Dick_Pole

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1406&position=OF http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=246&position=OF 66.4 versus 62.1 Earth shattering difference dude....

Ugh. All this added explanation about Raines not being in yet!!! Raines: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/raineti01.shtml Lofton: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/loftoke01.shtml Tell me, what exactly has Raines done that Lofton hasn't done? Raines had 69.1 WAR in 10.3K PA, Lofton had 68.2 WAR in 9.2K PA. At least we are in the position to talk about Raines and how he isn't in the HOF due to drug use, or due to playing in Canada because some people still vote for him. Lofton got knocked off the first time he was on the ballot and has been long out of the discussion. So what's his excuse? Perfectly valid to talk about Raines not being in, but if you're going to do that, you also have to mention Lofton in the same breath and apply reasons that could be applicable to the both of them (small markets, lead off men get no respect, defense and walks are underrated etc). But this is not a Montreal thing or a cocaine thing imo.

If he was in a mall he'd be kicked out my security by now. Fingering up the magazines at Indigo, trying on some new pants at the Gap, testing the treadmills at Sears (ha), and eating all the free samples at the food court.

I doubt there will be a QO, but I do think the Jays have a good shot at re-signing him, and if it's something in the 3 year $20-25M range I think that would be doable.

Same could be said of Kenny Lofton. At least Raines gets enough votes to remain on the ballot. They have very comparable careers. A similar argument could be had for Jack Morris vs David Wells. The guys from the 80's definitely get a lot more leeway from the writers.

Back to the topic at hand, it seems like a good idea to reduce the eligibility. Why string along a borderline candidate like Morris along any longer? If a man can't be inducted with confidence by year 10....

Baseball's not the Olympics...how much lack of integrity did Bonds have when he did something that was frowned upon in other sports but not really enforced in baseball. Then when Selig gets egg on his face he retroactively decides to go on the witch hunt. Maybe baseball should go after everyone who has ever committed adultery and blacklist them from the HOF. There's a lack of integrity there. But I would think the HOF would be pretty barren after that witch hunt. That integrity thing is just something they put in there but is rarely practiced what is preached. Rose's situation is different because he broke a very clear and strict rule and got himself banned, but outside of Rose and Joe Jackson is there anyone that has been excluded from the Hall for lack of integrity? A player that otherwise had passable stats but was excluded for being shady?

If by "low level" he means guys who the Jays gave up for Happ or lower, then yes this deal should have been done in a heartbeat, if true and not just posturing of a home town sports reporter trying to make news from unreliable sources. I don't see why this would even be a debate. Headley provides much more reliable defense. Francisco is a replaceable player that can be acquired cheaply, as evidenced by the fact that the Jays got him for nothing after he was released. Amazing that people can talk pretty freely about selling high on Janssen and Buehlre but selling high on Fransisco (getting anything for him) is met with anything other than 100% agreement that it was a great possible trade. Janssen's a consistent reliever year after year, something that this team has struggled with despite higher than deserved focus on acquiring bullpen arms. The Jays have had no problems acquiring and/or producing guys who hit .250, hit a bunch of bombs and strike out a ton.

Gotta love this team. AA hires Gibbons. AA acquires a bunch of guys like Santos, Rogers etc. Gibbons has no faith in those guys the AA acquires. AA wastes these acquired assets by DFA'ing them. Not to get into the whole hire/fire Gibbons topic that's been overblown, but you would think that AA would have at least hired a guy who shares some of his philosophies so he actually plays the players AA acquires.... Then again if the Jays had a yes-man for a manager then Arencibia might still be with this team. So maybe it's a good thing and these pitchers are nothing more than collateral damage in the "least harmful" option for this team.

lol looks like you don't share Deadpool's concerns.

It's fun to speculate, but it is just speculation. It really depends on the situation and who the Jays would be facing (trouble against lefties, trouble against the knuckleball). To be honest you could make a case for any of the 5 guys in the rotation, which we should really count that as a blessing. AT LEAST this year the starting rotation hasn't been a rotating clown show where if the Jays were in the position of the playoffs, you would scratch 3 guys off the list immediately.

Ugh. That paragraph comparing Beane to Bonds and Ruth annoys me. Of course a GM has an opportunity to score big "WAR" if you rank him on the performance of the entire 25-man roster for 162 games a season. A position player who plays every single inning in all 162 games is still only 1/9th of the team. So you have to divide Beane's performance by 9 to make him comparable to an everyday player. The article brings up some good points but I see it enough times where these stat heads skew the truth like this to prove that their heroes have god-like status in baseball.

...and some of them get pretty child porny...

All of them.

Good start today...the baffling randomness continues.

AA's a pimp I'm sure he takes care of his star players with plenty of hot women.

Tim Johnson, 88 wins. Sadly still the high water mark for this team post-93 WS. I think back to 1998 and all salivate over the potential of that roster. Too bad they couldn't put it all together is the following years. Comparing 1998 to now is night and day. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TOR/1998.shtml

Losing 14-1 is better than losing 14-10. If your pitchers just don't have it that day, might as well have your offense throw up blanks against Lackey.

f***, I hate these threads where they start off normal so I decide to skip to page 8 and all I see are pictures of Jews and personal insults and such. Now I have to go through the other 6 pages to find out exactly where and how this degenerated. This has got to be mind boggling how much wasted talent and how much "sell high" opportunities this team has squandered. Someone mentioned up front that Santos was a key piece in the Kinsler deal that fell apart after someone didn't pass a physical. If this is true: And it was Kinsler who didn't pass, the Jays' doctors are f***ing stupid because he's having a great, injury-free year If it was someone that the Jays offered to the Rangers, namely Santos, then they Jays are still f***ing stupid for not offering a similar arm as a replacement or in addition to Santos to send them all packing. At this stage I just refuse to believe that rumour and hope that the Rangers just preferred Fielder for whatever reason. Which in this case they were f***ing stupid because anything that the Jays offered would have been better than Fielder right about now.

I believe he was trying to say he was born in 1997. My earliest recollection of anything baseball was 1988. I did not grow up in a sports-loving family and had to learn it all by myself. I remember thinking such things to myself like "why is it so hard to score in the E inning"? I didn't even really pay attention to the Blue Jays until 1990. I liked the A's at first because I thought they had really nice looking baseball cards with the green/yellow ensemble. I had terrible taste as a kid.

There's lots of moves AA can do that don't involve trading top prospects.

Hey if we're lucky we'll see a bench clearing brawl after Colby is plunked tomorrow. Well let's just hope that this is one of these stupid clichés that lights a fire under the belly of this lackluster injury-prone team and turns around the season.

It wouldn't surprise me if most of the Rogers' brass didn't even know who Farrell was. But if that's the case I'd be very worried for their shareholders. Imagine if a telecom exec left Rogers to go to Bell and Rogers' immediate response was a spiteful price war against Bell? I doubt that Farrell leaving was a driver for the spending. Honestly, I couldn't point my finger at a single reason why this has happened. It's just been a very odd and disheartening situation. Was it the NHL $$$ spent? Rogers trying to get their financials in order for Bay Street? Lack of trust in AA? If so, why don't they just can him? Is AA just riding it out and half-assing the job knowing the writing is on the wall? Even if the payroll is frozen, he still has some options to shed then re-add if he worked hard at it but it seems that he refuses to do so. This is the same man who fought tooth and nail to get Rasmus here through two other GMs and a dozen players. Creative moves like with Olivo. Now his major thing is waiver wire fodder and being bridesmaid for Kinsler. The AA from a few years ago would have made the Kinsler trade work even if it took a couple other stage-setting moves. His heart for this job was a lot more apparent three years ago than now.

I remember a story about Jim Abbott, the one handed pitcher. He said whenever he pitched in a new setting (high school, college, MiLB) he would have guys bunting to him on purpose to see if he could actually field the ball given that he had to switch between throwing and fielding with the one hand. He did. And now we have this fully-able jackass complaining about someone else taking advantage of a situation (not related to someone's disability but an opening like a shift). If there was an unspoken rule about bunting in baseball, it probably would be "don't pick on the handicapped guy". And yet that did happen and Abbott's response was to get those guys out successfully, not to cry about it.

Yup...f***in team...they are all-stars at PR opportunities at every turn except when it comes to results in the standings.