As was first speculated in the fanshot yesterday, the Jays actually did complete the deal with 41 year old lefty reliever Darren Oliver. The specific contract details have not seem to be released as of yet, but it does seem to be for a 1 year deal with a team option for the next year.

Oliver looks to feature prominently in the Jays pen has he has had good platoon splits. Not only that, but he will bring the "veteran" presence that people always seem to want to have around. I like the move, and it is moves like this that really in the end help out a bullpen in my opinion. At the moment, we are looking at a bullpen with Santos, Janssen, Oliver, Villanueva and Litsch. There are still two spots that could likely be filled internally or by outside moves. That being said, to me that looks like a very solid pen.

Link to Darren Oliver's baseball reference page for stats.

The second move the Jays made seem to cause a little bit of annoyance in the people I talked to. The Jays signed Aaron Laffey. Laffey was non-tendered by the Royals earlier this month. He spent the first 4 years of his MLB career with the Indians before bouncing around in 2011 between the Mariners and the Yankees. Quite simply Laffey isn't very good. A soft tossing lefty that can't really miss bats. The logic goes that he wanted to compete for a rotation spot and the Jays offer him the best chance to do that? In my opinion if he beats out Drabek, Cecil, McGowan or Henderson we are in for a world of hurt come the start of the season.

Link to Aaron Laffey's baseball reference page for stats.

Hardly a monster bid as it was "reported".

Jays Lose. Commiserate in the comments.

I wanted to write about the MVP award yesterday. I wanted to rant and scream about some of the idiots at the writers association getting the vote wrong. I wanted to go on and on about this antiquated group of individuals who can't see past their own bias and traditional stats. It would have been great and cathartic to blow off steam.

You might ask "Well Johnny where is it then?", and the answer to that isn't all that complicated. For one, I am very very lazy. Next, many writers around the blogosphere (who are mountains more talented than I) already expressed the same sentiment. And finally , was anyone really surprised about this?

I mean honestly, was there anyone out there reading this blog or anywhere for this matter that didn't expect this or something similar was going to happen? It seems that every year we go nuts for these awards and every year there is something that the majority of people seem to point at and go "You picked that guy? Are you on glue?"

A lot of people like to point at the writers as being the ones to blame and while they certainly are the easiest target (Michael Young? REALLY??!@?!?). I don't think they are the biggest problem. The biggest problem that I see with this award is actually quite simple. Go into any room that has a number of baseball fans and simply ask the question, "What do you think Most Valuable Means?".  You are going to get a different answer from just about everyone in that room. 

We can disagree with the writers (and we do) as much as humanly possible. The bottom line is with the current structure of the awards, they aren't wrong. Since the most valuable player seems to take on whatever the individual voter wants it to be, then whatever they do is right. If you want to make Michael Young your MVP by whatever crazy idiotic off the wall ideas you have then go ahead. Granted if you are going to do something that nuts you better be prepared to back it up.

This of course leads into the second issue that I have with the awards. They can't be impartial. You can argue that professional writers are impartial people all you want. I call BS. There is no way possible that the fact that you have to interact on a daily basis with players and the team doesn't affect your decisions. Like having access to certain player? It can't get any easier to get on someone's good side then by writing a nice fluff piece about them. If the voting was done in secret we wouldn't have as big of a problem, but it isn't. Writers like to post their ballots with their reasoning, this drives page views. You think John Lott's ballot is generating as many page hits as Evan Grant's?  Over the past two days Evan Grant (the guy who voted Young and put Bautista 7^th) is getting a crazy amount of page hits and attention on twitter. You better believe he is sitting at home laughing like crazy. He just guaranteed his job and can rationalize it to himself that his vote didn't change the overall results.

Overall I am disappointed with the results, but I am biased obviously. I would not have voted Verlander for MVP, but I get the argument behind it. He had a great year as did Bautista and Ellsbury. I am not as angry at the overall results as some but I am still irked that something like MVP balloting can be used to further a personal agenda.

Please baseball, Im begging here. Take back the awards, Make them all voted on by the Players association or by owners/gms or league officials. Give the awards guidelines so everyone knows exactly what they are for without pause. If you want to have most valuable that contributed to his team making the playoffs go ahead! Just tell everyone that up front to avoid the damned headache. Let the BBWAA have their awards with vague definitions. Soon enough the more important ones would be the official MLB ones anyways.

My wish List

Most Valuable player - Player that provided the most value both offensively and defensively to their teams season success.

Most Outstanding position player - Best overall player, awarded regardless of team success

Most Outstanding pitcher - Best overall pitcher, awarded regardless of team success

And all the rest.....

Sound off in the comments, How would you want the awards to break down? What criteria and who votes on them?

Ever wonder what the Jays do for team building in the off-season? Wonder no longer!

Scene:  John Farrell's house. The house is decorated in Halloween decorations, with John Farrell running around frantically putting out party snack trays while Don Wakamatsu, Dwayne Murphy and Bruce Walton all watch with interest. They are all dressed as various members of the A-Team

Farrell : Faster, Faster we gotta be faster

Don: Uh John, maybe you should calm down.... And wasn't Halloween like 2 weeks ago? Aren't we a bit late?

Farrell: Well I got the idea for a team building party when all these kids came around asking for Candy.  I was putting out signs for a hit and run and to steal the candy from next door but all the kids looked at me like I was crazy. They just kept missing the signs.

Butterfield (yelled from another room): STILL NOT MY FAULT!

Farrell: Riiiight, Anyways. Come on, get in the spirit. The guys will be here any minute and I really want this to be fun costume party. Time to get into character.

Murphy: I pity the fool that takes a pitch!

Farrell:  Ok, This may have been a bad idea....

The doorbell rings, Farrell goes to answer the door. Bautista, Lawrie, Arencibia, Escobar and Rauch are all standing at the door.  Lawrie, Arencibia and Rauch appear to be only ones in costume. Lawrie is wearing a strange outfit with a red maple leaf shield, Arencibia is a black skintight outfit and Rauch is dressed as Superman

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A long time coming the BBB crew final gets together at the end of the baseball season to talk about the future, optimism and what irked us the most about the past year.

Recorded last Wednesday October 5th (sorry would have had it up sooner but encountered some technical difficulties again getting it uploaded). Big tip of the cap to Eric from SBnation for the help in getting this posted to the site.

Thanks to Tom, Jesse and Hugo as we actually had the full crew on to chat about our Jays for this one (not bad it only took 10 episodes for schedules to line up).

Keep it Civil and Go Jays Go!

Recap was put together by Minor Leaguer. A big thanks for helping me out when I couldn't get to a computer.

Rays 5 Blue Jays 2.

Brett Cecil (4-11) finishes a bad season with a bad outing against the surging Tampa Bay Rays, allowing a line of 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 HR, 1 K, 2 BB in 3.1 IP. This game was boring but at least it wasn't as horrible as yesterday's game.

Things were bad from the get-go with Cecil allowing a solo shot to B. J. Upton on his 8th pitch of the game. An out later, Ben Zobrist hit a hard fly ball to the right field wall. Jose Bautista was tracking the ball and ran hard into the a padded metal pole on the wall.He went down hard and by the time Dewayne Wise came over to get the ball, Zobrist was rounding third and got an inside-the-park homer. Bautista got back up and played several more innings but Mark Teahen was sent to pinch hit for him in the top of the 6th.

Cecil gave up a two-run homer to Evan Longoria in the bottom of the third, and after allowing a Kelly Shoppach single with one out in the 4th, Jesse Litsch was sent into relieve Cecil. Litsch gave up 2 hits and no walks with 4 strike outs in his 2.1 innings of relief, but one of the hits was a Kelly Shoppach home run.Shawn Camp, Luis Perez, and Danny Farquhar then combined for a one-hit shutout and four strikeouts for the rest of the way, but the damage was already done.

On the other side, Wade Davis limited the feeble Jays lineup to 3 hits and 2 runs in 8 innings, giving up 2 walks while striking out 6. Dewayne Wise, who was put into the lineup last minute due to Colby Rasmus' "flu-like symptoms" (he looked fine to me when the camera picked him up in the dugout), had a solo job. David Cooper's RBI double in the 2nd was responsible for the Jays' other run.

It is sad to see the Jays being so short handed in September, with Lind, Rasmus, Escobar, and Bautista unavailable. Reports at the beginning of the game say that Escobar is probably done for the balance of the season, but Lind should be able to join the team in Chicago. The best Jays-related news to come out today was the birth of Lind's little girl. Congrats!

Brian Jeroloman was seen chatting with Bautista and the supposedly contagious Rasmus in the dugout but saw no action.

Jays of the Day: none. But David Cooper (+.090) was close with his RBI-double.

Suckage Jays: Brett Cecil (-.295).

For the Blue Jays "fans" who were rooting against the Jays this series, you would be happy to know that with the Rays' win and Red Sox's game 1 loss, the Rays are now just 0.5 games back of a wild card berth.

The Jays (and Mike McCoy) take their last flight of the season to Chicago to meet the White Sox for the last series of the season. Tomorrow we will see RHP Dustin McGowan (0-1, 6.35 ERA) face RHP Dylan Axelrod (0-0, 4.26 ERA) at 8:10 pm EST. RHP Henderson Alvarez (1-2, 3.65 ERA) will pitch against LHP Mark Buehrle (12-9, 3.72 ERA) at the same time on Tuesday. RHP Brandon Morrow (11-11, 4.78 ERA) will pitch the last game of the season opposite to RHP Philip Humber (9-9, 3.86 ERA) in an afternoon affair starting 2:10 pm EST.

That was awful. I think it was worse since it started out so well. After scoring a couple of early runs and knocking Niemann out of the game after only one inning the Jays decided it was sporting to hand the game back to the Rays on a silver platter.

Ricky Romero was great and really deserved better. Had the defense not screwed up in the first he could have been looking at a 7 or 8 pitch inning in the first but instead it ended up being in the mid-20s. No matter though as Ricky continued to cruise through to the rest of the game. He gave up a HR to give the Rays a 3-2 lead but still looked great. He had two great pick offs of Upton however only one of them caused an out as Cooper took his sweet time on the second. In the 8th after Upton reached, the Jays had another error by McCoy. John Farrell came out to talk to Ricky but left him in the game, he got a quick out on one pitch but the next batter was Damon and he took him yard for a 3run HR that put a final nail in the game.

At the plate the Jays looked great in the first but not so much after that. The Rays bullpen came into the game after Niemann was pulled and things went south quickly. Bautista absolutely crushed one for his 43rd of the season and that was about it. The Jays did look to start something in the 3rd but Johnson was thrown out trying to steal second. Later Arencbia was caught trying to stretch a single into a double. 

In the field the Jays made three official errors but there was a dropped ball in the outfield that was absolutely awful with one of those I got it you got it, drop. Rasmus and Johnson didn't communicate it and the ball dropped, because no one touched it no error. Stupid. Cooper was awful and dropped a pop out in foul that was about 10 ft to his left and then right after that missed a bouncer from McCoy. The error gets put on McCoy because of the throw but it is a throw that a first basemen should be able to have. McCoy did make a few great plays but honestly it was all overshadowed by the Jays poor defense on the night.

Jays of the Day: Bautista

Suckage: Romero has the number but Im not giving it to him. McCoy, Cooper, Rasmus and Johnson, congratulations.

We all have them, the players and teams that we just can't stand. No matter what they do on or off the field it doesn't matter. Mostly everyone here has the standard ones with the Yankees and Red Sox which for the most of the past decade has dealt with the fact that we seem to be playing on an uneven playing ground when it comes to competing with the top payrolls. That being said I know there are other teams that I can't stand and even go as far to actively root for them to lose.

Putting aside the Red Sox and Yankees because there are enough obvious reasons to hate those teams even aside from the payroll issue (Papelbon, A-Rod, Posada, Youk etc etc), I want to focus more on some of the other teams that I like to watch lose and explore the potential reasons why that exists, some of them are rational, and others... not so much.

Atlanta Braves - I can't help it, it's been 19 years and I still can't stand the Braves. I was just a kid when the Jays played the Braves for the world series and I can still vividly remember that stupid chop and chant, the flag hanging upside down (Yes I know that wasn't the Braves but still) and the obnoxious fans saying that a Canadian team shouldn't ever win. Fast forward a few years and we get the delight of Chipper Jones rants about Toronto and seemingly poor attitude towards certain players. I just can't get past my hate for this team, and frankly I don't think I ever will.

Oakland Athletics & Minnesota Twins - Now on principle neither one of these teams have ever really done anything that made me hate them. In fact the teams have employed players that I love to watch in the past and still do. How can you hate on Canadian MVP Justin Morneau or MVP Joe Mauer. Even though there is a lack of ultimate success for the A's you have to admire the innovative direction and going against the flows approach that was outlined in Moneyball. So why do I hate them? On the surface it doesn't seem like there should be anything there, but really it is how these teams are portrayed in the media that gets to me. Honestly, I know I can't be alone in thinking if I hear the Jays broadcast team talk about how the A's or the Twins play the game the right way anymore in the run of the year I could just go crazy. It always seems like sweet justice whenever they lose do an error or some mis-play.

Tampa Bay Rays - Lastly the Rays...This is a fairly recent development. Up until the Rays broke out and even during their break out season I was happy for them. In the years before it always seemed like the O's and the Rays were at the bottom with us, fighting against the Yankees and Red Sox and I was cheering for them during the world series run, everyone likes an underdog right? It wasn't until afterwards that I soured on the team. We were overwhelmed with a sudden rash of Rays fans who just appeared out of nowhere. Every radio/tv host started to talk about how the Rays were now the example to follow despite all of the evidence to the contrary. To make matters worse the few fans I had to deal with personally seemed to develop a smug sense of arrogance about how their team was going to contend for years constantly bragging about their superior front office designs. Don't get me wrong, the Rays are to be praised for putting together a contending team on such a smaller payroll, but lets not delude ourselves on what helped get to them to that point. Years of high draft picks help build the base for the trades and other players they have as well as some career years from bullpen arms. 10 straight years of last place finishes (1 year was a 4th place finish...), that's the price for success?

What are some teams that you can't stand and what are some the reasons? Maybe you can never beat them in MLB The show? or your little league team was beat by another team sporting the same name? Sound off in the comments!

The Rays playoff chances got a little slimmer tonight as the Jays rolled into Tampa Bay and came close to blanking the home side. Brandon Morrow threw great for 7 innings and the Jays got to Price for 5 runs which is more then they needed. With the rain out in New York and the loss tonight, Tampa Bay falls to 2.5 back of the Red Sox for the wild card with only 5 games left to play. I'm not a big fan of the Rays at all, especially since they started to get successful, you can only hear "See do it like the Rays" so many times before you develop a tick and start yelling at people when they say stuff like that.

As mentioned above Brandon Morrow was great tonight, he threw 7 strong innings with only 2Hs and 4BBs he struck out 9, he ran into a little trouble in the 7th but was able to get out of it without too much concern. The bigger news tonight was that he got his first double play since 2010. According to our very own statsman MinorLeaguer this was a streak of 174 straight innings(0.1 IP from Aug 28 right after his GIDP, 3.0 from Sep 3, 166.1 this year, 4.1 this game before his GIDP = 174), quite impressive. <<Side note: Elias is saying 173.1IP>>  I would have loved to see him get the record as a weird quirk but oh well. Joel Carreno came out for the 8th and allowed BJ Upton to reach but he was thrown out trying to steal second on a great throw from Arencibia from his knees. Luis Perez came in for the ninth and did his best Kevin Gregg impression by walking Johnny Damon to lead off the inning, things didn't exactly go smoothly as the Rays were able to push a single run across but that was all.

At the plate the Jays got a bit of help from two throwing errors by David Price, one of which allowed two runs to score. Kelly Johnson had a strong game with an RBI hit and a big time HR to right, he was a good at bat going left on left against Price. McCoy and Thames each had a hit apiece with Bautista and McCoy taking a walk each. J.P Arencibia had a 2-4 night with a squeaker of an infield single in the top of the ninth. The Jays didn't produce a lot at the plate but it was more then enough tonight.

Jays of the Day: Morrow .256 and Thames .214

No suckage although Encarnacion came closest at -0.86 Nevermind

Tomorrow night the Jays look to really put a dagger into the Rays with another 7PM start, see you then!

Yet another walk off win for the Jays tonight, I could get used to these things.

To be fair, the Jays never should have gone into extras to begin with. The team squandered numerous opportunities to score a go more runs and just couldn't get things across. At one point earlier in the game they had the bases loaded with no out and Colby Rasmus grounded into the 3-2-3 double play. Luckily J.P. Arencibia was able to follow that up with a 2 out single to RF to score 2 runs. Thos would be the only two runs the Jays would score again until extra innings.

On the mound Ricky Romero was fantastic and it is too bad that the team couldn't get him another W. There has been a lot of talk the last two years of whether or not Ricky Romero was an ace, or just a very good pitcher (who cares, but I digress). You hear a lot of talk about a true ace of the staff will get wins, well if that is the case over the last 12 starts for Romero the Jays are 11-1, Romero himself is 8-1 over those same 12.  Overall Romero threw 9IP with only 6Hs, 5Ks and 0BBs, the problem was 2 of those 6 hits went over the fence. Casey Janssen came out for the 10th and was fantastic, things look bad for a second when Wells opened up the innings with a double, but a sac bunt, strikeout and ground out later got the Jays out of the inning and secured the win.

At the plate Arencibia and Johnson had 2 hits a piece, Thames had 3, Bautista and Encarnacion each had 1 apiece. Thames, Bautista, Encarnacion and Lawrie each took a walk. There were a few problems again on the basepaths. The Jays were caught stealing twice, on the season the team is running at about 70% (I think it is about 72% IIRC) and lately it has definitely seemed like more caught then safe. There also seemed to be yet another missed hit and run sign. I asked in the game thread but it bears repeating, just how damned difficult is the teams hit and run sign? The team had a bunch of help in the tenth scoring the winning run. The lead off batter Mike McCoy reached on an error before getting moved to 2nd on a single by Thames. Jose Bautista grounded into a force out at 2nd putting runners on the corners with 1 away. The Angels then pulled Hunter in from the OF to have a 5 man drawn in infield, with Lind on the plate he grounds towards first and Hunter grabs the ball. Instead of trying for the double play he tries to gun the runner out at home. Not a terrible move because with a good throw McCoy was out, but he throws wide of the plate and the Jays win.

There were a few decisions in game that made people in the game thread cringe, especially in the ninth inning with 2 runners on and Brett Lawrie at the plate he was asked to bunt. He did so successfully moving the runners over to 2nd and 3rd but I really hate that move. I know its easy to say that in hindsight because it didn't work but I think I have made my feelings on this matter clear before now anyways.

Jays of the Day: Romero .451, Janssen .143, Johnson .132, Thames .115, Arencibia .103

Suckage: Rasmus -.241, Molina -.209