And the fact that the team is carrying 3 catchers.

This seemed to be a frequent thing last year as well. The sharp movement of the knuckle ball seems to consistently fool umpires.

Bad news for RSN. Good news for the fans. I would gladly roll the dice with the opponents' broadcast team all summer long.

At least they didn't call-up a pitcher.

In the same way that teams employ roving pitching, hitting, fielding, and baserunning coaches to help players focus on certain elements of their game, the Red Sox realized they could find specialists to deal with these soft-tissue concerns. Physical therapists craft regimens to help players avoid the kind of nagging injuries that can linger for far too long; when those injuries do occur, they can help players recover in weeks instead of months, or days instead of weeks. In essence, the Red Sox are using a physical therapist like a roving medical coach.

Another that bugs me is that despite all the injuries to the jays over recent years, the training staff remains the same - nobody loses their job.

.... and Reyes only started having injury issues when he joined the Jays.. ??? 

Do we miss Y. Escobar?  Probably not, but Hechavarria is not looking too bad right now.

Yesterday's game was bad, but misleading.  Price was pitching tough and I thought Dickey was being squeezed. 

I am looking forward to today's game.  Is Hutch the real deal?

Escobar was worth 4 WAR last year. Hechavarria was worth -2.

Dickey is a unique case, but I think his age should still be a consideration. He was a conventional until age 31, so his shoulder would have a fair amount of mileage on it. It's also possible that his back or legs could become an issue at his age. He's not a typical 39 year-old pitcher, but he's not a 26 year-old, either.

Late to the dance here as I didn't see the game. While there is no disputing the quality of Loup's outing (at least on paper, my only barometer), was any mention made why he, specifically, was brought in to face right handed batters given his pronounced L/R splits? He would seem an odd choice.

I didn't read the game summary. I just saw the 5-up 5-down and assumed he was as impressive as that sounds. I still don't get why Loup was the man to face two RHB except that perhaps it was only the 6th inning and thus his "time" to enter the game.

...and zobrist is a switch hitter, who is better as a lefty, so flipping him around was the percentage play

His career OPS splits are actually 801/783, so this is not true.

It just seems odd to carry 7 or 8 relievers and not make this decision based on match-ups. Despite being early in the game, it is still high leverage. Much higher leverage, in fact, than starting the 7th with no one on base.

Roles can be defined in a variety of ways, so I'd argue that the question becomes whether the manager defined the bullpen roles correctly. A role can be defined based on the game situation and leverage. The inning doesn't need to be the primary consideration.

Hutch looked great last night.  I am very happy about that.

Not too look too far down the schedule, but this weekend they have McGowan, Dickey and Hutch vs the Yankees.  In order for the Jays to have any success this year, we have to win against our division.  If we can end up 4-3 for the week, I would be very optomistic.

I am impressed that Gibbons didn't slavishly stick to the old 100 pitch limit, but instead felt Hutch hit a limit and pulled him despite the 0 runs. 3 walks in 5 1/3 IP is higher than it should be and hints that he didn't have his best control, although 50-33 strike-ball count does sound good.

Yep, hutch was struggling with his fastball command, which makes his performance all that much more impressive.

What I love is how two games in a row we've seen decent offense from guys who were supposed to be in Buffalo right now - first Kratz with the home run yesterday and Diaz driving in the 4th run today. Funny how that works sometimes. A big positive also is the Jays getting more walks than they gave up.

This applies more to sports with strict salary caps, but even in baseball i've always endorsed the theory that with the bottom roster spots, unless you have clear quality options you should load up on as many borderline options as you can, and be willing to rotate through them without playing favorites - chances are you'll find a hot bat in there somewhere, as long as you don't stubbornly stick with one guy.

It's an underrated part of how the rays do it - they usually have a number of bench options (sometimes even key starting spots like 1b/dh), and often they end up demoting the favorite and going with a different hotter bat instead. They don't put up with sustained underperformance from these borderline guys for very long before giving another guy a shot.

• All 3 failed (defensively) at third base
• All 3 traded at age 26 or 27
  
• Age 26 figures...
• Francisco 227/296/422 -0.7 bWAR
  
• Encarnacion 225/320/410 0 bWAR
  
• Bautista 254/339/414 (238/313/405 the next year is closer) -0.6 WAR at 26, -0.1 at 27
  
• Age 29 Bautista & EE exploded. 
  

Big difference is Francisco K's a lot more while walking less.  Another big difference is there is nowhere to put Francisco right now outside of AAA.  Francisco would need to stay down almost the whole year to lose a free agent year (2 years 156 days ML experience so has to stay down until September) which I doubt will happen thus a free agent after 4 more years including this one which means the Jays would get his age 27/28/29/30 seasons thus following EE/Bautista they'd get 2 great years and 2 blech ones.

Now, in spring Francisco did hit well - 346/500/731 vs 8.9 quality (mid way between majors and AAA).  Seems odd that he'd have that hot a spring and be cut so Lyle Overbay could play.  Could the Jays be looking to dump Lind on someone and put Francisco in at DH/1B/3B (ala Encarnacion)?  Would you want to?  In 2014 I'd expect Lind to out hit him, but in 2015 who knows?

How does he look scared against left-handers? 

Yep. Now I know why Loup came into the game two nights ago. It was all part of Gibbons' long con to convince Maddon that he didn't care about matchups. Last night was the payoff. Cecil against Joyce is a definite gotcha.

Quote of the day is from Jose Bautista (as quoted by Shi Davidi last night): "I could really get used to the chemistry that I see between our catcher and our pitchers."

Good pitch calling and "chemistry" is especially helpful for Buehrle - I seem to recall reading that he always just throws what his catcher tells him to throw.

Navarro looks like a catcher (as opposed to just being some guy who squats behind the plate with a mask on, but isn't really a catcher). This is a good thing.

The Jays are 2-1 against Tampa Bay in the Evil Orange Dome, and the Yankees have lost twice to the Houston Astros. Life is not all that bad at the moment.

I don't see a contradiction. Rosenthal states that it's unclear whether the discussions about salary deferral were initiated by the players or management. If the idea was hatched by the players, it's possible they perceived the team's financial situation differently than it actually was. It's also possible the players were unaware that a salary deferral is something the union would find problematic.

I'm sorry, but I still don't see how Rosenthal is contradicting himself or was somehow wrong to leave that impression. The facts, according to Rosenthal, are 1) some Blue Jays players were willing to defer their salary (or "pass the hat") to help sign Santana, and 2) the team made a substantial offer to Santana, apparently without the assistance of the players. Based on the limited information we currently have, there is no reason why those two points can't both be true. When I read the article, I simply inferred that salary deferral proved to be unnecessary for whatever reason.

Rosenthal never says the Blue Jays are, in fact, cash-strapped. Had he done so and then gone on to say that the team offered $14 million to Santana, that would be contradictory. Instead he states that the salary deferral discussions "raise new questions about the Jays' payroll flexibility for 2014," which they most certainly do. I'm not trying to be dense or argumentative here, but I honestly don't see the problem with what Rosenthal wrote.

As for why the players may have perceived that the team was having financial difficulties, it could be a sign of bigger problems, but it could also be something as simple as poor communication between management and the players. It's possible the players were in the same boat as fans during the offseason -- they saw how the team didn't make any significant acquisitions and wondered why that was the case. Truthfully it sounds like one or more players concocted a harebrained scheme that just happened to gain a bit of traction in the clubhouse. Until we know more, I'm not going to read much into this story.

It wasn't clear in your original post that you were referring to the first paragraph of the article as the source of the contradiction. You cited several things from the article in your original post, but none of them were from the first paragraph. Further, none of the points you did cite in your original post were contradictory, and that is why I disagreed with your statement that Rosenthal had somehow contradicted himself.

The first paragraph was basically a clever/funny introduction and I don't think it was intended to be anything more than a throwaway line. Regardless, I'm glad to know we're basically on the same page on the article's substantive points.