How the Staypuft Marshmallow Pitcher Got His Groove Back

Well I have no idea actually, but who won't take 7 shutout innings from your #5 starting pitcher. Baring some crazy major change in direction somewhere Litsch is just holding this spot until Drabek is ready to come up and ultimately claim his spot. But everything the pasty white chunky dude does to increase his trade value is a good thing. Come late July he might look pretty good to some desperate team in any division other than the AL East. 

And I still think he has an outside chance to claim the ultimate prize in the who has a better career contest, Jesse Litsch or Joba Chamberlain?

Stupid answers to stupid questions

Good game yesterday, was a nice workmanlike win with some hitting. They are still above .500 so I guess that's something.

I thought this was quite the humorous headline at bluejays.com though.

Bautista searching for answers to end slump

Hey I got your answer right here - You Suck! Accept it.

Glad to be of help.

I kind of like Bautista, he certainly seems to be proving that he's a legitimate answer at 3B for a couple of years if you don't need to have him hit higher than 8th or maybe 7th in the lineup. I think Encarnacion is going to find himself on the outs when Snider gets back. But let's be honest, he's never really going to be more than an 800OPS guy on a regular basis.

The Apocalypse is Boring

When you think apocalypse you think blood red skies raining fire on the earth, winged beasts clashing in the air, half-man / half-animal armies ravaging the countryside. You know good times. Whatever the Jays did this weekend is about as far from that as possible. I think I may never want to watch baseball again after that display.

Anyways at least Romero and Morrow pitched ok. Litsch I really don't care about unless he pitches great. If he keeps sucking I'm sure somebody else can be along in no time.

Marcum in Petco tonight, let's see how mister "ace" does at stopping this losing streak. Well, I might not be "seeing" it.

The Apocalypse so far

Not so bad. 4-5 after 9 games against the Rays and Yanks. That's pretty encouraging i think, and Cecil pitched great. You definitely want to see how Romero and Morrow do in Colorado. Marcum is allowed to have a lousy game every once in a while. And exciting news, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Pitcher is back! We get to seem him on sunday, although you get the feeling if he doesn't do a lot quickly it may be the last we ever see of him.

Now of course 15 straight games against above 500 NL teams. This is not a recipe for Blue Jay success, they have enough trouble against below 500 NL teams. I don't mind low scoring well pitched losses, losing 9-1 sucks.

How are things going in that Apocalypse?

7 games in and the Jays finally had their first really bad one, a Tallet start, imagine that. 3-4 after 7 games, I wouldn't have thought it was possible.

Of course they could still end up 3-6. I would certainly have thought that was likely.

Draft Roundup Thoughts

My main thought as always is that nobody will really know anything about this draft for about 5 years, and anybody saying otherwise is selling snake oil.

In general terms though i'm pretty impressed. I have always thought that if I was running a draft I would pick all pitchers and shortstops. Because you can never have enough pitching, and if you've got it you can always trade it for something else. And shortstops, because they can play anywhere. Except maybe catcher, but you can always get a catcher, as long as you don't need a really good one.

So what does atos do in his first draft. By my count of the first 36 picks 21 are pitchers, and 4 or 5 are shortstops. I'm all for that. There was even a catcher. 

Why is Dickie Thon's kid playing High School ball in Puerto Rico?

Anyway, we can talk about it all again in 5 years.

What caught my attention in this whole Wilner Thing

 I've been casting sideways glances at this Wilner issue, I haven't read any of the news reports about it just what djf and Tao have had to say. But this from The National Post's Jeremy Sandler via djf did actually catch my attention. Sandler is reporting on what happened in the original conversation at the press scrum from his notes and recordings:

Gaston: “He was probably, I think Camp finished the inning, didn’t he?”

Wilner: “Downs came in and struck the last guy out.”

Gaston: “He came in and struck who out?”

Wilner: “Brignac.”

Gaston: “Well, evidently I think sometimes you need to get some stats and see what they hit off each other and then you’ll get that answer.”

See it appears to me here that Gaston doesn't remember what happened. Now I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that he didn't know what was happening while it was happening, I'm just going to say he didn't remember. Or I guess more rightly didn't care to try remembering what happened in a situation, a press conference, where he was almost certainly going to get asked about why the crucial thing happened in the game last night. I mean I don't know, maybe the rules are that you don't ask questions about the previous game in the pre-game press conference, or scrum or whatever it is, and Wilner breaks these rules on a regular basis, so that's why he's in trouble, because this was the last straw. But you think you might hear one peep about that from somebody. But I haven't really been looking, so maybe i'm not getting all sides through my sources, don't know.


I just think it's weird that Cito seems to think it's ok to put it out there that he had no idea what happened only the next day. Do players and managers really have that much disregard for the press? I mean if I'm Wilner my response to Cito not caring about this is "WTF dude, you were there, didn't any of this actually matter?" not helpfully reminding him of the particulars. This is what passes for even sports journalism?

Trading Draft Picks

For some reason I went looking for MSM info on the draft today and I ended up on this article by Tom Verducci about how to fix the draft. I usually like his stuff, I can read it every couple of months whereas most MSM writers I can't read at all. His fix #1: Allow clubs to trade picks. He gives some fairly weak reasons why clubs should be able to trade draft picks and then lists his main reason against it as: "The argument against trading draft picks basically goes something like this: Scott Boras."

Look I don't love me some Scott Boras anymore than the next sports fan, but that isn't the main reason. The main reason not to trade draft picks is, nobody's going to do it. I don't mean that nobody would ever not trade a draft pick, what I mean is there would probably be a little flurry the first couple of drafts, and then it would tail off to basically never happen once everybody sees that it doesn't work.

The reason for this is pretty clear, draft picks are a completely unknowable commodity in baseball. Yes I realize Strassburg is about to make his debut, and David Price had a pretty quick rise to the majors and top flight starter status. But those are seriously anomalous happenings, and Strassburg hasn't done thing one yet against MLB hitters, and may not for another couple of years. Has anybody noticed how things have been going for Joba Chamberlain recently? Some people may want to point out John Olerud, but then I'll point out he was drafted in the 3rd round. Somebody was going to trade down for him because he was so good?

I just don't understand how this is supposed to work here, Verducci's best rationale for why some team would want to trade for a higher draft pick is this:

But what if a contender picking late in the first round wanted to trade up to pick a relief pitcher who might pitch this year down the stretch? Why not allow the Pirates to trade that pick to get a prospect and a later first-round pick?

Ok, I'll bite. If said team was going to part with enough great assets to loosen up this phenom from a team that is bad enough to be picking high in the draft, why wouldn't they just trade those assets for a proven pitcher. Or probably actually fewer of those assets to get a proven pitcher. If I'm the GM of a the team with the pick of a player who may be so good he can play the same year he's picked, why am I giving it up unless I'm basically raping who I'm trading with? And If I'm the one being raped why am I doing it for somebody that I have truly no idea will be helping me anytime in the near future?


Deeper into this, I'm not sure what it is that the teams that are getting the draft pick are supposed to be trading away. If I'm the Nationals last year what are the Yankees supposed to trade me for Strassburg, that I want more than him? And why do the Yankees want to give it up? Hey Nats, "you have what could be a shot at one of the greatest pitchers of all time, who you can maybe control for relatively cheap for 8-10 years. Why don't you give him to us for a guy we thought the same thing about not so long ago but isn't really working out, and Phil Hughes." If I'm the Nats, the answer is Click. And if the Nats come looking for a package of minor league prospects, then I have to say: "Wait a minute, why am I trading 3 guys who I'm pretty sure there's a chance at least one of will be good soon for a guy who I'm going to pay a lot of money and may never do anything?"


It's the old Bird in the Hand argument and you can see if you think about it for a little, that it won't take long for a couple of these trades to turn into complete short term disasters before nobody ever wants to do it again. I mean look no further than this rationalization from Anonymous Scouting Director about Pittsburgh's #2 position in this years draft:

"It doesn't look like there's a lot of impact in this draft. Teams picking in the middle of the first round are in good shape. If baseball were like football, they'd be looking to trade down. They could get close to same player if they drafted lower."

Um yeah, but if the there isn't a lot of the impact in this draft, why exactly is anybody looking to draft up, genius? Pittsburgh could be looking to trade down all it wants but that doesn't mean they are going to find any suitors. What's the motivation, boredom?

The worst part of this thinking is the ever present "If Baseball were Like Football". Dude baseball isn't like football. Every year colleges produce about 100 or maybe even more players that can walk right onto an NFL field and play. In baseball it doesn't happen more than once a year, if that. Hell if you added in players with a full year of A ball to the list how many even play in the majors on average the next season? Aren't you a Scouting Director? You need me to point this out?

Again I'm not saying it would never happen. I could kind of see trading picks for picks. If number 2 absolutely wanted the first pick and the defacto #2 pick was still pretty damn good. So yeah maybe let it happen, but you just won't see any good effect from it. At all.

The best part of the article though is his reasoning for solution #2:

The draft must remain true to its original mission statement: Get the best players to the worst teams.

And we are doing that by allowing the worst teams to trade away the best picks I guess? I don't know my head spins.

The Apocalypse is Upon Us

Well look I still have to stick to my original point, I'm impressed that the Jays were even able to make a series of it against the Rays. To me the worst news of the whole thing was the good news that Tallet pitched well enough to probably justify another 3 starts or so. If they can do as well against the Yankees and don't collapse into the Orioles for the rest of the season, I see no reason to believe this can't be seriously good team next year with the right moves. Basically I put them a year ahead of schedule...if things don't go this year like they did last...ohh well...

The Gathering Apocalypse

I've been trying to write a post about the stretch of games coming up against much better competition and why it does/doesn't matter how the Jays do, mixing in my feelings about how this really isn't a very good team, all success should be celebrated and how things really do look good for future seasons.

And then last nights game happened and it was disappointing, but in the end i had to think to myself: "it's pretty amazing they even had a game to save".


I think that pretty much wraps it all up nice and clean, no matter what happens.