Anyway...enough about me potting garbage goals and watching the inside of my eye lids. 5 more thoughts on the Blue Jays offseason!
1. After being non tender by the Blue Jays on Tuesday night...Justin Smoak turned around and signed a 1 year 1 million dollar contract with your Toronto Blue Jays! I like the upside of this deal given the power potential, him playing half his games in a homer dome then a good number of road games in hitter friendly AL East parks, it's pennies financially, and they still retain a year of control if everything works out. Sure the worst case scenario is that he's horrible, but it's not like 1st baseman are really that hard to find compared to a 2nd baseman who can hit anyways!
2. Late Wednesday afternoon word got out that the Toronto Blue Jays traded current member of the starting rotation JA Happ to the Seattle Marniners for Good Old Canadian Boy from Victoria BC Michael Saunders. First off I like this Trade! JA Happ is a FA at the end of the 2015 and baring him coming out and dominating for 3 months... right now is the time to deal him if you want to get maximum value. In Saunders you get a guy to play LF Well, Got some Wheels and moving to the Roger's Centre "Should" help his bat (which looked to be taking a turn for the better last year). Yes, I would rather have Melky then Saunders (Lots of power in the line-up currently and they need more contact hitters) but this deal allows the team to do so much more to the overall line-up than signing Melky would have. Anyways.....What I took most from this deal is that Alex Anthopoulos is doing exactly what he said he was going to do this offseason. At the end of the year AA said that he was not going to let the market dictate what Jays plans are for the offseason. Waiting around to see how thing splayed out was not an acceptable strategy, and this deal to me is a perfect example of this. I think the Jays did want Melky back, but even though they said that they didn't have a time frame on getting a deal done with Melky, this trade for a Left Fielder with potential and control right before the winter meetings says otherwise. AA now has no Left Field issue to deal with, He's potentially cleaned up some of the bad eggs around the clubhouse and how will spend the Winter Meetings fixing his bullpen. It's Alex's World this offseason and we are all just living in it!
3. The past few days have seen a number of the regular Blue Jays reporters are starting to stress that the Jays have XXX amount of Money left to spend this offseaosn based on the previous year's player salary budget. That's all well and fine, but what makes me question all of this with a Rockian Eyebrow is if this is the case, why does Paul Beeston go out of his way to say that Payroll is going up this year? I get that if it even goers up by 1 million year over year it's technically going up, but to me why would you put yourself in a position if it's minimal increase. I don't get the need to build false hope and then need to justify your statement through semantics.
4. Good Old Boy John Gibbons was on the Jeff Blair Show on Thursday and the conversation at one point turned to the the topic of putting Aaron Sanchez into the starting rotation for 2015. Gibby didn't hold anything back and pretty much said that 99% we are going to see Aaron Sanchez as a starter for the Blue Jays in 2015. I'm not convinced this is the case. I'm not saying he can't go there and pitch well, but I still think the Jays make a play for another starter and may end up putting Sanchez into the Closer role. Gibby really liked him there and he has the stuff to dominate in that role for a long time!
5. So now it looks like the focus for the Blue Jays will shift to the helping upgrade the bullpen, which in all reality how this turns could determine how next season will play out. We've seen over the last few years that a truly dominant bullpen can help push a team towards playoff glory and how a terrible bullpen will turn a good team into a mediocre one. I'm still not convinced the Jays see the value in giving crazy $ to the two big FA bullpen arms that are out there in David Robertson and Andrew Miller, but to say I would be surprised if they did sign either one would mean I didn't learn anything from the offseason so far. Still I believe we see the Jays bring in 2 or 3 relievers in the next few weeks. I could see them looking seriously at Luke Gregerson, Sergio Romo, Jason Grilli and maybe even taking a flyer on Jason Motte.
Next week we have the Winter meetings! One of the most exciting times of the year in the baseball world! I don't expect the Jays to do anything overly significant next week, but i'm sure there will be rumors aplenty that will keep those in Jays nation talking for some time!
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