The worst draft pick in the history of Baseball

Jays sweep the Rangers over the weekend, and you have to say that it's looking like a less than 70 win season is going to be a dissapointment. One of the big reasons for this, if not the biggest has got to be the worst draft pick ever himself, Ricky Romero. He's basically stepped in and done just about the unthinkable and replaced He's Gone! After 8 starts last season He's Gone had 61IP with an ERA of 2.95 and 1 CG. Romero has 56.1IP, a 2.88ERA and 1CG. If Romero had the rep of the Gone One he might have racked up a couple more innings, but at the same time the bullpen needs their work too. Only time will tell if Romero can truly replace the Gone One, but he's certainly showing that only idiots ever judge draft success.

Something not to loose site of though is that as great as the contribution of Buck, Bautista and Gonzalez has been, I think it would be just about lethal to make any assumption that any more than 1 of them can be a long term solution in a contending lineup. Although they are all posting great OPS right now, the OBP is not good for Buck and Gonzalez. I think Buck might be a keeper as the everyday catcher batting 9th, but if you think he's going to bat 6th for your pennant winning team, good luck to you.

Next 10 games will be another pretty good test. I would have thought before the season in 7 games against Minnesota, Seattle and LAA you would do well to get 3 wins, but now I'm not so sure. I have no opinion on what they should do against the D-Backs.

Pitchers Good, Hitters I never heard of Suck, Randy Ruiz Celebrates first MLB Season Start by drinking too much

Big news of course is that Morrow missed his start, probably because he's fighting off the flesh eating virus or is becoming a vampire or something. Following that here.

At least Ruiz worked a walk in his 4 trips to the plate. I guess he was so dizzy from his hangover that he just didn't bother swinging.

Bastian is again writing about He's Gone's lingering effects. I think I'm not even going to read this article, because I'm sure I already read it before.

He's Gone!

While going back through posts tonight and labeling them (a tedious process) I have decided that Roy Halladay will for now on be referred to as "He's Gone". Mostly because "Get Used to It" is 4 words long instead of 2.

Catching up

Been a little bit rough in the recovery department the last couple of days so I'm just catching up on things. It looks like nothing has happened so we are all even.

First thing first, Bastian has now written a number of articles without having to start by reminding us that Roy Halladay is no longer a Jay. Yay to that.

I see that Lyle Overbay has finally gotten the gist of this "baseball is a business" thing. Good for Lyle. I really hope he has a monster of a season, gets traded for some good stuff, and can sign another contract somewhere. He really got robbed with the hand injury.

Vernon wants to take on more of a leadership role, or just rambled on about it in an interview about the only polite topic of discussion you can really have with him that doesn't involve "hope your wrist feels better". I wonder who's going to be "gritty" on this team now that we have the leadership issue covered for the time being.

Brandon Morrow is looking forward to a season where he doesn't have to guess whether it's starter or bullpen. Nobody wants to say he's guaranteed the job but you have to believe If he doesn't go out to the mound and forget to throw it to the catcher he's in. Especially since none of the guys who came back in the Halladay deal seem likely to be starting the season above AAA. I'm actually pretty excited about Morrow, I'll have to post something about that later.

There's an article about atos spending a week in the DR at the new digs and talking in circles about drafts and international players and cubans oh my! I really like the parts about the "high risk/high reward" stuff. Dude they are all high risk/high reward, unless you get guys who you know are lousy and won't ever amount to anything. Anyways I do like that they say they are going to be looking at everybody, sounds good, but it will be better when we start seeing some results. Besides he's got to do something with the 1,255 scouts the Jays now have. Funny thing is I thought I remembered at least 1 if not 2 of these being announced already, but i'm not going back to look.

Even the pretend games cannot start soon enough.

The First "Meaningful" Dispatch from Camp is not Encouraging

Bastian's first report from active Spring Training (is that right?) starts with a sad story about Roy Halladay's lonely locker, and I have to say if I have to read much more about this kind of crap I may not be getting any more Jays news from anywhere. He's gooooone for gawdds sake Jordan, when are you going to cut it out? Are you going to dredge up his carcass yet again after atos makes his first big move of next off season and harken back to the Halladay trade in the first paragraph of all those reports? Because I can definitely see that everything you write this season is probably going to open with a Halladay reference whether it's helpful or not.

Anyways it just goes downhill from there because this is all about Cito and his "plans" and yes the man has plans. Yeah I think Cito is wrong about most of this stuff, but I just don't care about it at this point because really can we expect any of this stuff to survive may? However you structure the lineup, the starters and the bullpen, the team would suck. Personally yes I would like to see Encarnacion bat 2nd and Hill bat 4th with Lind 3rd because that makes sense to me and I think they are intriguing ideas. But you know what, I'm pretty sure after the second week of the season things are going to get pretty fluid so whatever he rambles about now, it's not what's going to actually happen. I'm holding onto that anyways.

I did like the thing about no Halladay working every 5 days and more flexibility in the staff because of it. I'm not quite sure the paragraph actually made any sense, but I'm going to hope it means they have no intention of sticking to a strict 5 man rotation in order to generate more starting opportunities for more guys. Kind of sounds like my 6-man rotation idea doesn't it?

So I'll cling to that 1 poorly written paragraph in an otherwise dismal report to keep my hope alive that they have some kind of reasonable plan to develop something this season.

Update: Brian Tallet as one of the 5 starters? I will be first to admit that I thought he showed some promise as a 4th or 5th starter last season, and if they were going to go for it this season he should get a shot. But give those chances to some young guys with a lot more promise for the future if this is a lost year.