Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

For the sake of a little levity and because I'm obsessed; how about some Fun with Google Street View!


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Good family fun at ye olde ballyard!

Appease and Thank You

Oh right. The Jays fired J.P. this weekend. How could I forget. Was it the right move? It was certainly inevitable, so what difference does it make arguing? I do, however, take umbrage with the way it was handled and what it means for the future of this team.

I've hardly been shy with my feelings on Paul Beeston. Most Jays writers seem to love him, and that I get. All signs point to him treating them like actual human beings and his schlubby, shambolic everyman persona makes him relatable and likely sympathetic. Despite my harsh words as the firing was announced I doubt I'd take a hard stance in a face to face setting. If he were here right now I'm sure he'd politely decline my mother's offer of Bagel Bits while praising her for giving her son the opportunity to bang away at her computer with his cloven hooves. My mother and I would blush and make excuses and allowances without recognizing the serious pull Beeston has in corner offices all over North America.

That said, two things appear to colour every decision Beeton's made and they do nothing to endear him to me.

1. I get the distinct impression Paul Beeston doesn't think too highly of the baseball fans in this city.
   
2. I also get the distinct impression Paul Beeston doesn't think there is any chance of building a winner in Toronto.

These two things are clearly related but one is worse than the other. I get the sense Beeston realized building a winner in Toronto was impossible on or around Day One of his second stint in Toronto. Everything he's done sinks of him delivering a very specific message to the suits at Rogers: "we can't win but I can certainly make you money."

The events of this weekend only solidify this in my mind. People coming down on the sentimental manager? Protect his unsullied reputation and fire the wildly unpopular GM two days before the season ends! That quickly quashed any discussion of Cito's future, didn't it?

And what forward-thinking young man will you hire to take over as GM? I'm sure this new man provides the fresh vision and unique outlook required to steer his moribund franchise in the right direction, right? Oh, it's a long-serving lieutenant of the old guy! Why inject new blood or start fresh when you can milk the "good Canadian boy finally reaches the apex through hard work and good Canadian perserverance" story as the season winds down.

Each and every move a cynical play at sentimentality, calculated & designed to distract the fanbase from the futility of their pursuit without turning them off completely. Goodwill money looks the same as hope money but it comes much cheaper. Cut the payroll, lay off staff, all the while counting on our worst Canadian instincts of flag-waving and heritage stroking.

It isn't that I believe Alex Anthopolous will do a poor job or is undeserving of his promotion. But are to believe he is some front office savant, held down under J.P.'s oppressive thumb all this time? Once HE calls the shots, things will be different? Somehow I doubt it. It's taken Beeston nearly one full year to find a replacement president, yet he spent all of 0 minutes scouring the world for his next GM? Horseshit.

This isn't the time nor the situation for more of the same. They need to think completely outside the box because not matter how much Rogers is willing to spend, the box will always be too small. So here is my idea:

Another retread GM with mixed results in another market won't do. Best case scenario with an experienced baseball hand; he/she (somehow) improves on JP's draft record, fixes the injury woes and the team suddenly (magically?) improves their situational hitting. Why not just take the $120 million bucks and put it down on 17 at Rama?

Like any smart mid-sized corporation, the Jays need to eschew the MBAbots that swept through front offices over the last decade. Like the wise companies, they need a fresh outlook and unique skillsets. Hire an MFA with a design background and a Computer Science/analytical type. Lock them both in a room with Tom Tango and don't let anybody out until they've changed the world.

They need to fire from completely new angles because the Yankees and Rays defenses are too strong. Innovate or wither on the vine. Do something. Just don't sell the same shitty cake made by the same short-order cook. Just do something I won't expect.

Y.O.Y

Why oh why Brandon League, why did you have to leave such a bitter taste in my mouth for the next 5 months? Not because you cost the Jays a game that meant less than nothing, but because you exhausted the goodwill I spent ALL SEASON building up for you. Nobody else gives a good god damn about you Brandon League, but I've convinced myself and at least one of my dozen readers that you are the second coming! You didn't have a superduper year, but you made The Step which precedes The Leap you are going to make next year as you head into free agency!

Now Brandon, they call it "Fielding Indepedent Pitching" for a reason, it's based on the components rates and averages you produce that help create outs. Low walks? Yup, you got it. Ground balls? Yup, you generate them. Strike outs? You piled up this year. Home runs? You manage to only give them up at the exact worst moment! Basically, this evaluative stat gives you the benefit of the doubt, working under the assumption that the guys behind you are boobs. What this stat can't do for you, Brandon, is account for your own errors. Nor can it TEACH YOU TO THROW THE BALL TO FIRST BASE LIKE A MAN. Sigh.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Managing this team from this day forward. Clearly a wise tactician and man who has the support of the players, there is no reason for the Citocharade to continue one minute longer. I'm referring, of course, to the Rosenweasel report over mutiny in the Jays clubhouse. Wilner supported the sentiment on-air &mdash if not the strong tone &mdash stating numerous uniformed players approached him over the last week to express their disapproval. For me, this uprising stems from one thing and one thing only: Millar.

Players are no different than you or I, they are generally self-interested only. In a vocation where one man has the power to impact your year-to-year earnings so dramatically, the players see Randy Ruiz perform at high level only to receive more pine time in exchange. They see their boss flagrantly playing favorites and they hate it. They (presumably) see their increasingly negative and bitter manager shit down the throat of a 21 year old kid, a player that manager appears to resent penciling into the lineup everyday due to an order from on high. They see a manager with zero faith in two mid twenties outfielders, to the point that he'd rather put a 37 year old player at third base for the first time in seven years.

They see that shit and they get fed up. Quickly. Just as we in the peanut gallery have been fed up since, well, forever. That they go crawling to the Rosenelf is a shame, but it had to come out some time.

So vote for Butter! He made Marco Scutaro millions of dollars and turned guys Johnny Mac into a local legend. He survived one regime change, no reason he can't stick around through the next one.

Roy Halladay - Self Saboteur

Roy Halladay single handedly killed his trade value this week.

After his perfunctory plunking of The Only Swinging Dick in the Sox lineup Wednesday night, Roy Halladay elevated his status among Blue Jays fans from "legend" to "demigod." I don't think I am overstating it when I say the love-in has reached "epic swoonfest." Combine his three hit mastery of the flaccid minor league bats (and Rocco, who went 1-3), Halladay is now, from a consumer confidence standpoint, utterly untradeable. The streets will run run red with front office blood if the living embodiment of all that is good and mighty and just in the world is shipped out for a crateful of arms.

By the by, as my man Rob Iracane pointed out today as we addressed the Walkoff Walk urinals, we shouldn't discount Halladay's effortless dismissal of the Lesser Sox while we all heap copious praise on Zack Grienke. I'm still firmly in the Zack for Cy camp, but have you SEEN the Twins??? I liveblogged last night's game and let me tell you, they are fucking terrible. Awful. They miss Morneau like Jeter misses his 2006 MVP trophy. That they played playoff baseball with the Tigers this week is a travesty. A travesty! Good thing The Zombie will set it all right by carving up the shitty Twins lineup like Millar at a low rent steakhouse.

Lindependence Day!

Let me make two quick apologies: firstly to you the dear reader for subjecting you to such a cheesy and predictable title and submitting this post a day late. I know one day is forever in internet time but I hope you'll bare with me. And secondly to Adam Lind, whom I've shamefully ignored this season.

There is no good excuse for the lack of credit given to Adam Lind, both here and the greater Blue Jays universe. I haven't used the "Adam Lind" tag since APRIL, for crying out loud. During the offseason Lind was a forgotten man after a quiet ending to 2008 and the emergence of Travis Snider, who took up all the hope space in my thoughthole.

Last year, as Lind wiled away in Syracuse, we at Ghostrunner on First dubbed him the OPS EXPRESS. We waited with baited breath for him to arrive on the scene and save the day. And that he did, until he slumped through the second half. We weren't alone in expressing some skepticism over Lind's credentials.

The numbers in 2009 speak for themselves, his .932 OPS and .394 wOBA are impressive in ways I'm not quiet comfortable with. That he's gone unmentioned around here says a lot about the way I think about baseball and players and I don't think I'm alone. We take the here and now for granted while coveting the youth and future, hoping they're the answer to all our prayers. Adam Lind as been that and MORE, a fuck load more. He exceeded any and all projections in 2009 while continuing to provide hope for the future.

Where does that hope come from? This. Adam Lind's Hit Tracker profile. Lind uses all fields with power. He takes what you throw him and mashes it at will. Let's take a look at the pitches he saw Tuesday and what he did with them.



In the first inning he waits on a curveball and drives it to deep center. Next he rides a 94 mph fastball out to center again. Finally he spins on a slider inside, yanking it down the line for cheapy. (Video of all three here.) Pure hitting mastery. What a pro. If I had code-crunching skills I'd do a graph like those found at the bottom of this amazing post, but I have no such R skills and the only guy who could probably help me is having computer meltdown challenges. So my breathless praise will have to do.

Update: I'm asleep at wheel it would seem. Dave Allen created the very graph I longed for today at Fangraphs. Check it out here. Plate coverage like a motherfucker.

Displays like this will keep my faith in Adam Lind. He won't hit 35+ every year but he is a true master at the plate. Sure, he runs like a 8 year at recess and plays the field like a drunk on a unicycle, but he can hit like no other. Well some others, but nobody we've seen around here since Carlos Delgado. The power to all fields, the quick bat. Yum. I promise I won't overlook you ever again Mr. Lind.

Thanks to the usual victims of my theft Daylife, Brooks Baseball, Fangraphs, and Hit Tracker Online

Black Tie Knife Fight

So JP's done and Cito isn't far behind him. Right? Right. The search for a new GM to accompany the new president is surely in full swing. The mold for baseball GM's broke long ago, thankfully and seamlessly moving from wizened former player to learned young wunderkind. JP was a little from column A and a little from column B to predictably (and contentiously) mixed results, so what direction is Rogers likely to go?

If we step back and think about it, the concept of former athlete turned front office honcho is bizarre approaching idiotic. One need only consider the recent downfall of one Wayne Gretzky or the hilarious travails of Isiah Thomas and, to an extent, Larry Bird to see that entrusting minimally educated athletes with multi-million dollar enterprises is about the worst business decision one can make. The rise of Daryl Morey and even BC as smart guys with experience beyond the insular walls of professional sports. Only the NHL, pathetically and predictable, fails to break up this old boys circle jerk and examine the games with a slightly more educated eye.

The next step, logical or otherwise, is an on-field manager with no practical baseball experience. Moneyball first introduced the concept of manager as player-coddling parrot of the front office, an idea that continues to gain ground in the book's seismic aftermath. That said, so much armchair managing is predicated upon the poor, misguided choices of a manager with friends in one corner of the clubhouse and enemies in the other.

I don't mean to suggest that leathered asses and sun crisped skin has no place on the game or in the dugout, nor do I mean to come off as some kind of anti-populist wannabe. But if you are heading up a massive corporation (like Rogers) and have an incredibly large amount of money invested in a not-so profitable arm of the business (like the Jays) wouldn't you want to hire the best people but also the people most likely to give you an edge? When was the last time you saw a company give one of the most important roles to the guy who started out mopping floors (so to speak) and worked his way up to a comfortable role? No way. Jobs like that go to high-pedigree whiz kids with drive, determination, and everything to gain.

Maybe that's a little extreme, a bit too much to ask. A big part of baseball is surviving the sturm und drang of the regular season. What about, rather than having a second wizened baseballman sitting beside the head wizened baseball man, bring in a game theory math whiz. Immerse the nerd in the game, but have him bring some crazy, off-the-wall thinking that the bunters would never see coming.

Would it work? Probably not. The chances of 25 baseball players giving a single ounce of credibility to pencil-pusher B Math are pretty much nil. But, for teams like the Jays, the status-quo isn't going to make get them where they want to go either. Why not do something ridiculous? They have less to lose than they think.

Not Saying, Just Sayin

Were I ask you whom ranked second on the Blue Jays pitching staff in strikeout to walk ratio and groundball rate, first in ground out to air out ratio and strikeouts per nine, third in WHIP for the season, who would say? The man who's second on the team in second half appearances with 25, over which he's struck out 35 and walked 6? Same guy? Fourth on the team in FIP with one of the highest (most damning) ERA-FIP marks on the staff?

You would have to assume that guy's pretty awesome. You'd be right.

Fire Up the Roy Halladay for Cy Young Campaign!

Just kidding! That would be asinine. A vote for anyone but Zack Greinke is a vote for tyranny.

2009 is quite different from last year; when Cliff Lee and Halladay split most of the key stats with "strength of schedule" hanging over the proceedings. This isn't even close. The Zombie's got the Doctor in WHIP, strikeouts, strikeout rate, ERA, FIP, shutouts, number of games played for the Kansas City fucking Royals, home run rate (by a factor of 2), opponents average, opponents OPS, opponents superlatives, WAR, VORP, number of gushing blog posts per start, ERA+, tRA, and just about everything else other than K/BB. Whew.

More impressively, as Joe Posnanski pointed out last week, he is on pace to register one of rarest of all obscure pitching feats: 200/200/200. 200 innings pitched, 200 strikeouts, and an ERA+ greater than 200. Uh, wow.

So let's hope that Halladay can eek out a second straight second-place finish ahead of Verlander and Hernandez. We should never take Halladay's 7 WAR brilliance for granted, but not even the most die-hard, the most myopic, the most mentally deficient among us can tout Roy Halladay for the Cy Young with even a shred of sincerity.

Fancypants photo of the Zombie by the AP and stolen from Daylife

Shames Enters, Ruins Rosterbation Afterglow

A funny thing happened along the way to my perfectly idealized roster. The always with-it Tao and a few others made an important point: in order to hang with the big boys, you need to get splashy and make a big signing. You need to shove all your chips into the middle of the table and make a labored metaphor. This is the exact same thought I had one second before I hit publish on my Adrian Beltre/J.J. Hardy post on Friday:

Wait a minute, do I really believe that adding Hardy & Beltre would be enough for the Jays to be competitors?

I felt awful. I felt dirty and dishonest. There is no way those two&mdash even with Carl Crawford thrown in for good measure&mdash are the missing pieces to the Jays puzzle. But then I thought some more: neither are Chone Figgans and Jason Bay.

If those are the big time, no guts no glory signings the Jays need to make, they're fucked. Matt Holliday is the lower end of guys I'd consider big-time impact players. Figgans and Bay, even if both provided 5 WAR, don't get you much closer. I'm all in favor of a splashy signing so long as the team throws down a legit cannonball rather than a bellyflop.

Let us not forget the Golden Rule

In the wake of my pining for Adrian Belre, some were quick to point to the recent resurgence of both Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista. To which I say: good for them, it means less than nothing. Why? Because we DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN APRIL OR SEPTEMBER.

Consider the pitching woes of our local nine. How many other teams are doing the exactly same thing? Shutting down promising rookies while sending out gassed shadows of their summertime selves (see Romero, Ricky or Price, David.) How many runs did Sergio Mitre yield to the Jays when he was left in the game for the sole purpose of sparing the bullpen. This stuff happens nearly every night in September when teams at both ends of the spectrum&mdash methodically marching towards a division title or restlessly counting the days until October 3&mdash are playing out the string.

Every pitch Scott Richmond throws in pointless attempt to prolong his nascent big league career is one pitch the Jose Bautista of the Tigers or Rays doesn't see in July. I'll cut E5 some more slack but to me, Bautista had 5 months to prove he could still/ever hit.

His strong arm/no range defense is fun to watch as plays at the plate are exciting. In fairness, many outfield assists mean many people are running on you, but Baustista ranks well in Fangraphs more complete ARM metric in limited innings. To his detriment, other part-time outfielders with similar arm abilities all put up vastly superior range numbers. Again to be fair, he's never been a full time outfielder though he did log 600+ innings in the field in 2006. No matter how you slice it, he still isn't much more than a 25th man off the bench.

What does my ceaseless Bautista Bashing have to do with my earlier rosterbation? Plenty. A optical success in September could influence the decision makers into believing Bautista is valuable piece moving forward. You and I know that just ain't so. Every rep he gets the rest of the way is a strike against developing the young talent of this Blue Jays ballclub. Remember, all our hopes and dreams are banking on Aaron Hill's ability to pull everything and sustain a home run per fly ball rate double his career average. The is no amount of insurance too small to consider for 2010.

Something Completely Different

The very good and very wise people at Pitchers and Poets launched a new project called the Rogue's Baseball Index today. An "alternative baseball lexicon" of terms they didn't teach you in Little League. It is great fun and a great way to kill a few stray moments. They were foolish enough to let me contribute a few entries (see related on this entry). Please do check it out.

Where Did I Move?

I knew things were going to be different when I packed my shit and moved to glorious downtown Orangeville. There would be an adjustment period, sure, but one thing I couldn't have considered: Orangeville is a lacrosse town.

At first I didn't think anything of it. Then I started seeing kids with lacrosse sticks EVERYWHERE. On my street, at the park, at the complex where I drag my kid for swimming lessons. Lacrosse, lacrosse, lacrosse. I ducked my head into a sports store on the main drag in search of some new high socks for softball (WWBLD?). What was the response of the guy at the cash? "We don't have baseball, hockey and lacrosse only."

What? Hockey and lacrosse only? That blows. Things came to a head today as I walked through a parking lot. On the back of a shitty red minivan was a sticker with two crossed lacrosse sticks and a web address: baseballsucks.com. Baseball sucks dot com!!!

Look, I like date rape* and power violence as much as any one, but do I go around starting websites bragging about it? I realize the most troglodytic among us need entertainment too, lest they roam the streets in packs crosschecking seniors and doing kegstands on fire hydrants. What I don't understand is why anyone would brand their car like that. I can only imagine the excitement one feels when coming off house arrest, but you can only give exuberance so much credit. Honestly, was taking a shot at glorious baseball really worth it?

* - Nobody loves date rape. Obviously. Besides, no lacrosstitute ever said no.