Dick_Pole

Sorry, Alex Anthopolous hacked my account for a second.

Jays get Ortiz. Put him at first. Trade Encarnacion for Price. Profit.

Needs a new category: Whoever I'm betting on.

That would be a nice dream. Right now we have one guy living in a fantasy land where he is going to ride into the sun as a champion but when that fails he will cling onto his 1993 with a big goody smile on his face. The guy underneath him is pretty much coasting and getting an easy paycheck until he gets canned because he knows it's all over. This is what I read from the situation after this off-season.

The thought and hopes and dreams of a contender well exceeded the actual ability of the team. I loved the idea of it, hated the execution of it especially in retrospect. I probably should have hated it right from the start, but like I said I fell in love with the idea of a contender. Not so much AA and Beeston's idea of what a contender looks like. I suspect the vast majority of fans are in the same situation. I partially blame Ricciardi for this. Years and years of him bitching about lack of payroll brainwashed me into believing it was true. Same thing with the prior regime with Interbrew although I don't recall Ash being the crybaby I think it was Beeston or someone else. Lack of payroll has never been the problem. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have never been the problem. The problem is in the mirror for Ricciardi, AA, Beeston, Rogers and all us sucker fans who for one glorious month in December 2012 believed it could be true. Just be thankful that the Raptors are surprisingly good in a shithole division and the Leafs are at least no longer terrible. hopefully that means Toronto is no longer the worst sports city overall.

If we're talking Stanton in a realistic trade, that would only open up more holes elsewhere. This team needs depth. The Jays are pretty well off when it comes to "star" players. The top 5 or 6 guys on this team can compete with the best of them. The problem is there's at least 5 and probably 6 to 8 players who will make the 25 man roster which a truly competitive team should have no business having on its roster. If Stanton comes in a trade, at least 2 quality MLB talents off the 25-man goes the other way (in addition MiLB talent) and the team is even worse off with depth. You can't make Stanton the RF AND the 2B AND a SP all at once.

This is not a fantasy team where you can shuffle your guys around all you want to fit in the best offensive lineup. The marginal pick up on offense is lost with poorer defense Defensively: Lawrie > Bautista at 3B Goins probably > Lawrie at second, at least until he gets some games under his belt Bautista vs Gose???? Not sure. If this was CF there would be some pick up there. But you need a different skill set for RF. Maybe move Gose to CF and have Rasmus and Cabrera throw to bullseyes at the plate from RF and whoever does less terrible takes the job. But my preference would be to leave as is. Bautista only moves to 3B in a desperation attempt to avoid having two of Kawasaki/Goins/Izturis in the lineup once Reyes or Lawrie goes down.

Give this to Carter...*at least* he has the HR and two WS rings to his name. Letting him and Cito f*** up 1996-97...well at least they brought something good to this organization in recent memory at the time. That's a step better than giving guys who never were, aren't currently and never will be MLB-level talent, roster spots.

Goins looks like Babe Ruth next to this kid. I still don't get what's up with the obsession over him? Family member of someone here or something?

But they made some awesome trades! "Despite little success in recent drafts, the Rays have acquired young, controllable talent by trading veteran players, who were nearing Free Agency. The two best examples of this strategy are when the Rays traded Matt Garza to the Cubs and landed Chris Archer, among others, and when the Rays traded James Shields for Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi." Can put any number of Expos trades in there, excluding Bartolo Colon and Mark Langston.

I guess you wrote this (or maybe a friend)? Only someone who personally wrote it would get so upset over someone criticizing "someone else's" (aka their own) work. Alright I'm not going to badmouth the list anymore just end with this...there's a lot more to judging the "best organization" than if the organization just happens to have a few smart people running the player roster side of it. I'm sure there's lots of smart people doing good things in BlackBerry's software division. Would anyone put them on a top list of tech companies? No, because of their blatant weaknesses elsewhere, poor profitability, declining brand name and low stock price.

I didn't see this name here yet and I'm kind of surprised: Billy Koch f***in guy was the hardest throwing pitcher this team has ever had (I think) and three up-and-down years as closer and Hinske was all the Jays could get out of him. Honestly he should be disappointed in himself more than anyone else should be in him...blew a great potential career.

Top Five Organizations by baseballstooge I am a Senior in High School and have my own baseball blog Ok, that explains a lot about the quality of this person's post. Gotta love the sheep who bleat what they think will get them some fandom points in the online world. Heck, if he was old enough to remember the Expos they'd be his #1 pick by far! All they did was get screwed by their pathetic owner and get relocated but otherwise they're like the Rays on steriods.

Ok, this list is stupid and not very well written and the title is misleading. There's a lot, and I mean A LOT of panning and drooling over the absolute stunning brilliance of the TB Rays on this board and everywhere else where baseball nerds collide to talk baseball. They have won ZERO World Series. NONE. Under what metric can they be considered the third best organization in baseball? If you want to make a list that puts TB near the top, you call it "The top 5 best-run organizations in baseball over the last 10 years" or something like that. A list like this that excludes the Yankees is just stupid. Dodgers and Braves as well. You know, teams that have had some recent success, a strong and profitable brand and a history of great baseball tradition.

McGriff and Kent shouldn't count...talent for talent...might as well say Roberto Alomar and David Cone really blossomed while they were here. Carpenter was the one who irks me....let go for nothing. Although if he stayed in Toronto who knows what would have happened because apparently Dave Duncan took over his arm through telekinesis and taught him how to pitch.

Kind of strange comments on his non-commitment to baseball on Rosenthal's Twitter. I'll let the forum experts embed the Tweets.

...or the Jays just can't draft or coach or train pitchers (to avoid injury). I know what you mean but a 4 ERA for two plus years is kind of arbitrary. Did you look at other teams as well to compare? Clemens could easily have had that if he was here long enough. I would say the Jays have had a fair amount of decent pitching performances over the years. Consider also that most of your life has taken place in the "steroid era". I was born in the 80's during a time when the offense was low and players changed teams less often. If the dome was open before 1989 I'm sure Stieb, Key and Clancy would have put your numbers to the test.

Another observation of this pitching staff - despite having 4 solid SP options that pitched 150+ IP and Litsch coming out of nowhere, how many innings were wasted on junk pitchers - puts it into perspective over people who complain about Ortiz, Laffey, Redmond et al last year. This has been an organization-wide phenomenon since a 70 yo career mediocre pitcher called Danny Darwin was given a starting spot for half the year in 1995.

Ah yes, going back to the days when the Rogers Centre was an extreme pitchers park

Well to be fair I think the Jays over/under last year was 91....so technically you would have hit the bet with an under

Too much Ricciardi-pining in retrospect here. Let's not forget he had inherited one of the best pitchers in baseball who was willing to stick around at below market value and Wells' actual tenure here came at pretty decent value. He had a big leg up even if at a somewhat limited payroll. His strengths in player evaluation at the MLB level is masked by his overwhelming weaknesses of being a f***ing douchebag. People are sick of AA talking...well recall back to Ricciardi's speeches which were about the same but also littered with excuses about salary parity and a little bit of sucking his own knob each time too. He should be thankful the Rays sucked until just about the end of his tenure. Don't know what he would have said if they were competitive throughout. Sure he had Godfrey influencing some of his bad decisions but AA has Beeston to deal with so I would assumes the two effects cancel each other out.

This was actually higher than I expected. I was expecting 74-76 based on the World Series odds. I will take the over but only $1K and not $5K like I was planning at 75.

Oh f***, why do I get this feeling someone's gonna try to sell me sunglasses or cell phone accessories at a kiosk in the Scarborough Town Centre?

I like pitching to contact! Defensive plays make more entertaining ball than watching some guy whiff three times in a row. Meh maybe I'm just upset from getting fat over too much damn free pizza.

The players might not know the ins and outs but sure as f*** the agents do...and then the agents relay this information and tell their pitchers to go for the K more often. Come on guys, you gotta admit that when pitchers with mediocre tools start striking 7-10 guys per 9 IP something's odd about that. Even if the offense has reverted to 1980's level of output, K's are way higher than 1980 levels. We're in a strikeout binge just like we were in a home run binge 15 years ago. And if we're in a strikeout binge because of advanced stats, then there's sampling bias and the predictive nature of the predictive stats lose their effectiveness. Note that my argument I'm only focusing on pitchers. In every single circumstance a hitter wants to avoid a K (unless you're Adam Lind and a guy's on first) so advanced stats that penalize a hitter for one makes sense. But the mirror image does not hold. It's not optimal for the pitcher to always go for a K but the advanced stats always reward him for it.