Rumor Mill

I feel as thought I owe all of you an explanation.  We here at 1bluejaysway try our best to stay on top of everything Blue Jays and live up to our slogan: All Jays. All the time.  However, it is very difficult to "break" a story in these times we live in.  As such, you may have noticed that we are reluctant to post something about a rumor.  It is not that we avoid staying current, the truth is quite the opposite, it is just there are many other sites dedicated to this and their teams do a fantastic job.  When I was designing the site, my goal was to provide as many feeds and links dedicated to this as possible so that you, the reader, could get this vital real time information.  I think it is just as fun as the next guy to speculate about rumors involving the Blue Jays and their potential impact on the organization.  The problem with it is this: It takes a while to post something worth reading and it seems like a waste when it turns out to be about something that never happens.  It is our intent here to provide detailed analysis of the transactions after they become official.

When your Toronto Blue Jays traded the Doctor, you might remember there was whispers of a failed physical involving one of the players.  It turned out not to be true and the deal went through as reported.  Also, there was much speculation in the media that we were the front runners in the Cuban lottery, which turned out to be false.  We waited until all the players involved in the Brandon for Brandon trade had been announced.  This was particularly difficult because the term prospect was used to describe what turned out to be Johermyn Chavez.

Which brings me to the infamous Ramon Castro signing.  He never was a Blue Jay and just recently re-signed with the White Sox.  His ordeal brought back memories of the Rod Barajas handshake agreement with J.P. in the winter of 2006 that never materialized.

So you may be asking yourself by now: What the fuck is the point?  Well here goes.  When this little piece of news hit the hot stove, that Carlos Delgado was being scouted by the Jays, Nemesis Enforcer and I spent the better part of the day discussing every possible topic regarding this issue.  Where was he going to hit in the line up?  What would the length of the deal be?  Would he accept a bench role?  What would we be forced to do with the impending Overbay deal?  What would we do with Lind.....etc.  We were in agreement that if Delgado re-signed with us then there would be a domino effect on the rest of the team.  He sat down and typed out a beauty post, only to wake up to this report a day later.  Talk about a piss me off.  I feel like it needs to be added to the site, even though it now seems out of date.  Here goes.....

UNTITLED:

When I was first approached by Golden Arm about this blog he mentioned to me about rumors and how he really didn’t want to discuss them because it was mostly a lot of hot air.  He wondered what more we could bring to the table?  What more than the other established sites wouldn't have already talked about already?

Then Monday night I read the rumor that most of you probably read on mlbtraderumors.com, “Blue Jays, Mets Interested In Delgado”  My first thought was, oh fuck, here we go…does no one remember the great Frank Thomas experiment of 2007? The Frank Thomas who just won the comeback player of the year at the time I might add.  So then I got curious and looked up their stats in the year before they joined the Jays, so Frank 2006 and Carlos 2008 (his last full season), Carlos has missed most of 2009 with a hip injury.  I should also point out that AOL Reporter Ed Price has said that Delgado "is not moving well" and would be a good fit to play for Toronto and DH.  So right, the stats, fuck I get distracted easily sometimes.

Frank
Top of Form Year Bottom of Form	Team			League		G	AB		R				H				2B	3B		HR			RBI			BB		SO		SB		SLG		AVG Bottom of Form
Top of Form 2006 Bottom of Form	Oakland			AL		137	466		77			126					11	0			39		114			81		81		0		0.545		0.270 Bottom of Form
						159	541		89			146					13	0		45			132			94		94		0
Carlos
Top of Form Year Bottom of Form	Team			League		G	AB		R			H					2B	3B		HR			RBI			BB		SO		SB		SLG		AVG Bottom of Form
Top of Form 2008 Bottom of Form	NY Mets			NL		159	598		96			162					32	1		38			115			72		124		1		0.518		0.271 Bottom of Form

The second line of the Frank's stats are projected to 159 games to match Carlos’ 2008 season just to compare apples to apples.  Frank had a good year in 2006 there is no doubt, but so did Carlos in 2008.  Frank was 39 when he signed his deal with us, Carlos is currently is 37.  So what the fuck?  What’s the diff here?

Today I had a chat with Golden Arm about this situation and we couldn’t come up with a good answer with what to do here.  What’s the advantage of bringing in Carlos this season in which we are “supposed” to be rebuilding?  Different topics were thrown around, butt in seats, an actual leader in the clubhouse since Vernon doesn’t want to hold that job and then there is Vernon.  Would Carlos take some of the offensive burden off Vernon?  A legitimate left handed power bat possibly to hit behind him in the lineup.  It really could only be a 1 year deal, plus maybe an option and I’m guessing lots of incentives.  Butts in the seats? I don’t buy that argument at all, the Jays only got an average of 18000 fans out to see Roy’s final 3 starts as a Jay.  If people aren’t going to see the best pitcher to pull on a Jays jersey, they won’t come for Carlos.  If people aren’t going to cram the Skydome to see Rocket Roger Clemens and watch some of the greatest pitching seasons ever in the Jays history, they won’t come for Carlos.  I know The Cito, Beeston and the old logo are back and we’ve got this Flashback Friday thing.  But Carlos by himself won’t be enough to bring in the crowds.  A Clubhouse leader, sure, I’d buy that…look around that clubhouse and tell me who’s going to take the reigns and be the leader?  When I think team leader, I think of a guy that’s a bit older, been around for a bit, seen some things and commands respect.  Does that sound like anyone we’ve got?  Wells doesn’t appear to be that guy, I guess maybe Hill?  But Hills only 27 and missed most of 2008.  What is the average age of this team now? 27? I don’t know, that’s something I’ll have to look up at some point.  We gotta be one of the youngest teams in the bigs right now.  So ya, back to the point, clubhouse leader.  Sure, I’ll go with that and Frank didn’t want that role either, so another point in favour of Carlos.  Pressure off Vernon, this is a biggie and will lead to a totally different post.  What’s our lineup going to look like IF the Jays did re-sign Carlos? You have to think he’ll hit after Wells and that has to give Wells some confidence again and probably some better pitches to hit early in the count.  Hopefully Carlos’ attitude will rub off on Vernon, just his attitude people ;)  Carlos could sit down have quite the chat with Vernon which we figure would go something like this “Vern, I carried this once great team on my back and still put up great numbers and earned my money, what the fuck are you doing?”  Another positive point to re-signing him is by meshing Carlos in the middle of all these right handers, it’ll make it a lot more difficult for the opposing manager making his late game bullpen decisions.  He won’t be able to look at the 7th, 8th and 9th and see 3 righties in a row nor would he be able to burn his left handed specialist on Lind.  Then there is the contract, what would Carlos re-sign for?  Vladdy just signed with the Rangers for a year at 5 million plus an option for 2011.  Vladdy is 35 versus Carlos’ 37, but how low could the Jays go?  6 million plus incentives? Looks good right? Let's do this...Not so fast sucka.

The other side of the coin:

We’re not supposed to be good this season, right?  The big thing we’re playing for is seeing what we’ve got on this team.  If we re-sign Carlos he’s going to take someone’s spot, someone’s spot who we’re trying to develop.  Someone who would need the year in the bigs to season.  Someone who would be totally cockblocked by The Cito and Carlos combination.   Plus if they re-sign Carlos, Boy Wonder has to trade Overbay and he can’t get fussy at this point.  The Jays don’t want Lind in the outfield, so if King Carlos is around where else do you play him?  Lind’s got to play first just to fit Carlos in and that’s just this season.  Then you’ve got Brett Wallace coming along and the Jays say they want him to play 1^st, but as I’ve said, I just don’t see how we’ve got the room to make that happen.  Will Wallace be ready to go this season?   Some say he’s pushing hard to get into the bigs and others say he needs another season.  Although just saw a picture of this kid and for fuck sake, he looks 12.  The Jays have said they don’t want to see Lind and Snider in the outfield together.  So if Carlos comes in and you don’t trade Overbay, do we send Snider down to the minors for another year of learning and prep for the pros?  That will buy you valuable time as Golden Arm points out in his Major League Service Time post.  The big question really is: would Carlos even want to come here for the kind of money that Boy Wonder would be offering and would he come here knowing that he’ll be the full time DH?  Him being the full time DH is really what’s best for Carlos at this point in his career.  Rest that hip up old man ;)  Speaking of that hip, that has to be in the back of anyone’s mind when reading about Carlos.  How long can he go before something starts to get sore and sore to the point where he has to start missing games especially playing 81 games on our shitty turf?  We don’t want to just start throwing more money away.  We’re already paying too many guys not to play here.  Anyway we spin it, we’ve got too many guys with too few positions to put them in.  Wait, sorry.  We’ve got to many guys that should have great years, but they all play the same fucking position.  My brain says, just let the kids play, let’s see what we’ve got.  But my heart says, fuck I’d love to see Carlos back in a Jays uniform.  Plus while reading around for this post I did see that Carlos currently has 473 career home runs.  Damn it’d be very cool to see Carlos hit his 500^th in a Jays uniform, unlike that other old guy we signed in November 2006 to be our DH who hit his 500^th in a Jays uniform.