On This Day

Your Toronto Blue Jays signed free agent Kevin (Complete Waste Of A 25 Man Roster Spot) Millar to a minor-league contract with an invite to spring training.  Here are his contract details courtesy of Cot's Baseball Contracts:

• 1 year/$0.85M (2009)


• performance bonuses: $50,000 each for 200, 250, 300 PAs
• contract purchased by Toronto 4/5/09

Millar produced a .223 average, slugged 7 HR and plated 29 RBI.  He managed to weasel 251 at bats out of The Cito, which was good for a cool $100,000 extra in bonuses.  And he didn't even have to spend a nickle of that salary on union dues because he is a scab.



Thank fuck we didn't even attempt to re-sign this guy.  The Cito had him bat clean up in 11 games and he (s)hit .186/.255/.395 in the role with 2 home runs.  Seeing him "preform" on a daily basis made me angry.  This year he is the Cubs problem as he signed a minor league deal with them earlier this month.  Good riddance.    

Mission Accomplished

I will give credit where credit is due.  Boy Wonder managed to sign all of his arbitration eligible players before his self imposed deadline of Tuesday January 19.  I was skeptical of his tactics but I guess if you are going to make a change in the way your organization does business, why not do it when none of your stars are involved?  I wonder how the "file-to-go" strategy will hold up next off season when cornerstone Adam Lind becomes salary arbitration eligible for the first time.

"For the most part, two things get deals done, deadlines and having some type of momentum," said Anthopoulos. "The policy we put in place, all it did and all it was designed to do was encourage more dialogue."

He inked projected top of the rotation RHP Shaun Marcum first which tells me he values him the most.  Marcum, 28, signed for $850,000 over double what he made in 2009.  He failed to throw a pitch in the majors last season due to major arm surgery.

"We just had a mini camp down in Florida and everyone said he looked very good," Anthopoulos said. "Right now, we'll continue to evaluate him going into the spring. We'll see how he looks in the spring, but so far the reports have been good."

Then he was able to reach one year agreements with all the remaining players: 
RHP Jason Frasor ($2.65 million US), Shawn Camp ($1.15 million), Jeremy Accardo ($1.08 million) and Casey Janssen ($700,000) all singed on the dotted line.

I am happy to report The Wolverine will be back making bats miss for the reasonable sum of $2 million even.  Nice to see him rewarded for his efforts last season.  He strikes me as a throwback player.  The kinda guy you can count on to do whatever the fuck you need that day.  I think he may have hit the wall last year around July but in all fairness he pitched 161 of his career 370 innings in 2009.  Perhaps he needs to stay in the pen full time where he is more effective.
"I'm going to come in prepared and ready to pitch anywhere from 60 innings to 160-200," Tallet said at the end of the season. "All I have to do is prepare myself mentally and physically to accept whatever role they're willing to give me."
Boy Wonder counter with:  "The fact that he's able to do both roles brings value to us."


Quickly:

The list of shitty minor league free agents added two more names to it.  These types of moves are required when you fail to draft well as an organization over a prolonged period of time. 
"With all these guys we are signing," said Anthopoulos, "we're hoping to catch lightning in a bottle."
And that boys and girls, in my opinion, should be the slogan for your 2010 Toronto Blue Jays.  Problem is we play 162 games in this bitch and unfortunately for us, the cream does tend to rise to the top.

Weekly Round Up : Jan. 11 - 17

We added four more warm bodies to the list of shitty minor league free agents that I gave you all for Christmas last year.  Hey wait a minute.....it looks like a totally different list now!  Back when I gave it to you, the only names on it were: Lance Broadway, Raul Chavez and Joey Gathright.  Fast forward a mere three weeks and the new list contains the names of five of the top prospects in the organization?  Wow, my present is getting better with each passing day.  That is the best type of gift you can either give or receive.

Courtesy of CBSSports Fantasy News:

Blue Jays hand out spring invites	Updated 1/14/2010
News: The Toronto Blue Jays invited the following players to spring training camp: outfielders Jorge Padilla, Chris Lubanski, Adam Loewen and Joey Gathright; infielders Brett Wallace and Jesus Merchan; catchers J.P. Arencibia, Travis d'Arnaud, Brian Jeroloman, Raul Chavez and Kyle Phillips; and pitchers Kyle Drabek, Lance Broadway, Willie Collazo, Zach Jackson, Chad Jenkins and Rommie Lewis.	Analysis: Kyle Drabek, acquired in the Roy Halladay deal, is an elite pitching prospect who can be drafted and stashed in AL-only and long-term keeper leagues. Wallace is one of the better slugger prospects in the minor leagues to start the season, while Arencibia and d'Arnaud are keeper catching prospects. We fully expect these players to begin the year in the minors and hold little in the way of normal value on opening day.

  

Baseball America's Top 10 Prospects list:

1. Kyle Drabek, RHP
2. Brett Wallace, 3B
3. Zach Stewart, RHP
4. J.P. Arencibia, C
5. Travis D'Arnaud, C
6. Chad Jenkins, RHP
7. David Cooper, 1B
8. Henderson Alvarez, RHP
9. Jake Marisnick, OF
10. Josh Roenicke, RHP

Baseball Prospectus Top 15 Prospects list:

Five-Star Prospects:
1. Kyle Drabek, RHP
2. Brett Wallace, 1B
Three-Star Prospects:
3. Travis d'Arnaud, C
4. Chad Jenkins, RHP
5. J.P. Arencibia, C
6. Zach Stewart, RHP
7. Carlos Perez, C
8. Jake Marisnick, OF
9. Henderson Alvarez, RHP
10. Tim Collins, LHP
Two-Star Prospects:
 11. Gustavo Pierre, SS
Four More:
12. Brian Dopirak, 1B: A former top Cub prospect, Dopirak fell off the map, but he’s slugged .549 since coming to Toronto and could have a career as a professional hitter.
13. Josh Roenicke, RHP: He’s a reliever who has outstanding velocity, but is still a prospect in his late 20s due to no dependable breaking ball.
14. Brad Mills, LHP: Mills is a pure finesse arm, but he’s so good at it that he could have big-league value.
15. David Cooper, 1B: Cooper is a 2008 first-rounder who flopped at Double-A. He needs to rebound or be quickly forgotten.

The Rolen trade J.P. managed to pull off last year at the deadline looks pretty good now doesn't it?  I'm still not ready to talk about the Halladay trade.  I remain wallowing in the destructive belief that the return for The Doctor could never, ever be enough.  Maybe in time.....

Quickly: 

According to MLBastian: Boy Wonder has decided to make a big change in the way the organization deals with salary arbitration.  He has implemented a "file-to-go" strategy.  If the club has not reached an agreement with its arbitration eligible players between now and Tuesday January 19th, they will go to an arbitration hearing rather than continue negotiations till mid February.

"I made a change this year," Anthopoulos said. "The thought was really it's hopefully to encourage more dialogue in negotiations with the goal of continuing to avoid arbitration and continuing to try to get deals done and maybe bring both parties to the table a little bit sooner."

Analysis:

Alex, with all due respect sir, I'm not sure how this one is going to work out for you.  Almost half of our major league pitching staff is going to have to be signed in the next four days.  Completely unnecessary change and a very unrealistic deadline.  What teams should be trying to do right now is avoid the entire salary arbitration process like the plague.  The system is set up in such a way to do just that.  If it does go all the way to a hearing, the brain trust are going to have to go on the record saying that (insert player) is not worth (insert dollar figure).  The only logical way to convey this argument is to basically talk smack about the players skills/abilities/numbers/production/character/attitude/potential etc.  Not the types of things an employee would want to be hearing from their current employer.  Especially when there are 29 other soon to be available employers.

Prediction:

Jeremy Accardo is going to salary arbitration.  He's still pissed.  You heard it here first. 

More Quickly:

Your Toronto Blue Jays will be in attendance to watch the Ben Sheets show next week on Tuesday at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.  Shortly thereafter, we will continue to watch him sign a contract with the Evil Empire. 

And the winner of the Cuban lottery is:

NOT US!

He hits 100mph from the stretch @ the 3 minute mark.

So, we lost the Cuban lottery, can’t say that I’m overly surprised, but I am relieved. Can’t see why he decided on the Reds as I don’t think they’re any good either. He won’t have to compete in the AL East which must have something to do with his decision. Well that and the other 7 million dollars. But after all that, I’m glad we didn’t win, here we’ve got this kid who hasn’t pitched a day in the majors, I don’t think his stats are that great. Speaking of stats, his Cuban League stats translate to major league levels to what pretty much what we've already got. Sure with some seasoning and him getting used to big league hitters he "might" be something. But at that rate of pay, he doesn't have that kind of time. With 30 million on the line I’m guessing he’ll be pitching in the bigs before he’s ready. The Reds GM has already said that he may break camp with the team. He may break camp? You're going to have a player getting paid 6 million in the minors? 30 million might buy you a lot of things, but one thing it doesn’t buy you is time.

But for me, there is a much, much bigger story here. When you first heard or read that the Jays were at one point close to the front of the pack for this kid; what was your first reaction? I’ll tell ya right fucking now; I was like WHAAAT? When was the last time we were in the front of the pack for anything? When was the last time you could actually find the Jays mentioned in a story on Foxsports or ESPN’s website that didn’t involve Roy Halladay? Every time I read about the Jays it’s never good, 4th largest market in the league doesn’t get us many news stories down there. I was happy to see the Jays in the headlines again, but more importantly; I am happy to see Boy Wonder trying to make a big move. A very risky move, but a big move none the less. J.P. tried to make these kinds of big moves as well; Hello B.J. Ryan! They never seemed to work out for him. So why this time when Boy Wonder decided he’s going to make a big risky move, why am I excited about it? Faith is the answer to that question boys and girls, I’ve actually got some confidence in this GM, this President and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Rogers has faith in this kid. The fact that we were even talking contracts with this kid tells me that Rogers has faith in what Boy Wonder has to say and they’re buying what he’s selling. I don’t think they had faith in J.P. for a few years now, but just couldn’t pull the trigger on getting rid of him. Once again it comes down to hope and I’ve got hope in Boy Wonder taking us to the next level.

Quickly:

We DID re-aquire Zach Jackson. He joins the others on the list of shitty minor league free agents.

Boy Wonder still has one spot open on his 40 man roster but no back up catcher. Are we done shopping?

Merry Christmas

This year due to economic restraints, I cheaped out.  All I got you was these shitty minor league free agents.  Hope you like!