Adam Lind has a .987 OPS at Syracuse and appears to be perfectly healthy. He is hitting .355 with a .581 slugging percentage. The Blue Jays are struggling offensively and starting bench players at DH and the corner outfield positions. Why?
I didn’t hear WWJP on the FAN 590 yesterday, but apparently JP said Lind would be up “soon.” However, that seems somewhat non-committal, as JP didn’t indicate it would be “tomorrow” or “this weekend.” JP was asked about Bonds and didn’t deny having interest in him in the way that other teams (and I believe the Jays, as well) have done in the past. This could be for one of two reasons:
1. There are orders or has been strong pressure from the Commissioner’s office for teams not to completely deny having interest in Bonds, in case it would give him evidence and motivation to proceed with a collusion lawsuit. That could be the case, as some have speculated, but I’ve seen other teams flatly deny having an interest in Bonds, so it doesn’t seem like this is an MLB-wide policy. Tampa Bay was quick to quash the rumours a few weeks ago that they had an interest in Bonds and flat-out denied it, from what I recall.
Furthermore, any collusion action against MLB would be difficult for Bonds to prove, particularly because you can make a reasonable case for most teams not having an interest in him. Whether a team is rebuilding or simply deciding to avoid the ‘negative publicity,’ teams can make an argument for not signing a 43-year-old outfielder. He would improve most teams on the field, but it would be hard to disprove that it is reasonable to believe the issues associated with Bonds would be detrimental to a club’s interests. If JP is purely giving lip service to this interest in Bonds it still doesn’t answer why Adam Lind has not been promoted.
2. Alternatively, you can read into JP’s non-denials that he has an interest in signing Bonds and is currently prevented from doing so by the higher-ups in the organization. That’s Wilner’s interpretation and he makes a reasonable case for it, as JP said statements such as “we’d have to get a lot of sign-offs on a lot of things like this” and “we’re still thinking about (signing Bonds) in the sense we’re talking about a lot of things. Wilner also makes the point that JP said that even if Bonds’ came with a mini-entourage and did his own thing, it wouldn’t matter to his teammates if he was helping them win. That would have an easy thing to seize upon to flatly deny an interest in Bonds, particularly considering JP spoke so highly of character in relation to the Rolen and Eckstein signings.
Wilner does make the point that JP doesn’t think he could get more money for the payroll given how the team is playing and even these non-denial denials ended with JP saying “I really don’t see us going down the road there.” I'm not sure this is the case at all, but if the Jays gave themselves a few days or a week to get something done, it could explain the decision not to call Lind up. If not, we’re back to square one, as the team's best left-fielder is in Syracuse.
Are the Jays seriously interested in Barry Bonds? I’d like to think so, but I'm not optimistic than that is the scenario in reality. However, if they aren't, then why is Adam Lind still in Syracuse?
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20080424072625494