Kids under new MGMT - the new look, new feel, AA 2010 Blue Jays!

now post-Halladay.

to recap what Anthopolis has done since taking over:
• hired and army of scouts
• signed a battalion of below average catchers
• signed one Alex Gonzalez at short
• made the inevitable Halladay trade with the Philies - getting Kyle Drabek, Travis d'Arnaud and Michael Taylor
• immediately flipped Taylor for Brett Wallace from the A's
• not said anything stupid or embarrassing

would love input from those removed from J's fandom on what's been happening.

Are all those things actually official now?

My overall impression is that the Blue Jays are a long way away, but have a good young core. None of their pitchers seems anything like an ace, so I guess they're hoping Drabek can fill that role?

I think the catchers / Alex Gonzalez deals are just a matter of having bodies to man those positions, so not really a big deal given that they don't seem to be blocking any prospects.

I think Wallace / Lind / Snider is a pretty decent group of DH/1B/OF guys. Don't know anything about Randy Ruiz, who I guess played pretty well in limited duty last year. Have to think that Overbay gets traded, hopefully for pitching or someone who can play defense.

Randy Ruiz: 10 HR/17 RBI/1.019 OPS in 32 games last year, jock obv cannot be held by Brett Wallace.

not actually official yet. and the mystery failed physical also complicates thing obv. but i'm sure it's still happening.

also - there's a considerable amount of people staning for Brian Dopirak to get a shot at 1B aswell - pretty sure Overbay is gone soon.

oh - looks like it is official. failed physical = bs!

Here's my question about Overbay: why would anyone trade for him (he made $7,950,000 last year, so I'm assuming he'll make roughly the same in '10) when you could just sign Johnson or Branyan or etc., possibly for significantly less money? Overbay OPS'd .777 and .838 in 08 and 09, production I wouldn't feel particularly motivated to pay $8mil a year for. My sense is that he's a pretty solid defender at 1B?

ya - his defense is his strong suite fer sure.
he gets on base like crazy even when is ba sags (when he's healthy) and has led both leagues in doubles once (i believe). so there's that too. i'd say 8 mil is close to what he's worth, but ya - i could imagine i'd be hard to find a team that really wants him. he is seriously as solid a defender you can find at first tho.

http://www.thanksroy.com/

can't find an image of it anywhere online - but Roy took out a full page ad in the Sun today thanking the fans.
i mean holy shit - can he be any more awesome?

there's a story about it on the website including the picture:
http://www.torontosun.com/sports/baseball/2009/12/22/12235981-sun.html

what a guy. phillies fans don't deserve him

ya. god forbid he lose a few home games in a row. he's *really* gonna miss T.!

so - the Brandon swap with the M's looks pretty good to me!

Yeah what did Morrow do to Seattle that prompted this?

i'm worried there's maybe something up with his health or something we don't know about?!

the rumour seems to be that he will be a starter with the J's. and when i look at his splits for '09 - he looks fairly promising! in 10 starts he was 2-1 with a 3.68 era and a .243 ba.

I'd also like to thank the pitching free agent class of 2011 and hope they don't hate me for setting an undervalued precedent and depressing the marketplace for all

yeah - Kevin Gregg... uh - welcome to Toronto?
so... meet your new teammates, Scott and Jason. i'm sure you'll be great friends.

This was the first dumbass move of the new era ... teams that will struggle to win 75 games don't need to spend millions on potential new closers. Especially not in an organization that showed an uncanny knack last season of turning out major league quality pitchers from its minor league system.

also kevin gregg suuuuuuuuuucks

so who knows anything about this Adeiny Hechevarria? i'd never even heard of him before yesterday!

SS/Cuban defectee/probably 21 yrs old/probably better that Jose Iglesias (similar player that signed with Boston)

Make what you will of these 'comparables' -
In MLB terms, Hechevarria is an 'offensive-minded' shortstop in the Cal Ripken mode: a high-average hitter with above-average power. At the plate, his spray chart looks a little more like Ichiro Suzuki: he has a knack for finding infield holes and hitting behind runners. He'll command a high signing bonus and start in the minor leagues, with 2012 or 2013 looking like a possible MLB arrival date.

Did the Blue Jays end up signing this guy? I'm excited about the new scouting/signing attitude under AA. Didn't realise we were pursuing A. Chapman

wow @ the Lind extension. A+, AA!

shawn marcum w/ 5 hitless innings

i wish i started him today.

also: shhhhh!

dulcet tones of buck martinez

keithlaw
Great start by Marcum. Now go to the bullpen.
6 minutes ago via web

vernon wells just turned around a 98 mph pitch from neftali 2 put tor back ahead

lets hope he can keep this up all season!

WEEEELLLLLLLSSSSSSS!!!!!!

ok - we have one Randy Ruiz on the bench and he uses Joe Buck to pinch hit?!

Whoever had autodrafted Vernon Wells for their fantasy team should be pretty ok with it by now..

Sole possession of first place! Let's brag about it for the day or so that it'll last.

i suppose if we brag enough, about the J's unrivaled superiority, we could make it *seem* like it lasted a while.

Alex Gonzalez has four HR already? What is going on.

what a rollercoaster ride of a home opener. fun game regardless of the outcome.
i got a 7 year old kid heckling Rios for half the game.

i am also very hungover.

Drinking enough at a professional sports event to be hung over the next day sounds like a very expensive proposition.

there was pre-drinking.

and when your friends owe you money for tickets - payment in beer is hard to turn down.

um - so Fred Lewis is a J now?

and morrow sucks so far huh

ya - not looking so hot.

i'm not getting too bent out of shape about it tho.

he's so hot and cold, could throw a two hitter next week

i would just like to point out that i have been otm in this thread

IP H R ER BB K
B. Morrow 7.0 3 1 1 2 8

http://vimeo.com/11052603

well, that kinda sux. oh well, i'll be there tomorrow!

my gf was a little disappointed when i explained to her that there was no one worth heckling on the royals.

it gets ti that point where it's just too sad to yell at yuniesky betancourt

LOLs

I have no idea how we're 4th in the AL in runs scored, the entire offense is a mirage held up by Wells' unsustainable start. Then again, Snider hasn't started to hit yet and Hill is still injured, so maybe it will even out.

the crowd last night was so small. it was weird. you could really tell there was fewer retards and could audibly hear the actual helpful/pseudo coaching cheers from the older die-hards. in a way it seemed to bring me closer to the other, dozen or so, people in my section.
esp once we all decided we were going to pick on Butler, for no real reason, for the remainder of the night.

All these douchetards who are predicting the demise of the team and complaining about the team "not winning" need to STFU. It seems like nobody even writes about the actual on-field product anymore.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/799902--can-the-blue-jays-survive-in-toronto

The article does make one good point -- tickets (and merch) are way too expensive. Cutting prices doesn't "cheapen your product" (no pun intended). If there's no demand for tickets, then high prices are at least part of the problem.

i never thought the ticks were all that overpriced (compared at least to most the other ballparks i've been to). but the merch could certainly be cheaper and so could the food/drink. i think the big problem for the J's is "Rogers Centre". people want to go to the Skydome and the don't want to be gouged or treated like a walking atm machine. there's no "experience" there. no notable specialty food items or anything that would seem authentic or special - just the overpriced, oversalted food items being sold to you by the highest bidder.

that article also fails to point out that other teams are also dealing with record low attendance this year (i can't for the life of me remember which ones off the top of my head).

i think the biggest threat to the J's isn't attendance or losses. it's attitudes like the writers. reminding everyone about the Expos and putting it in people heads that mlb would rather not be in Canada.

and as much as it pains me to say - Rios is right. retards here still care way too much about the stupid, stinky, sucky leafs.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. The stadium looks a lot better than it did a few years ago (before they changed the turf, added more scoreboards, etc.) but hosting baseball in multipurpose stadiums is a 60's-70's-80's relic that is thankfully passe. Good for the game, bad for Jays fans but we're stuck with the dome and there's not much point in complaining about it (I've never thought it to be nearly as bad as a lot of people claim it to be).

The article does mention that other teams are dealing with low attendance (specifically Baltimore).

The Jays are definitely hurt by having to compete with the Leafs, but that's a small part of the problem IMO. There are what, 6M people in the GTA? That's more than enough people to support a number of successful sports teams. Lacrosse and soccer draw fans, and they have to compete with the Leafs (lacrosse tickets are relatively cheap, soccer tickets aren't but Toronto FC still draws). Plus, hockey season and baseball season barely overlap (especially when the Leafs never make the playoffs anymore).

A team that has won multiple titles and consistently puts a good product on the field ... when you're a fsn of a team that's never won the title, that kinda talk just makes me angry.

not sure if i know what you mean there, poly.

and i agree griping about the stadium isn't going to do much good. i still like the roof, and everyone forgets that the Dome was the first of its' kind. maybe calling it historic is going too far, but it's close. my issue (and i think alot of the people who are staying away would agree) it's not the stadium, as much as how it's run.

I don't really know what I mean either.

sorry man - the leaf bashing didn't rub you the wrong way did it?
lots of my friends are fans, once in a while they suck me in - but for the most part i avoid the koolaid.

I just hate it when cities have a good team and don't support them, especially when they've won multiple titles.

The Marlins I can understand because they blow the team up as soon as they win. But the Blue Jays have fielded solid teams year after year.

Poly is right. The Jays have been fairly directionless for the past fifteen years (never trying to rebuild, never trying to go win-or-bust, always middling somewhere inbetween which is a terrible approach IMO especially in the AL East) but the front office has always been fairly competent, they've fielded consistently competitive teams, and developed a good number of star players. Maybe those weren't "winning teams" by one definition of the term, but plenty of other teams have had much lower lows since '93, ffs the Pirates and Orioles have had like 30 consecutive seasons of sub-.500 baseball between them.

And Leafs fans are the LAST people who should be complaining that the team doesn't deserve to be supported because they haven't been winning. The 80's under Harold Ballard made Jeffrey Loria look like the Steinbrenner family.

so back to the lazy writing that sparked this conversation - i just watched a Bloomberg clip talking about how almost *all* teams are experiencing attendance drop offs - with the J's seeing the 5th highest decline.
but i guess that small, inconvenient factoid would have thrown our writer off her J bashing narrative too much.

WWWWOOOOOOOoooooooo......

the scoring summary of that game says a lot about both teams

ha ha - not exactly smallball!

another come from behind W!!!

guys need to throw some strikes imo.

yes, looks like that was quite the inning.

RETURN TO T.O. IN JUNE MOVED DUE TO G-20

The rescheduled games will be considered home games of the Blue Jays, who will bat last, and the DH will be used.

wow.

8 run rally. 11-9 for the Js in the 3rd!!!

14-10 in the fourth.

15-10.

in the 4th.

"Duthtin Nippert gettin' ready."

25 runs between the Rangers and J's. 19 for the rest of the league.

"Crack of the bat," I kiss you.

so many eras destroyed.

These guys can play!

Except that they can't possibly sustain being near the top of the league in runs scored but near last in the league in both AVG and OBP. All they do is hit home runs! Even the 2005 White Sox got a few hits and SB's here and there.

and what do you make of the pitching, sir?

Romero and Marcum and pray for rain the roof of the dome to fall down?

you think Romero is the real deal? i was worried about a regression this year, but so far: not bad!

this team is hilarious

this games right now is idiotic.

WT flying F was that?!?!?

Y'know, that Cito, he's a player's manager, he sticks with his closer even if he walks FIVE guys in one inning.

old school kg meltdown

liked when the pitching coach came out smiling

'hey big guy, just throw strikes, eh?'

the whole game was bizarre.

That KG cross-up was the one of the most amazing cross-ups in the history of cross-ups.

http://www.mocksession.com/30fps/%20/2010%20June%201%2022%2015%207.jpeg

who's the new 3b, Kelly Gruber?

"Hoffpauir"

^ sounds like a very fancy old thing

they so desperately wanted to get rid of encarnacion that hoffpauir was removed from his minor league game in the middle of an inning on sunday

Marcum to DL w/ elbow inflammation

yup. same ol' same ol'

turned on the game and then turned it right off!

Kyle Drabek with a no-hitter in AA today!

Grand slam for Yunel!

bautista in his last 4 games: 11-15 5HR 13RBI

JPA!!!

HR: A Hill 2 (18, Bot 3 off J Shields, 2-2, 0 Out, None on; Bot 4 off J Shields, 2-2, 2 Outs, None on); J Arencibia 2 (2, Bot 2 off J Shields, 0-0, 0 Out, 1 on; Bot 6 off D Thayer, 0-0, 1 Out, None on); E Encarnacion (12, Bot 3 off J Shields, 2-2, 1 Out, None on); L Overbay (13, Bot 7 off C Qualls, 3-2, 2 Outs, 2 on); J Bautista (34, Bot 4 off J Shields, 2-0, 0 Out, None on); A Lind (15, Bot 3 off J Shields, 0-0, 0 Out, None on)

man that new kid!

Good thing the Jays don't have any 220 pounders on their team or people might be talking about how steroids make you hit more home runs, or something.

wtf dude - let me have my moment!

isn't J.P. Arencibia the old GM they fired? is this guy trying to sneak back in?

There's no mention of it in the SI.com game report, but CFTR was saying that Arencibia was the first guy ever to have two HR and four hits in his first game. I find that hard to believe--I'm wondering if they meant first Blue Jay.

possibly. that seems sort of crazy.

Some clarification from the Star this morning: first player in the "modern era" to do so. (Which I think began with Joe Pepitone--they weren't any more specific than that.)

John (Lexington, KY)

Thoughts on Cito sac bunting in the first inning yesterday? Does he realize what kind of offense he has?

Klaw (1:22 PM)

Just count the days.

fucking Cito is such a stupid excuse for a manager

I seriously want the Jays to break the single season home run record and then sit back and wait for the "more steroids = more home runs OBVIOUSLY" crowd (including some on this board) to spew more of their non-causality related garbage. (the Jays are a few HR off the pace right now)

http://www.google.com/search?q=jose+bautista+steroids

Jose Batista + steroids:

23 900 results

Jose Batista + fluke:

42 300 results (and more references to Brady Anderson)

jose bautista soul patch

About 1,760 results (0.13 seconds)

mr bautista head

About 345,000 results (0.23 seconds)

Apropos of nothing, I was thinking about the 1998 Jays and realized what a fascinating bunch of characters, misfits, and stars were on that team. If they'd somehow managed to win something that year (and they weren't far out of the wild card for most of September) then somebody would have written a book about these guys by now.

You have:

Delusional Vietnam "vet" Tim Johnson (manager)
Jose Canseco and Roger Clemens and their steroid recruitment BBQ parties
Future MVP candidate Shannon Stewart
Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green in their primes, looking like a young dynamic combo that would dominate the league for years
Perennial Jays SS of the future Alex Gonzalez
That fuckface Ed Sprague, one of the most hateable Jays ever
Jose Cruz, one year removed from being practically stolen from the Mariners, everyone thought this would be one of the most lopsided trades ever had Cruz become the star he was expected to be
Darrin Fletcher, Expos refugee and future 2nd worst Jays TV colour commentator ever (Joe Carter will forever be #1)
Tony Fernandez, on his 954th go-around with the Jays (always loved this guy, one of my fave ever Jays)
Headcases/troublemakers/criminals/"seasoned veterans" Benny Santiago, Juan Samuel, and Tony Phillips
pre-awesomeness Chris Carpenter (at the time, the Jays' pitching equivalent of Gonzalez, except that he actually did become a huge star, except not with us)
A washed-up Juan Guzman (only nobody wanted to admit it yet)
A washed-up former Cy Young winner Pat Hentgen (only nobody wanted to admit it yet)
A washed-up Dave Stieb (everybody knew it but decided to humour him) inexplicably returning to baseball at age 40, five years after his retirement
Young phenoms Kelvim Escobar and Roy Halladay (the latter appeared in just two games but the second of those was a no-hitter broken up with two outs in the 9th on the last day of the season)
Middle relief "specialists" Paul Quantrill and Dan Plesac
Randy Myers, who got pawned off to the Padres late in the season in arguably the most hilarious waiver claim in baseball history

like I said, a fascinating bunch of guys

i don't remember ever hating on Sprague. i stopped caring about baseball from the strike until about 1999 if he he did some douchy stuff i was unaware.

Fantastic snapshot of '98! I wonder about Sprague too, though--he seemed affable enough, and he had the big home run in the '92 Series. One thing that's always fascinated me is the '92 pitching staff. There are just so many guys--some near the end, most near the beginning--who had long, productive careers. If you were to add up the career innings by everyone on the '92 staff, I've got to believe it would be an unusually high number.

It started with the 1992 Olympic synchro swimming scandal, when his wife beat Sylvie Frechette for the gold (remember, Frechette got screwed out of winning because one of the judges mistyped) and he more or less told Canadians to STFU and deal with it. I remember him generally being a complainer about how the club was being run, about his PT, not receiving enough respect for his marginal talents, etc. I searched but couldn't find any specific quotes, but that's how I recall it.

The Olympic thing is 100% true though, and I think he didn't really come off most people's shitlists until his game-saving homer in Game 2 of the 1992 WS.

oh - holy shit. i do remember his wife being an olympian.

Keith Law does not react kindly to sportswriter who suggests that Jose Bautista is on steroids:

http://www.fan590.com/media.jsp?content=20100824_170720_7952

ya - was listening to this this morning. didn't even realize it was Law!

oh it wasn't him. they were going on about the article this morning then (obv wasn't paying 100% attention).

i'm shutting off this game now.

NUMBER FIVE OOOHHGHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh..............

It sucks that the steroid era made people care so little about stuff like this. Pretty cool accomplishment.

ya. i was at the game last night and he got a standing o his last ab of the game. place went nuts when he just missed #50 by a matter of feet. like berzerk!

Great that he hit it off Hernandez...Any idea if he's the greatest pitcher ever to give up a 50th?

this team may be my dark horse pick for next year

Still not nearly enough pitching imo

Just caught it on the news. Something I love: he touches the plate, head down, and that's it. You don't get that ridiculous touch-your-heart and point-to-the-sky nonsense (or kiss-your-hand and point-to-your-heart...however it goes).

what a moment for the former pirate, who lost his job to . . . andy laroche (.224/.304/.335 career)

KLaw: it's a Brady Anderson fluke year

^^^libel!

Six homers at Target Field, three of them off Francisco Liriano? These guys are flukes? good!

i don't know what to think about Snider anymore. he did this least year - heating up like crazy towards the end of the season, raising my hopes for him. and then when 2010 kicked off he was back to stinking. i don't want him to do this to me again next year.

sick of him toying with me!

didnt i see they now have like the 6th most homers EVAR as a team?

snider's still a baby (he acknowledged this by wearing a baby bonnet for his postgame interview the other day (?!?)), he's still got plenty of time to turn into a good player

he's got a career 104 OPS+ in about a season's worth of playing time from age 20 to 22, that's perfectly good at that age.

what? and WHAT?!

can't find the baby bonnet clip or screencap but i did see it last night somewhere. he kept a straight face during the interview too

also he hit a home run the other night with a cito mustache drawn on
http://nationalpostsports.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/snider.jpg

love this guy

ya - i was at the game and noticed that! couldn't see who else had one tho.

didnt i see they now have like the 6th most homers EVAR as a team?

4th most!

We can think of Snider's mustache HR as an FU to Cito, who stayed true to his managerial shittiness right until the end by choosing to finish .500 with the vets instead of risking losing with the kids.

And since I'm not in T.O. right now, somebody drive down to the Toronto Star offices and kick Dave Perkins in the nuts for writing that dumbass editorial stumping for Cito's HOF induction.

Snider isn't a kid?!

anyways - he managed the way he managed. i may not have been a fan of his style, but i harbour no real animosity.
it was really weird - at the last game sitting next to my friends was a girl that must've been homeless. and this was a premium game too, just to sit in the nose bleeds was $15. most the city loved the guy and in a town where baseball is usually on the fringes i don't see the point in trash talking the guy. i'm ready to move on.

anyone wanna take bets on who might replace him? so many names are getting thrown around.

Considering that the franchise has been treading water for 15 years mainly thanks to him and Gord Ash, I'm not ready to let bygones be bygones as easily as you are.

Cito's not a horrible guy or anything, but he's a terrible manager. I'm sure he means well and that a lot of players like him. He has a lot of skills that can be useful to a baseball club, but managing a rebuilding team (or any team with a bunch of moving parts) isn't one of them.

i dunno how much of the treading water can be pinned on Cito. the club's performance really turned around when he took over this last time and this year we performed well above expectations. i agree with you about his flaws etc - but you can't argue with results (i know well you can, but i don't see the point here).

Where's this big turnaround? They won 86, 67, 80, 87, and 83 games in the years before Cito reappeared out of nowhere (more or less as a publicity stunt). They played well when Cito took over for Gibbons part way through 2008 (and won 86 games in total), then 75 games last year in Cito's first full season (and a bunch of players nearly mutinied over the way he was running the team or have we already forgotten about that?), and will win about 85 this year. They were slightly better than .500 before he arrived and that's what they are right now (although they play in probably the toughest division ever).

Teams almost always play a little better after an in-season managerial switch, and Cito hasn't shown any additional skill beyond that when it comes to turning a team around. In 1989 they were a good team off to a bad start and everyone (players, city of Toronto) just happened to hate Jimy Williams and would have been satisfied with nearly anyone else.

The most telling fact of Cito's managerial "career": NOBODY else seriously considered hiring him, EVER. The guy was unemployed for ages and managers get fired all the time, so why wouldn't anyone want to hire a two-time WS winner with a "proven" record of managing winning teams? His countless limitations as a manager were no secret to anyone in baseball.

they were below .500 under Gibbons in 2008: 35–39. 51–37 after Cito took over. i think we both rolled our eyes when he came on, but the turn around genuinely surprised me. quite frankly i was glad to be rid of Gibbons. ugh. and again - for this year – i don't think we should forget how absolutely low the expectations were for the team. esp when you look at the competition this year (except the O's).

and i remember rumours of players being unhappy last year, but was there anything concrete to that? i don't recall any specific names or quotes. players get annoyed at managers all the time – even the actual good ones piss off players once in a while.

and him never getting hired always sort of confused me. it could be because MLB thought he sucked, but that would almost require a level of insight i don't think alot of head offices are capable of! i know he turned down a job with the Royals and i think some of it had to do with his stubbornness.

but anyways you hate him, i'm more or less indifferent. i don't think we're going to convince each other of shit. but i would like to drop a quote about Roger Clemens (who i ALWAYS hated) that really endeared me to the guy in a way:

"Him and I had some words at one time and I still regret to this day that I didn't get right up in his face and challenge him," Gaston said. "It was one time he felt like I had left Pat Hentgen in a game too long. Now you ask Pat Hentgen what he thinks of (Clemens). It isn't too good, either."

Gaston heard of Clemens' complaint about Hentgen second-hand. Had Clemens voiced his complaint directly, Gaston vows "one of us would have had a whooping that day. It might have been me but he would have known I was there."

I can speak to Gaston's management of young players, but the Jays were definitely better than I thought they would be this year.

he might just be better suited as a hitting coach. alot of people are crediting him for Bautista's mammoth year.

they were below .500 under Gibbons in 2008: 35–39. 51–37 after Cito took over.

But this is exactly my point ... they were a bit below .500 under Gibbons, then Cito took over and the W-L record improved a bit when the team played up to their "true" talent level. Maybe they won a couple more games because of the usual post-managerial change boost to team morale. They were an 80-85 win team under all their managers over the past ten years.

and i remember rumours of players being unhappy last year, but was there anything concrete to that?

We discussed it on last year's thread:

Whose Baseball Team Is This? (2009 Blue Jays Thread)

But yeah, no specifics. I don't have any reason to doubt the story though -- obv guys didn't want to be quoted on the record about something like that, especially with the GM change happening at the same time.

IMO, the Jays are better than expected because nearly all their pitching moves panned out, which shouldn't have been quite so surprising in retrospect because they excelled at developing pitchers in 2007-2009. Everyone (yeah, that includes me) got fatalistic after Halladay was traded and forgot about this.

That, together with their freakishly one-dimensional offense (which Cito also can't take credit for) is the reason they're an 85-win team and not a 70-75 win team like people were predicting.

i agree about the pitching. they far exceeded what i was expecting and i don't think we can credit Cito for that. hitting i'm not so sure about tho.

How come Cito gets no credit for the pitching?

All of those guys were drafted and developed under Ricciardi's watch, and the starting rotation was more or less healthy this year. Cito didn't really play a part in any of that. Credit also goes to Anthopoulous for getting Morrow for a handful of beans.

they did perform better than expected too. i, for one, did not see our '10 pitching staff coming!

aside from Marcum who is my new toronto starter man-crush.

ya. quite the season. the Js for 2010 are tied at 3rd for home runs in a season.

This year's team was definitely 1000X more interesting than what I was expecting.

i think this has been once of the best years (to watch) since the world series days.

rotation of romero-marcum-morrow-cecil-drabek could be pretty solid next year

plus lind and hill are probably gonna bounce back a bit and might make up for bautista's inevitable regression

Regarding Hill (from http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12142):

Last year, Hill hit .250 when he went to the opposite field. This year, he’s at .096 when going to the right side.
Hill is trying to pull the ball and crush home runs. He’s also swinging at a ton of pitches out of the zone and making some really poor contact. It’s the perfect storm for a crummy batting average. He was a four star second baseman entering this season, but he has no hope of regaining that kind of value unless he completely overhauls his approach at the plate.

Craig Brown is pointing out why his ridiculously low BABIP .196 (making you'd think he'd bounce back HUGE time) might be driven not so much by luck but his diminishing line drive/increasing FB rate. I was at the game the other day saying "How has Hill hit 26HR this year and still be carrying a .205 AVG? And on the scoreboard I notice he has more homers than doubles and that 1/4 of his hits are homeruns. I'm thinking - hmm, he's clearly swinging for the fences as is this whole damn team which is why we don't actually have anyone on base when these balls are leaving the park.

(incidentally, this was at a game featuring the 3 players with the biggest drop in AVG from last year: Hill, Lind and Jeter)

yeah CITOBALL seems to have broken hill especially badly since he's a linedrive / spray hitter trying to pull everything

John Farrell!

so we now know the name for the J's 2011 thread: "FIRE JONH FARRELL"

I wish they'd given Ernie Whitt a chance at some point (I know he wasn't even on the radar this time). Or the year they hired Buck; they should have implemented an Ernie/Buck managerial platoon.

The Jays have their very own sabermetrician as manager.

I heard some of Farrell's intro press conference on the way home, and he said the goal for 2011 is to finish in the league's top 5 in both runs scored and ERA; historically, he pointed out, such teams end up in the World Series.

That was such an unusual way to put it. Not disputing the truth of what he says, but essentially he's setting the goal for this year in terms of Pythagorean run differential, leaving the wins and losses to take care of themselves. I found that...interesting!

i only caught the last bit. but that's pretty interesting.
did he give any indication of what his management style might be like?

It's nice to see a manager championing two of the most useful statistics of the pre-Bill James era.

xpost: I just caught that one little bit; I'm sure it'll be all over the local news tonight.

Yes, I know--runs and ERA have been around since the days of Grover Cleveland Alexander and Jamie Moyer. It's just unusual to hear a manager speak like that. I mean, they generally set goals along the lines of how many wins they're shooting for.

I'm not sure what this says about next year's prospects, but I noticed this morning that the Rogers Centre bears an uncanny resemblance to the influenza virus:

http://www.2010nfltickets.com/images/rogers_centre.jpg

http://www.bknowledge.org/bknow/userfiles/image/cancer/flv.jpg

i'm too lazt to start a new j's thread.

Vernon Wells: 'I would totally agree I'm not worth that contract'

I was at the Raptors game last Sunday, and Wells and some other Jays were brought out to toss novelty basketballs into the crowd. The reception to Wells was...muted. No booing, but not what you'd call wildly enthusiastic, either. It was a couple of days after Alomar's HOF election. Wish he'd been there instead.