Dick_Pole

That's what I'm thinking about. When s*** hits the fan that's when AA and Beeston might have the noose around their neck but by then it could be too late.

The corporation seems pretty happy that the team is on track to their budget - for now. I interpret this as AA and Beeston's jobs are safe in the near term. Reading this and the rest of their transcript, I'm not sure how much more willing the corporation is with continuing to open up the purse strings beyond what it has already done. When looking at it within a greater context, Rogers' Media division stands out like a sore thumb in terms of costs going out of control. Every other division is cutting costs or are relatively flat because the company isn't gaining a lot of traction in terms of revenue. They admit than $35M goes to the lockout programming and the Jays. The good news is that there's no NHL lockout next year so they could use that money to slightly increase the Jays payroll and still have it look like costs are contained within the Media division.

Not sure if anyone was paying attention, but Rogers released their Q2 results on July 24th. After reading through their transcript to put together some competitive intelligence as part of my job, I encountered some of their comments on the Jays. http://www.rogers.com/cms/investor_relations/pdfs/quarterly/transcripts/Q2-2013-Transcript.pdf The key part of it was what was said by Tony Staffieri, CFO: Turning to our Media segment. The largest contributors to revenue growth for our Sportsnet properties, the Shopping channel and higher attendance at the Blue Jays games. Our total media revenue growth of 7% in Q2, the acquisition of theScore comprised about 140 basis points of that. However, overall revenue growth at Media continue to be constrained by softness in the advertising markets across most divisions, underscoring the importance of our growing subscription revenues in this segment, tied to valuable content customers are willing to pay for. Notwithstanding Media's strong cost efficiency improvement activities in the quarter, 2 specific items caused Media's adjusted operating profit to decline year-over-year. The first was the residual impact of the NHL lockout that compressed a large number of hockey games, specifically 34 more NHL games than last year, which Rogers Sportsnet produced and aired, driving significantly higher programming cost in the quarter. The second item was the seasonal impact of increased Blue Jays player salaries, reflecting the strategic decision late last year to make investments in the depth of our baseball teams' talent. While we continue to be optimistic about our team's successes in the field, the effort has proven successful in terms of boosting ticket sales. Blue Jays revenues were up a strong 27% from Q2 of last year and the financials are tracking to our plan. The impact of these 2 expense items at Media was nearly $35 million. So as you can see, we're continuing to successfully execute around cost management initiatives across our Media properties, having offset significant portions of these items.

Oliver can't be traded remember? He's gotta be around so he can be the winning pitcher when the Jays battle in game #163 for the second wild card spot. #20GameWinningStreak

Jays should get Vernon from the Yankees then trade him back to the Angels for Kendrick.

Yes, let's hope the Rangers agree. Lind + for Andrus would make me happy.

Hopefully this is just posturing.

AA needs to be spending the next 2-3 hours dealing with the Rangers. If it's not a deal centered around Bautista/Profar, then maybe he can peddle off Lind. Out of the power hitters available, Lind can't be too far down the list behind Bautista or Encarnacion.

Oh great...AA has an interest in Kendrick...which means he's going to overpay or do something stupid. If it was the other way around, say Angels had an interest in X Jays player, I'd feel a lot better about it.

Lump of coal....or Santa came in and stole your TV.

Another guy destroyed by the inept player development scheme of this team. I mean, JPA thinks he's good. He's not. And the Jays serve no purpose letting him think otherwise. I can understand the issues with catching. If he doesn't have the eyes or reflexes for it nothing can be done no matter how hard he tries. But if he wants to stay in this league he HAS to improve his overall approach at the plate so he has value at 1B or DH. There's nothing so atrocious about his swing that can't be fixed with some good coaching and humility on his part. This is not the 1980's anymore where guys like Rob Deer can pull off 10 year careers.

If JPA could at least add 50-75 points to his OBP he'd at least have some value as a DH. That's a big if though. JPA being out of the league soon should be a legit concern to him. He reminds me a lot like Josh Phelps in terms of hitting style. Phelps was pretty much relegated to a couple seasons of a power bat off the bench before he was completely out of the league once the Jays traded him away. And Phelps has a career OBP of .343.

Ryan Doumit doesn't even play at C for two-thirds of the time, and has played several positions in his career. Might as well compare his hockey skills to the worst NHL player and then say oh no, Doumit is the worst player so that guy is actually only the second worst.

Well...a trade is very possible in August.

Kind of like Utah Jazz or LA Lakers.

I would trade Cecil because he probably brings in the most value out of everyone. Someone will think he can become a starter where the Jays have already been down that slippery slope and have failed. Selling him at a pretty high point for the outside chance he becomes the next CJ Wilson is a risk I'd be willing to take. As far as the tweet I interpret it as her not being able to tell her sister when they will be in TB next as in the Jays next visit to TB, because he might not be on the team then...doubt they trade him to either AL East opponent.

If Asher W got plunked in the head instead of Happ, the trade goes from "not horrendous" to pretty good imo. You can't really call this trade a win or loss right now because it was freakishly bad luck that Happ got injured. Unlike all the other injuries this team gets to their pitchers which screams poor conditioning and development.

How was that a good argument? It was a s*****, incomplete argument in my view. You can't just look at some stats say "large sample size" and be done with it. You have to think too. Let's say your sport was baseball or hockey or whatever. And we made you play with a bunch of 18 year old (if I recall your 15/16 yo, around there). You might not exactly be dominant but if you held your own people would say you're pretty damn good. That's what Profar has been thus far in his life. This skinny little 160 pound **** occupies a spot on an MLB roster right now. Imagine how good he can be when he finishes puberty and looks like a man. That being said, I don't think Profar is nearly enough to fetch Bautista. He occupies an MLB spot now at 20, which means he'll be a FA by the time he's 26. That means he could walk before the Jays ever see his peak value, or take a chance and overpay someone for "potential".

I'm looking at it from AA's perspective of trading the team's perceived top star for prospects...not going to happen. But if you sell it as a significant upgrade at OF/DH and as not too much of a downgrade by giving up one of those three SP for Darvish, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. Actually let me put it this way...I think there's a greater chance that the Rangers would bite at giving up Darvish than AA would bite at giving up Bautista for nothing but prospects. If the chance of the Rangers giving up Darvish is 0.001% then AA giving up Bautista for something other than a hyped current MLB star is 0.0001%.

If you're in for a penny you might as well go in for a pound. Bautista and one for JJ, MB or Dickey for Profar and Perez +++ In order to deem this as a retooling, the Jays would need to get back MLB-ready players right now. Or if AA really knows how to pull strings...don't flame me too much on this one....Bautista and one of those starters for Darvish and Profar. My thinking is there's no way AA deals away his top star with the current way this team is constructed unless he can get a legit star back in return.

I don't get why people dwell on Napoli all the time. The main purpose of that trade was to get rid of Wells. For whatever reason he didn't feel he needed Napoli on the team and the main mission was accomplished. Blaming him for the bad Napoli trade outside of the greater context isn't fair imo.

Eddie Gaedel

It would be nice to follow the individual stories except really, even those aren't that great...this team was supposed to be some sort of all-time record stolen base threat. That's what happens when you're never on base I guess. They should just have the green light all the time on everybody...takes me back to the days of watching cocaine-induced run-a-thons of the 1980's. If you're not going to win at least try to be entertaining.

lol all of this mocking of this guy and his ace reliever nonsense. Then when the team has anyone named Francisco or Kevin Gregg running the show there will be dozens of posts "IF ONLY WE DIDN'T HAVE THESE 20 BLOWN SAVES WE'D HAVE 94 WINS AND A PLAYOFF SPOT" littering the board like the other one two years ago. How long was Jason Frasor on this team racking up decent RP numbers but as soon as he's put into the closer role he turns into a bag of s***. People should know better than to mock the closer role when the Jays finally have that solved after many, many attempts to fill it since Duane Ward. I don't disagree with trading 1 or 2 RP from surplus but at least one of Janssen and Delabar must stay here and preferably both imo. Relying on Santos or McGowan as closer/late inning specialists is no guarantee for success. It's funny when people say Casey is at his peak value, the exact same thing was said of Scott Downs when he was here. Using advanced stats to predict his decline once he left as a FA. Well here we are 3 years later and he's had three pretty effective years in LA. No one really knows when Janssen will decline. He has a pretty good mindset for a closer, the best we've seen in years for the Jays and his ability to fill the role surpasses his actual pitching talent so he could have a good 5 or 6 years of effective late inning relief left in him even if his velocity declines. Now whether or not the Jays can resign him after 2014 or if signing him is wasted money if this turns into a s*** team 2014 and beyond that doesn't need a closer is another debate altogether.

Why? Because he'll be dead last out of all Jays players to meet the qualified minimum of 1,500 plate appearances in BA and OBP. It's funny because with a .223 career avg and .270 OBP with both those stats heading in the wrong direction, it's not even close. Up until now 45 players have made the minimum requirement. Ed Sprague and Alex Gonzalez are last in BA at .245 and Alfredo Griffin is last in OBP at .280. Imagine if he still had his Twitter account we could point that out to him. What's kind of sad about this is that Colby is not too far off from 1,500 PA either and with a .231 BA in a Jays uniform, he'll bridge the gap between last and second last for JPA. So let's hope he has a hot streak for the rest of the year to bring that up a bit and to help us forget that we have had to live through two Jays regulars that could be the worst hitters for average the team has ever had. Here's the leaderboard as it stands. Check out #11 for OBP...I wouldn't have guessed he's that high...pretty impressive list of players that he ranks above. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TOR/leaders_bat_50.shtml Batting Average (?) Rank Player Batting Average PA 1. Paul Molitor .315 1839 2. Roberto Alomar .307 3105 3. Frank Catalanotto .299 1783 4. Shannon Stewart .298 4052 5. Tony Fernandez .297 5900 6. John Olerud .293 3689 7. Damaso Garcia .288 3756 8. George Bell .286 4883 Shawn Green .286 2766 10. Alex Rios .285 3354 11. Carlos Delgado .282 6018 12. Barry Bonnell .281 1647 Reed Johnson .281 2302 14. Rance Mulliniks .280 3470 Vernon Wells .280 5963 16. Fred McGriff .278 2322 17. Darrin Fletcher .276 1927 18. Roy Howell .272 2168 19. Orlando Hudson .270 1780 Devon White .270 2979 Al Woods .270 2171 22. Adam Lind .269 3205 23. Lyle Overbay .268 2854 24. Edwin Encarnacion .266 2136 25. Jesse Barfield .265 3869 Aaron Hill .265 3642 Willie Upshaw .265 4172 28. Bob Bailor .264 2052 29. Jose Bautista .261 2616 30. Kelly Gruber .259 3372 Eric Hinske .259 2559 32. Garth Iorg .258 2615 33. Joe Carter .257 4494 Lloyd Moseby .257 5799 Otto Velez .257 1843 36. Pat Borders .256 2463 John Mayberry .256 2102 38. Gregg Zaun .255 1922 39. Manuel Lee .254 2357 40. Ernie Whitt .253 3977 41. Rick Bosetti .252 1522 42. Jose Cruz .250 2901 43. Alfredo Griffin .249 3655 44. Alex Gonzalez .245 3634 Ed Sprague .245 3527 On-Base% (?) Rank Player On-Base% PA 1. John Olerud .395 3689 2. Carlos Delgado .392 6018 3. Fred McGriff .389 2322 4. Paul Molitor .387 1839 5. Roberto Alomar .382 3105 6. Jose Bautista .380 2616 7. Otto Velez .372 1843 8. Rance Mulliniks .365 3470 Shannon Stewart .365 4052 10. Frank Catalanotto .361 1783 11. Gregg Zaun .354 1922 12. Tony Fernandez .353 5900 13. John Mayberry .352 2102 14. Lyle Overbay .350 2854 15. Edwin Encarnacion .346 2136 16. Shawn Green .344 2766 17. Reed Johnson .342 2302 18. Eric Hinske .337 2559 19. Willie Upshaw .336 4172 20. Roy Howell .335 2168 Alex Rios .335 3354 22. Jesse Barfield .334 3869 23. Lloyd Moseby .333 5799 24. Barry Bonnell .331 1647 Jose Cruz .331 2901 26. Vernon Wells .329 5963 27. Orlando Hudson .328 1780 28. Devon White .327 2979 Ernie Whitt .327 3977 30. George Bell .325 4883 Al Woods .325 2171 32. Adam Lind .321 3205 33. Darrin Fletcher .318 1927 Aaron Hill .318 3642 35. Ed Sprague .315 3527 36. Bob Bailor .314 2052 37. Damaso Garcia .312 3756 38. Joe Carter .308 4494 39. Kelly Gruber .307 3372 40. Alex Gonzalez .304 3634 Manuel Lee .304 2357 42. Garth Iorg .292 2615 43. Pat Borders .290 2463 44. Rick Bosetti .289 1522 45. Alfredo Griffin .280 3655