Consider this your
required reading for the week.
Consider this your
required listening for the week.
Consider this your
required viewing for the week.
I have decided to include this
blast from the past circa 2001 for your enjoyment.
The search for the next Blue Jays manager was exhaustive, thorough and involved as many as 25 employees.
Almost everyone but Rogers Centre ushers, who were not asked to look
under the seats for potential candidates, helped in the search.
General manager Alex Anthopoulos began the process in the spring,
accelerated it in September, began interviewing at the end of the
season, cut the field to his finalists ...
Weighing the input of his staff of advisers and scouts, Anthopoulos
brought three finalists in for one-on-ones with Paul Beeston in the
presidential suite. And on Oct. 22, John Farrell accepted the job to
manage the Jays.
A look behind the scenes at Anthopoulos’ most important challenge in
the spring with 150 candidates, shrunk to 46 to 19 to five to four to
one.
Bobby does another one of his time line pieces. Rock solid as usual. Sounds like lunchtime at Il Posto in Yorkville is a good place for the autograph seekers of the world to scope out.
But the more homers he hit, the more
skeptical some became. Bautista was hurt by speculation that he might be
using performance-enhancing drugs. He took his lumps as columnists
raised the issue.
“Maybe I
wasn’t loud enough about it, but it was disappointing to hear those
things,’’ he said. “People say things and write things without proof.
“I’ve
been tested since the minor leagues. I was tested five or six times
this season. I did what I did with hard work and dedication to my
hitting. I’ve worked hard my whole career to get to the point where I
got last year. It didn’t happen overnight.
“It’s
upsetting and disappointing that some people don’t think hard work and
dedication allow you to have good results. It’s very unfair and it needs
to stop, but it’s just something I’m going to have to deal with.’’
What is more remarkable is that Bautista played with the injury from late April.
“There
was a two-week period when I first heard something pop that it really
hurt,’’ he said. “It was annoying the rest of the time more than
anything, but it was there.
“I
can’t say that during that two-week period it prevented me from hitting
more home runs, but it probably prevented me from getting my hits or
extending a single into double or something like that. It was just one
of those things that was there and I had to play with it and deal with
it.’’
Strongest language I've heard come from J-Bau regarding the PED`s allegations.
Question:
This piece on CNBC's website
http://bit.ly/9qxAlT says that if the
Yankees offer Cliff Lee 5 yrs at $120M Texas can offer 5 yrs at $111M
and it would be the same net once NY taxes are accounted for. Do players
and their agents pay attention to this?
Answer:
Of course they do. It was an issue in Toronto because Canadian taxes are
so high. (This was a chronic argument between me and Ricciardi; I
argued it was strictly financial, but he said - I believe he said this
publicly - that players didn't want to come play in Canada. I think one
look around the streets of Toronto in the summer time would convince any
player, especially a single player, that Toronto is an awesome place to
play.)
Klaw answers some questions in his weekly chat. Perhaps now he can focus his hate on the New York Mess instead of us, but I doubt it.
Snider has also embraced perhaps his most unusual quote, taken from a
nachos taste test he performed for a Toronto community magazine in
2009. One of the plates sent his way featured both beef and chicken and
he responded to a question about it by saying, "Meats don't clash."
While one enterprising blogger, The Blue Jay Hunter, began selling
shirts featuring the quote and Snider caught some ribbing from his
buddies back home, he's used the phrase a couple of times on his Twitter
feed.
"I'm a big meat-lover, obviously," Sinder said. "Meat-lover's pizza,
meat-lover's omelettes, those kinds of things, I do honestly believe
that meats don't clash and when I saw that article ... and I got to show
some of my buddies back home, they were like, 'You're ridiculous, what
are people asking you about nachos for?'
"I said, 'I don't know man. You gave me the name Lunchbox and they've ran with it, we'll just see where it goes.'"
Nice to see Ian getting a much deserved shout out right there! His blog, The Blue Jay Hunter, is top notch.
"If it makes sense, and the value is there, we have full authority to
be able to move forward," Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays' general manager,
said recently, in reference to ownerships' willingness to increase
payroll.
Anthopoulos will entertain the thought of dangling his
young talent, who are contributing towards his goal of long-term
sustainability, for players who can contribute immediately in a move to
remain competitive.
"I'm not opposed at all to taking prospects and trading them for big-league players," Anthopoulos said.
It's a likely scenario given Toronto's strong farm system.
Trading prospects for MLB ready talent. Huh. That`s a new one. Maybe we are getting closer.....
As part of the 14-man committee appointed and chaired
by Selig to examine ways of improving the game, Beeston is in position
to influence the process more than others.
Only when it comes to adding teams to the playoffs, it seems others have been working their influence over him.
"I'm not completely there yet," he said in an interview this week.
"But I listen to all the arguments on both sides, I think you have to
have an open mind about it. There are some compelling arguments in
favour of expanding the playoffs and the ones against it go back to
tradition.
"We as an industry are different from the other sport leagues and
being different there's a sanctity to a schedule that lets the best
teams proceed to the playoffs."
Nice to have a guy on the inside.
I say: take your time deciding on the potential extra playoff teams Mr. President but for fuck sakes can you please work on getting us a balanced schedule? If we didn`t have to face the Yankees, Red Sox and Tampa Bay for just about a third of our games each season, then perhaps we can get in under the current playoff structure.
Alex Anthopoulos can pinpoint the exact moment his mindset as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays changed.
The instant when the "light bulb went off" came during a conversation
with Cincinnati Reds GM Walt Jocketty during spring training in March.
Anthopoulos was digesting the decision to give Cuban shortstop
Adeiny Hechavarria US$10 million over four years. Weeks earlier, Jocketty had outbid Anthopoulos for another Cuban, left-hander
Aroldis Chapman, and praised him for accepting the risk in signing Hechavarria.
"He said, 'That's how you're going to get better, you're going to get
better if you take a shot, you're going to have to take a shot at
times,"' Anthopoulos recalled during a recent interview.
"I looked back at my off-season, trade talks, dialogue ... and I just
found myself being so much more conservative than I needed to be or
wanted to be."
The main takeaway for Anthopoulos as he heads into his second
off-season as GM is that while risk shouldn't be embraced recklessly,
it's OK to swing and miss once in a while if the potential reward is
worthwhile.
Since he believes playing it safe won't help the Blue Jays overcome
the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays, they must find
other ways to close the gap in the American League East, and taking more
calculated gambles is one way to accomplish that.
"If we're going to do what everyone else is going to do in this
division, we have no chance of getting better," said Anthopoulos. "If
it's the easy decision and everything lines up, the I's are dotted and
T's are crossed, well everyone is going to look to do it and you're
probably not going to be able to do what you want to do.
"We're going to have take chances at times and make moves that may
open us for criticism, but we also have to look at the upside of the
moves. They may backfire and may not work, but if they hit, we're going
to do really well.
"And that's how we're going to get better."
If the Jays offer arbitration and everybody declines – obviously the
best case scenario – the Jays will come out of this with at least 5
supplemental draft pick and two second round picks. If Frasor and Downs
were to go to a team with an unprotected pick – this year, the 19th
pick, held by the Detroit Tigers, is the first unprotected pick – the
Jays could pick up two more first rounders. In this ideal situation, the
Jays could pick up an utterly massive haul, with eight picks in the top
50 of the draft. Said haul becomes even more impressive when we
consider that the upcoming draft in 2011 is considered to be one of the
deeper drafts of recent times, and far deeper than the 2010 draft.
If, however, the Jays do indeed on
offering arbitration to these five relatively marginal players, there
will be risk involved. As a whole, the five players had a salary of
$13.15 million. Because of how arbitration works, it’s a near lock that
every player would see a salary increase. Buck and Olivo are both coming
off career years. Frasor put up a solid 3.68 ERA, and Gregg (3.51) and
Downs (2.54) were even better. If the entire group accepted arbitration,
I could see a total salary of $20 million to possibly $30 million, on
top of the $1.25 million buyouts for Olivo and Gregg.
The difference is nearly equivalent to the potential value of the picks that the Jays would acquire. According to
Victor Wang’s research
from 2009, a first round draft pick is worth about $5.2 million, a
supplemental pick worth $2.6M, and a second round compensatory pick
(guaranteed to be in the top half of the 2nd round) worth $0.8M.
Therefore, that the type Bs – Buck, Olivo, Gregg – would contribute
$2.6M in value each (total $5.8M) and the type As could contribute
either $7.8M or $3.4M (range of $6.8M to $15.6M, for a total range of
$12.6M to $21.4M).
A lot of us, myself included, were wondering out loud about whether or not the $500K buy out for Olivo was to much to pay for a draft pick. As it turns out, it is not.
"That's the key for me, that's the reason they sent me here,"
Rzepczynski said. "I need to get ahead and learn and work on my fastball
command, throw my sinker in the zone and get quick outs."
The Jays also sent the former fifth-round pick to the AFL to get in some
more innings after he broke a finger on his pitching hand during Spring
Training. He began the year with Triple-A Las Vegas and made a dozen
starts before going 4-4 with a 4.95 ERA in 12 outings for Toronto. Much
of his success came in September, when he won three starts and compiled a
2.86 ERA.
"I got hurt, I missed about six weeks, and I had only 130 innings and
they wanted me to get to 170 innings, so they're sending me here to get
my innings up," he explained. "And working on throwing the fastball more
for strikes, those are the two main things I'm trying to do."
The Jays hinted earlier this month that Rzepczynski's role may change
next season, depending on how the roster fills out. With top prospect
Kyle Drabek set to compete for a rotation spot, Toronto may look to use
Rzepczynski out of the bullpen. He said he'd prefer to start but is open
to whatever the organization has planned.
"They sent me here to start, so next year we'll see how Spring Training
goes," he said. "If they put me in the bullpen, then they put me in the
bullpen, but I'd like to start. They sent me here to be a starter, so
I'm just working toward that for spring."
Rzep is a man among boys in the AFL. He is just there to get some innings in and tell some war stories.
For the Toronto prospects selected to participate, the five-week long Arizona Fall League has come to an end. The six-team league’s season wrapped up on Saturday, when the two division winners met in a winner-takes-all championship game. The team that featured 7 Blue Jays minor leaguers, the Peoria Javelinas, visited the Scottsdale Scorpions in the nationally televised match up.
