Pretty much the way I see it. There Snider and then there's everyone else some distance away. I would have probably moved Romero down a few spots and Tolisano too.

That's an interesting comment about Snider letting too many hittable pitches pass him by. I hadn't heard that before and I wonder if the Blue Jays front office has the same issue with his approach.

"That's an interesting comment about Snider letting too many hittable pitches pass him by."

All things being equal, and given the right situation, I'd rather have a guy who's waiting for the pitch he can crush than the guy who stabs at the first thing that looks half decent.

It's an approach that seemed to serve Barry Bonds well.

Well somebody's fibbing....

"He could use more aggressiveness at the plate, as he currently works himself into poor hitter's counts while letting not perfect--yet perfectly hittable--pitches go by." - Kevin Goldstein, BP

"His strikeouts are more a function of being aggressive than having holes in his swing or poor plate discipline." - Deric McKamey - MLBA

 

Not exactly fibbing, but simply differing opinions.  "You say toe-may-to, I say toe-mah-to, let's call the whole thing off."  I'd have a lot more respect for the opinion of Lugnut Fan who saw Snider a lot last year.

It's too bad that Gershwin never wrote a baseball song, although Roger Clemens has been more or less singing "it aint necessarily so" for the last few days.

Lugnut Fan would be the expert on Snider.  In the 4 AB's I saw of him last summer I would say that the latter comment reflected what I saw.  The K's that I saw by him were a function of not cutting back his swing with 2 strikes.  He certainly didn't let any hittable pitches go by but he also didn't chase pitches either.  But like I said it was only 4 AB.  BP also listed Snider a being "huge" which means they actually haven't seen him and are going by his pre-draft weight listing of 245lbs.  He wasn't that big when I saw him and this was confirmed by reports out of the AFL.  When one of the top prospects in baseball is getting reports like that then how accurate are the reports on the other 5000 minor leaguers.

Thanks, MatO.  I trust your account, with the welcome "sample size warning". 

Not sure where to put this but:

Chris Dial at Primer gives out his Gold Gloves

There are Blue Jays all over the place.  Including Adam Lind?

Wow, those fielding ratings are amazing for the Jays.

1B:Overbay not listed, last year was dead centre
2B:Hill in 2nd place after winning in 2006
3B:Glaus not listed, near bottom in '06
SS:McDonald #1, middle of road in '06
LF:Lind #2, in '06 Johnson was #2 by ratio
CF:Wells #2 (so something did go right) repeating '06
RF:Rios #4,but #2 on Dewan's system vs #1 last year
CA:Not mentioned

So the only slots that are sub-par defensively going into 08 would be CA and 3B. Our new SS, Eckstein, was 4th in the NL in '06 (with a comment about an 'ugly arm') so he shouldn't be a disaster defensively although his defensive stats did take a dive in '07.

It does appear the Jays are doing something right on defense with lots of credit to the coaches I suspect given Lind was viewed as weak defensively coming in and Hill wasn't a secondbaseman just a couple seasons ago. It does look like defense is the new OBP (ie: the area most teams are weak in taking advantage of). Lets hope JP has it right and things work out in '08.