All-Star Break - Blue Jays

Back by popular demand, I am writing a blog post.   Well, I am exaggerating by saying "popular demand" but one guy at least actually has missed my posts.

It has been an interesting first half of the season for the Blue Jays.   They had a very slow start offensively with many of the guys slumping all at once.   It was really hard to believe they could be that bad, but sure enough the offense has come around to what we had expected. 

Tulo got off to a real rough start and many Jays fans really had no clue what this guy was capable of.   Now he is back to being the Tulo that the Rockies fans grew to love.  His overall season stats may not be impressive but if you look at his stats since about mid May, he is hitting very well. 

Donaldson is being a boss and on his way to the all star game.  Thank you Billy Beane.  I don't know what voodoo magic Alex pulled off on you, but thank you, thank you, thank you.  

The 2 biggest pleasant surprises offensively have been Michael Saunders and Darwin Barney.  I wasn't sure what to expect out of Saunders after last season's knee injury, but I certainly didn't expect him to have a career year and being an all star.  As for Barney, I expected him to be a back up infielder with good defence.   I didn't expect this kind of offensive contribution.   There's a guy who really has increased his stock as a player.  

EE has been hot in June and July and has 80 RBIs already.   Not coincidentally, JD has scored 80 runs.  

Bautista has been on the DL.  Seems like they never quite get their full offensive power all healthy at once.   I will be happy when Joey Bats comes back.   

The starting pitching has been quite good.   Estrada and Sanchez are all-stars. Happ has mostly been the guy that shocked everyone with Pittsburgh after the trade deadline last year, other than a mini slump that he went through  Dickey is having his usual season where he sucks in April and then becomes way better than most will give him credit for or even realize.   Stroman has been the most inconsistent.  He was quite bad for a while there but the last couple of starts have been very good.   The big test fro Stro will be when he faces AL East opponents again.  That's who have given him the most trouble.  I wouldn't ever bet against the Stro Show.   His drive and determination will get him through whatever struggles he may face. 

There are concerns however.   Estrada's back has put him on the DL.  Let's hope he gets through it well.   Sanchez may or may not be working on an innings limit.  If he is, they will put him in the bullpen.   He has been so good as a starter that putting him in the pen will hurt.   Unless Jays add a starter before the trade deadline, that will likely put Hutch in the rotation.  

The bullpen has the been the worst component of the team for they year so far.  Had the pen been even average, this team would be in first place now easily.   However, there's been signs of big improvements.   Grilli has been excellent for the most part since they acquired him (despite giving up the homerun to V-Mart the other day).   Cecil is now healthy and looks better than he did in the early part of the season.  Chavez has been good, although scares me coming in with inherited runners.   I like Bo Schultz.   I don't trust Storen or Loup.   I expect some improvements at the trade deadline in this area.   Of course, if Sanchez moves to the pen, then adding a starter becomes the bigger priority.   I'd still like to add a lefty specialist in addition to Cecil but other than Loup.  

There were times in the early part of the season, when this team was frustrating to watch.   Even when you know "it's early", you also can't expect that the team will win at the pace they did in August and September last year.   But they won enough games when they weren't playing well to avoid digging too much of a hole to crawl out of.   After playing well in June/July, the Jays sit just 2 games back of the first place O's and tied with Boston (also tied for WC spot).   I still expect the O's to fade and the Sox are the team to worry about, but strange things happen in baseball. 

It will be an exciting 2nd half of the season!   Go Jays Go!

Blue Jays Twit

My thoughts after watching "The Colorful Montreal Expos"

Last night, MLB Network aired a wonderful documentary on the Montreal Expos called "The Colorful Montreal Expos".  It was an incredible documentary that brought back many memories and emotions for me, so I thought I'd share.....

I was born in Montreal and lived there until I was 7 years old, but even after I moved I still had that connection given that my parents would always consider themselves to be Montrealers.  I had grandparents and other family that lived in Montreal, plus I visited from time to time.  As I grew up in Toronto, there was always a piece of my heart that was still a Montrealer.  I really became a bigger Blue Jays fan than an Expos fan, but I considered myself a fan of both teams.  There was never any real conflict in that.  The Pearson Cup was just a fun exhibition game.  Interleague play came along and they would play each other in real games, but I don't believe any of those series were very consequential to either team.

The first baseball game I ever attended was at Jarry Park in Montreal in 1976.  It was Expos picture day, so I was able to go onto the field while my father took pictures of me and my brother.  My memory of this is quite fuzzy, but I'd imagine that the lineup to have your picture with star players was quite long, so I don't have a picture with the "Kid" or anything like that.  In fact, it seems like over time some of those pictures were lost.   Here is one that I have remaining with my brother and coach Ron Piche of the Expos.  You could see the Olympic logo on his jersey sleeve.

I'm the little guy on the right (6 years old).

Watching the documentary last night brought back memories of the passion that my grandmother had for that team.  She was a huge Expos fan.  In those days, many games were not televised, so she would always listen to the game on the radio.  The voice of Dave Van Horne, who appeared in the documentary, was part of my childhood.  I would sit at my grandmother's kitchen table listening to the game, playing cards with her and trying not to inhale too much secondhand smoke from the constant cigarette she had burning.  She was an emotional fan, although not a sophisticated fan.  She would complain about certain players and yell things like "ahhhh, he strikes out all the time!", or "I don't trust that Reardon!".  She would also get very pleased when the team was doing well and would always tell me how many games they were above .500.  When she would come to Toronto to visit us, she would always want me to find the Expos game on the radio, which was sometimes an impossible task.  She didn't seem to appreciate that Toronto had different radio stations than Montreal.

Overall she was a disappointed fan.  The pain of "Blue Monday" sat with her.  Those great teams in the 1980s that never quite got over the hump left fans feeling empty.  She didn't care much for the Blue Jays.  Montrealers often look at rooting for a Toronto team as a betrayal.  But in 1992 she was happy that the Blue Jays won the World Series because she knew how happy I was.  She was rooting for them for me.  She was too sick in 1993 and died that year.

During 1994, the Expos had the best team in baseball.  My initial thought was "oh figures, now that she's gone they are going to win it all".  But of course, the strike happened that year and the season ended without playoffs.  My thoughts changed.  I thought of how angry she would have been to see that happen to her beloved team, and maybe it was good that she didn't get to experience what was the ultimate disappointment for Expos fans.

I hope to see the Expos return to Montreal one day.  It just seems wrong for that team to no longer exist.

Dirt Infield for 2016

For years we have heard Paul Beeston promise a change in the Rogers Centre from artificial turf to real grass.  Shapiro's comments this week indicated that grass was not a priority over other stadium upgrades to improve the fan experience.  Those comments were rather disappointing for many fans who had expected that 2018 was still the target for a grass surface.

For many fans, it isn't just about the aesthetics of watching a game played on a real lawn, but rather the impact that turf has on the players.   Generally speaking, players have complained about the pounding their bodies take with playing on turf.  Underneath that green stuff that you see is nothing but hard concrete.  However, the new turf that was installed at the onset of 2015, is considerably softer/spongier than the turf that was there before, and an even more significant upgrade from the turf that the dome originally had.

We didn't hear much complaining about the turf during 2015 up until the first game of the playoffs when the US broadcasting knuckleheads started to blame Beltre's back trouble from playing a couple of innings on it.  Which of course made no sense.  He had barely touched the ball to that point.  If standing on that stuff for 2 innings ruins your back we would all be crippled for taking a walk down a concrete sidewalk.  It's more of a long term thing with artificial turf, one would think.

Installing grass in the Rogers Centre would be a really big deal,   And really expensive I'd imagine.  Grass needs drainage, light, airflow, and water.  The stadium is not designed for it at all.  For now, it seems that Shapiro sees this as something he doesn't want to tackle.

However, I was surprised that Shapiro gave no concrete (pardon the pun) news on the dirt infield option.  This would mean that the artificial turf stays but a dirt cutout is made along the infield and baselines (see the imagined image above but picture turf instead of the grass where you see green...more or less).  Tropicana field in Tampa Bay, the only other artificial turf surface in MLB, has a dirt infield.  That means that the Rogers Centre is the only MLB park that currently does not have a dirt infield.  There are only dirt cutouts immediately around each base.  This was reportedly an option for 2016 now that the Argos won't be playing there, but we have heard no news on it.  The Sportsnet articles this week on Shapiro's comments said that the dirt infield was still an option for 2016.  However, I was discouraged because I thought if the plan was to do this then surely they would know by now to tell us one way or the other.

Then tonight, Stephen Brooks (Senior Vice President of  business for the Blue Jays) tweets in response to a question on whether a dirt infield will be in place for 2016 saying "Plan to start in Feb.".  Ok, so that is the first positive confirmation we have had that this is indeed happening.  By "start" I assume he means to start digging into the concrete.  You can't just sprinkle dirt over the concrete of course.

That's really good news.  Out of concern for the long term health of Tulo and Donaldson who will now effectively be playing their defense on dirt instead of turf.  This effectively makes playing at home for them no different than any other ballpark in terms of surface.  There are situations where they would be running for balls on the turf but that's not a big deal.

I'm not one of these Shapiro haters like I see all over twitter.  It takes years for someone in his position to be successful or fail.  To decide he is going to do one of those things within a couple of months seems ridiculous to me.  I will say though, that he'd have done himself a favour this week by announcing the dirt infield at the same time as saying that grass was not a priority.  Always good to soften the bad news with a little bit of good news.  To have the news come out by Stephen Brooks in a tweet seems a little odd.

The Great Divide Among Jays Fans

There seems to be a divide amongst Jays fans as I watch tweets go back and forth.   One group is optimistic for 2016 and the other is ready for disaster.  Perhaps every fan base has the same kind of thing, but these days the fans seem quite polarized.   

After 1) an exciting run in 2015‎ that energized all Jays fans, 2) a new president arriving, 3) AA leaving the team, 4) a new GM, 5) various off season moves or notably moves they didn't make (Price).......there's a lot of anger out there.   I'd argue that most of the anger is misplaced. 

There's people that want to fire Shapiro even though he hasn't even had the chance to succeed or fail yet.   There's people who don't like the Atkins hire, even though they don't know anything about him.    

These same people are the ones that perpetually wanted to fire AA up until when the magic started.   But now suddenly the Jays are falling apart cause AA is gone.   With insane reports about how AA would have signed Price, even though he wouldn't have been given the budget to do so, some fans have idealized AA into a miracle man‎.   

It's interesting and ironic that some of the things they are upset about right now are the repercussions of things that AA did.   Many prospects were traded away at the deadline.   While I supported the moves at that time, I knew that once the 2015 season was over there would be some tough pills to swallow.   The cupboard of pitching in the system was bare and that means having to fill it through free agency before the farm can be built back up.  With so many starting pitching holes to fill, that also made it more difficult to allocate a huge amount of money into one player (David Price).   Re-signing Estrada and signing Happ are the kind of moves you need to do.   They are the kind of moves that AA would have had to do.   In a way, he really left the team at the perfect time in terms of his reputation.  He doesn't have to feel the heat from the repercussions of the back end of the risks he took in 2015. Instead, he's the guy who brought us Price and Shapiro is the guy who let Price get away.   It's completely unfair to Shapiro to judge him that away, especially when his predecessor Beeston never allowed deals beyond 5 years to begin with.  

But some of the media are feeding ideas to those fans that eat up negative news.   To the rest of us who remain positive on the team, the negativity seems irrational and sometimes seems as if they don't want the team to do well in 2016.   There are people who say this team is now ruined, but if you look at the roster it is largely the same as it was in 2015.   If you look at the team as it existed after the 2015 trade deadline (say August 1st) ‎to right now, it is very comparable.   We lost Price but now have a healthy Stroman.   Buehrle is gone but now we have Happ.  Lowe and Hawkins are gone but that's not too hard to replace.   We will have Tulo and Revere for a full year. There's certainly more work to do in terms of bullpen and adding pitching depth but people are behaving as if this is a stripped down team.  It isn't.  

Judging from some of the callers into PTS recently, it's as if they didn't understand that Price was brought in as a rental.   One fan literally said that AA brought Price in and Shapiro shipped him away.   That's an insane and naive way to look at it.

Baseball is such a highly unpredictable sport.   Injuries can derail a season.   Often players don't perform as expected.   And often a diamond in the rough emerges to be an all star.   Losing Stroman in spring last year was a huge blow to the team.  Estrada emerging as he did was a pleasant surprise.  That's what happens every year.  We have seen a team like the Red Sox go from last place to first place and back to last place within 3 seasons.   That tells you how unpredictable the sport can be.   It also tells you that it is foolish to think you know how 2016 will go.    There's every reason to be optimistic.   There's also things that can go terribly wrong.   That's what makes it interesting.  There's reason for so many fan bases to be excited right now.

I once had a friend that every spring would tell me that the Jays will come in last place.   I'd be optimistic and excited going into the season and he would laugh at me every time the Jays would lose.   Yes, he is highly immature, but I interpreted this to mean that he wasn't a fan at all.   This same guy painted a Blue Jays logo on the hood of his car in 1992.   But in 2013 and 2014 he enjoyed every loss so he could rub it in to me.   He was literally rooting for losses.   He wouldn't go to games and waste money on a losing team.  When they would lose, it was the big "I told ya so!" that maybe is a victory of some sort for people like that.   But in 2015 he also predicted they would come in last place.   So do I get to say "I told ya so!" to him now?    I wouldn't bother.  And guess what, suddenly at the end of 2015 he was a big Jays fan again.   It's the definition of a bandwagon fan.  ‎I just don't understand how one gets enjoyment out of that.   When Bautista whipped his bat into the air in game 5 of the ALDS, all of the real fans felt the release of years of frustration. The excitement and joy that comes from winning is so much more meaningful when you were part of the struggles.   It's like a friend who only is around when things go well but abondons you in times of trouble.   You treasure the friend who is around no matter what, as you should.  

This is what is happening now.   Some fans are setting things up for the potential failure of the 2016 team.   If they do fail then they will give us the big "I told ya so!".   If the Jays succeed they will say they are happy they were wrong, or maybe make up some narrative about how they won despite of themselves. Or better yet, if the 2016 team wins, it will be because of what AA did. If they lose it will be cause of what Shapiro did.   That sounds about right.

What I propose is the idea that Shapiro et al are going to do their best to make the Jays a winning team in the short and long term. Let's give them a chance to succeed or fail before making judgment.    Let's root for a team that is filled with great players that are exciting to watch. Let's hope that they can have success in 2016 and beyond.

Source: Edwin Encarnacion sets spring training deadline for new deal to be done

Red Sox writer, Rob Bradford, has written a small piece on Edwin Encarnacion.  According to his source, Edwin and his agent have set a spring training deadline for negotiating a new deal with the Blue Jays.  The article is written from a Boston perspective and it seems that the Red Sox are salivating at the thought of bringing Edwin in to replace Ortiz (who retires after 2016) and start mashing baseballs off the green monster.  Let's look at this from a Blue Jays perspective....

This is Edwin's last year in his contract and he will be paid a team friendly $10M for 2016.  Of course, the Blue Jays do not have to negotiate anything under Edwin's timeline, but if they don't he is saying he will become a free agent at the end of 2016.  In other words, if they don't extend him by the spring, they shouldn't bother trying to extend him during the season.  So this is the Jays opportunity to negotiate with him prior to free agency.  Understandably, if a deal is made prior to spring, then part of the deal they negotiate could include a pay increase for Edwin 2016.

I fully expect the Jays to be a competitive team in 2016, but you would have to think that if they stumbled and were realistically out of it by the July 31, 2016 trade deadline, they would have 2 big bargaining chips in Edwin and Bautista to deal to a contending team for some nice prospects.  Making a deal with Edwin prior to that, takes away that option.

There have been some light rumors of the Jays having interest in Chris Davis.  At first glance, it certainly doesn't seem like spending money on Davis makes sense when the biggest need is pitching.  There certainly would be those criticizing spending big money on a bat, which the Jays have plenty of, while they didn't spend on any of the big name free agent pitchers.  But when you consider this story with Edwin, it does make sense that the Jays would consider Davis as an alternative.  This is why I was tweeting yesterday that signing Davis would mean trading EE.  They already have EE, Smoak, and Colabello at first base.  Smoak wouldn't have any trade value.  They'd probably be lucky to find another team to just take his $3.9M contract without any players going the other way.  Colabello would have some trade value but nothing close to EE who is a proven elite power hitter.

I actually think there is a slim chance that the Jays sign Davis so don't get caught up in such a rumor.  But it is an avenue worth exploring given the choice they need to make on Edwin.

Update:
Within minutes of posting this, Howard Berger (@Berger_BYTES) tweets:  "#BlueJays and free agent slugger Chris Davis appear to be in a serious contract dance...."

So.....I don't know a lot about Berger, but he was on the FAN590 I think at some point.  It's a bit better of a source than Incarcerated Bob, but ya know how these rumors usually go.

@bluejaystwit

My response to Jon Morosi's stupid article

I haven't blogged in a few days due to a dental surgery I had this week, but this morning I read Jon Morosi's article titled "Did losing Anthopoulos cost jays shot at re-signing Price, too?", and I got annoyed enough to get myself to write this.....

There's just so much wrong with what Morosi writes that it's hard to know where to begin.  First, his article starts off saying "We can't say it's terribly likely,...", but yet he STILL wrote an article about it.  This article is echoing what a lot of the angry mob Jays' twitterverse likes are saying.  Unfortunately this article will validate their very naive opinion.

All of this new regime vs old regime talk is already tired.

Let's say hypothetically the old regime was still in power and AA wanted to offer Price a contract.  Well he's stuck with Beeston's 5 year policy so what is the best they offer?  5 years for $150M?  And if you are David Price being offered 7 years for $217M from Boston, is that a hard decision?  He was reportedly offered 7 years for $180M from St. Louis and turned it down so....  What would even be the point?  AA would have spoken to the agent and the agent would have said Price is being offered 7 year contracts.  AA would not have bothered to waste everyone's time offering a 5 year deal.

Now let's say AA stayed on as GM under Shapiro.  Well everyone is blaming Shapiro for not signing Price now, so how would it have been different with La Cava & Shapiro instead of AA & Shapiro.  It wouldn't.  It's sort of ironic that people thought we had a chance at Price cause Beeston was out with his 5 year thing, but yet are blaming Shapiro anyway.

But really the worst part of the article is the suggestion that Shapiro determined that the team's rotation dollars should be distributed among multiple starters (Estrada, Happ, Chavez) instead of one (Price).  Can we stop and think about this for a second?  You need a rotation of 5 starters right?  You can't just have Price, Stroman, forfeit game, forfeit game, forfeit game.  Hey look everyone we have David Price but we spent all of our money so we don't have any other starting pitchers!!!!

We already know for a fact that AA wanted to re-sign Estrada.  He told us so.  So that's the same.  We also know AA traded away guys like Norris, Boyd, Hoffman who may have been ready to fight for a starting role this year.  That depth was traded away and the team desperately needed to replenish that huge void.  To now insult Shapiro for doing just that, is simply so unfair.  This is the position he was put in.    In order to afford to sign Price, the team would have needed a $30M boost in payroll so that they could still address the other needs AND sign Price.  You may want to blame Rogers for that but you can't blame Shapiro for deciding he needed a full rotation.

We don't know what else AA would have done this off season different from La Cava.  We don't even know what else will happen this off season.  But I don't think the Happ deal is out of the realm of what AA would have done.  Some team is going to end up paying Jeff Samardzija more than $20M per year, and he was awful last year.   Happ is being paid $12M a year and he was one of the best pitchers in baseball after the trade deadline.  It's a good deal.  And do we really think that AA would have been against trading Hendriks for Chavez to add desperately needed starting depth in 2016?

It's entirely plausible that AA would have done the same things so far.  AA left at the height of his popularity with fans, so maybe it takes a while for fans to move on, but at some point you have to.  Morosi wrote a trashy article that was catered to the fans that just want to moan and groan.  He should know better.

Tip of the day:  I see lots of people use the word "resign" instead of "re-sign".   "Resign" means like to quit.  "Re-sign" is to sign a player again.

@bluejaystwit

My comments on criticisms of Happ/Estrada signings

Lots of people ripping apart the Happ deal these days.  Keith Law of ESPN has joined the party there too.  He also rips the Estrada deal.

Law had an insider article last night that discussed the Happ deal.  He was also on TSN 1050 this morning, which I missed, but I understand based on some tweets that he was rather negative about the signings.

I did read the insider article yesterday, or at least most of it.  Law's argument was that the Jays are paying Happ based on his 2 months of success in Pittsburgh, which is too small of a sample size.  But is that true?  Well yes and no.  Had Happ's season continued in Pittsburgh with his career norms then yah, nobody would have signed him for 3/$36M.  But maybe 2/$20M? On the other hand, if Happ had a career like how he pitched for the Pirates in the final 2 months, then he would be up there looking for $200M like Price and Greinke.  So no the Jays are not paying him based on those 2 months.  I'd say the 3/$36M does reflect the potential upside that we saw down the stretch to some extent but nowhere close to fully expecting that.  He's at $12M a year.....what half decent starting pitcher can you sign for under $10M a year?

The thing about Happ's Pirates success is that it wasn't a random fluke.  Their pitching coach noticed flaws in his delivery and they fixed it.  He was one of the best pitchers in baseball after making those changes.  In Law's article he noted that Toronto wouldn't have the same coaches and defense.  Well, yah they don't have the same coaches obviously, but does that mean that his mechanical flaws will return?  Does that mean that he will unlearn what he learned about himself in August 2015?  And the part about defense?  Does Keith Law not realize how good the Blue Jays' defense is?  That seemed like a really odd and weak point for him to bring up.

All year long Law and others were waiting for Estrada to fall apart.  He never did and even pitched extremely well in the playoffs.  I recall a September game in Yankee stadium where Estrada gave up 3 home runs.  It brought out those, like Law, that waited all year to say that they told us this would happen.  However, 2 of those home runs were Yankee stadium short porch specials.   I realize those home runs still count and both teams have the same dimensions in which to play in, but at the same time it wasn't time to sound the alarms that Estrada was as bad as that one start (which the Jays ended up winning).  I always find it interesting when the ones that criticize about making judgments based on small sample sizes are the first to say "told ya so" when a pitcher has one bad game (which wasn't so terrible since he only gave up 4 runs).

When a pitcher has a breakout year, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will revert back to career norms.  It might of course, but if that breakout season came as a result of making substantive changes in delivery, adding a pitch, or pitching strategy, then there's reason to believe that the success can be sustained.  Estrada would have to regress quite a bit to make his 2 year contract not worth it.

What we are seeing here is the result of the Jays trading away a ton of starting pitching depth in 2015.  Going into the off season, there were just no arms available to pitch at the major league level.   That forces the club to either sign free agents or trade away some bats to get pitchers.  It was a scary position to be in given that a lot of free agents do not want to pitch in Toronto.

In the case of Chavez they were able to trade a bullpen piece to get him.

We tend to think of a starting rotation as 5 guys, but most often by the end of season there ends up being 10+ guys that make a start in the season.  Injuries happen.  Look what happened with Stroman last year.  Signing a guy like David Price and not leaving any room in the budget to add other decent arms, is highly risky if not stupid.  We could argue that the budget should be higher and that Rogers should go all out, but they are not doing that.   The off season is still not over and I still expect some significant moves to be made so a lot of judging here may be premature anyway.

@bluejaystwit