Today, the Blue Jays announced the 2010 R. Howard Webster Award winners today, honouring the Most Valuable Player at each of the team’s minor league affiliates.

In another thread, veteran Bauxite Mike Green intones, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going.  Can we not talk about something else, like ...

• Perhaps the best pop song which adverts to September? The efforts of Kurt Weill, Rod Stewart, Earth Wind and Fire and Green Day come to mind. 
• Or perhaps, the best Septembers by a ballclub? 
• Or whether Lyle Overbay or some other defensively qualified first baseman should be signed during the off-season?

First person to answer all three questions by tying them together into a single, annoyingly hip Mad Men-ish advertising slogan wins the coveted Batter's Box No-Prize! But don't worry, if you're not first, the BEST such entry will win FIVE No-Prizes. Quintuple your winnings!
 

Here's a look back at the Jays series opening win over the Texas Rangers at the Dome on Labour Day Monday.

Much of the talk this year has focused on Jose Bautista, and for good reason - he recently broke the Jays' franchise record for home runs in a season and will likely soon become the first Blue Jay to ever hit 50. In the Year of the Pitcher, he leads the majors in home runs by a whopping ten over Albert Pujols, and his .998 OPS ranks 4th in the bigs. This incredible power surge seemingly came out of nowhere, and has prompted numerous discussions about What To Do With Jose Bautista.

The Houston Astros have reached a player development deal with the Oklahoma City RedHawks of the Pacific Coast League and that means the Blue Jays and the Las Vegas 51's will still be together for at least the next two seasons according to the National Post.

UPDATE 09/21 @ 6:30 p.m. - The Jays have officially announced a two-year PDC with the 51's.

Baseball America will begin publishing their league top twenty lists this week.  I thought I would take a shot at guessing which Jays might make the lists.

This is a tricky objective because I don't know all the prospects from other organizations nor will I be examining the non-Blue Jay rosters of all the minor league teams to see who should make the list.  I will approach this purely from a Blue Jay perspective.

With a home run in the sixth inning off Michael Bowden, scoring Yunel Escobar, Jose Bautista hit his 48th home run of the year, breaking George Bell’s club record set in 1987.

The Twitter rumour mill is reporting that the Jays will announce on Friday that Vancouver will be the new home of their short season A team, replacing Auburn.

I didn't get the chance to watch the game last night, so you guys will have to help me on the scouting report, but here are my quick impressions after watching the highlights.

Jamey Newberg, a Baurxite since 2006, creates the best daily team-oriented MLB e-newsletter on the planet, the Texas Rangers Newberg Minor League Report. In today's edition, he goes all Toronto on us, as he has done a couple of times before. Enjoy ...

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I’ve been a little under the weather the last couple days, so I’ve reached out to our pal north of the border to pinch-hit today. You might remember this guy from a couple entries he shared with us in 2006.

THE NOUVEAU-BERGERON REPORT
The tragic number for the Jays is now down to four. It would be a waste of time talking about tonight’s game in Baltimore or the weekend series in Boston. This isn’t a bad team – we’d be in second place in the AL West – but there’s plenty of work to be done if we’re gonna make any noise the next few years in the East. Let’s look at something two of the four teams who will be in the playoffs this year did in 2007 to help get them where they are now.

The POTD focuses on Kyle Drabek and his Cy Young Award winning father.  They were spotlighted on JaysVision in between innings of Thursday's game against Texas.

With Kyle Drabek set to make his major league debut Wednesday night comes word that the man he was traded for will get to return to his old stomping grounds next season.   According to bluejays.com, Roy Halladay and the Philadelphia Phillies will be in town for the Canada Day weekend.

For the last couple years, Adam Lind and Aaron Hill have been inextricably linked in conversation about the Jays. It isn't hard to see why; aside from profile similarities (they were both drafted out of college, they're about a year apart in age), they were the offensive leaders on the team last year, belting 35 and 36 homers respectively (no other Jay had more than 19), and driving in 114 and 108 (Barajas was next with 71). And, of course, this year, both have tanked while the rest of the team has hit very well (every starter has an OPS+ over 100 - Hill and Lind are at 85 and 90).

With all these similarities, I'm surprised we haven't started calling them by a dumb hybrid name. Maybe Aram Lill just doesn't have the same ring as, for example, Freed Johnalanotto.

It wasn’t a typical time-sharing arrangement, but once in team history the Blue Jays accomplished a rare split of playing time that I imagine is not common in major league history. In one year, the Jays had 3 players each start at least 50 games at a particular position. This has only occurred once in club history and only at one position during that year. What year was this and who were the players involved?

This game featured the debut of Mississauga's Shawn Hill in a Toronto uniform and the 2010 return of Robert 'Bobby' Ray to the hill.  Hopefully, this will be the first of many POTD's in the coming days as the 2010 campaign winds down.