Don't forget the physical

Of course Glaus pouted to be assured he won't DH. Like I needed a bad first impression of the guy.

What's the reference for that? I missed it. Is it our regular muckraking friends who apparently got snowed by a certain baseball GM this afternoon?

Glaus wanted to know where he fits in the Blue Jays plan before he agreed to waive his no trade clause. The third baseman wants to be used as a third baseman and not as the clubs designated hitter.

Take a look at the picture of Santos in the Scout link above. He's HUGE. He's built like Troy Glaus already.

compare 1? & 2?

Batista:
2001: 5.2 
2002: 3.9 
2003: 5.6 
2004: 5.1 
2005: 3.6

Hudson:
2002: 1.8
2003: 6.0
2004: 5.7
2005: 5.2

Glaus:
2000: 10.0
2001: 5.5
2002: 6.4
2003: 1.8
2004: 2.0
2005: 5.0

Are we now supposed to use Arizona's management team as a barometer? The same braintrust that saw fit to bestow millions of dollars upon Russ Ortiz, who had walked 214 in the two previous seasons? Or trade for a very expensive, past his prime Shawn Green?

Arizona is looking to lessen payroll and deal with overcrowding at their infield corners. The Jays, themselves already overstocked at the same positions, seem strangely willing to further exacerbate their problem.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/13477123.htm

It is very possible (maybe even probable) that Glaus will get injured again next season, but it appears a big reason behind his poor defensive showing was a knee problem. If his knee is healthy going into next season, I think he can be an average defensive third baseman. Of course, the injuries are a problem, but at least it appears that it's not like his skills have deteriorated to the point where there is no hope for defensive improvement next year. I'm not saying it's probable he'll be a better defender next year, but it's possible and not unlikely.

If that's true then this team is in trouble with JP evaluating the defence. He has insisted Russ Adams is fine at shortstop which he isn't. He just doesn't have the tools to stay there.

And no matter what he says now, he also signed Hinske to a 5 year, $15 million deal under the assumption that he would be a capable third baseman who would hit similar to his rookie year. That is the only thing that would justify giving that kind of contract to a player that just completed his first year and had obvious issues playing third.

He also went as far as to say that Hinske could be a gold glove third baseman in the second half of that year when Butterfield improved Hinske's D from gagworthy to barely tolerable. Today Hinske might not be worthy of the platoon DH role to which he's been pushed.

Kenny Rogers was traded for in Oakland under the assumption that he would be a centerfield solution for the A's. A few years after that he couldn't even play passably in left field. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't implicitly trust JP's naked eye in determining who can play defence. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe the OPPOSITE of whatever JP says in determining who can play defence in certain cases.

I think the Jays will manage with a combo of Hill, Adams, and MacDonald. Glaus has to stay healthy and produce and Santos needs to turn into a useful or plus middle infielder. The Jays just have to make sure Hill and Adams now play the positions best suited to them. There's no sense continuing to subject Adams and us to the torture of him playing shortstop because of hubris.

If it wasn't for the fact that our LOOGY was the team's ace, that team might have intimidated somebody.

Then Glaus in 2001 was abandoned offensively. He still mashed home runs and still got his OBP, but not as well as before.

Then there's Troy's WS year, 2002, when Schoenman went back to LOOGY duty and Glaus had some more support, but not enough to do 2000 damage. Note that he was the weakest link defensively each year.

I expect Troy's production to be similar to 2002, with a similar lineup around him, starring Shea Hillenbrand as Brad Fullmer, Aaron Hill as David Eckstein, Russ Adams as Adam Kennedy, Vernon Wells as Garret Anderson, Lyle Overbay as Scott Spezio, Alexis Rios as Darin Erstad and Reed/Cat as Tim Salmon, with Zauny as our own little Bengie Molina.

Plus, I'd hope we'd get more power off the bench (10 home runs? *choke* how did they win the WS? Oh yeah, bullpen.)

Pretty good looking there, Jays. But there's still one last day before Christmas, what else can we ask J.P. for this Christmas?

How about a good table setter, the Juan Pierre/Podsednik-type? Anyone available? Nah...JP will probably add another corner infielder or two. Durazo's still available, isn't he?

Yes, that's usually true. But you can sign a good player as a free agent and you can make a trade where the other team is dumping salary. In both cases, you don't have to give up anyone good (ignoring the draft picks as FA compensation).

In this case, the Jays gave up someone good and cheap (who will remain cheap through his arbitration days because defense always goes undercompensated) and acquired a player being moved in a salary dump.

I'd have rather seen them dole out $10M (matching KC's offer) for the aged and injury prone Reggie Sanders, and gain an immediate RF upgrade. Far less money, deals with a positional problem, doesn't exacerbate the 3B/DH clutter issue.

Are you implying causality?

Interesting to note that Glaus had his best season in 2000 when he was in a lineup full of mashers. Three other guys with 35+ HR, another with 25 HR and a .400 OBP

Are you implying causality?

It's there, it's unquantifiable and it's unpredictable. It's almost not even worth talking about.

But getting back to the VORP projections, I'd like to see some stats on how well a previous year's production is a prognosticator for the following year? Any stats on the fluctuation from year to year of your average player? Seems to me that as much as you may project from past performance, it's less reliable to do that than most would like to believe. Unless you're gauging Albert Pujols, of course. Then you might as well expect an increase in performance.

I'm not sure if you're suggesting that Ripken made up for either a lack of range or arm via his positioning skills. Ripken played a very deep shortstop because he had a terrific arm. As such, he got to a lot of balls in what appeared to be an easy fashion, not requiring the highlight reel gymnastics of shortstops who played shallower.

I'm not sure that Hill could play so deep. I'm very sure Adams couldn't. I see Adams' defensive upside the same as Eckstein's. A shallow shortstop to compensate for the absence of a gun. Making the plays on what balls he does get to. That's his upside, and he's nowhere near that now.

Actually, no I wouldn't, not without evidence.

If you're going to say that, you're making the assumption that everyone in the clubhouse are are bad clubhouse people which is *totally* not the case. What as happened is that 24 good clubhouse people lost one very good clubhouse player. The leader is still Vernon Wells, and both he and O-Dog are chips off one another. I don't think any were particularily pleased with losing Orlando, but the current roster is mature enough to take it like a man. They know how close they are, and they're not going to let something like this ruin it.

If you're going to give Orlando the God-like status that you're giving him, you have to realize that the time he spent with the current roster should be enough to make the team mature enough to handle this situation.

And I have my entire faith that Vernon Wells will maintain the excellent clubhouse. This isn't pre-school nor the Philidelphia Eagles.

I thought the Jays were getting Glaus on the cheap already, presuming he's healthy enough to play at least 125 games/season for three more years.

If the Jays are getting paid, they must be giving up more, or the right of players to make a trade demand while in the middle of a multiyear contract is driving down prices.

Anyhow, how do the D-backs win organization of the year while making trades like this? According to this article, give former Diamondbacks General Manager Joe Garagiola Jr. a lot of credit.

The award, presented annually at the winter meetings, honors the major league organization that produces the greatest number of player awards, including players of the month and the year, minor league All-Stars and the Topps major league Rookie All-Star Team.

Perhaps they'd settle for one of Hillenbrand, Koskie, Hinske.

And I hear they have a rightfielder who can hit that they are interested in trading (Craig Wilson)...

The Blue Jays were the last team in the major leagues to have a player with "Ryan" as either his first or last name. It wasn't until the team's 25th season, when Ryan Freel made his debut, that it all changed. In recent years, the name Ryan has become a bit more common on the Blue Jays roster, but clearly the team once had a bias against players with that name.

I wonder why the Toronto Star never picked up on this? Perhaps it was because the team never showed a bias against names like "Baker" and "Griffin" -- two names that made their Blue Jays debuts in the early days of the franchise.

At least none that have made the big club. If you know of any, please add them to this list. Perhaps there was a minor league player named Geoff?

At least it would be hard to fault JP for shipping Geoffs or Ryans out of town. But if he had the opportunity to acquire Geoff Jenkins and passed it up, I'd be FUMING!

I believe you do need to have subscription access, BUT... somehow I'm able to get it without access.

Anyhow the gist of the story is that Blair loves J.P. but looks at why others don't, and the deal is done, signed sealed and delivered to the commish.

Make no mistake: The deal is finished, the papers are nestled all snug in the commissioner's office and it would have been announced officially by now were it not for Christmas.

The "interesting" part is debatable, but what we have to insist on is that you give credit where credit is due - that is, a link to wherever these comments come from, and a small passage rather than a full quote.

I'm afraid the first names of Vernon, Lyle, Aaron, Russ, Gregg, Eric, Frank, Alexis and Troy, assuming Cat in the OF and Hinske at DH, leaves us with:

V[ery] LARGE [and] FAT

Maybe that refers to team batting average or win percentage or somesuch?

If you use the last names for 8 of our likely starters:
Adams, Hill, Overbay, Glaus, Wells, Koskie, Hillenbrand (or Hinske), and Catalanatto ...

Boston wanted to do several things this off season:
Sign JP Ryan, aw shucks

Since Overbay is slower than molasses in January I think we bat him further down where he can knock in runs not near the top where he can't go first to third and will hit into all sorts of double plays.

"Glaus officially a Jay today" from The Globe and Mail (Jeff Blair)

"Batista set for return to D-Backs" from the Arizona Republic (Nick Piecoro)

"Hudson isn't bitter at Jays" from the Toronto Star (Allan Ryan)

Read them all yourselves, but here are some important points.

1. Blair's article says the Jays' payroll projects to 73 million for 2006. How'd they do that? All along we've been under the impression that the Jays would have to dump salary to get to 75 mil. And the Glaus trade should add about 3 million. Have all the so-called experts been off?
2. Hillenbrand is less likely to be traded than we all thought because Gibby has lobbied against trading Shea's right-handed bat.
3. Glaus listed Toronto as a location in his no-trade clause not because of the cold weather but because of the (old) turf. He agreed to waive the no-trade clause upon being convinced of the improvements when FieldTurf was installed in the Rogers Centre.
4. According to the Republic, the Jays will get a little bit of help financially from the D-Backs (around 1 million for 2008) for tax equalization. Which means to me that the money isn't really for the Jays, it's for Glaus. How nice. However, Blair says no money will change hands.
5. Hudson isn't bitter. He has known it was coming for close to a month, according the Star. Seems this trade has been in the works for a while but there were so many stumbling blocks until last Thursday.
6. Santos was not on a list of the D-Backs "coveted" prospects submitted by Josh Byrnes to Ricciardi. JP was permitted to choose any minor league player who was not on this list. However, perhaps Santos was a convenient choice for the D-Backs because there was no room on the D-Backs 40-man roster. (The Republic) anyways.
7. JP has contemplated playing Hinske in the outfield. Some days, he thinks it's a good idea. Other days... uh, not so much.
8. Glaus got a new no-trade clause to replace the one he just waived.
9. Ticket sales are up 15% at this time compared to last year.

   For your own edification, read the articles!

Glaus has been told privately that he will play third base for the Blue Jays, and if that's the case, the club can be expected to solve the logjam by moving out one of its lefty bats (Eric Hinske, Corey Koskie or Frank Catalanotto.) Manager John Gibbons has urged Ricciardi to hang on to righty-hitting Shea Hillenbrand, and Ricciardi has all but taken him off the trade block.

That's some of the best news I've heard regarding the logjam. Keeping Hillenbrand is VITAL, especially if he backs up his comments from a few weeks ago about the new swing and his HR predictions.

What reason do we have for thinking he will back up his comments? Did we expect Batista to live up to his 50 save prediction? Wells to become a 30-30 man last year?

It's sort of like in Major League II when that rookie catcher stands up and says that he'll play, even though he's never been successful. It's different as supposed to a star player blowing off steam.

*No disrespect to Vernon, I think star players need to set challenging goals to influence the younger players to push themselves more.

"We don't have to move anybody ... these guys have spots, our job is to find spots for the guys we have"
~~ on the roster's future

"We have some wiggle room left"
~~ on the budget