The Re-birth

Suddenly and emphatically the Toronto Blue Jays announced they are back on the scene 

It will be easy to say this is a risky move by the Jays, that they took on too much money and too many bad contracts. It is. They did.

Jose Reyes got overpaid as a free agent last year (6 years, $106M) and missed good chunks of the three years before that (playing in 295 of a possible 486 games). Josh Johnson is a total gamble*.

Mark Buehrle is by far the surest thing in this deal for the Jays, but he'll be 34 by the time next season starts and has somewhat improbably made at least 30 starts and pitched 200+ innings every year since moving into the starting rotation to begin his second major league season back in 2001.

Those three, along with John Buck and Emilio Bonifaco will cost Toronto over $160M in salary. If Reyes is trending down, if Johnson gets hurt, and if the mileage catches up to Buehrle, it could easily go all wrong.

But even if that scenario plays out, what does it mean? Another 3rd, 4th or 5th place finish? If it doesn't work, it's just status quo. Jays fans are used to it.

Which is why so many of us are thrilled not so much with the actual components of the trade, but that Anthopoulos ultimately pulled the trigger and ownership actually approved it.

And on the bright side, Reyes fills obvious needs both at the top of the order and in the stolen base department. With only 1 year remaining on his hefty $13.75M contract, the 28 year-old supremely-talented Johnson is a chance worth taking. Buehrle is a workhorse, a dependable veteran presence who has won in the playoffs.
 
This trade was a bold move. It might not translate into playoff games for the Blue Jays, but at least it finally feels like they're truly trying to get there again.
 
 
*After a very good rookie year in 2006, Johnson missed almost all of 2007 and more than half of 2008. Johnson was then dominant in 2009 and 2010 (he was briefly considered the best pitcher on the planet during one stretch) but missed most of 2011 (only 9 starts) and was only okay last year when he stayed healthy and pitched 191 innings. For 2013, you really have no idea what to expect out of him.

A Vote for Carlos Villanueva

Q: Why does the Canadian baseball/sports media refuse to give any love to Carlos Villanueva?

CSJ: The easy answer is because neither of Alex Anthopoulos nor John Farrell have ever given them reason to, but we won't go there. Starting over then...Beats me. All he's done is pitched his butt off when asked to fill-in on a decimated starting rotation. In eight starts this year covering 47 innings, he's given up 40 hits and 16 earned runs with 50 K's against 14 walks. Read those numbers again*. They're probably unsustainable, but you'd still think they'd be good enough to at least merit consideration for a starting role moving forward. Yet when referencing the work that needs to be done to fix said rotation for next year, you never hear Villanueva's name come up alongside Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow. You can argue that he is prone to the long ball (12 HR allowed in 21 starts as a Jay) and that with an average of only 5.2 innings per start, he lacks stamina. But Toronto is 13-8 in those 21 games** and with the options currently very thin both in big-league ready prospects and note worthy free-agents-to-be, why isn't Villanueva being touted as a potential candidate for a permanent role as a starter?

*I wanted to include xFIP, WAR, and K/9, which are all awesome advanced stats but after googling my way to very little and not wanting to spend 2 hours separating the starting numbers from his totals, I can only offer this to my fellow stat nerd brothers: his 2012 WHIP as a starter is 1.15 which would place him 8th among AL Starters.

**Including a passable effort over 13 start last year: 72 IP, 85H, 42 earned runs, 42K, 16BB. Again, sorry for the archaic stats but we should really blame the internet because how can Carlos Villanueva's advanced stats only as a starter this year not be at my fingertips? WHY?

Goodbye Jo Jo?

Now that Jo-Jo Reyes has officially tied the record, this is going to be a bigger story.

At 22, 23, 24 it was a minor nuisance, but now, after a disastrous outing in New York, the all-time winless streak could easily take over the Jays current identity. Today's loss will make the American media smell blood and threatens to overshadow the ridiculousness that is Jose Bautista and the overall spunkiness (yup) of a team that has clawed through a difficult early schedule heavily loaded with road games in tough ballparks to remain in the hunt.

Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos has made the 26 year-old southpaw a personal project and despite 28 consecutive starts without a victory, Reyes hasn't actually been totally horrible. At least not all the time. Of those 28 starts, only ten have come for the Jays and of those 10, six have been decent to good. Reyes has no minor league options left, so removing him from the major league roster means they risk losing him for nothing.

It's easy to look at the 28 game streak and say get rid of him, and the media pressure will no doubt intensify over Reyes' next couple of starts. But Anthopoulos has a streak of his own, one that grows with each player transaction. The GM phenom believes in the loser lefty, and Jays fans believe in the GM phenom.

That's why getting rid of a pitcher who fails to win a start 28 times in a row is somehow complicated.

Fixing Major League Baseball

After hearing about the Red Sox swooping in to sign Carl Crawford to a $142 million deal only days after trading for Adrian Gonzalez, I quickly went into yet another doomsday level of panic on behalf of Toronto Blue Jay fans everywhere.

Totally unfair. Ridiculous. What's the point?

It was the same old storyline: How can the Blue Jays ever realistically expect to compete when a maximum of two teams from one division make the playoffs, and the Jays reside in a division with the two biggest spenders in the sport?

Of the last 27 AL East teams to qualify for the playoffs, 24 of those births have gone to either the Red Sox or Yankees.

When the inevitable finally occurs and Cliff Lee accepts somewhere around $160 million from the Yankees in the next few days, the two Evil Empires will have spent around $530 million on five players (Crawford, Gonzalez, Jeter, Rivera, Lee) over the last two weeks. (The Red Sox have agreed to an extension with Gonzalez for about $154 million but won't announce it until opening day in order to save money on the luxury tax.)

In an attempt to have another baseball geek console me and remind me that the Rays have managed to sneak past both Boston and New York and into the playoffs twice in the last three years, I turned to my friend Marshall and quickly began texting up a storm. After several exchanges, neither of us were particularly hopeful that things would get better.

And that's when Marshall came up with gold.

Rather than luxury tax payments going into a pool that is then evenly divided between all the non-luxury taxed teams, why not have all (or at least the bulk) of luxury tax payments stay within the division? Why should the Pirates or Padres or Marlins get an equal amount of Boston and New York's luxury tax dollars when it's the Jays, Rays and Orioles who have to compete with them?

And wouldn't this model actually potentially curb the spending of these teams? If the Sox and Yanks knew that going into luxury tax territory would mean directly financing their AL East counterparts, wouldn't they think twice about their next big acquisition?

State of the Jays

Even as the Jays predictably fall further and further away from the powerful trio atop the AL East, it's been refreshing to see a trait in this team that has been missing for quite some time: Resiliency.

And no, I don't mean that in a "Vernon Wells won't leave the table until he's finished his third double-cheeseburger" kind of way. I'm talking about overall team scrappiness and a never say die attitude that has translated into gutsy team performances and come from behind wins.

There were several times when this particular edition of the Blue Jays could have folded, when it would've been easy to flip the switch off and let the season get away. The back-to-back ninth inning meltdowns against Tampa in early June, the two losses to start the series against the St.Louis Cardinals later in the month, and more recently, heading into Yankee stadium after being swept by the lowly Cleveland Indians all come to mind.

But each time the Jays faced the prospect of being completely buried in the standings they responded and came away with a much-needed win. For a team with extremely low preseason expectations, that means something. Actually, it means everything. Entering a 'rebuilding phase' is basically another way of telling your fans your going to lose. But if you can actually rebuild without turning into the Pittsburgh Pirates for a few seasons, it allows you to potentially speed up the process because your players haven't forgotten how to win. That can make the transition from up and coming to legitimate far less bumpy.

Normally you would point to the manager as a specific reason or a major contributor in developing successful team qualities and characteristics, but Cito Gaston was brought back to sell tickets, not to be a Major League manager. His atrocious handling of the bullpen, stubborn refusal to alter a stagnant line-up, and total neglect for his bench has cost the Jays far more than any gentle whispers of encouragement to the younger players has helped.

Which leads us to the person who has really put his fingerprints on this operation: Alex Anthopoulos, the boy wonder GM who took control of the franchise, at least from a player development standpoint, last fall. After 15 years of trying to patch holes with mediocre free agents when what this team clearly needed was an entirely new foundation, Anthopoulos has Jays fans eagerly jumping on his bandwagon by presenting a blueprint that actually make sense: Stockpile starting pitching and positional prospects, let them develop together, and then add through free agency when it's time to go over the top. So what if I've been trumpeting the exact same game plan in this space for years? (Really, I'm happy that Anthopoulos, a guy who is only a few years older than me, gets to make 10 times more money than I do, travel around North America in a private jet, stay in five star hotels and talk baseball everyday. I'm not bitter at all, not a bit. Hold on a sec...just have to scream into my pillow here. Okay, all good.)

Anthopoulos began his tenure by making what appears to be a good trade under difficult circumstances when he moved fan-favourite Roy Halladay for a package that included Kyle Drabek and Michael Wallace. Both are big-time prospects with high ceilings who should see playing time in Toronto later this year and both could be full-time big leaguers in 2011. Rather than caving in to the (not outrageous but still unacceptable) contract demands of Marco Scutaro, Anthopoulos smartly chose to replace him with Alex Gonzalez, who leads all shortstops in home runs and RBI. He also stole Brandon Morrow from Seattle, signed John Buck for the bargain price of $2 million and claimed Fred Lewis off waivers. Those moves prove that after only nine months on the job, Anthopoulos has earned our trust.

With a cupboard full of young and talented pitchers accumulated by the previous regime and an ownership-endorsed organizational shift in team-building philosophy, Toronto is finally properly positioned to follow the Tampa Bay model and sneak up on the Red Sox and Yankees in a few years.

Rotation Leading the Surprising Jays

A quick look at the current Jays batting order reveals how heavily this team relies on two things: home runs and cheeseburgers. Whoops, I meant home runs and starting pitching.

With zero everyday players batting .300 (Vernon Wells is leading at .286) and the home run totals predictably slowing from their ridiculous pace, Toronto owes their surprising record mostly to a quartet of starters who have done considerably more than just ease the loss of Roy Halladay. They've somehow managed to turn the loss of the best pitcher in baseball into a more complete unit.

When Doc was sent to Philadelphia in the offseason it was supposed to mark the beginning of the end for the Blue Jay rotation. Gone was the man who bordered on invincibility every fifth day, the guy who could handle Boston or New York and anyone else, they guy who was destined to throw a perfect game, and in his place were two inexperienced prospects, a reclamation project, and a player who hadn't thrown a big league pitch since the summer of 2008. Needless to say, expectations were not high for this group.

But nearly halfway through the season three of those question marks have performed solidly and the reclamation project is showing promising signs. Collectively the group has been churning out quality starts (6IP+ and 3 earned runs or less) which has allowed Toronto to capitalize on their home run binge and win games.

Sean Marcum, who had Tommy John surgery in 2008 and missed the entire 2009 season, has more than bounced back. In 14 starts this year Marcum has 10 quality and is second in the AL in innings pitched (92.1) and 5th in WHIP (1.10). Every time he gets the ball he seems to take a shutout into the 6th inning, and right now he's the odds on leader to replace Halladay as my favourite Jay. (I came close to awarding the official title to Aaron Hill after 'the trade' but ultimately decided to wait, so it's currently vacant. Glad we cleared that up.)

It wasn't long ago that many of us pointed to J.P. Riccardi passing on Troy Tulowitzki in the 2006 draft and instead selecting Ricky Romero as ample proof that Riccardi was not fit to be a MLB GM. While Tulowitzki would certainly look good (okay very good) filling the black hole that has been the Blue Jays shortstop position, Romero has quietly developed into one of the best young starters in baseball. He has made 13 starts including nine quality, is 2nd in the AL in strikeouts (91), fourth in innings pitched (90.1), and has two complete games to go with a 1.22 WHIP and 3.29 ERA. On top of those sterling numbers, the kid has some serious moxie and if he was anywhere but where he is, where the spotlight is hogged by two star-studded rotations and another that is all #1 picks, Romero would be much more heralded.

After making 17 starts last year, the soon-to-be 24 year-old Brett Cecil has made 10 starts this year (prior to last night) and has seven wins, seven quality starts, a 0.99 WHIP and a 3.22 ERA to show for it. Cecil, who was drafted 38th overall in 2007, has quickly blossomed at the Major League level.

When Toronto acquired Brendan Morrow from Seattle for Brandon League over the winter, it was seen as little more than two teams exchanging prospects that both had grown tired of. While League has been his usual Jekyll and Hyde self for the Mariners, Morrow, who many Blue Jay insiders claim to have the best 'stuff' of any Toronto pitcher, has put a slow April and May behind him to rack up three straight quality starts. While he continues to fight control issues (his 38 BB's are second in the AL), Morrow happens to be about $600,000 cheaper this year than League and at only 25 years-old, still has plenty of upside.

The combined 2010 salary commitment for those four Blue Jay starting pitchers is just over $2 million, or roughly the same as what the Yankees pay their bat boy. While none of them are anywhere close to replacing Halladay on an individual basis, together they're giving Jays fans reason to believe that this young and talented rotation could be the bridge to October baseball.

Or at the very least meaningful baseball in September.

The Silver Lining(s)?

If you're a Toronto Blue Jays fan, you've probably spent the last week and maybe even the last few months trying to talk yourself into paying attention to the new season.

As Jays fans we've already been doing this for a number of years, so it's not totally new ground. The difference this time is that limited hope for success has now been replaced with no hope. Like none, nada, zilch. We all know there is absolutely zero chance the 2010 Blue Jays will make the playoffs. With our division and our line-up, that's just the way it is.

Instead we need to find reasons that will intrigue us enough to follow this campaign rather than simply taking a pass and checking out until 2011 or 2012.

Here are the five best reasons to care about this Blue Jays season:

1. The legitimate building blocks

If the Jays are ever going to compete in the AL East they will need to follow the Tampa model, and (hallelujah!) it appears new GM Alex Anthopoulos is actually aware of this. What this means is that rather than throwing away money by adding free agents to a team that isn't anywhere close to being a playoff contender, the Jays will patiently develop their own prospects and then, when the time is appropriate, dip into free agency to compliment the roster and plug any holes.

As of right now, this roster has only three players that can truly be counted on to be a part of the future: Aaron Hill, Adam Lind and Vernon Wells. These three are all under contract for at least the next three years and have all proven they are capable major league players. Hill and Lind are both coming off impressive breakout offensive years and both will need to prove it wasn't a fluke by backing those numbers up again this year. Wells has regressed in each of the last three seasons and has a horrifically bad contract, but he is still a known commodity that can contribute. These three players are the foundation and core that the position players will be built around, and 2010 will be an important measuring stick to determine exactly how good this group can be, and what type of players they will need to be surrounded with when it comes time to actually compete.

2. Randy Ruiz

Since being signed by the Reds in 1999, Ruiz has been a part of eleven different franchises and has played a grand total of 55 games in the big leagues. Ten teams have given up on the 32 year-old and at times this spring it sounded a lot like the Jays were about to be the eleventh despite the fact that Ruiz hit 10 homeruns in only 115 AB's for Toronto last year. Ruiz has a career .378 OBP and .909 OPS in the minors and tore up the Puerto Rican Winter League this past offseason. The guy can flat out hit, and if the Jays give him a real opportunity, he will be the non-suprise surprise of the season.

3. The fake umps
Watching the two guys dressed in replica umpire gear, complete with face masks, mimicking the home plate ump from the first row behind the plate is like listening to someone do the Zohan voice or watching contestants on Wipeout destroy their bodies - it just never gets old.

4. Development of the young arms

Anthopoulos has a bevy of young and talented pitchers that are at various levels of their development and this year we'll find out if any of Brandon Morrow, Brett Cecil, Ricky Romero, Mark Rzepczynski, and perhaps Kyle Drabek will develop into dependable major league starters or possibly even something more than that. Morrow and Romero are currently in the rotation but all five are likely to get starts at some point and the pressure is on both the management and the players themselves to do more than just gain experience. They need to learn how to perform in front of the rabid crowds at Fenway Park and Yankee stadium.

4.5 The Replacements

Lyle Overbay, Edwin Encarnacion, Alex Gonzalez and John Buck are all on the last (or only) year of their contracts and are nothing more than stop-gap players. None have a long-term future with the organization which means four new fielding positions are likely to open up for the 2011 season. Brett Wallace, who was obtained as part of the Roy Halladay trade, will have the opportunity to play both first and third base in the second half of the season and another prospect acquired in the Halladay deal, catcher Travis d'Arnaud could also get a look. Assuming Travis Snider figures things out and gets on his way to becoming the player he is projected to be, all of a sudden the 2011 and beyond Jays have considerably more potential for friskiness. And if the rumoured signing of 19 year-old Cuban defector Adeiny Hechevarria ever becomes official (his $10 million contract is apparently being held up by Canadian customs), the Jays may have finally found their shortstop of the future.

5. Roy Halladay

Even though Doc is no longer a Jay, he was traded to the National League which means Toronto fans don't have to worry about cheering for him at the expense of our own club. If he had gone to the hated Red Sox or despicable Yankees, Jays fans would've been forced to cut ties forever with our long-time hero. But because he ended up in the 'other' league we can continue to follow him closely and root for him as if he were still one of our own. Watching Roy destroy the weaker line-ups that populate the Senior Circuit (we could be looking at a Koufax-like year from Halladay) will provide a certain amount of relief in what will otherwise be a very difficult year to be a Jays fan.

The Man Behind the Mask

Until now, I've been writing under an alias.

Hiding behind a vague (but witty?) moniker, I've opined and mocked my way through two years and 70 columns without hinting at who I really am. Now, granted, this isn't quite the same as Bruce Wayne revealing himself as Batman...but it is finally time to come clean.

My name is Alex Anthopoulos. You may know me as the new GM of the Toronto Blue Jays. I replaced the hatchet-man J.P. Ricciardi on the final weekend of the regular season and recently unveiled my new game plan that will transform Canada's only Major League baseball team into a contender. Maybe.

Well, actually I initially went public with my blueprint here, but I've been sitting on about 60 readers for most of a year so it didn't exactly make a huge splash when I first announced it back in July.

Anyway, because all of you have been "with me from the start" - I will now decipher my recent media comments to allow an inside glimpse at what I really have in store for the future of the franchise.

Quote: "I know that everything we will do will be obviously to improve the team, but it won't be a quick fix, or it won't be to sacrifice the ability to have a long, sustained run of success here."

Translation: The key to not answering a question is talking in circles, and I illustrate that beautifully here. The first part of my quote makes no sense whatsover. None. That is the point. The second half of my quote might as well be a picture of pigs flying through the sky because a long, sustained run of success is not even remotely possible. That is pie in the sky thinking, but I had to say it to give our dwindling fanbase something to believe in. Realistically, the best case scenario is us catching the Yankees or Red Sox in an off year and sneaking into the playoffs. If we draft and develop well, there is a sliver of a chance of that happening in 3-4 years.

Quote: "I think when people talk about a rebuild, it would be tearing down a team and trading away numbers of players. I don't know that we have that necessarily. I think we have a lot of good young players, I just don't think we have enough."

Translation: This is a direct shot at my predecessor, who was ornate, prickly and mostly a terrible judge of talent. His only friend in the game is the agent for Vernon Wells. We have a couple of very good position players (Lind and Hill) who are building blocks, one excellent prospect (Snider), and a bunch of young guys who might be big leaguers but could easily be busts, or players that are just good enough to lose with. You know, like Overbay, Frasor, League and McGowan.

Quote: "There are several players I'd be very reluctant to trade. That being said, I have to be open-minded to anything that could make this club better moving forward. Halladay stressed his timeline for winning and ours may not mesh and may not match."

Translation: Roy is as good as gone. He has thrown his last inning as a Jay and everyone should be prepared to see a headline announcing his departure. The two draft picks we would get if we held onto him through next year and then allowed him to walk as a free agent are miniscule compared to what teams will part with this winter, and we will accept the best offer. Unless that offer comes from Boston or New York at which point I will do the right thing and tell Epstein or Cashman to *%@# right off.

Quote: "With respect to payroll, there's really no defined number going into next season...ownership is fully committed to giving us the payroll if the right baseball opportunity presents itself."

Translation: We have no idea what our number is and Rogers isn't about to tell us. I'm on a need-to-know basis, and Mr. Beeston tells me that I don't need to know. It's safe to assume that our payroll will continue to decrease the next few years while we stockpile young players and try to figure out who can be part of the long-term plan. If any of you were dreaming about Jason Bay or Eric Bedard, well, sorry. Ain't gonna happen.

Needless to say, the future is not overly bright for us. Without realignment or a total overhaul of the current playoff system, our postseason aspirations are largely a mirage. The idea is to build a youthful, talented and cheap core that can eventually be bolstered with a couple of free agent signings to push the team over the top. It's a good plan. No really, it is. But there is no guarantee it will work.