Ananas

Brett Lawrie makes his Rogers Centre debut tonight. When you look at everyone at the top of the depth chart in Toronto right now with the exception of Hill who I'd say is more or less done in Toronto and Bautista who's obviously at his peak, this team is just pure upside right now. A lot of fun to watch, and we might even see Henderson Alvarez start Friday. This team has the feel of the 2007 Rays - just waiting to break out. And on top of all that they've been a decent team this year that might be in a bit of a playoff hunt if they had anything resembling a competent back end in the bullpen. EDIT: Henderson Alvarez has been called up to start tomorrow. Dude has been clocked as high as 101mph in AA, and has had an all-star caliber season in the Eastern League. This is going to be a fun week.

Maybe it's an AL/NL fan thing, but since I saw more of Seattle than Pittsburgh/SF during the 90s I tend towards Griffey as the best player I've ever seen. On a boxscore Bonds' numbers are just incredible and make him maybe the greatest player to ever play the game, but I have so many more memories of the Kid, like watching him smoke 3 off the Jays (2 off Clemens) in one game in '97. I don't want to jump into yet another Jeter debate, just the whole thing about his numbers being similar to Craig Biggio's - they're not THAT similar (.312/.383/.449 vs Biggio's .281/.363/.433) but it's not really a knock against Jeter if they were. Because yes, while Biggio has been insanely unheralded, he also totally deserves to be in the Hall. And the thing about all those guys who had better offensive numbers - positional adjustment. Was Vladimir Guerrero a better hitter than Derek Jeter? Of course. But if you take someone playing passable defense at a corner outfield position and compare it to someone playing passable defense at SS (and yes, while he was not a gold glove caliber defender he was hardly a statue), the offensive expectations are completely different. Relative to Jeter, there was what, 1 better offensive shortstop during the last 15 years? And he ended up playing third base beside Jeter. If we look at Fangraphs which does a calculation called Wins Above Replacement which includes positional adjustment, Derek Jeter over his career has been worth 73.8 wins. This list goes back as far as 1871, and Jeter comes in at 68th. Of 15,867 (BTW Craig Biggio comes in at 88th, immediately ahead of HOF Ozzie Smith and just behind should-be HOF Mark McGwire). How is being among the 99.5th percentile of players to play the game not qualification for calling someone great?

I can't believe we got a top-of-the-rotation starter for only a middle-of-the-rotation starter who will probably be out of the game in a few years and one of our many young relievers! No. Just no.

I still have a hard time believing Colby Rasmus is a Blue Jay. Basically for the past 9 months he's been the target du jour for the Jays fanbase. Back in November we assumed it would have taken Snider or Drabek + + to get him. That we got him ostensibly for Zach Stewart, Marc Rzepczynski and the rental of a AAAA outfielder, 3 serviceable middle relievers and taking on a bit of bad salary is just mind blowing. Stewart could be a solid mid-rotation starter, but given the spoil of riches the Jays have in minor league starters Stewart was probably going to fall behind 2-3 prospects by next year. The best part of it is that Anthopoulos has basically worked out a deal where he's likely gotten overwhelmingly the most value going forward, yet all 3 GMs feel they got what they wanted. Now the Jays are really close, and can make a push in the offseason to shoot for 95 wins, with 90 probably being enough to get the team into that second WC spot. Silent assassin.

Source - Wikipedia

It's weird, that's been the book on Weeks defensively forever and yet advanced metrics have plugged him as an above average defender at 2B for the last 3 years. He has a tendency to make errors but what runs he gives away with those mental mistakes he tends to take back with his range. His offensive profile is elite for the position and given his age he can most likely be remain a reasonable facsimile of himself for another 2-3 years. I agree that Braun is a franchise player, but I disagree that Weeks is the guy you move to restock the system. Take the picks for K-Rod, consider shopping Marcum/Greinke, but only based on the market. Hold on to Gallardo for now as he's under control through 2013. I think given the money committed to Weeks, unless teams are throwing insane packages at adding SP it makes more sense trying to find another 1B on the free agent market and let the potentially 6 comp picks for Fielder, K-Rod, Betancourt and Saito expedite a reboot of the farm system. Otherwise it seems like you end up making the Braun extension look lean during the peak years and expecting a lot from his decline phase.

Not to make a federal case of it, but he had an ownership stake in the team too.

Don't forget the Marcum trade. Lawrie was the top prospect in their system and that trade was pre-Grienke. Also didn't they extend Rickie Weeks through like 2015?

Tell that to John Vanbiesbrouck.

He already had a good reason that he chose not to use... "I haven't been an All-Star for 2 years."

So Schenn's agent is trying to use Doughty's deal as a precedent? He realises he's not Drew Doughty, right? Like, not even particularly close to Drew Doughty?

Yunel Escobar was wrung up on two strikes this year, but he and Farrell pointed it out to the ump and he reversed the decision.

Anyone still think baseball doesn't need replay? This ridiculous out call decided the Jays-Sox game today:

Kypers reporting MacArthur re-ups with the Leafs for 2 years, 6.5m. Seems like a bit of an overpay given his RFA status and extended history, but the terms are short and it's not like there's a whole lot available elsewhere. I'm sure it's front loaded so as to make him moveable to a floor dweller should he drop off substantially this year.

5 relievers is just stupid. The starters are going to come in as relievers anyway, so why not just pick the best pitchers? Romero and Sabbathia were both All-Stars this year. None of those relievers put up as much value in their 40 or so innings as each of those two put up in 3 times as much.

Eklund with the huge breaking rumour - Malkin to Pittsburgh!

34 grand slams so far this season. I'm not sure there even is a qualifier in the BBRef play index to count how many times a particular home run is the first of the game.

I'd find you examples of people like Keith Law talking about how ludicrous the strength of schedule stat is especially two months into the season, but I'm sure you'd just say he sits in his mother's basement all day playing D&D and not watching baseball at all. Not statistical, but it's not uncommon for a change of manager to shock the players into life. Wait, what? Vlad has only been a DH this year. The line I gave you was not solely Luke Scott, it was the combined numbers of Orioles DHs. Since he's less positionally flexible than Scott and has been worse than the combined DH numbers of Scott/Wigginton/Reimold etc, in what way has he made the Orioles a better team than 2010? No one ever denied the young talent the Orioles have. More the decision to spend a ton of money on players that should be in a retirement home. Still been better than Vlad. *sigh* This being an argumentative prick thing doesn't suit me so I'm trying to avoid it. I hate getting into these stupid pissing matches because they're a waste of both of our time, but that just completely unnecessary and condescending knock on stats conscious fans annoyed me. But let me assure you, I watch plenty of baseball. I've been to all but one of the Jays home games since the start of the 2008 season (and that was one of the three games that got shifted to Philly because of a G8 summit in Toronto). I'm a Sunday Night Baseball junkie. I have an MLB.tv package for when I have a lazy afternoon. I don't play Fantasy Baseball, so my stat slant is more towards having a greater understanding of the game. One word of advice, if you want to knock stats fans Fangraphs has totally replaced BP as the site du jour for us nerds living in our mother's basements. And I wouldn't be a nerd living in his mother's basement if I didn't point out that Theo Epstein and Andrew Friedman had done pretty well with a stats slanted approach.

The numbers do not lie, maybe you lie about the numbers. .289/.314/.403 from a DH? That makes the Orioles better? Orioles DHs combined for a line of .278/.359/.506 in 2010 so Vladdy's numbers have been a step down year to year. Maybe he'd have made the team better if their 2010 DH had been Royce Clayton. And the Rays are on pace to win 84 games, the Jays 82 and the O's 76. I'm not sure how on pace to be 6 games out of 4th and 8 out of 3rd constitutes "tight". In runs scored, the Blue Jays have 272, the Rays have 232 and the Orioles have 216. In ERA, the Rays are at 3.60, the Jays are 3.94 and the Orioles are 4.35. But who am I to argue with your vast baseball knowledge, I'll just go back to Baseball Prospectus and keep my stupid "fact based opinions" to myself.

And after that we can have the all moron team picked solely by people who thought that signing Vladdy and Mark Reynolds was going to make the Orioles better than the Rays. The ratings will be great unless there's a Two and a Half Men rerun airing opposite.

I think it warrants mentioning that JD Drew has more All-Star votes than Matt Joyce right now. Democracy has failed.

Albert Pujols' 2011 on base plus slugging - .753 Jose Bautista's 2011 slugging percentage - .841

I liked the episode right up until the hacky twist at the end. Well the whole "they're gonna have their own personal army" thing off 800 million dollars thing is pretty silly too, but putting the intersect in Morgan just seems like a "whatever, we've done everything else" sort of decision. This whole season felt like it was built around Chuck Vs the Push Mix, and then after that it really had a hard time getting much momentum going. I dunno, maybe the fact that season 5 is expected to be the last is a good thing - nice to see a genre show other than Lost get to go out on its own terms without becoming a complete parody of itself.

Besides if they need an all bat catcher Jesus Montero is right around the corner.

Don't get ahead of yourselves. Look at Dice-K's splits against the Jays. It's insane, they're like the only team he does well against.