I've said this before, but I find the off season in baseball to be the more exciting off seasons in all professional sports. Much like the baseball season it's off season is somewhat of a marathon than a sprint. It starts out with a lot of house cleaning for teams and as the months wear on organizations do do their best to put the next World Series Champion together.
Here's a quick look at what the Jays did this past week.
- The Blue Jays hired new hitting Coach in Kevin Seitzer. Seitzer comes in to replace the fired Chad Mattola. I am not well aware of Mr. Seitzer's past work, but from what i've read/heard he was hard nosed hitter who is looking for guys to use all fields and come out with a different approach with 2 strikes. I like it. However I think there is obviously some guys on the team that may not thrive under this philosophy. One of them being Colby Rasmus. This past year was a revelation for Colby and if I remember correctly Mottola made things simple for Colby and I think with a guy like Colby his new found approach may be the best thing for him. I hope Sietzer is a guy who can read guys and figure out what works best for them.
- The Jays exercised the options on Casey Janssen, Adam Lind and Mark Derosa. Janssen and Derosa all seemed like no brainers. Janssen`s 2013 was pretty remarkable and as a Bench/Veteran role player Mark Derosa was exactly what the Jays were expecting to get from him. The 7 million option on Adam Lind of the three options is the only one that had a possibility of not being picked up. Although Adam's 2013 was decent he still struggled with LHP and went through a couple long stretches where he couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. The bright side of picking up Adam's option is "if" he's able to sustain some consistency over 2014, 7 Million isn't all that much.
- The Blue Jays declined to pick up the 1 million dollar option for Munenori Kawaski. Yeah I liked Kawasaki and what he brought to the Team, but if he's on the team in any other role than a back up infielder we aren't going to be any closer t the playoffs than we were this year. If they can re-sign him to a minor league contract I think all Jays fans should be happy with that. One thing for sure. Kawasaki will always have a place in the hearts of many Jays fans.
- The Jays are also reportedly in deep thought on whether or not if they will be offering Josh Johnson a qualifying 14.1 Million offer for 2014. If they don't qualify him the Jays will get nothing for the year they spent with Johnson and if they do and he chooses to reject it they will compensation from the team that ultimately signs him. I'm for signing him to the qualifying offer. 1. It't not my $ and 2. I think he's going to come back next year and have a big year. Yeah you'd be overpaying for him, but that's what we have to do it seems in order to bring elite talent to Toronto. The Jays have until 5 pm on Monday to make their decision.
- Already in this off season we are are well on our way to hearing the Blue Jays linked to numerous different trade and free agent options. ie Gordon Beckham. If we've learned anything over the past few years we need to remember that if we hear the Blue Jays are interested in someone we should probably scratch that guy off the list.
Not really on the Jays 2014 off season front....
- The new book by Shi Davidi and John Lott "Great Expectations" came out this week and I i was lucky enough to read the 1st 13 pages as they were put out on the web. If the rest of the book is anything like the first little expert was like I'm really going to be looking forward reading the whole book. My question however is this....From what I've read both Davidi and Lott seem to have some extra information that is new to Jays fans from the mess that was last year. so that being said. Does that mean that they would have been withholding info from the daily beat of the Jays world that could have effected the way the fans were looking at the team during the off season and spring training or was this info for the book gathered after the fact? Just curious as if they knew the info about Farrell being at ods with AA back in the day were they told to exclude if from daily beat or were they holding info in order to write the book? Either way i'm sure that they idea of the book was meant to have a much different ending than it ended up with.
Anyways... The off season is now upon us and let's sit back and enjoy!
