The New York Mets signed both John Rauch and Frank Francisco away from the Blue Jays, for $3.5 million/1 year and $12 million/2 years. Rauch and Francisco were both type B free agents that were offered arbitration, so the Blue Jays will receive two compensatory picks in the second round for losing them.
The Jays will also receive a compensatory pick from losing Bengie Molina, as well as a supplementary pick for failing to sign Tyler Beede, giving Toronto six picks in the first two rounds of the 2012 draft. If Kelly Johnson doesn't agree to arbitration, or signs with another team, they could receive an additional two picks.
Rauch signed this a one year contract for $3.5 million this past off-season and posted a disappointing year, with his ERA rising by more than a run and a half and his FIP by almost 2.5 runs. He struck out fewer batters than he had in any of the previous five years, and at thirty-three was starting to show his age. Frank Francisco, acquired in the off-season for Mike Napoli, also had what many Jays fans would term a down year, although his overall numbers were fairly similar to 2010. In point of fact it was actually quite a decent showing.
Francisco was by far the superior of the two players, striking out over a batter an inning and posting a 3.55 ERA. He was one of the best relievers in baseball for the second half of the season, pitching 26.1 innings and allowing only 4 runs while compiling a 24/4 K/BB ratio and allowing batters to hit .188 against him. Losing Rauch probably isn't much of a deal, but keeping Francisco would not have hurt the team, and he would have made a nice one-two punch with Santos. Then again, the reason the team was able to acquire someone like Santos in the first place is because of a surplus of talented minor leaguers that will be replenished with the extra picks. The circle of life I guess.
In any event, the Blue Jays bullpen now looks something like this:
Sergio Santos
Casey Janssen
Joel Carreno
Carlos Villanueva
Luis Perez
Jesse Litsch
Plus one or two of
Chad Beck
Danny Faquhar
Alan Farina
Trystan Magnusson
It's not an all world pen, but it should be reasonably decent. At this point I don't think there is much point in the Jays acquiring another arm unless it's a situation similar to Sergio Santos, as the team will have a plethora of pitchers who will likely end up in the bullpen over the next couple of years. Hopefully someone is able to take a big step forward this year, as Casey Janssen did last year. My money would be on Joel Carreno, who I've always liked. Carreno is a three pitch reliever, though mostly a fastball/curve guy, who posted strong strikeout numbers throughout the minors and had a good cup of coffee in September.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20111207091810708