SBNation.com User Blog: Emily G

Down Memory Lane

Emily G — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 23:48:13 -0000

Yesterday, 2012 opening day starter Ricky Romero got sent down to high-A Dunedin. Ricky's struggles over the past 12 months have been well documented, and you can read about them here, or here or here...

Ricky's struggles are not what I want to write about today. Instead, I'm going to take a trip down memory lane and tell you about one of my fondest Rickey Romero memories.

When I was thirteen years old, I moved from Burlington, Ontario to Calgary, Alberta. I moved in June, after school ended, and being the somewhat shy and awkward child that I was, I was not interested in making any sort of effort to go out and make friends before I began grade nine at a new school in September. For three months, my only friends were my mom and dad.

My dad's favourite thing to watch in the summer was (and still is) baseball, and so I watched a lot of baseball that year, and by the next summer I had become a real baseball fan: something I never thought I'd be.

My problem now, of course, was that I couldn't go watch the Blue Jays live. I had lived in the Toronto area for 13 years and gone to only two baseball games (I slept through the first one and talked through the second), and now I felt like I had wasted all that time. The Calgary Vipers just weren't going to cut it for me.

Luckily, I didn't have to wait very long. We moved back to Toronto in 2009, and I got to attend my first live baseball game (as a fan who actually understood what was happening) on July 1st, 2009.

I was in awe of the Rogers Centre when I entered it that day. I knew that it wasn't the most beautiful ballpark in the world, but I didn't care. I was just happy to be there.

We went to get hot dogs before the game started, and then moved down to our seats on the first base line. I got an autograph on my program from a reliever named Lance Cormier. I had never heard of him before and I don't think I've heard of him since, either, but I was pretty excited about it at the time.

(My friends and I made a sign for this game, too. It was double sided, which fifteen year old Emily thought was pretty cool, and it was also probably the worst thing ever. You can see the two sides here and here, if you want a reason to make fun of me.)

Ricky Romero was pitching against the AL champion Tampa Bay Rays that day. He was facing James Shields, the Rays' ace. I don't really remember what I expected to see: probably a loss, me being the pessimistic person that I am. I was pleasantly surprised, though. Romero pitched eight shutout innings, walking four and striking out seven in the process. Shields, on the other hand, allowed five runs in seven innings, and three of those runs were home runs: to Adam Lind, Scott Rolen, and Rod Barajas.

Ricky was the best part of that game, though. The only time I remember feeling even a little bit nervous was during in the seventh inning, with the Blue Jays up by 2 runs. Carl Crawford led off the inning with a single, and after Evan Longoria hit a fly-out, Carlos Pena hit a double. Ricky then walked Ben Zobrist to load the bases with only one out, but Romero wasn't fazed. My eyes were glued on his red Canada Day jersey for the entire game, and he didn't disappoint: the next batter was Pat Burrell, and he hit a ground ball that led to an inning ending double play.

I assumed Ricky would be pulled after getting into that jam, but Cito let him go out for the eighth. He allowed two walks, but with help from the defense he got through without allowing a run.

Romero was a rookie that year, and though his numbers weren't sparkling, they left plenty of hope for the future: a future that, on July 1, 2009, was beginning to look like it would not include longtime Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay. And for the next two years, as we all know, Ricky didn't disappoint as one of thee leaders of the pitching staff.

Romero's down in Dunedin now, and he'll stay there to work on his new mechanics for as long as he needs to. I don't want this post to be a Ricky Romero eulogy, but rather a reminder of what he used to be, and what he can hopefully be again.

Dunedin and the Blue Jays

Emily G — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:00:24 -0000

The Toronto Blue Jays have been affiliated with the city of Dunedin, Florida since the inception of the franchise in 1977. For many Jays fans, going to Dunedin to take in spring training every March has become a tradition. However, it looks as though that may be changing.

Reports surfacing over the past few days have suggested that the Blue Jays are looking for a new home for their spring training complex. Where and when that may happen is still uncertain, but according to this article from Tampa Bay Online, team officials have said that they need to "keep up with the Joneses," but that in a perfect world they would be able to stay in Dunedin.

This raises the question: What's so imperfect about Dunedin? Let's take a look.

The Blue Jays and their class-A affiliate (the Dunedin Blue Jays) play spring training and regular season games, respectively, out of the Florida Auto Exchange Stadium. The stadium opened in 1990, and was built on the same land as the old Grant Field (built in 1930), where the Jays played their first spring training game in 1977. The new stadium cost the city $2.4 million to build, and increased seating capacity from 3,417 to 5,509, but the clubhouses and the playing field itself were not changed.

The Jays signed a fifteen year agreement to stay in Dunedin in March 2000, agreeing with the city of Dunedin and Pinellas County to spend $12 million on renovations. Thus far, the clubhouse, weight room, training room, office space, restrooms, and grandstand have been renovated.

The stadium has a reputation as being bare-bones and lacking in amenities despite these recent renovations. It's also relatively far from the minor league complex, as you can see in this map.

The minor league complex isn't the only thing it's far from, either. As you can see on this map, Florida Auto Exchange Stadium is also a bit of a distance away from other Grapefruit League ballparks. The only stadiums that can be reached in less than an hour are the Phillies' Bright House Field and the Yankees' George Steinbrenner Field. The Jays are hardly isolated in Dunedin, but being closer to some other facilities could be one of the upsides to moving, both for fans who want to visit other teams and for the players.

The Dunedin Blue Jays are owned by the Toronto Blue Jays, so finding a new Florida State League home wouldn't be a terribly complex issue as the parent club can decide to move where new ballpark is. However, there are other concerns with the minor league team: they have the lowest average attendance of any team in the FSL along with the lowest attendance overall, getting an average of only 830 people to each game and only 53,091 overall in 2012 (you can see the attendance of every FSL team here), and it's not as though the team had a bad season in 2012: they won the FSL North division with a record of 78-55. The small size of Dunedin's population is a factor in attendance, though: at 35,000, Dunedin has one of the smallest populations of any city with a spring training complex.

So, where would the Blue Jays move, if it comes to that? There have been suggestions that they could share a stadium with the Astros, Nationals, or Mets while they build a new stadium in Fort Myers, Naples, or elsewhere. Fort Myers and Naples seem to make the most sense for the team, though: many Ontario snowbirds are already there, and a number of other major league teams have their spring training facilities in those cities (the Twins and Red Sox are already in Fort Myers area, and the Rays aren't far off in Port Charlotte).

The Jays will spend the next year looking for a new location, and that will be followed by a couple years of paperwork and approvals for a new stadium, but it will be an interesting story to keep an eye on in the meantime.

The Battle for Backup

Emily G — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:32:46 -0000

Since the first of the two big off-season trades made by Alex Anthopoulos this winter, the Blue Jays have seen drastic turnover at the catching position. In 2012, J.P. Arencibia and Jeff Mathis caught for the Blue Jays, with Yorvit Torrealba and Yan Gomes getting some time behind the plate while Arencibia was injured.

Jon Buck was acquired in the Marlins trade and subsequently traded to the Mets as part of the haul for R.A. Dickey, along with top prospect Travis d'Arnaud. In return, the Blue Jays received two players with experience catching the knuckleball: Josh Thole and (Canadian) Mike Nickeas. Henry Blanco, who also has experience catching Dickey, was signed last month to a non-guaranteed contract worth $750,000.

With J.P. Arencibia a shoo-in for starter (whether he should be or not), this set us up nicely for a somewhat interesting spring training battle in a year where most of the lineup is already set.

Josh Thole

Twenty-six year old Illinois native Josh Thole was drafted by the Mets in the 13th round of the 2005 draft. He had, well, a rough year in 2012. He suffered a concussion on May 7, after a collision at the plate with Ty Wigginton. Though he only missed a month (he returned just in time to catch Johan Santana's no-hitter on June 1), it appears his play was greatly effected by the injury: he hit only .234/.294/.290 in 321 at bats, and his wRC+ was an unpleasant 60.

2011 was a significantly better year for Thole, and should give Blue Jays fans some hope for the future: he spent the entirety of the season with the Mets, and hit .268 with a wRC+ of 94, with a strikeout rate of 12.2% and a walk rate of 9.8%, both of which are very good. While his strikeout and walk rates went up and down respectively in 2012 (to 14.1% and 7.6%), they didn't drop drastically enough to cause great alarm, and they were still far better than Arencibia's rates of 29% and 4.8%

If Thole is able to get back to and exceed his 2011 numbers, there is a chance he could take over Arencibia's starting job. If he doesn't improve, though, we could be seeing a lot more of...

Henry Blanco

Henry Blanco made his major league debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1997. Sixteen years later, he's 41 years old and with his tenth MLB team.

Anthopoulos signed Blanco to bring some veteran experience to the team, and because Blanco has experience catching R.A. Dickey's knuckleball (he was with the Mets in 2010, Dickey's breakout season).

I would much prefer having Josh Thole on the team as the backup catcher out of spring training, due to his age and the simple fact that he's got more potential to be valuable in the future, but we should not be surprised if Henry Blanco is the man we see catching Dickey every five days, at least at the start of the season. The fact that Blanco's contract isn't guaranteed means that he could be cut during spring training with minimal impact to the team, which could mean that a lot is dependent on spring training (assuming they hadn't already made a decision going into spring training), and obviously that's not the greatest place to be.

However, Dickey has said that Blanco was the best catcher he's ever worked with, and perhaps that alone is a good enough reason to give him a chance. If the Blanco experiment turns out to be a failure, Josh Thole is only a couple hours away in Buffalo, and could be called up any time.

Mike Nickeas

That Nickeas will begin the season in Buffalo is all but a certainty. With Thole and Blanco ahead of him on the depth chart, we should all be hoping that Nickeas doesn't see any time with the Blue Jays this season - because that would mean either injuries or sub-par play from the three catchers discussed above.

Nickeas is under contract for more than one season, though (he's under team control until 2018), and he could potentially have a future with the Blue Jays, though it's unlikely that future will be as anything more than a backup or third string catcher.

So, what do you think? Who would you like to see as backup catcher and who do you think deserves the job?

Team Canada at the World Baseball Classic

Emily G — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:35:00 -0000

Team Canada's quest to win the World Baseball Classic finally begins today (games have been going on in the middle of the night and early morning in Japan for almost a week now). While there are quite a few recognizable names on the roster, there are also quite a few who you may not recognize. Let's take a look:

The Infield

Team Canada's strength is its infield, and it's not particularly close (even without Brett Lawrie, who suffered a rib cage injury yesterday). Former MLB MVPs Joey Votto and Justin Morneau will be splitting time between first base and DH. At shortstop and second base are Cale Iorg and Pete Orr, respectively, and we will probably see Taylor Green get playing time at third base now that Lawrie is out.

Cale Iorg is a shortstop in the Detroit Tigers organization. He was born in Toronto in 1985, and attended the University of Alabama, and was drafted by the Tigers in the sixth round of the 2007 draft. He has yet to make his major league debut, and has split time between AA and AAA over the past three seasons. His numbers are, well...not very pretty. Maybe Russel Martin at shortstop wouldn't have been so bad after all.

Pete Orr is a 33 year old second baseman from Richmond Hill, Ontario, playing for the Philadelphia Phillies' AAA team. Orr has spent most of the last six seasons with four different International League teams, but he has had a few chances with the Phillies over the last two seasons, and with Washington and Atlanta before that. His numbers could be a lot better, but after looking at Mr. Iorg's .207 OBP I'm not going to complain too much.

The last underwhelming infielder we'll discuss Taylor Green. He's a 26 year old third baseman for the Brewers (I guess they have a thing for drafting Canadian infielders) from Comox, British Columbia. He spent both 2011 and 2012 playing at AAA Nashville. He had a very good year in 2011, hitting .336/.413/.583 in 487 plate appearances, but his numbers went down in 2012 (.273/..345/.408).

The Outfield

Canada's outfield is far from All-Star calibre, led by Adam Loewen, Michael Saunders, and Tyson Gillies, but it should be enough to get the team past Italy and Mexico into the second round. Since we are all aware of those three from their time with MLB teams (Loewen hasn't had much major league experience, but I expect we're all quite familiar with him from his Blue Jay days), I'm going to focus on Canada's fourth outfielder: Rene Tosoni.

Tosoni, a 26 year old born in Toronto and raised in British Columbia, was drafted by the Twins in the 36th round of the 2005 draft. He had 189 plate appearances with the Twins in 2011, hitting an disappointing .203/.275/.343. Since then he's spent most of his time at AA New Britain and AAA Rochester, where he's been not very good at all. Hopefully the three outfielders mentioned above will keep us from having to see much of Tosoni over the next two weeks.

The Pitchers

The most interesting of Canada's pitchers is Jameson Taillon, mostly because, well, no one knew that he was Canadian (he's a dual citizen) before his name appeared on Canada's roster. Taillon, one of baseball's best pitching prospects, was born in Florida in 1991 and attended high school in Texas. He has numerous connections to Canada through immediate and extended family, and his father and grandmother are living here now. He hasn't made his MLB debut yet, but his minor league numbers are pretty great. Taillon is almost certainly Canada's best pitcher, but let's take a look at a few other names as well:

Chris Leroux, Shawn Hill, and Scott Mathieson were named starters last week, and they're joined in the bullpen by recognizable names like John Axford and Trystan Magnuson (yes, I know Trystan Magnuson is only a recognizable name if you're a Blue Jays or A's fan).

Leroux pitched 11 innings for the Pirates in 2012, and spent the rest of the season in AAA. Former Blue Jay Shawn Hill pitched 3 MLB innings for the Jays last year, and 20 in 2010. He signed a minor league deal with the Detroit Tigers this offseason. Scott Mathieson pitched poorly in a small sample size back in 2006, and then didn't see any MLB action until 2010. He spent 2012 in the Japanese Central League.

The Catchers

Chris Robinson and John Suomi will be catching for Canada. Robinson is a 28 year old catcher in the Baltimore Orioles organization. He was born in London, Ontario and has yet to play a game in the Majors. He spent the last four season in AAA, (one in the International League and three in the Pacific Coast League). Robinson is expected to be Canada's starting catcher throughout the tournament. John Suomi, a 32 year old from Toronto (who also has never played an MLB game) will be backing him up. Suomi has spent the last six years splitting time between various teams from A+ to AAA.

The Coaches

Team Canada is managed by former Blue Jay Ernie Whitt. Whitt played twelve years with the Jays, from their inaugural season in 1977 til 1989. He is not Canadian (he was born in Detroit) but he spent many years promoting baseball in Canada while with the Blue Jays, and was therefore offered a job as manager of Team Canada for the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Some considered Whitt a candidate for the Blue Jays managerial job this past offseason, but it does not appear as though Alex Anthopoulos and the rest of the front office ever considered him a serious candidate.

Larry Walker (batting coach), Denis Boucher (pitching coach), Stubby Clapp, Greg Hamilton, Tim Leiper, and Paul Quantrill round out Whitt's coaching staff.

The Schedule

Canada's first game goes today against Italy at 2:30 PM. All of Canada's games will be broadcast on all four regional Sportsnet channels (and you can find every WBC game somewhere on the network-either on the regional channels or Sportsnet One).

Canada's game versus Mexico will begin at 2:30 PM tomorrow, and The Big Game against the USA will go at 4:00 PM on Sunday. If they finish in the top two in their pool (Pool D), Canada will move on to the double-elimination second round.

In the second round, the Pool D winner will play the Pool C runner-up, and the Pool C winner will play the Pool D runner up (same thing for Pools A and B). This means Canada could end up playing one of Spain, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic. The losers of those two games will play on March 13, and the winners will play the next day. On March 15th, the winner of the Losers game will play the loser of the Winners game, with the winner of that game coming out to play the winner of the Winners game on March 16th.

Are you confused yet?

Just remember that a team has to lose twice to be eliminated, and it will begin to make some sense. You can also check out the schedule here.

From there it's quite simple: Winner and runner-up from Pool 1 (Pools A and B) will play the winner and runner up from Pool 2 (Pools C and D), and this time it's single elimination (lose and you're out). The winners of those two games will play in the final on March 19th.

And that is everything you need to know about Canada at the World Baseball Classic. The most important thing, though, is that when it's over we'll only be two weeks away from Opening Day!

Let's talk about Expectations

Emily G — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:26:57 -0000

As of February 21st, 2013, the Toronto Blue Jays are Las Vegas' favourites to win the World Series, with 7/1 odds. Las Vegas gambling odds don't reflect the talent of the team itself, of course, but rather their talent as perceived by gamblers: whichever team people are most likely to bet on becomes the team with the most favourable World Series odds (our very own Gerse explained this quite well in a comment on Tom's post yesterday). What does that mean for the Blue Jays? It means that for the first time in (arguably) twenty years, there are legitimate expectations from the baseball world for a playoff performance. As a Blue Jays fan, I find this both exciting and terrifying.

Last week, Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections were released, with the Blue Jays coming in at 4th in the AL East with 85 wins. While I do think the Blue Jays will have a more successful season than that (I have a hard time seeing how the Red Sox could finish with 86 wins, or how the Yankees could win the division without a catcher), my goal here is not to argue with PECOTA but instead to look at how we as a fanbase reacted to this projection. In most years, 85 wins would be accepted as a very good season, but you wouldn't know that if you were reading comments from fans on twitter last week. In a normal 85 win season, we would talk about how the Blue Jays would have made the playoffs if they were in the AL Central, and how unfair the divisions are. "But, hey," we'd say. "At least we have a good farm system!"

Something tells me that's not how the fanbase will react if the Blue Jays get 85 wins this season.

When Alex Anthopoulos traded for Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio, and Mark Buehrle, he took the Blue Jays from being an injury-plagued 73 win team and, at least on paper, vaulted them into contention. When he traded two of the team's best prospects for R.A. Dickey, expectations skyrocketed. The addition of these five players and their 10+ cumulative WAR will be enough, we all hope, to push the Jays into the playoffs. However, these players, along with some already on the team, don't come without risk: risk of injury, risk of being lost to free agency, or just the risk that we face with every player: the possibility that they just won't play well.

The majority of people agree that the Blue Jays have "won" the offseason, and rightfully so. No other team in baseball has added the quantity and quality of talent that the Blue Jays did with the two trades mentioned above. The question, in my mind, is not "did Alex Anthopoulos do enough to set the team up to win?" because he quite clearly did. The question to be answered instead is "will they pull it off?", and it's one that can't be answered until games are played.

The list of failed teams that had high expectations going into the season is a long one, and we need look no further than the 2012 Miami Marlins or Los Angeles Angels to see evidence of that. The Angels and Marlins were last year's offseason winners. The Angels had CJ Wilson, Albert Pujols, and, promoted from their minor league system, Mike Trout joining the club, but were unable to overcome a horrid start. The Marlins added Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, and Heath Bell (although people really should not have been excited about Heath Bell), but the team was (and still is), well, just a mess all around. And if you were to take a look at last year's preseason World Series odds, you would find the Philadelphia Phillies on the top of the list, and we know how well last season worked out for them. The Blue Jays themselves finished well below expectations last year, suffering through unpredictable injury after unpredictable injury.

Does this mean you shouldn't have high expectations for the 2013 Blue Jays? No, and the 2013 Blue Jays are far from being the 2012 Phillies. But it does mean that you should prepare yourself for the possibility of disappointment. If disappointment does come, keep in mind that the Blue Jays window for contention is larger than just this year: failure to make the playoffs in 2013 does not mean that the offseason moves were a mistake, or that Alex Anthopoulos should be fired, or that the team can't contend in the next three years and beyond.

I, like many of you, am a Toronto sports fan, but I only started paying attention in 2007. Needless to say, I have never really understood what cheering for a successful team feels like. While I'm certainly terrified about the implications of the elevated expectations the Blue Jays are dealing with this season, it's a burden I'm more than willing to bear if it means my team is making a run for the World Series this year and in the years to come. I hope I'll look back on this post in October and smile, because as it turned out, I didn't really need to write this at all.

Meet the Blue Jays: The Starting Lineup

Emily G — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:40:42 -0000

Jose Reyes

Age: 29
Height: 6'1
Weight: 195
Salary: $10 million
Signed through: 2017, option for 2018
Last year: 160 GP, 109 wRC+, 8.8 BB%, 7.8 K%, .298 BABIP, 4.5 fWAR

Melky Cabrera

Age: 28
Height: 6;0
Weight: 200 lbs
Salary: $8 million
Signed through: 2014
Last year: 113 GP, 149 wRC+, 7.2 BB%, 12.6 K%, .379 BABIP, 4.6 fWAR

Jose Bautista

Age: 32
Height: 6'0
Weight: 190 lbs
Salary: $14 million
Signed through: 2015, option for 2016
Last year: 92 GP, 140 wRC+, 14.8 BB%, 15.8 K%, .215 BABIP, 3.2 fWAR

Edwin Encarnacion

Age: 30
Height: 6'2
Weight: 230 lbs
Salary: $8 million
Signed through: 2015, option for 2016
Last year: 151 GP, 152 wRC+, 13.0 BB%, 14.6 K% .266 BABIP,4.4 fWAR

Brett Lawrie

Age: 23
Height: 6'0
Weight: 215 lbs
Salary: ~$500,000
Team control through: 2017
Last year: 125 GP, 100 wRC+, 6.2 BB%, 16.0 K%, .311 BABIP, 2.9 fWAR

Colby Rasmus

Age: 26
Height: 6'2
Weight: 200 lbs
Salary: $ 4.675 million
Team control through: 2014
Last year: 151 GP, 85 wRC+, 7.5 BB%, 23.8 K%, .259 BABIP, 1.4 fWAR

Adam Lind

Age: 29
Height: 6'2
Weight: 210 lbs
Salary: $5 million
Signed through: 2013, options for 2014-2016
Last year: 93 GP, 98 wRC+, 8.2 BB%, 17.3 K%, .282 BABIP, 0.2 fWAR

J.P. Arencibia

Age: 27
Height: 6'0
Weight:205 lbs
Salary: $489,600
Team control through: 2016
Last year: 102 GP, 89 wRC+, 4.8 BB%, 29.0 K% .281 BABIP, 1.3 fWAR

Maicer Izturis

Age: 32
Height: 5'8
Weight: 170 lbs
Salary: $3 million
Signed through: 2015, option for 2016
Last year: 100 GP, 82 wRC+, 7.8 BB%, 11.9 K%, .289 BABIP, 0.7 fWAR

Meet The Blue Jays (MS Paint Style): Starting Pitchers

Emily G — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:28:48 -0000

Mark Buehrle

Age: 33
Weight: 245 lbs
Height: 6'2
Salary: $11 Million
Signed Through: 2015
Last year: 202.1 IP, 3.74 ERA, 4.17 xFIP, 15.1 K%, 4.8 BB%, .270 BABIP, 2.1 WAR
Career: 3.82 ERA, 4.22 xFIP, 13.7 K%, 5.4 BB%, .289 BABIP, 48.2 WAR
Fun fact: Mark Buehrle has a pit bull named Slater (pictured). He and his wife plan to join the fight against Ontario's pit bull ban.
Fun fact 2: Buehrle has never been on the disabled list.

Brandon Morrow

Age: 28
Height: 6'3
Weight: 200 lbs
Salary: $8 million
Signed through: 2014, option for 2015
Last year: 124.2 IP, 2.96 ERA, 4.03 xFIP, 21.4 K%, 8.1 BB%, .252 BABIP, 2.4 WAR
Career: 4.10 ERA, 4.03 xFIP, 25.0 K%, 11.0 BB%, .291 BABIP, 10.8 WAR
Fun fact: Brandon Morrow is a type 1 diabetic. He does charity work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Fun fact 2: Brandon Morrow has a perfect beard.

R.A. Dickey

Age: 38
Height: 6'2
Weight: 215
Salary: $5 million
Signed through: 2015, option for 2016
Last year: 233.2 IP, 2.73 ERA, 3.27 xFIP, 24.8 K%, 5.8 BB%, .275 BABIP, 4.6 WAR
Career (note that Dickey has only been using the knuckleball since 2010): 3.98 ERA, 4.11 xFIP, 16.4 K%, 7.3 BB%, .291 BABIP, 12.0 WAR
Fun fact: R.A. Dickey is an advocate against sexual assault. He recently spent time in India working with Bombay Teen Challenge, an organization that rescues women and children from sex trafficking.
Fun fact 2: Dickey wrote a book (Wherever I Wind Up) about his life and the development of his knuckleball pitch.
Fun fact 3: Oh yeah, he won the NL Cy Young last year.

Josh Johnson

Age: 29
Height: 6'7
Weight: 250 lbs
Salary: $13.75 million
Signed through: 2013
Last year: 191.1 IP, 3.81 ERA, 3.73 xFIP, 20.7 K%, 8.2 BB%, .302 BABIP, 3.8 WAR
Career: 3.15 ERA, 3.57 xFIP, 21.9 K%, 8.1 BB%, .297 BABIP, 22.3 WAR
Fun fact: Johnson donated his hair to Locks of Love last February. Other than that it appears he's quite boring (his name *is* Josh Johnson, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised).
Fun fact 2: He was threw the first pitch for the re-named Miami Marlins and threw the first pitch of new Marlins Park.

Ricky Romero

Age: 28
Height: 6'0
Weight: 220 lbs
Salary: $7.5 million
Signed through: 2015, option for 2016
Last year: 181.0 IP, 5.77 ERA, 4.86 xFIP, 15.0 K%, 12.7 BB%, .311 BABIP, 0.5 WAR
Career: 4.09 ERA, 4.06 xFIP, 18.2 K%, 10.2 BB%, .292 BABIP, 10.4 WAR
Fun fact: Ricky Romero has been the Blue Jays' nominee for the Roberto Clemente award for last two years.
Fun fact 2: Romero has gone from being the Opening Day starter last year to being #5 this year (this fact isn't really fun for Mr. Romero, but it sure is fun for the rest of us).

Advanced Stats Primer: Win Probability and WAR

Emily G — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:39:05 -0000

As of this week, the official start of Spring Training is only two weeks away. Since we're getting close to the start of Baseball: 2013 Edition, I thought I would give a basic introduction to some of the advanced stats you'll be seeing on this site and around the internet during the season. There's a lot of information to cover, so I've broken it into three parts: two weeks ago we covered offensive stats, last week we covered pitching and defensive stats, and this week we'll be talking about win probability and WAR.

Win Expectancy

Win Expectancy (WE) quantifies a team's chances of winning a given game, based on the score, the inning, the number of outs, whether or not any runners are on base, and the "run environment."

WE is calculated using historical data from past games. This chart lays out the different scenarios from the seventh inning on, and shows what the home team's win expectancy would be for each one.

There's a good chance you'll see Fangraphs' Win Expectancy charts in articles and in the comments section here on BBB. In big comebacks (or meltdowns) they can be fun (or depressing) to look at. This one is from the Blue Jays' crazy meltdown against the Mariners in 2011, and this one is from the 19 inning game between the Pirates and Braves the same year.

WPA

Win Probability Added (WPA) measures how much a player has done to effect his team's Win Expectancy, whether he has a positive impact or negative impact on it.

Taken from the Fangraphs' Sabermetrics Library entry on WPA, here is how it's calculated:

"For example, say the Rays have a 45% chance of winning before Ben Zobrist comes to the plate. During his at-bat, Zobrist hits a home run, pushing the Rays' win expectancy jumps to 75%. That difference in win expectancy (in decimal form, +.30) from the beginning of the play to the end is Ben Zobrist's WPA for that play. If Zobrist strikes out during his next at bat and lowers his team's win expectancy by 5%, his overall WPA for the game so far would be +.30 - .05 = +.25, as WPA is a counting statistic and is additive."

You'll see WPA used on Bluebird Banter every day in the "Jays of the Day!" section of the game recap. Any player with a +.100 WPA or higher gets the "award," while any player with -.100 or lower gets the Suckage Award. But do note that WPA is not a fair way to evaluate players since they don't control the situations where they get to contribute. For example, a first inning homer in a 0-0 game gives a small WPA, but that exact same home run in the 9th will have a large WPA.

WAR

WAR (Wins Above Replacement) attempts to quantify how valuable a player has been to his team in one statistic. It's measured in wins, as the name states, and it looks to tell us how much more value a given player is worth than the one we would be calling up from AAA (a replacement player) if that given player got hurt.

WAR for batters and WAR for pitchers is calculated differently, obviously. I won't go into great detail about the differences here (if you're interested in the details, take a look at the links at the bottom of this page) but the basics are as follows:

WAR for batters is calculated by adding wRAA (offense), UBR (baserunning), and UZR (defense) together, adjusting for position (because some positions are harder than others), and converting the numbers to be based on replacement level rather than league average. 10 runs = 1 WAR. WAR for pitchers is calculated using FIP.

Lastly, there are two main versions of WAR: Fangraphs WAR (fWAR) and Baseball-Reference WAR (rWAR or bWAR or brWAR). The main differences are that 1) Baseball-Reference does not use FIP to calculate pitching WAR but instead uses adjusted runs allowed, 2) rWAR uses Total Zone as opposed to UZR for defense, and 3) rWAR uses a slightly different baserunning stat.

And there you have it! You now have a basic, foundational knowledge of the most common advanced statistics. There's a lot more information about sabermetric statistics than what I've presented you with this month, and if you're interested in finding out more I suggest you check out the Fangraphs' Sabermetrics Library. The Fangraphs blog is also a great source of information, as is SB Nation's own Beyond the Boxscore. Happy stat hunting!

Advanced Stats Primer: Pitching and Defense Edition

Emily G — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:50:49 -0000

As of this week, the official start of Spring Training is only three weeks away. Since we're getting close to the start of Baseball: 2013 Edition, I thought I would give a basic introduction to some of the advanced stats you'll be seeing on this site and around the internet during the season. There's a lot of information to cover, so I'm going to break it into three parts: last week we covered offense, and today we'll be looking at pitching and defensive stats.

DRS

The goal of defensive runs saved is to quantify how many runs above or below the league average a player has "saved."

Joe Posnanski's quote on the Fangraphs' DRS page describes it better than I ever could:

"...as I understand it, the numbers determines (using film study and computer comparisons) how many more or fewer successful plays a defensive player will make than league average. For instance, if a shortstop makes a play that only 24% of shortstops make, he will get .76 of a point (1 full point minus .24). If a shortstop BLOWS a play that 82% of shortstops make, then you subtract .82 of a point. At the end, you add it all up and get a plus/minus."

Three full years of data are needed before any significant conclusions can be made about a player's defensive abilities. DRS is scaled in the same way as UZR: 0 is average, +15 is Gold Glove, and -15 is terrible.

FIP and xFIP

Fielding independent pitching (FIP), sets out to determine what a pitcher's ERA should be by looking at the parts of pitching that he can control: strikeouts, walks, hits by pitch, and home runs. The formula for FIP is as follows:

FIP = ((13HR) + (3(BB + HBP)) - (2*K)) / (IP + constant)

The constant is usually around 3.20, and is used to bring FIP onto the same scale as ERA. FIP is generally more useful than ERA when it comes to predicting future performance, due in large part to the removal of the "luck factor" (pitchers don't really have control over balls in play).

xFIP (expected fielding independent pitching) uses the same formula as FIP, except that instead of using the pitcher's actual home run total, it uses the number of home runs a pitcher should have allowed. This number is found by multiplying the league average home run-to-flyball rate by the pitcher's flyball rate. This is done as an attempt to correct the inconsistencies in a pitcher's year-to-year HR/FB ratios.

FIP and xFIP are measured on the same scale as ERA: 4.00 is average, 3.00 and lower is fantastic, 5.00 and higher is awful.

Strikeout and Walk Rates

The most commonly used statistics used to measure walks and strikeouts are BB/9 and K/9. While these are useful, BB% and K% are better indicators because they take into account the fact that some pitchers face more batters per nine innings than others, and therefore have more opportunity to get both strikeouts and walks.

A pitcher should strike out approximately twice as many batters as he walks. The average strikeout rate is 18.5%, while the average walk rate is 8.5%.

BABIP

Batting average on balls in play for pitchers is based on the same premise and factors as the batters' version: defense, talent, and luck. The pitchers on a good defensive team may have lower-than-average BABIP, because their defenders make plays that those on a poor team would not be able to pull off. Talent can affect BABIP when a player has a "period of adjustment", either good or bad. If, for example, a player is dealing with a nagging injury, his mechanics may be off and his BABIP may rise (it would go back to normal when he's healthy again). And luck, well, is just luck.

As was mentioned before, pitchers have very little control over where balls in play are hit, therefore their BABIP is prone to variation. Typically, though, a pitcher's BABIP will fall between .290 and .300. Any drastic change from within that range can be expected to regress back to the mean in time.

Thanks for reading! We'll wrap this up next week with a look at win probability statistics and WAR. In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to check out FanGraphs' Sabermetrics Library for more information. It's fantastic.

Advanced Stats Primer For Beginners: Offense Edition

Emily G — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:04:22 -0000

As of this week, the official start of spring training is only one month away. Since we're getting close to the beginning of Baseball: 2013 Edition, I thought I would give a basic introduction to some of the advanced stats you'll be seeing on this site and around the internet during the season. There's a lot of information to cover, so I'm going to break this into three parts over the rest of this month. We'll begin today with offensive stats.

BABIP

Batting average on balls in play, or BABIP as it's commonly known, measures what percentage of balls a batter puts in play fall for hits that are not home runs. It's largely driven by luck, but defense and talent play an important role as well. BABIP is calculated by taking a player's hits, subtracting home runs, and dividing it by the number of balls in play:

BABIP = [Balls in Play - HR] / [AB - K - HR - SF]

Typically, 30% of balls in play will fall for hits (it can be slightly higher for quick players). If a player's BABIP is significantly higher or lower than their career average, you can expect it to regress back to the mean in the future. When one of the Blue Jays inevitably gets off to a cold start this season (yes, I am a pessimist, why do you ask?) a good place to look is his BABIP. If it's lower than his career average, there's a good chance his bad numbers are luck driven (though this is not the only factor, obviously). If it's not lower? That's when we have a real problem.

I suggest watching this video for a good explanation of BABIP:

OPS and OPS+

On base plus slugging is a fairly self-explanatory statistic: it's simply the sum of a player's on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG). On base percentage measures the percentage of plate appearances a player gets on base, and slugging measures the average number of bases a batter reaches in a plate appearance. League average OPS varies on a year-to-year basis, but is typically somewhere around .730. The scale is around the same as marks from school: .70-.75 is average, low-to-mid .80s is good, .90s is excellent, and 1.00+ is incredible.

OPS+, on the other hand, adjusts OPS for park effects and is normalized to give 100 as the league average every year. Each point up or down from 100 is 1% above or below league average. So if a player's OPS+ is 125, that player is 25% better than average.

OPS is not without flaws, of course. The biggest one is that it weighs OBP and SLG equally, when it has in fact been proven that OBP is about 1.7 times more important. But calculating and interpreting it is very simple and can be done on the fly.

wOBA

Weighted on-base average was created by Tom Tango and is used to measure the value a player provides offensively. FanGraphs' Sabermetrics Library post on wOBA describes it quite well:

"Weighted On-Base Average combines all the different aspects of hitting into one metric, weighing each of them in proportion to their actual run value. While batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage fall short in accuracy and scope, wOBA measures and captures offensive value more accurately and comprehensively."

The formula for wOBA changes slightly every year, with the various weights on walks, HBP, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases, and caught stealing shifting from year to year (you can find the formulas for wOBA from 1871-2010 here). League average wOBA also changes every season, but is always somewhere around .320.

wRC and wRC+

Weighted Runs Created (wRC) sets out to quantify a player's offensive value. Based off wOBA, it combines a player's offensive stats to find out how many runs a player has provided his team.

You'll most often find it in it's park and league adjusted form, wRC+. wRC+ is similar to OPS+ in that both consistently scales league average to 100, and each point up or down from there is a percentage point above or below average. wRC+ is considered to be more accurate than OPS+ due to the flaws of OPS discussed above. Since wRC+ is based on wOBA, it's a wiser choice when looking to see how a player is contributing offensively. You can find wRC+ on the FanGraphs' statistics pages (Baseball Reference uses OPS+).

K% and BB%

Strikeout and walk rates are quite simple: they're measured by taking the number a times a player has struck out or walked, respectively, and dividing that number by plate appearances.

Like most of the stats we've covered today, league average walk and strikeout rates vary from year to year. Generally speaking, though, a strikeout percentage below 10% and a walk percentage above 15% is excellent, while 18.5% (K) and 8.5% (BB) are average.

In the next couple of weeks we'll take a look at pitching, defensive, and win probability stats. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out FanGraphs' Sabermetrics Library for more information.

The Bleak Mid-Winter

Emily G — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:39:45 -0000

When I began to think about a topic for my article this week, I came up with a list that included the following:

Yeah, I had nothing. We've entered the worst part of the year: it's cold, it's dark, the holidays are over, and baseball isn't close enough to get excited about yet. All the big off season moves have been made (well, I assume they have), and most discussion that doesn't fall into the "beating a dead horse" category has taken place. So what should we do in the meantime? Here are some things I'm going to be doing:

Reading

I got two baseball books for Christmas: The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract and The Book. I'm hoping to work my way through The Book by the time the season starts, and while I doubt I'll ever read Bill James' book from cover to cover, it'll be great for learning some baseball history (an area in which my knowledge is lacking). R.A. Dickey's book Wherever I Wind Up is another to add to your reading lists, of course. I haven't read it yet myself, but I've heard nothing but good things from those who have.

Most of you have probably read The Bullpen Gospels and Out of My League already, but if you haven't now may be a good time to get started, considering that author Dirk Hayhurst is being considered for a role in the Blue Jays' broadcast booth this season.

World Baseball Classic

The World Baseball Classic gets underway on March 2nd in Fukuoka, Japan at 5 AM EST (the full schedule can be found here). Canada's games don't begin until March 8th, at the much more reasonable time of 2:30 PM EST. Canada will play games against Italy, Mexico, and the United States. If they finish in the top two among those countries, they'll move on to the second round, which begins on March 12th in Miami. The semi-finals and the championship will go March 17-19 at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

So far two Blue Jays have committed to playing in the tournament: Brett Lawrie for Canada, and Jose Reyes for the Dominican Republic. Justin Morneau has also agreed to play for the Ernie Whitt-managed Team Canada.

Stats

I think I have a decent grasp on most of the advanced stats in baseball, but one of my goals for the rest of this off season is to get an even better understanding. The Book, FanGraphs, and Beyond the Boxscore will be valuable resources to help me on my journey. I'm hoping to blog about it, too, so keep an eye out for that in the next couple of weeks.

Archived Games

As someone with access to an MLB.tv account, I have the privilege of being able to watch games from the past few seasons (I highly recommend buying MLB.tv. It's fantastic). I already watched R.A. Dickey's one-hitter vs the Tampa Bay Rays and I'm planning to watch more of his best performances (and maybe some of his not-so-great performances, too). Other candidates are Brandon Morrow's three complete game shutouts, those games that the Red Sox completely blew at the beginning of April, and various Mets games. I need to begin educating myself on my new NL team.

Speaking of the Red Sox...

I'm going to watch this video. A lot.

Hockey

Hockey is back and I am going to watch it. Now that the Jays are World Series favourites, I'll need to get my daily does of masochism somewhere else. The Maple Leafs are prime candidates. Go team go.

*Sob*

Do Homework

Just kidding! I don't do homework.

How are you going to stay busy for the next three months?

The Blue Jays' Year in Review

Emily G — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:23:44 -0000

When the San Francisco Giants won the World Series at the end of October, I began to think about writing an article detailing some of the highlights and (mostly) lowlights from the year that was for the 2012 Toronto Blue Jays. I was expecting to tell a sad story about a sad year; and while that would have been right up my masochistic alley, I much prefer the article that I present before you today.

Darvish Day

Yes, Darvish Day happened in 2011 (on December 19th). I'm including it here anyway because it was, I think, what the 2011-2012 off season will be most remembered for. When reports were coming out declaring the Jays the front-runners in the bidding for Yu Darvish I (and I'm sure many others) let myself get far too hopeful. I'll never forget sitting on my bedroom floor on December 19th--the day I wrote my last exam--refreshing Twitter over and over again until I saw this tweet from Jeff Passan. It was a disappointing, angry night (I was angry with myself, mostly, for getting my hopes up so high), as I'm sure many of you remember. From then on it felt like the rest of the off season was just a jumble of arguments about whether or not the Jays bid on Darvish, how much they bid, should they have bid more, and whining about how cheap Rogers is. And thus began the season from hell.

Spring Training

Despite the disappointment of losing the bid for Yu Darvish, spring training was a very exciting time for the team and its fans. The Blue Jays set a franchise record for most spring training wins with 24, and had the best spring training record in all of baseball. They entered the 2012 season on quite a high note, with both fans and players excited and expecting big things. It would have done many people well, I think, to remember that Spring Training Means Nothing.

Opening Day

The Blue Jays' 16-inning come-from-behind victory on opening day in Cleveland was arguably the greatest game of the season (so it shouldn't surprise anyone that I missed it). Ricky Romero started the game, and struggled: he allowed 4 runs on 3 hits in 5 innings pitched, and left the game with the Jays trailing 4-1 (the one run was a Jose Bautista homer, of course). It wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that the comeback began, with the Jays scoring 3 runs to tie the game. The game then dragged on for seven more innings before J.P. Arencibia pulled his team ahead with a three run home run in the top of the 16th. I arrived home from The Hunger Games a few hours later, and had a fit of something between excitement, remorse, and frustration. Mostly excitement, though. Hooray for MLB.tv archives!

All The Injuries

2012: The Year of the Injury.

The list of players that hit the Blue Jays' disabled list this year is an impressive one: Jesse Litsch, Sergio Santos, Brandon Morrow, Kyle Drabek, Drew Hutchison, Ben Francisco, Luis Perez, Jose Bautista, Jason Frasor, J.P. Arencibia, Adam Lind, Brett Lawrie, and J.A. Happ. Perez, Hutchison and Drabek all underwent Tommy John surgery, Bautista had surgery on his wrist, Lawrie fell into a well, and both Casey Janssen and Ricky Romero have had minor surgery in the off season. Welp.

Let's all just desperately hope that the team holds up better this season--we'll certainly need them to.

Goodbye, Disappointing Left Fielders

The Battle for Left Field began in spring training and carried on throughout the season. Eric Thames won the job in April, but his awful defense and sub-par hitting got him sent down to Las Vegas at the end of May. Travis Snider (a classic example of a prospect heartbreaker) was called up on July 20th: many thought that perhaps this would finally be when the young outfielder would prove himself at the major league level.

It was not to be.

Snider and Thames were traded late on the night of July 31 for a pair of relievers. Snider was sent to Pittsburgh for Brad Lincoln, and Thames was off to Seattle for Steve Delabar. It's too early to declare a winner in either move, but the trade for Delabar is certainly looking like a good one. Improvements from Lincoln in 2013 would be much appreciated.

Losing And More Losing

The Blue Jays lost a heck of a lot of games in the last few months of the season. They went 19-37 in August and September (see "All The Injuries" for why this happened). The team's record overall was a fair bit below .500, and bad enough for a top ten draft pick. Needless to say, the end of the season was not fun to watch, and I'm only a little ashamed to admit that I often didn't bother.

John Farrell Gets His Dream Job

I covered my feelings on John Farrell's flight to Boston in a post back when it happened, and I don't really have anything to add to them two months later. I will say this though: I am VERY excited for daily John Gibbons press conferences. And for the proper use of platoons. And hopefully some good bullpen management.

The Trade That Changed Everything

November 13th, 2012 is a day that will go down in Blue Jays history, no matter what the outcome of the next three years turns out to be. I was at Tim Hortons with a friend of mine when I checked Twitter and saw this. My friend was probably angry that I cut our shopping trip short, but I really didn't care. If she didn't understand that Alex Anthopoulous had just pulled off a trade that vaulted the Blue Jays into the Zone of Contention, that was her problem.

Josh Johnson: a potential all star. Mark Buehrle: a workhorse who has never hit the DL. Jose Reyes: a speedy shortshop who won the batting title not so long ago, and Emilio Bonifacio: a decent player who can play six positions. I'm certainly quite pleased with that. The cons are just as obvious, of course (Johnson and Reyes are injury-prone, Buehrle's aging, and there are a number of huge contracts going forward), but I think the trade was a risk worth taking.

R.A. Dickey Is A Blue Jay, And Hope Returns To Toronto

I love the trade for R.A. Dickey. I love it to bits and pieces, I love it to the moon and back, and I just want to hug it and feed it cookies. I explain why in this post, so I won't go through it all again here, but this trade has made me check my countdown to opening day ten times more often than I had been, and it gave my friends the extra push they needed to agree to buying a flex pack with me (yay!).

This is really just a small taste of all the many things that happened around the Blue Jays during 2012. What were your best (and worst) memories?

A Roller Coaster Ride Of Feels: From Hate To Love Of The R.A. Dickey Trade

Emily G — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 03:29:14 -0000

On Friday afternoon, rumours began to start pouring into my Twitter feed regarding R.A. Dickey and the Blue Jays. I chose to ignore these rumours. "There are three other teams involved," I said to myself, "and besides: how often do rumours about the Blue Jays actually end up being true? Nothing's going to come of this."

How very wrong I was.

The next thing we were hearing was that our precious baby catcher, Travis d'Arnaud, was likely to be included in the trade. This was when I began to care, and my reaction was far from positive. "How can you trade d'Arnaud, Alex!!!" I said in my head. "He's the catcher of the future! He was born to save us from bad defense and horrible OBP!"

Eventually I came around. "If we're giving up Travis d'Arnaud already, maybe we should give up Gose too. Then we could get Matt Harvey!" (yes, you may laugh at me).

As Saturday wore on we learned that it was Noah Syndergaard, rather than Anthony Gose, that was to be included in the package. I spent more time thinking about the pros and cons of the deal as it was reported at the time: I liked keeping Gose for obvious reasons, but I was hoping for a lot more coming this way from the Mets (Josh Thole's sparkly smile makes up for it, though. Certainly a candidate for the All Hot Team). After the passage of more time in which I was supposed to be studying, I decided I liked the trade. And not only liked it: "loved it so much my heart could burst."

The following were my conclusions, and are why I give this move my total support:

1) The Value of Marginal Wins

Here's the thing, y'all: I want the Blue Jays to win. In order for the Blue Jays to win in the AL East, they need to be great. Even in a year that is shaping up to be a window of opportunity, with each of the teams in the division (with the possible exception of the Orioles, though I believe their 2012 was based almost entirely on luck) looking weaker than they have in quite some time, winning the division or one of the wild card spots is certainly not a walk in the park. And it's here that the marginal wins provided by R.A. Dickey will be so important.

After the trade for Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, and Mark Buehrle, the Blue Jays pulled themselves up into what I am going to call The Zone of Contention. Alex Anthopoulos had set the team up to be a very good one--how many wins they were going to get is, of course impossible to know, but it was the general consensus that the post-trade Blue Jays would be in a close race with Tampa Bay for the division, and that the Yankees would not be far behind. Adding a pitcher like Dickey gives the Jays the extra boost they may very well need to clinch themselves a playoff spot. Is a spot guaranteed? Not by any means. But the addition of R.A. Dickey and his wins above replacement will probably be a big positive.

2) The Window is Open

This, I think, is the most important point to be made in any argument supporting the trade. Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Buehrle, and Jose Reyes are all nearing their decline years, and if the Blue Jays want to win with the current core (and avoid another rebuilding cycle with nothing to show for it) now is truly the time to do it. The AL East is as vulnerable now as it may ever be, with the Yankees aging, the Red Sox rebuilding, the Rays trading away a very good pitcher (in exchange for a very good prospect--but he likely won't make huge contributions for a couple of years) and the Orioles being unlikely to repeat what they did last year (but their weakness shouldn't be counted on forever, if you're a believer in Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman).

I believe (based entirely on scouting reports) that Travis d'Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard will both be valuable big leaguers, and in d'Arnaud's case, very soon. However, they are not what the Blue Jays need right now, in Go For It mode. Both d'Arnaud and (mostly) Syndergaard will not reach their peak value until after the Jays current window has closed.

The sum of all these factors as they stand right now is a clear three-year window in which the Blue Jays can be serious contenders not only for the playoffs, but for the World Series. It would be unwise to pass up on such an opportunity, especially in a division as hostile as the AL East. Advantages must be taken!

3) Winning is Always Good

This doesn't need much explanation: if the team wins more games, the fans will buy more things. When the fans buy more things, revenues go up. When revenues go up, so does spending on free agents, contract extensions, and various other things that will make this team better. The hope is that with sustained winning, the Blue Jays will be able to spend like the large market team that they are, and produce more sustained winning. A cycle of sustained winning and happiness! There's something I can get behind.

4) The Contract

The contract extension that Dickey signed holds incredible value for the Blue Jays, and should not be forgotten in any analysis of the trade. If he produces 2 or more WAR in 2014 and 15, his deal is worth it (over the last three seasons he's been worth 3.4, 3.1, and 5.6 rWAR), and he only needs to be worth one win to for his $5 million in 2013 to not be an overpayment from a monetary standpoint (obviously we're all hoping he's worth a lot more than 1 WAR). And as if all that isn't enough, he signed a club option for 2016 worth another $12 million, with a $1 million dollar buyout, providing even more control and value to the Blue Jays, and possibly giving the team another year of contention before a new wave of players takes over.

And last, but certainly not least:

5) Flags Fly Forever

and it's about time we raise a new one.

Failed Prospects from the Last Half-Decade: Dishonourable Mentions

Emily G — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:10:14 -0000

With the recent release of the (now outdated) Fangraphs Top 15 and Baseball America Top 10 prospects lists, ranking season is upon us once again. Prospecting, along with most other things in baseball, brings with it both hope and heartbreak. The Blue Jays have seen their share of both over the past half-decade, and over the next few weeks I will take a look at some of the biggest disappointments from that time. In part one we covered Russ Adams and Dustin McGowan. Two weeks ago we remembered David Purcey and Curtis Thigpen. Last week we talked about Travis Snider and Kevin Ahrens. Today, in the final part of this series, we'll take a quick look at a number of players who were either not bad enough or not hyped enough to make the cut.

Before we dig right in, I'd like to make a few notes about how I came up with these names: first, not all players in this series could really be classified as a 'bust' or a failure, since most of them did at least have (or are likely to have) a career in the majors. Secondly, I only considered players who ranked as top five prospects in the organization according to Baseball America at least once since 2005, and were taken in the first 40 picks of the draft . Lastly, I do recognize that a large number of Jays fans have followed these players since they were drafted. If that's you, you can read the following to dampen your day and laugh at me: a relatively new fan who is just beginning to understand the pain of prospect disappointment.

Justin Jackson

Jackson was drafted by the Jays out of high school in the supplemental round of the 2007 draft. In the five full seasons he's spent in the organization, he has never had an OPS higher than .708, and that came in Lansing during the 2008 season. Since then, he's spent most of his time in Dunedin, though he's also played in Lansing and New Hampshire (he spent more than half the 2012 season in New Hampshire). While splitting time between AA and A+ in 2012 he hit .220/.300/.282 with a wRC+ of 61 in Dunedin and 70 in New Hampshire.

He'll probably begin the 2013 season in New Hampshire, and if he does well enough he may get promoted to AAA. I wouldn't count on it though, and unfortunately I don't expect he'll ever make it to the majors.

Chad Jenkins

Chad Jenkins was drafted out of college by the Blue Jays in the first round of the 2009 draft. He was the first pick in former general manager J.P. Ricciardi's last draft. He began his professional career in 2010 with the Lansing Lugnuts, and was promoted to Dunedin by the end of the season. He had an ERA of 3.94 over the whole season, and a very good FIP of 2.94 in Lansing. Unfortunately, it didn't last.

He spent 2011 and 2012 in AA New Hampshire, having a particularly poor season in 2012. His ERA climbed to 4.98 (with a FIP of 5.08) and his strikeout rate was an awfully low 11%.

He made his MLB debut on August 7th, coming out of the bullpen. In his 32 innings (13.2 of which came in starts) he had an ERA of 4.50 and a FIP of 5.25. He's currently 6th on the starting pitching depth chart, and I assume he'll be battling for a spot in the bullpen during spring training.

Deck McGuire

Deck McGuire, the first draft pick made under current general manager Alex Anthopoulos, was drafted 11th overall in the 2010 draft. He signed with the Jays at the deadline for $2 million. He's only been pitching professionally for two season: most of his 2011 season was spent in A+ Dunedin, though he was promoted to New Hampshire before suffering a season ending oblique injury.

McGuire's numbers in 2012 were not pretty: he pitched 144 innings for AA New Hampshire and had an ERA of 5.88 (with a FIP of 5.26). His strikeout rate fell from 23.2% to 15.1%, and his walk rate increased from 8% to 9.6%.

While it's still too early to write Deck McGuire off completely, it's beginning to look unlikely that he'll be able to start in the majors. Lets hope for better things from him in 2013.

Zach Stewart

Stewart is the only prospect in this series who was not drafted by the Blue Jays. He was acquired by the Jays as part of the Scott Rolen trade, along with Josh Roenicke and Edwin Encarnacion. He was the Jays' number one prospect after the 2009 season. He spent 2010 and part of 2011 in AA before being called up to make his debut with the Blue Jays on June 14, after Kyle Drabek was demoted to Las Vegas.

Stewart only pitched 16.2 innings with Toronto before being traded to the Chicago White Sox as part of the mega-deal that landed Colby Rasmus. His best game came with them on September 5th, when he pitched seven perfect innings in a start against the Minnesota Twins. In June he was traded to the Red Sox along with Brent Lillibridge for Kevin Youkilis. After being designated for assignment on November 20th, he was traded to the Pirates for a player to be named later.

And that's the end of this series! A case could be made for the inclusion of a few other players (I'm looking at you, Kyle Drabek) but I think that the ten players covered here provide the reality check I was looking for.

Join me again in five years to hopefully NOT discuss what a bust that Travis d'Arnaud was.

Failed Prospects from the Last Half-Decade: Part 3

Emily G — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 01:54:04 -0000

With the recent release of the (now outdated) Fangraphs Top 15 and Baseball America Top 10 prospects lists, ranking season is upon us once again. Prospecting, along with most other things in baseball, brings with it both hope and heartbreak. The Blue Jays have seen their share of both over the past half-decade, and over the next few weeks I will take a look at some of the biggest disappointments from that time. Two weeks ago we covered Russ Adams and Dustin McGowan. Last week we remembered David Purcey and Curtis Thigpen. Today we'll talk about Travis Snider and Kevin Ahrens.

Travis Snider

Travis Snider was drafted 14th overall out of high school in the 2006 draft, and was the first high schooler taken in the first round during the JP Ricciardi era. He was given a signing bonus of 1.7 million dollars, and began his professional career in rookie ball, where he hit .325/.412/.567 with 11 home runs in 54 games. 2007 was Snider's first full season in the Blue Jays' organization, and he spent the entire year at low A Lansing. He had a very good season, hitting .313/.377/.525 with 16 home runs and a wRC+ of 151. He ranked #1 on Baseball America's top 10 Blue Jays list and #11 on the top 100 list after the 2007 season.

He began the 2008 season in high A Dunedin, but his stay there was not a long one. He was promoted to AA after only 18 games, where he spent the majority of the season, posting a line of .262/.357/.461 and hitting 17 home runs. Snider was promoted to AAA Syracuse on August 6, and played in only 18 games there before making his MLB debut on August 29. He finished 2008 with the Blue Jays, appearing in 24 games and hitting .301/.338/.466. He was once again the Blue Jays #1 prospect on BA's list, and moved up 5 spots to #6 on the overall list (behind Matt Wieters, David Price, Colby Rasmus, Tommy Hanson, and Jason Heyward).

As well as Travis Snider played during the two years he spent in the minors, there were some red flags: namely, his strikeout rate, which was never below 20% and went as high as 27.4% in a 428 PA sample in AA.

He began the 2009 season with the Blue Jays, and hit two home runs on Opening Day. From there, though, things began to go downhill. He was demoted to AAA Las Vegas in May, after a prolonged slump. He was very good in hitter-friendly Vegas (three cheers for Buffalo), with an excellent OPS of 1.094, and an wRC+ of 186. He was called up to the Blue Jays again in August and he finished the year with an MLB line of .241/.328/.419.

In 2010, Snider got 319 plate appearances, the most he's had in any year in the majors. Unfortunately for him, it was also the year he began to have trouble with his wrist. He hit the disabled list in May 2010 with a wrist injury and didn't return to the Jays' lineup until late July, after rehabbing in Dunedin and New Hampshire. Going into the 2011 season there was a lot of hope for Snider: he was still young, and still had a lot of promise. 2011, we hoped, would be his breakout year.

We were disappointed, of course. Snider was awful to start the season, batting only .184 with 1 home run and 23 strikeouts in 99 plate appearances. He was demoted to AAA at the end of the month, getting a decent-but-not-spectacular wRC+ of 119 during his stay in Vegas. He came back to the Blue Jays in the middle of July, but hit the DL with tendinitis in his wrist in August.

In 2012 spring training, Snider was pitted against teammate Eric Thames in a battle for the starting spot in left field. Many fans (myself included) hoped Snider would win the spot, for the improvement in defense if nothing else. Snider was demoted to minor league camp, though, and Thames got the starting job. Snider once again battled injuries, but was finally called up on July 20, in what would be his final stint with the Blue Jays.

Travis Snider was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for reliever Brad Lincoln on July 30, confirming what had felt inevitable for quite some time: Snider would never achieve significant success as a Blue Jay. Since being traded to Pittsburgh, Snider's hit /.250/.324/.328 with 1 home run.

There are so many things I'm going to remember about Snider ("Meats don't clash" probably tops the list). I was never as big a Snider fan as some, but I was still disappointed to see him traded when it felt like he never got a real chance to prove himself. Shi Davidi's three-part series on Snider was revealing, though, and brought some insight into what went wrong during his time in the organization. It's likely that a lot of Snider's problems had their foundation in his lack of confidence, which is frustrating for everyone since the effects of mental issues are hard (if not impossible) to quantify, and can be difficult to overcome.

I truly hope Snider becomes fantastic in Pittsburgh. I hope there are home runs, great catches, and giant steaks in his future.

Kevin Ahrens

Kevin Ahrens was drafted by the Blue Jays, 16th overall, in the 2007 MLB draft. Like Travis Snider, Ahrens was drafted out of high school. He received a signing bonus of 1.44 million dollars, and began his career with the GCL Blue Jays, where he hit .230/.339/.321 in 48 games. Sadly for Kevin and for Blue Jays fans, it never got much better than that. He was ranked the #3 prospect (behind Snider and Cecil and ahead of J.P. Arencibia) by Baseball America going into the 2008 season.

Ahrens has not played at a level above high A, and he's been there for parts of four years. His best season (which was not a very good one), came in 2008, where he spent the entire season in Lansing and hit .259/.329/.367 and was exactly league average. His worst was the following year in Dunedin, where he posted a line of .215/.282/.302 and a wRC+ of 70. Welp.

So what went wrong with Kevin Ahrens? Pretty much everything, by the looks of it. He's had high strikeout rates and low walk rates for most of his career, and has never hit well for average or power. He is a bust in every sense of the word, and that's okay. Busts happen. The stories of players like Travis Snider and Dustin McGowan are far more disappointing for me.

And that's all for this week's dive into masochistic memories. Join me next time for more depressing tales of prospect fails!

Failed Prospects From The Last Half-Decade: Part Two

Emily G — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:56:05 -0000

Before we dig right in, I'd like to make a few notes about how I came up with these names: first, not all players in this series could really be classified as a 'bust' or a failure, since most of them did at least have (or are likely to have) a career in the majors. Secondly, I only considered players who ranked as top five prospects in the organization according to Baseball America at least once since 2005, and were taken in the first 40 picks of the draft (this week's exception to my own rule is Curtis Thigpen, who was drafted 57th overall). Lastly, I do recognize that a large number of Jays fans have followed these players since they were drafted. If that's you, you can read the following to dampen your day and laugh at me: a relatively new fan who is just beginning to understand the pain of prospect disappointment.

David Purcey

David Purcey was drafted 16th overall by the Blue Jays in 2004. The Texas native played college baseball for the University of Oklahoma, and he signed with the Blue Jays for a bonus of $1.6 million. He ranked as the Blue Jays' 5th best prospect coming out of the 2004 season. 2005 was his first full year pitching in the Blue Jays organization, and he spent most of it in A+ Dunedin (he also pitched 43 innings in AA New Hampshire). His combined ERA that year was a not-glittering-but-also-not-terrible 3.41, and it looked as though he was off to a decent start in his professional career. His performance in 2005 was good enough to earn him a ranking as the Blue Jays' #3 prospect, behind Dustin McGowan and Ricky Romero.

2006, though, did not go so well. Purcey split time between New Hampshire and AAA Syracuse that year, posting an ERA above 5 in both leagues. He had a decent strikeout rate (around 19%) but showed major control issues: his walk rates (10.6% in AA and 15.7% in AAA) were truly awful, and as a result he spent the entire 2007 season in AA, pitching only 62 innings due to surgery to remove a cyst in his arm. The improvement in his numbers in those innings was encouraging, though: his K% increased to over 20, and his walk rate went way down to 6%.

Purcey made his major league debut with the Blue Jays in April 2008, after being called up due to an injury to reliever Brian Wolfe. He went 4.1 innings, allowing only one run on two hits. However, he also walked seven batters, showing signs of what was to come. He returned to AAA and was called up once again in July, staying with the Blue Jays for the rest of the 2008 season. He pitched 65 innings and posted an ERA+ of 77 during his rookie season. His strikeout rate remained above average at 20.1%, but his walk rate began to climb back to where it was in 2006, reaching 10% by the end of the season.

Purcey earned a spot in the starting rotation coming out of spring training in 2009, but was demoted to AAA after being quite terrible in five starts with the Blue Jays. Unfortunately for David, a full season in AAA didn't fix whatever ailed him, as his control issues continued in Syracuse and never really got any better.

Purcey rejoined the Blue Jays in May 2010, pitching out of the bullpen. He had a decent ERA of 3.71 and an ERA+ of 114, and had a valuable season (according to fWAR), providing 0.3 wins above replacement for the Blue Jays in 34 innings.

On April 18, 2011, exactly three years after making his major league debut, Purcey was traded to the Oakland Athletics for Danny Farquhar. A month later he was flipped to the Tigers for Scott Sizemore, and was subsequently designated for assignment in August. He signed a minor league deal with the Phillies in December 2011 and spent the 2012 season pitching for AAA Lehigh Valley.

David Purcey is a textbook case of a pitcher who never sorted out his command and control issues. I'll remember him most for his big feet.

Curtis Thigpen

Curtis Thigpen was drafted out of college by the Blue Jays (I am sensing a theme here) in the 2nd round (57th overall) of the 2004 draft. He was given a signing bonus of $625,000 and began his professional career in 2004 with the Auburn Doubledays. He batted .301 with an OPS of .908 in 196 plate appearances that season.

He split time between low A Lansing and New Hampshire in 2005, hitting .286/.380/.417 over the full season. This was good enough to earn him a spot on BA's top 10 Blue Jays prospects list, where he came in at number nine, just ahead of Vince Perkins. In 2006 Thigpen played 87 games in AA, posting a line of .259/.370/.421, with a wRC+ of 128. He was promoted to AAA at the end of the season, playing in 13 games for the Syracuse Chiefs.

Heading into the 2007 season, Thigpen was ranked the fifth best Blue Jays prospect, and by this time was touted as "the catcher of the future." He played in 50 games at Syracuse to start the season, and was called up to join the Blue Jays in early June. His first game was on June 6, against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He went 1-4 with a single. Over the rest of the season (110 plate appearances) he hit a depressingly awful .238/.294/.287, with a wRC+ of 55. He was worth -0.4 rWAR in his 2007 stint with the Blue Jays.

He spent most of the 2008 season in Syracuse, and was awful there too, batting .222/.267/.310 in 96 games and was 46% worse than the league average in doing so. He saw very little time in the majors in 2008 (21 plate appearances in 10 games) and he has not appeared in an MLB game since.

In March 2009 he was traded to the Oakland Athletics (I guess the A's like ex-Blue Jay prospects) for a player to be named later or cash considerations. The Athletics released him in 2010, and he now works as an agent and lives in Austin, Texas.

That's it for this week's masochistic trip down memory lane. Join me again next week for more depressing tales of prospect fails!

Failed Prospects From The Last Half-Decade: Part One

Emily G — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 01:08:36 -0000

With Monday's release of Fangraphs Blue Jays top 15 prospects, ranking season is upon us once again. Prospecting, along with most other things in baseball, brings with it hope and heartbreak. The Blue Jays have seen their fair share of both over the past half-decade, and over the next three weeks (if all goes according to plan) I will take a look at some of the biggest disappointments from that time.

Before we dig right in, I'd like to make a few notes about how I came up with these names: first, not all the players on this list could really be classified as a 'bust' or a failure, since most of them did at least have (or are likely to have) a career in the majors. Secondly, I only considered players who ranked as top 5 prospects in the organization (according to Baseball America) at least once since 2005 and were taken in the first 40 picks in the draft. Except for Russ Adams. I just really wanted to write about Russ Adams. Lastly, I do recognize that a large number of Jays fans have followed these players since they were drafted. If that's you, you can read the following to dampen your day and to laugh at me: a relatively new fan who is just beginning to understand the pain of prospect failure.

Russ Adams

Adams was selected with the 14th overall pick in 2002, J.P. Ricciardi's first draft as GM. Coming out of the University of North Carolina, the shortstop was given a $1.785 million bonus by the Blue Jays. His professional career got off to a good start: in 2002 and 2003, playing in leagues ranging from A- to AA, he OPSed over .750. After the 2004 season, in which Adams hit .288/.351/.408 at AAA Syracuse, he was ranked the 6th best prospect in the Blue Jays system by Baseball America. He made his MLB debut in 2004 as a September call-up, getting 72 AB in 22 games.

He spent the entire 2005 season with the Jays, putting together a not-completely-atrocious line of .256/.325/.383, and a middle of the shortstop pack wRC+ of 86. 2006, though, was the definition of atrocious. From there he split time between AAA and and the majors, with most of that time being spent in AAA. In 2008 he didn't even see one at bat with the big club, and during the 2009 season he was unceremoniously designated for assignment. He elected free agency and signed with the San Diego Padres, then signed a minor league contract with the Mets prior to the 2010 season. He spent 2010 with the Buffalo Bisons, and retired on May 5, 2011, at the age of 30.

It's very possible that I'm missing something here, but it appears as if Russ Adams was terrible mostly out of the blue. Both his strikeout and walk rates in the minors were very good, but in this mysterious case that didn't mean much of anything. He struggled defensively at shortstop, which was one of the reasons for his demotion to AAA in 2006. The team tried to convert him to second base, but the attempt failed.

It's possible that his inability to adequately throw a baseball triggered some collapse of confidence that also affected his hitting, and based on his lack of injury, I think that's most likely. Of course, I never saw Russ Adams play a game, so I'm far from being an expert on this. I'd love to hear theories from those of you who were fans way back in the good old days of 2007, since the next best thing I can come up with involves murder and evil twins.

Dustin McGowan

The tale of Dustin McGowan may be one of the saddest in disappointing Blue Jay prospect history, if only because for a short while we got to see what he was capable of doing.

He was drafted 33rd overall in the 2000 draft out of high school in Georgia, and signed with the Jays for $950,000. He spent parts five years in the minors, posting decent but unspectacular stats all the way through. McGowan suffered an elbow injury in 2004 and underwent Tommy John surgery, causing him to sit out most of that season, and pitch only 31 innings at AA New Hampshire. Unfortunately for Dustin, Tommy John was just the beginning.

He made his MLB debut on July 30, 2005, in a game against the Texas Rangers. He went five innings, and only allowed one run. The rest of his 2005 wasn't great: he pitched in 13 games (7 starts) and posted a 6.35 ERA. Following the 2005 season, he was ranked the #1 Blue Jays prospect by Baseball America. In 2006, he split time between AAA and the majors, putting up an ugly ERA of 7.24 in a small sample size of 27 MLB innings.

It was the following year that Dustin McGowan finally began to show what he could do: in May 2007, he was called up to the Blue Jays' rotation after an injury to Gustavo Chacin. He pitched in 170 innings and had an ERA+ of 110. His best game came against the Colorado Rockies in June, where he took a no hitter into the ninth inning, and ended up with a complete game shutout.

In 2008 things started to go wrong for McGowan. He had a decent start to the season, but at the beginning of July he was forced to leave the game with pain in his shoulder. The pain was found to be caused by a torn labrum, and he had season ending surgery. He suffered numerous setbacks, requiring knee surgery in 2009 and another season-ending shoulder surgery in 2010.

McGowan finally returned to the Blue Jays in September 2011, three years after he left that game in July 2008. He wasn't very good, though I don't think that mattered to most Jays fans, who were just happy to see him finally pitching again. He signed a three year contract worth $4.1 million prior to the 2012 season, and was considered a serious contender for a spot in the starting rotation. Bad luck struck McGowan yet again though, as I'm sure we all remember. He didn't end up throwing a pitch in a professional baseball game for the entirety of the 2012 season, sidelined first with plantar fasciitis, then with more shoulder soreness, which ultimately resulted in arthroscopic surgery in August.

It's not likely that Dustin McGowan will ever make a meaningful contribution to this team again. His story is disappointing in an entirely different way than that of Russ Adams. We got to see how good McGowan had the potential to be and we know exactly what prevented him from achieving it, whereas "What Happened to Russ?" is more of a mystery. Both are frustrating and depressing in their own way.

Well, this has been the opposite of fun. Join me again next week for more depressing tales of prospect fails!

Goodbye, Baseball

Emily G — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:12:00 -0000

On Sunday night, Sergio Romo struck out Miguel Cabrera to win the World Series for the San Francisco Giants, and in doing so, he brought an end to the 2012 baseball season.

For Blue Jays fans, the season has been over since August (or earlier, if you're as pessimistic as me), and thankfully so. Who knows what other terrible things would have happened if it had gone on much longer? Considering the awfulness of the 2012 season for me personally, I was surprisingly sad to see it all come to an end.

Here are the things about baseball that I'm going to miss the most this winter:

Irrational Anger

There were a lot of things about the Blue Jays, and baseball in general, that made me irrationally angry this year. The Baltimore Orioles come to mind immediately, with their good luck and their run differential that was almost enraging enough to make me cheer for the Yankees in the playoffs.

The Orioles aren't the only thing that made me mad, though. I was also angered by oblique injuries, elbow injuries, shoulder injuries, hamstring injuries, wrist injuries..and the list goes on. Bad defense caused a lot of yelling at my TV too, though that ended up working out quite nicely.

While irrational anger is, well, angering at times, there's something to be said about being passionate enough about a sport to get mad about it (whether that passion is misdirected is a topic for another post), and I'll miss that.

Average-Players-Turned-Superstars

First it was Jose Bautista, and this year it was Edwin Encarnacion. We all know the story of how Bautista became amazing right out of the blue, but after this season I'm more thankful for what Edwin managed to do. Without his fantastic year, we'd have almost nothing positive to keep us going this off season. A quick look at Edwin's stats show how great he was, especially when compared to the rest of his career. As a matter of fact, the only first baseman who was better is Prince Fielder. I'll take that. He signed a three year contract extension during the season, so keep it up next year, Edwin!

Comebacks

Is there anything quite like a comeback victory? Just ask the San Francisco Giants, who did it twice in these playoffs. Watching your team slowly (or sometimes quickly) claw and scratch their way back into a game is truly exhilarating. The best comeback of the season, for me, was on the very first day; when JP Arencibia hit a three run walk off home run to win the game in the 16th inning, after the Jays had gone down 4-0 early and managed a tie in the 9th.

Comebacks can go both ways, of course, and be completely devastating. I'll never forget this game against the Mariners in 2011. Even now I feel the urge to punch a pillow when thinking about it.

Pitching Gems

I have a thing for strikeouts, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Brandon Morrow is my favourite pitcher. There are many of his games I could talk about here, but I'm going to limit myself to two: this one, vs the Rays in 2010, is still my favourite Brandon Morrow game of all time. I don't see it ever being passed by another game, unless it's a no-hitter.

The other is this: a complete game shutout against the Angels, in Los Angeles. He threw only 102 pitches, and faced one batter over the minimum. It was a fantastic start for Morrow, and the first of three shutouts on the season. Looking back on it now just makes his injury that much more devastating--who knows what could have happened for him this season if he had stayed healthy?

The Baseballness of Baseball

I tried to find words to describe this, and I just couldn't. This is the feeling you get when you wake up on opening day, when you're full of hope and nothing's gone wrong yet. That feeling when you're walking up to the ballpark with your ticket in your hand, and the one you get when your team hits a home run in extra innings. It's the same, in a way, as the feeling you get when they lose a heart breaker, or when your manager leaves the starter in one batter too long. It's hope and devastation and heartbreak all rolled up in one magical game, and I'm going to miss it desperately for the next five months.

What will you miss the most about baseball?

Dear John

Emily G — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 18:11:06 -0000

Dear John:

Well, it's been a crazy couple of weeks, hasn't it? Congratulations on finally getting your dream job. I can honestly say that I hope the Boston media, fans, and players make you long for the days of injury problems, pitcher implosions, and bad bullpen management.

I am writing this letter to tell you why I feel this way.

When you were hired in October 2010, I was excited. While I didn't share the same negative feelings towards Cito Gaston as some of the other fans, I was ready for a change and a fresh start at the managerial position. Hiring a pitching coach seemed like a good idea, as we had a lot of young pitchers with the team or on their way up.

In your first season as manager, the fan base was willing to give you what can be best described as a free pass. It was your first year managing in the big leagues, and some hiccups along the way were to be expected. And the hiccups came: your struggles with bullpen management, aggression on the base paths, and understanding platoon splits. Fortunately for you, the team's record (.500) wasn't a disaster, and while fans recognized you had some issues that needed fixing, we were more than willing to give you the next two years of your three-year deal to work those issues out.

At the end of the 2011 season, the Red Sox collapsed in glorious fashion and, as I'm sure you are well aware, fired manager Terry Francona when it all ended. Not long after that, the rumblings started: "The Boston Red Sox are interested in John Farrell." I remember thinking this was a joke when I first heard about it. 'Yes, the Red Sox have an entitled attitude, but there's no way they really think they can take our manager while he's still under contract, right?' Wrong. As days passed it became more apparent that the Red Sox were serious about wanting you to manage their team. You wisely kept your mouth shut through all of it, which gave me the opportunity to defend you to anyone who suggested you wanted to leave. You really got me there, didn't you? Nice one!

The next thing we heard was that the Blue Jays had introduced a new club policy: no lateral moves. "That was that," I thought. "Alex Anthopoulos told the Red Sox no, and it's over."

Once again, of course, I was wrong. The Red Sox' 2012 season spiraled out of control with the hiring of Bobby Valentine as their manager, and ours didn't go much better, though even now I won't lay the blame for that on your shoulders. However, your poor use of pinch hitters and Francisco Cordero in high leverage situations (not to mention your handling of the Yunel Escobar eye black situation) caused some of the hope for your improvement as a manager to begin to dwindle. By the end of what was a truly dismal year, I was advocating for a one year extension for you. This would have avoided the lame duck problem, but still given you one more chance to prove that you could manage this team to a winning season.

The Red Sox firing of Bobby Valentine couldn't have come as a surprise to anyone, and the return of the rumours about you wasn't exactly shocking either. On October 13th, you said this:

"I can tell you this--in my conversations with Alex, it hasn't distracted me from my job and what the commitment there is. I'm extremely challenged and happy as manager of the Blue Jays"

That quote, along with my attitude of skepticism, led me once again to believe that you weren't going anywhere. Leaks from your lovely new friends in Boston, though, kept me from holding to my belief for long. Report after report came out alleging that the Blue Jays and Red Sox were deep in talks about compensation for you, and eventually we all had to face the facts: you were no longer going to be the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.

By the time the news broke officially, I was at peace with the situation. We had acquired a somewhat useful player in Mike Aviles, and we'd get a fresh start with a new manager after a miserable season. It was only when you opened your mouth that feelings of hatred began to bubble up.

I understand that Boston is the team you grew up cheering for and that you spent years in that organization. I don't think it was wrong for you to want to manage there. But "discretion" and "sensitivity" are also good things, (not to mention "gratitude" and "not being a jerk") and you could have displayed a lot more of them. Your comments about Alex Anthopoulos's hypothetical return to the Expos were classless, unnecessary, and untrue.

I guess all this is just a long-winded way to say that you really disappointed me. I had high hopes for us, John, and now you're just another Boston Red Sock. Maybe someday my dream can come true too, and I'll get to watch the Blue Jays beat the team from the "epicentre of baseball" on the last day of the season to win the AL East, while you cry in the dugout.

Adam Lind: A Mostly Disappointing History

Emily G — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:15:38 -0000

"I'm pretty sure I'll be in the big leagues come opening day, but I have no idea where that'll be."

Adam Lind spoke those words, along with a bunch of others, in an interview with The Herald Bulletin last week. While I don't think too much time should be wasted worrying about his future with the Blue Jays (for obvious reasons), I do think that this would be a good opportunity to take a look back at his career and see how we got to where we are today.

Lind was drafted by the Blue Jays in the third round (83rd overall) in the 2004 draft, out of the University of Southern Alabama. He played half the 2004 season in Auburn as a twenty year old, hitting .312/.371/.477 in 295 plate appearances. He spent the entire 2005 season in Dunedin, improving his OPS to .862. In the following year he split time between AA New Hampshire and AAA Syracuse, once again improving his batting line (he had an OPS of 1.093 in 137 plate appearances with Syracuse, and won the AA Eastern League MVP award). On September 2nd, 2006 Adam Lind made his Major League debut against the Boston Red Sox, hitting a double off of Lenny DiNardo. His first home run came eight days later, off (fellow rookie) Jered Weaver.

In 2007 and 2008, Lind split time between Syracuse and Toronto. He was called up to the Blue Jays in early April 2007 after left fielder Reed Johnson was put on the disabled list with a back injury. He struggled for three months in the majors, slashing .238/.278/.400 until being sent back to Syracuse in July with Johnson's activation from the DL. He improved upon his return to Syracuse, hitting .299 with an OPS of .824. Lind had his next opportunity with the Jays in April 2008. It wasn't much of an opportunity, though, and once again he struggled, getting only one hit in nineteen at bats and six games before he was demoted to Syracuse for what would turn out to be the last time. He lit it up in Syracuse and was called up on June 21st. He closed the season hitting .282/.316/.439, and had a wRC+ of 95. He was worth 0 rWAR that year (and 0.1 fWAR).

This brings us to 2009, easily Lind's best year in the majors. He hit .305 with an OPS of .932, good enough to win a Silver Slugger award along with teammate Aaron Hill. He also won the Edgar Martinez Award as the best DH for the season. He had the best wRC+ among designated hitters, and was in the top 25 among all batters leaguewide. He posted an rWAR of 3.6, good for third on the team behind Marco Scutaro and Aaron Hill. It appeared that Cito Gaston and Dwayne Murphy had had a very positive effect on Lind, and the team's as well as the fan base's hopes and expectations for him going forward had increased. Lind signed a four year contract extension worth $18 million (plus three options worth a total of $29.5 million) on April 3rd, 2010.

I would imagine everyone knows what's happened since then, and it hasn't been pretty. In 2010, Lind's OPS dropped more than 200 points, and his wRC+ dropped from 140 to a woeful 89, dead last among designated hitters that year. His home run totals fell from 35 to 23, and his walk rate also dropped from 8.9% to 6.2%. The only category where he saw an increase, unfortunately, was strikeouts (16.8% to 23.5%). All this is reflected in his painful rWAR of -1.3.

The 2011 and 2012 seasons were supposed to determine which one of these performances was a fluke; sadly for Lind and Blue Jays fans it appears as though 2009 is the anomaly. Over the past three years, Lind is last in wRC+ among designated hitters, and fifth last among first basemen. He's struggled with back injuries throughout this time, hitting the DL in both the 2011 and 2012 seasons. On May 17th of this year he was optioned to AAA Las Vegas, and was placed on waivers a few days later, passing through unclaimed. He stayed in Las Vegas until June 25th, just before his 2012 DL stint. He did, at least, end the year on a somewhat more positive note, batting .301 in September, but we can't place much value on data from such a small sample size.

It's all but certain that the Blue Jays won't pick up the 2014 option on Lind's contract, and even his position with the team in 2013 is uncertain. While I personally believe that Lind will be a Blue Jay next year, it wouldn't surprise me to see him replaced this off season. Whatever happens, though, the team's decision on the future of Adam Lind will be worth watching in what's shaping up to be an interesting winter.

Thanks to Captain Latte for finding the Herald Bulletin interview.

Red Sox moving on without Farrell?

Emily G — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:17:08 -0000

Red Sox moving on without Farrell?

The Red Sox are interviewing Brad Ausmus and DeMarlo Hale for their manager position this week.

Getting to know you

Emily G — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:21:14 -0000

Hi, I'm Emily. I'm in my second year of university studying health science, and I'm a dedicated sports masochist. I'm also the newest writer here at Bluebird Banter!

Most of you probably know me quite well already, but for those who don't, here's a little introduction to me.

I grew up hating sports, especially baseball. I can distinctly remember watching a baseball game from the Athens Olympics in 2004 and thinking to myself "this is the most boring game I can possibly imagine. Nobody is doing anything." I called myself a Leafs fan, but I would watch them for five minutes at a time at the most. As a child, I definitely had more interest in bossing my friends around on the playground than in anything to do with sports.

All that changed, though, when I moved from Burlington to Calgary in 2007. My dad became my best friend by default, and his favourite thing to do was watch baseball. While I protested at first, eventually I did grudgingly develop an interest. It was during the 2007 season (and World Series) that my now burning hatred for the Boston Red Sox began to develop--and when I first asked my dad to explain the infield fly rule.

My first favourite players were AJ Burnett and Joe Inglett. I liked AJ Burnett because Roy Halladay was everyone's favourite, and I liked Joe Inglett because he had high socks and stole bases (he actually only stole nine bases in 2008 according to Baseball Reference, but I guess that was enough for me).

My first Blue Jays related heartbreak came when AJ Burnett left for the New York Yankees after the 2008 season. I felt snubbed, and as a relatively new baseball fan I didn't see the value in compensation draft picks (or even know what they were). I vowed to hate Burnett forever, and christened Roy Halladay my new favourite player.

That is why this remains my favourite Blue Jays game of all time. Listening to the boos rain down on Burnett was like music to my ears, and of course watching Halladay shut down the Yankees is a thing I could never get tired of.

It was the trade of Favourite Player Roy Halladay that first piqued my interest in the farm system, though it wasn't til last season, when we acquired Brett Lawrie for Favourite Player Roy Halladay replacement Favourite Player Shaun Marcum, that I began to really follow the minors closely.

Today my favourite players are JP Arencibia (which I'm sure comes as a shocker to all of you) and Brandon Morrow. I'm pretty sure JP Arencibia's going to follow in the footsteps of all my other favourite players and leave the team at some point relatively soon, and I'm working on coming to terms with that before it happens.

And that's the history of my love for the Blue Jays! I'm looking forward to the day when I'll have playoff games to talk about, and to writing about them here on BBB. You can follow me on twitter, if that's your thing, at @emilyg819.

Baseball Prospectus-Daily Stat Updates

Emily G — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:19:25 -0000

Baseball Prospectus-Daily Stat Updates

Baseball Prospectus has a new free feature that updates the stats of the top 20 prospects in each organization (and the top 101 prospects in another list) every day. Pretty awesome.

Blue Jays Wallpapers

Emily G — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:31:26 -0000

Blue Jays Wallpapers

These are really, really good. I'm having a legitimately difficult time deciding which one to use.

Vote for Carlo Coliacovo!

Emily G — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:58:51 -0000

Vote for Carlo Coliacovo!

it's the last hockey gif left in the tournament, let's band together and get it through!

Star Article on McGowan

Emily G — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:06:45 -0000

Star Article on McGowan

Richard Griffin talks to DMc about his ability to win a spot in the rotation this spring.

Blue Jays draft

Emily G — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:52:23 -0000

Blue Jays draft

Our friend McCutchenistheTruth did a draft preview for the Pirates here and I asked him to do one for the Blue Jays so he did the one linked in the title. Check it out!

The d'Arnaud Brothers

Emily G — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:18:41 -0000

The d'Arnaud Brothers

Our Pirates fan friend McCutchenistheTruth and myself wrote a blog post about the d'Arnaud brothers.

KJ Might Accept Arb?

Emily G — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:49:35 -0000

KJ Might Accept Arb?

This would make me very happy.

A TRADE

Emily G — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:48:46 -0000

A TRADE

Brad Mills to the Angels.

SBNation.com User Blog: Emily G

Down Memory Lane

Dunedin and the Blue Jays

The Battle for Backup

Team Canada at the World Baseball Classic

Let's talk about Expectations

Meet the Blue Jays: The Starting Lineup

Meet The Blue Jays (MS Paint Style): Starting Pitchers

Josh Johnson

Ricky Romero

Advanced Stats Primer: Win Probability and WAR

Win Expectancy

WPA

WAR

Advanced Stats Primer: Pitching and Defense Edition

DRS

FIP and xFIP

FIP = ((13*HR) + (3*(BB + HBP)) - (2*K)) / (IP + constant)

Strikeout and Walk Rates

BABIP

Advanced Stats Primer For Beginners: Offense Edition

BABIP

BABIP = [Balls in Play - HR] / [AB - K - HR - SF]

OPS and OPS+

wOBA

wRC and wRC+

K% and BB%

The Bleak Mid-Winter

Reading

World Baseball Classic

Stats

Archived Games

Speaking of the Red Sox...

Hockey

Do Homework

How are you going to stay busy for the next three months?

The Blue Jays' Year in Review

Darvish Day

Spring Training

Opening Day

All The Injuries

Goodbye, Disappointing Left Fielders

Losing And More Losing

John Farrell Gets His Dream Job

The Trade That Changed Everything

R.A. Dickey Is A Blue Jay, And Hope Returns To Toronto

This is really just a small taste of all the many things that happened around the Blue Jays during 2012. What were your best (and worst) memories?

A Roller Coaster Ride Of Feels: From Hate To Love Of The R.A. Dickey Trade

1) The Value of Marginal Wins

2) The Window is Open

3) Winning is Always Good

4) The Contract

5) Flags Fly Forever

and it's about time we raise a new one.

Failed Prospects from the Last Half-Decade: Dishonourable Mentions

Failed Prospects from the Last Half-Decade: Part 3

Travis Snider

Kevin Ahrens

Failed Prospects From The Last Half-Decade: Part Two

Failed Prospects From The Last Half-Decade: Part One

Russ Adams

Goodbye, Baseball

Irrational Anger

Average-Players-Turned-Superstars

Comebacks

Pitching Gems

The Baseballness of Baseball

Dear John

Adam Lind: A Mostly Disappointing History

Red Sox moving on without Farrell?

Getting to know you

Baseball Prospectus-Daily Stat Updates

Blue Jays Wallpapers

Vote for Carlo Coliacovo!

Star Article on McGowan

Blue Jays draft

The d'Arnaud Brothers

KJ Might Accept Arb?

A TRADE

FIP = ((13HR) + (3(BB + HBP)) - (2*K)) / (IP + constant)