked like he might these 2 together would be deadly.

Final thought on Tallet and Eveland making the rotation over Cecil and Rzep? Well rzep got injured so that cleared things up. Eveland, if you were going to trade for him and then stick him in the bullpen or risk losing him to waivers when he pitched as well as he did, why did you bother trading for him? So it makes sense to give him a shot.

Tallet - well really what i got to say there is i'm betting that this is a move that's done as much for the benefit of the players as that management thinks he can be legit starting pitcher with more upside than any of the other options. Tallet has been a good soldier as long as he's been with the team, and i can bet he's popular with his teammates. He took the ball a lot last season and "ate" innings even when he wasn't very good and could have said he just wanted to stay in the bullpen. I could see that he might have been quietly politicking to get this opportunity. Nobody should fool themselves here, the potential earnings between a guy who's a pretty good reliever and 5th starter could be pretty huge. Especially if he actually is any good and gets traded to a contender. That's probably something that is going to be respected by the players here as well as ones you might be trying to attract. And if he sucks, Cecil can be here in no time.

On the position player side of that long shot coin. I'm fine with Ruiz and McCoy on the team. I think they are both going to get regular chances to show why the entire rest of the league has been right about them for years once Bautista proves he's not going to suddenly bloom into a legit above average everyday player. But who knows, if one of these 3 exceeds expectations that would be a very good thing. We just have to hope that Cito realizes when one of the is showing there is no hope and moves onto the next one.

Finally, congratulations to Adam Lind on his brand new contract. It's amazing, the MLB contract. Both sides can be screwing each other and making out like bandits at the same time. I think this is positive backup to this story from tao of stieb. If the CEO was actually telling the players all this stuff, well then I have to think Rogers would have to be awfully cynical for it not to be true. The only thing is until proven otherwise, I really do believe that Rogers just is that cynical. Let's just say the scale is momentarily tipped the other way. But that's got as much to do with it being the first game of the regular season as anything else.

Some stuff to follow on Lind and Hill that I've been working on for a looong while.

Isn't that Addie guy supposed to be reporting somewhere about now? did he get lost in the Bermuda triangle?

At this point let me also state dissapointment that the Jays do not have a former Giant Bocock on the roster this season. I was looking forward to that.

100 losses and #3 in the draft here we come!