Note to Hockey Guyz -- Baseball's Hall of Names has done NHL and NBA Hall of Fame same-name-alikes. One from the NHL would be welcome!

And to Gerry -- great photos. But what makes this crop so outstanding, as good as the Alvarez delivery images are, is the dugout background scene. Nothing happening, SO much going on! Classic baseball.

Alvarez gets the start tomorrow!!

Giggity!

With Alvarez now officially promoted and starting tomorrow, it's worth reviewing the track record of Jays pitching prospects who were promoted directly from AA to the majors, skipping AAA entirely.  It's still a somewhat unorthodox route, but a route that the Jays have often experimented with.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.  Here are a few examples, but don't hesitate to add to this list with others that I've forgotten:

Jesse Litsch (2007) -- successful.

Kyle Drabek (2011) -- unsuccessful.

Zach Stewart (2011) -- mixed results, then traded.

Henderson Alvarez (2011) -- we will see.

I'd be interested in Cord Phelps from the Indians for second base.  Blocked by Kipinis/Chisenhall in Cleveland.  Young and controllable, good minor league numbers.  He could easily slot in at the bottom of that order.

I'd also be willing to move a guy like Lind and platoon Cooper and EE at first.  Depending on what Lind's value was in the offseason of course.

This post is about Alvarez.  I am all about seeing what the kid has got.  What the hell. 

BTW...Get over Fielder.  There is not way I would sign him.  It would be a contract we would regret.  I could see it now.  We would have another albatross contract that ties the Jays down as we have to trade away young players because we can't afford them anymore.  No thanks.

If we were the Yankees and we had unlimited cash, maybe.  But we are not.  Did we not learn anything from Vernon Wells?

I would like to see money spent on a closer and other bullpen arms.  A 2nd baseman would be nice.  But....  Bullpen, bullpen bullpen!  Other than that, develop that minor league system. 

....We would have another albatross contract that ties the Jays down as we have to trade away young players because we can't afford them anymore....

Just out of curiosity:  who were the "young players" that the Jays had to trade away because they couldn't afford them anymore?  I can't think of any, unless you are referring to Halladay (not a young player, and traded because he wanted to leave, not because the Jays couldn't afford him).  Or are you referring to Alex Rios (who was released on the waiver wire and has a .579 OPS this season)?

In other news:  let's hope that Snider's season was jinxed by his porn-star mustache, because -- in a dramatic attempt to find a fresh start -- he has apparently decided to shave it off.  From Twitter tonight:

The real question is who is Adam Lind? 

Interestingly, Lind's 2011 performance is virtually identical to his career numbers heading into 2011.

pre-2011: 271/322/473/109+
2011:        271/321/464/112+

Split	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	TB	GDP	HBP	SH	SF	IBB	ROE	BAbip	tOPS+	sOPS+
April	24	103	 91	13	26	6	0	4	14	0	0	11	27	.286	.359	.484	.843	44	1	0	0	1	1	0	.361	139	128
May	28	118	109	12	19	3	0	4	14	0	0	 7	24	.174	.220	.312	.532	34	2	0	0	2	0	0	.181	50	44
June	25	 97	 90	4	14	2	1	1	 8	0	0	 6	28	.156	.216	.233	.450	21	2	1	0	0	0	1	.213	30	23
July	24	 98	 91	9	25	4	1	5	11	0	0	 6	24	.275	.327	.505	.832	46	2	1	0	0	2	0	.323	133	124
August	25	103	 97	10	27	8	1	5	15	0	0	 5	19	.278	.320	.536	.856	52	3	1	0	0	0	0	.301	138	133
Sept	24	 94	 91	9	24	9	0	4	10	0	0	 3	22	.264	.287	.495	.782	45	0	0	0	0	0	0	.308	116	117

I think the question going forward is can he minimize the damage next time he goes bad, or will he just flail away for two months.

That's basically where he is now, in another slump that threatens to last several months (July had an OPS of .580, August is at .385 so far), just flailing away. Lind does seem to average out to a reasonable level, but it's nothing great, and barely better than Encarnacion. Not going into slumps that last 1/3 the year is an important part of being a top player, and Lind seems to lack the ability to avoid them. His lack of walks is an important piece of this, but it's not very likely that he will suddenly develop this skill at this point. Although just taking 60 walks, instead of the 40 he's on pace for, would be a huge improvement.

I was on the "what's wrong with Lind and Hill" bandwagon before Lind got hot. But since Lind has turned out to be essentially Lyle Overbay (Toronto OPS+ of 109), except not as good defensively and with a much lower OBP, that's pretty disappointing. Aside from guys who will cost big money, I don't see a better option for the Jays next year. 

Da Vid Coo Per (clap-clap--clap-clap-clap)

Seconded.

I'm not necessarily defending Murphy, but isn't it true that Farrell and Anthopoulos canvassed the Jays players in the off-season (after Farrell's appointment as manager) and they specifically said they wanted Murphy to be retained from Cito's staff?  If that's true, it does count for something -- it suggests that the players themselves believe that Murphy is helping them, even if it isn't proven by the numbers in some cases. 

Secondly, as others have noted before, the Jays ability to score runs has not been a huge problem this season -- in fact the offence has been better than the pitching, relative to the rest of the league.  Again, that suggests Murphy isn't the main problem this year.

Jonny, it's true that those 5 hitters have been disappointing this year.  But hitters do regress -- it happens all the time, on every team, and I don't think it's usually the fault of the hitting coach.  All 5 of those hitters have had better seasons in the past, but they've also had some terrible slumps and bad seasons in their past too -- so their poor performances this year aren't a total shock.  Rivera and Davis were pretty mediocre in 2010, when they weren't coached by Murphy, so their struggles this year weren't unexpected .  Hill and Lind have only really had one strong season in their major-league careers, so there was no logical reason to expect them to maintain those peaks forever.  Snider has never had a consistently strong season in the majors, and he's only 23, so his difficulties are unsurprising.

Frankly we as fans tend to expect too much from some of these players.  Why should we expect a player to continue indefinitely at the same level as their peak season?  Or at the same level as they hit in the minors?   Regression is pretty common.

CF: Hill had 2633 PA's in the bigs with a .285/.337/.434 line before falling off a cliff in 2010. That's not regression, that's devolution.  Saying he had only 1 really good season is really slanting it to support your statement. He was a fine ball player and a good enough hitter for his position for close to 3000 PA's.

No I did not say that. Did you read that somewhere in my post? Please. Respond to the words that are written, not the ones you wished were.

 You said lots of players regress, that it's common. I'm saying Hill hasn't simply regressed, he's completely fallen off a cliff.   To me, I except the notion that maybe the hitting coach isn't getting as much out of some of his players, Hill in particular being one of them.

Zeppelinkm, I still don't understand your point.  Many players on many teams have deteriorated from their peak seasons.  Occasionally, like Aaron Hill, their numbers fall off a cliff.  It doesn't happen frequently -- and Hill is clearly an exception -- but it does happen, and not only on the Jays.  Regardless of whether a player declines gradually or falls off a cliff, how does this substantiate anything about the hitting coach?  What is the connection between "rate of decline" and "influence of the hitting coach"?  I don't see any logical connection.

Or put it another way:  in the vast universe of players who decline from their peak seasons, some decline a little, some decline a lot, and some fall off a cliff.  It does happen, and Hill is not the only case.  How does this prove anything about the hitting coach?  Quite possibly, or even probably, it's because Hill managed to put together an exceptional season in 2009 because everything went right for him.  Since then, for a variety of reasons, he declined drastically from his peak.  It happens.

Why should we expect a player to continue indefinitely at the same level as their peak season?

This is where you're getting silly and implying things I most definitely didn't say.

But I didn't imply that you said it.  It was a rhetorical question, and it was obviously me who said it, to help me make my point that regression is very very common.

As for the 5 players you cited:  None of them were particularly good in 2010.  One of them (Lind) has actually improved significantly from last season (improving his OPS from .712 to .777 this year).  The others have continued to decline, but roughly at the pace by which they were already declining.  Two of them (Rivera and Davis) are at an age where declines would be expected anyway.  Another one, Snider, is only 23 years old and his struggles at that age are unsurprising.  Hill is the only one of the 5 players whose further decline this year is mysterious and difficult to explain -- but it does sometimes happen in baseball.

As for Mottola -- there's no evidence that Snider was demoted because of a desire to get a better coach.  He was demoted to allow him to work on his hitting in a more favorable environment with less pressure on him.   (Or did he suddenly get 4 hits yesterday because Mottola instantly fixed him?)

I think you can even question Murphy's role with Bautista if you wanted to.  His breakout came in September 2009 when Tenace was the hitting coach. 

Except Bautista's swing change was Murphy's and had nothing to do with Tenace, by all accounts.

Henderson Alvarez is a slight pitcher, to me he looks to be a little short of six feet, probably around Pedro Martinez size. Alvarez has a nice compact delivery. Alvarez is only 19 years old and has been Lansing's best pitcher so far this season. Alvarez throws a 92-94 mph fastball (touched 95 a couple of times), a hard change-up at 84-87mph and a flattish curve-ball at 79-80. On Saturday he was a "thrower", he likes to work fast and would get the ball and be ready to pitch and fire it in there for the hitters to handle. The hitters handled him pretty well on Saturday but Alvarez is still not yet a "pitcher" and he left too many fastballs over the middle of the plate. As Alvarez gets a little older and more experienced you could see him averaging 93-95 mph with the fastball and if he can start living on the edges of the strike zone he could be very effective. If the Jays top 30 prospects were re-evaluated today Alvarez would be in the top half.

Certainly from this article, Murphy was the main instigator of Jose's swing change.

As per Jose himself "It never was explained to me in the way these guys did it. It didn't make sense in my head when they'd say you're getting ready too late, I didn't know how to fix it. They didn't pinpoint and explain it to me in a way that I would understand it the way Cito and Murph did"

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/2010/05/31/going_deep/