The 25 Man Roster Challenge 2019 Edition

Spring Training dates:
Pitchers and Catchers, 1st workout – February 14th
Full team, 1st workout – February 18th https://t.co/Rc3Zo6Ub97

— Blue Jays PR (@BlueJaysPR) November 26, 2018

This will be the 10th annual contest in which a bunch of random people make a guess a month and a half before a deadline and then a bunch of shit happens and in the end somebody wins stuff.

The 25 Man Roster Challenge. Just mentioning the name sends contestants minds to a previous year in which one of these scrubs fucked them out of a possible glorious victory.

• Jo-Jo Reyes
• Jayson Nix
• Dana Eveland
• Jay Bruce (unicorn)
• Hank White
• Ben Francisco

For the record, it is a super simple game that has but one requirement: Name the 25 baseball players within the Blue Jays organization who will crack the opening day roster.

Sounds easy right?

Well, it isn’t. No one has ever gone 25-for-25 in all the years we’ve been running this challenge, and we would be very happy if that streak was broken this time around.

If you decide to play, there are 4 ways to submit your ballot:

1) Send us an email: 1bluejaysway(at)gmail.com
2) Make a post on your blog, if you have one, and send us a link.
3) Add your ballot to the comments section of this post or the reminders we post later.
4) Twitter ballots will be accepted. @1BJW

In the event of a tie—and it's pretty much a given at this point that there will be a tie—we ask that you also give us a prediction of what you think the spring training record will be. From what we can see, it appears as though the boys of summer will attempt to play 33 spring training games this year. That total includes the 2 exhibition games against the Brew Crew at the Big O but not the split-squad game against the Canadian Junior National Team on March 23.

Try not to forget that sometimes it rains in Florida and the games don't generally get made up if they are cancelled. There is also a chance that if a game goes to extra innings and one team runs out of pitchers, both teams agree the game ends in a tie. 

It is not a requirement that you select a tie breaker, all ballots containing 25 names will be considered valid, but it is a really good idea that you do include one. Over the years we have had numerous stupid close finishes and we actually had to break it right down to winning percentage. We have only had one outright winner in 9 years.

Some things to consider:

The pride of Mississauga Dalton Pompey is mercifully out of options, meaning he makes the big league club or is potentially lost on waivers. Still just 26 years old, the 16th rounder from 2010 has had his chances to impact the roster before. This could be his last go at it for the home side.

We got a rule 5 pick to spice it up! Soon to be 19 year old Elvis Luciano was selected from the Royals and needs to be on the big league roster *cough lengthy DL stint cough* all season or has to be offered back. Certainly a wild card to break camp with the club due to his age and inexperience but the braintrust knew all this prior to selecting him so you have to believe that they believe he has a shot. No doubt he throws hard, has a "feel for spin" and is working on a third offering.

Eric Sogard AKA Nerd Power and his career .623 OPS will try to crack the infield rotation on a minor league deal. Doubtful he makes an impact but likely has on out clause in his contract that the team might have to think about.

Prizes:

We are emptying the clip this year. Most of this stuff has been just collecting dust in various basements across the GTA for some time. All of it will go to the winner. Behold!

The ticket is from Vlad Jr. second game in AAA in which he collected his first hit. You can pretend you were there now!

Vladdy Jr.’s first #Bisons hit! #Jays #Bluejays pic.twitter.com/er5WjFvd76

— Sarah Peacock (@spcock) August 1, 2018

Good luck to all that decide to join in on the fun this year. We already have our first ballot and it is not predicted to do well. They forgot the damn tiebreaker. Do NOT forget the tiebreaker. Deadline is February 13th @ 11:59PM EST.

Here's my entry
Vlad Guerrero Jr. 25 times

— Rowdy Guzmir Jhericurl Jr. (@GuzmansJhercurl) January 17, 2019

Swing and a miss

There are a few things from the "article" written by Amy K. Nelson and Peter Keating with respect to the unnamed team and players that we can examine further. The purpose of this exercise is to find the mystery team and maybe even the players involved. 

The first clue!

From the visitors bullpen at Rogers Centre in Toronto, an American League pitcher screamed at Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista as he took his position late in a game in the spring of 2010.

Spring can technically be any date up to and including June 20th on the calender. Here is your Toronto Blue Jays schedule from April till June 2010. The team in question MUST be on this list.

New York played in Toronto June 4 - 6
Tampa Bay played in Toronto May 31 to June 2
Baltimore played in Toronto on May 28 - 30
Minnesota played in Toronto May 17 - 18
Texas played in Toronto May 14 - 16
Oakland played in Toronto April 29 to May 2
Boston played in Toronto April 26 - 28
Kansas City played in Toronto April 19 - 21
LAA played in Toronto April 16 - 18
Chicago played in Toronto April 12 - 15

The second clue!

Some guys on that team had actually seen the same man making the same motions in 2009. But that had been in the last series of the season against Toronto, and they let it go.

This right here is the only mention of the year 2009. I'll admit that it is extremely vague - most likely on purpose - but I decided to take a look at our second half schedule after the All Star break which reveals the following:

Seattle played in Toronto on Sept 24 - 27
Baltimore played in Toronto on Sept 21 - 23
Minnesota played in Toronto Sept 7 - 10
New York played in Toronto on Sept 3 - 6
Tampa Bay played in Toronto on Aug 24 - 26
LAA played in Toronto on Aug 21 - 23
Boston played in Toronto Aug 18 - 20
Cleveland played in Toronto July 21 - 23

So let's play some match em up! Here are the teams that appear on both lists:

New York (shocking I know)
Baltimore
Tampa Bay
Minnesota
LAA
Boston

More clues! 

When Bautista next came up to bat, he struck out. After the inning, he ran to right field, adjacent to the visitors 'pen, and the livid player issued Bautista a warning.

This one clue in conjunction with the next clue actually narrows down the list of teams BIG TIME. We now know Jose was playing RF and that he struck out. 

The next day, the players who had seen the man in white headed to the field early. One stood in the batter's box while another stood on the mound.

We now also know that the game in question was not the final game in the series or else the players would have left the previous day.

That narrows it down to the following possible games in 2010:

June 5th vs New York - interestingly Bautista hit 2 bombs off AJ the day before.
June 1st vs Tampa Bay
May 29th vs Baltimore
May 28th vs Baltimore


Then I read this

Where would YOU hit Brett Lawrie in the lineup?

Was just pondering that question myself. Unfortunately due to the fact that I can't come up with an original thought all by myself, I decided to rely purely on statistical data.

I get started by going straight over to the appropriately titled Lineup Analysis. It requires merely a player name, OBA (which I'm rather confident is in fact On Base Percentage) & slugging. Right away we got problems. Brett doesn't have any of that in the Majors and I'm looking for some accuracy here. So over to the Minor League Equivalency calculator I go. It requires a whole bunch of stats, which the always rock solid Baseball Reference easily takes care of. Only problem is that they need to be manually inputted. After a couple I`m pretty thankful that I only need to do this for one player. That and you can't actually link back to the results. I guess that is really two problems. Whatever.

Here are all of Brett Lawrie's 2011 Minor League stats (AAA and High A) converted as if he had of played all year in the Big Leagues.

 AB    R    H    2B   3B   HR   RBI   BB   K    BA     OBP   SLG    SB   CS   HBP
309  44  85  19    4     13     43    19   58  .275  . 332  .491   11    2     7

Nice. No idea how accurate it is and I don't even care. It's what I'm going with. 

Right back to the Lineup Analysis I go and plug these totally fictitious numbers as well as all the other Blue Jays into this tool. Please note: I'm assuming that Thames is in LF, Bautista is back in RF and J.P. is behind the plate as we are facing righty starter Tom(my) Hunter. I get the rest of the team stats from The Official Site of The Toronto Blue Jays. Only minor wrinkle was I had to click on the new guy's page individually for his stats from the NL. Again I'm looking for accuracy here.

Here's what shakes out. Buckle up!

If we are looking to score a whopping 10700.285 runs per game then we just have to try this lineup.....

Esco
Bautista
E5
Lawrie
Lind
J.P.
Thames
Hill
Rasmus

That's only if we go with the somewhat suspect 1989-2002 Model. However, if we decide to go with the larger and clearly more accurate 1959-2004 Model we get this:

Esco
Bautista
Thames
Lawrie
Lind
E5
Rasmus
J.P.
Hill

That right there is good for 10411.223 runs per game. PER GAME people. Prove me wrong. You can't do it can you? 

Conclusion: 

I removed the link on this site to the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis for obvious reasons.

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.