KingKat

Wasn't Maddux a pretty hard thrower in his younger years?

http://m.bluejays.mlb.com/news/article/91555448/pompey-among-blue-jays-prospects-set-for-afl TORONTO -- Dalton Pompey will headline the list of Blue Jays prospects participating in this year's Arizona Fall League.Pompey spent most of this season with Double-A New Hampshire, where he hit .295 with a .378 on-base percentage and eight stolen bases in 13 attempts. The native of Mississauga, Ontario, recently was promoted to Triple-A Buffalo, where he's scheduled to finish the season. The 21-year-old is Toronto's No. 3 prospect according to MLB.com and earlier this year he was named to the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game at Target Field in Minnesota. "We welcome the Class of 2014 and the arrival of the Arizona Fall League's 23rd season," AFL director Steve Cobb said. "It's an exciting array of top Draft choices and Minor League All-Stars who have excelled in the early stages of their professional careers. We continue to take great pride in the role the Fall League serves in Major League Baseball's player development process. "Approximately 60 percent of our players will reach the Major Leagues. We want fans to know top young professional talent still will be playing baseball in October and November in Arizona." Each organization is required to send six players to the AFL. Last year, Toronto used the AFL to provide some additional innings to pitchers Drew Hutchison and Marcus Stroman to get them ready for this season. Double-A New Hampshire infielder Jon Berti and Class A Advanced Dunedin Blue Jays left fielder Dwight Smith Jr. will also will represent the Blue Jays in the AFL. Toronto has yet to make a formal announcement on the other players who will be on the Mesa Solar Sox's roster.

It's funny how Jeter always gets what he wants and never comes off demanding. Maybe he's a jerk privately but if so, he and the Yankees have done a pretty extraordinary job of keeping it under the wraps all this time. Maybe I'm naive but I think he just get what he wants because he's genuinely well liked. He certainly seems to have enviable emotional maturity. Even as he gets more and more praised, he keeps the same even keel that he's always had. I wish people would give him credit for that without overating his qualities as a baseball player. He's not the greatest baseball player, he's just a great baseball player whose personality made him perfect for the spotlight he's under.

Also interested.

Interesting to note that Maddux unlike Buehrle wasn't as good at dominating the running game. He was actually quite bad at it according to James. I guess Maddux just didn't need it to control the runners to be successful the way Buehrle does.

That's some seriously circular logic from James.

It takes AnemicOffense to count possibly being homosexual as a negative against a player.

There's actually nothing particularly wrong with Jeter himself. He's not the first player to give himself a retirement tour. Nobody seemed to have a problem with Mariano doing it and nobody seemed to have an issue when Cal Ripken did it. I don't see anyone calling them *******s. Jeter is a good player and he's done a lot of things well in his career. He's a media savvy star player in a large market but that really shouldn't excuse the mainstream sports media for overrating him and over-praising him. That's all on them not on him.

Did Kottaras catch him in September? I really wish the team would at least try to weane Dickey off Thole.

The fact that he was so tore up about not being with his dog should have clued us in that he was a pretty swell guy.

How does Maddux compare to Buehrle defensively? He had 18 gold gloves so he certainly had the reputation of a great fielder. Seems like in some way he was Buehrle with better stuff.

He really wasn't impressive in that Marlins season despite pitching half his games in Florida. I can only speak for myself but I didn't think the A.L. East was the issue per say, I just thought it would expose him as a declining pitcher. Turns out he still had plenty in the tank. Dude just continues to find ways to succeed with less and less velocity. Who know? He might keep this up for awhile longer yet. You simply cannot write this guy off. He's just a freak at doing everything a pitcher can do to help himself short of throwing hard.

I never said Navarro was the worst thing about this team (that's been implied a few times in the discussion since but it was never my contention). I just brought it up as something noteworthy in the context of this discussion. It may not even be a top 3 weakness but it was definitely one of the weaknesses which combined with many others doomed this team. You can live with Navarro if he's the worst player on your team but there were an awful lot of Navarros and sub Navarros getting playing time for this team.

Navarro was pretty bad. Basically an average catcher at 2.0 WAR but less than that once you deduct framing and it took 500 PAs to get to that 2.0 WAR total which is actually more PAs than JPA got last year and we all thought that was an insane amount of playing time for a second division (at best) starter. The Jays really need to find better catchers to give PAs to. Navarro/Thole wasn't AS brutal as JPA/Thole but the Jays still got very little value out of the position for the second straight year.

That's the part I find more problematic. To get back to the McCartney scenario discussed above, the problematic part was that the first instinct was to express ignorance rather than just look it up. It seems like for some people the Internet is just a communication tool not a tool for research. Perhaps this has something to do with growing up the Internet and taking it for granted as a source of information and tool for research.

Reminds me of when people went up in the arms when Paul McCartney played at the grammies and teenagers on the Internet didn't know who he was. Well everybody has to hear about McCartney/The Beatles for the first time at some point. Everyone starts from a point of ignorance.

My point was that since we're throwing around pure hypotheticals anyways, why stop at the chip in the ball. If you're going to just dream up scenarios involving chips, you might as well go whole hog. Maybe it's a knee pad or something. Do the exact logistics of such a dream scenario really matter? (BTW, good to see you back. I miss having your point of view even if haven't always cared for the way your present it).

Seem to me like it wouldn't be any harder to build a chip into the MBL uniforms than it would be to build one into a baseball. In both cases, there would have to be harsh penalty for any tampering.

I'm coming around on Pompey. His ascendacy has been scary fast (from barely discussed prospect to MLB in less than a season) but ultimately you have to love the skill set. The main argument for Gose in CF is the plus defense but Pompey has that too. Pompey is a switch hitter which means he seems more likely to cut it as an every day guy something that seems Pillar and Gose aren't and don't seems terribly likely to become. By all acounts, Pompey has much better makeup than Gose too. There's certainly a lot to like about him. If the Jays could get their hands on a Rajai Davis type and run with a Gose platoon while keeping Pillar and Pompey as insurance in AAA, that certainly wouldn be prudent but even in such a scenario, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Pompey wound up forcing the issue and stole the CF job.

I don't feel like you need to be saber-savvy to accept a poor hitting, good framing, catcher. There are always ways to spin a poor hitting catcher into a positive for the casul fan. "He's a real leader, works great with the pitchers, etc." Whether that's true or not, it's something the casuals can easily lap up. They tend to look for the positives in their own teams players anyways. I'm not convinced having more Ryan Hanigan's in the game will have the negative impact you anticipate. Poor hitting catch and throw guys have been around forever and are pretty easy sell to old school types. You just have to use words like "grit" and "leadership".

Could happen if he fires Boras. Otherwise, I'd consider it a long shot. It's a shame because it's a fit. The guy can field and the Rogers Centre is a good place to rebuild offensive value.

If I had been a FA signing, it would have been a very good one.

That's what he said.

Gose doesn't seem very coachable. Most teams wanted to make him a pitcher and he insisted he wouldn't sign with a team unless he was an OF and his development as a position player has been a mess. He strikes out too much, he doesn't steal effectively despite blazing speed and he generally seems to phone it in when he's in AAA. I wonder if the fast-tracking of Pompey reflects internal frustrations with all of Colby, Pillar and Gose. It's certainly been aggresive. If nothing else it's probably a good thing to put some heat on Gose and not treat him like the appointed one. Pompey, to his credit, has adapted remarkably well to each new challenge.

Some GM is going to come in an win with a team largely assembled by Wren and be given far too much credit for it.