KingKat

I wouldn't have an issue with it honestly. No worse than Rasmussen.

Perhaps... But I feel like you'd have to overpay. Otherwise, Lawrie and his agent will just turn around and hope he has a healthy season and raises his value. I don't think there would be a discount and frankly, it would have to be a hell of a discount to override concerns about him staying on the field. He'd have to be paid like a part time player that he essentially is and I can't see him and his agent accepting that.

Sure in theory but it's only ever clear in hindsight whether a player has peaked or has bottomed out. Maybe this is a good as Pompey will ever look (I'm assuming you were referencing him above) and maybe he's going to climb up the charts (so to speak). If it's the former, the team will really regret selling high if it's the later, they will regret selling low but they'll only know that for sure after the fact.

Name one person who doesn't realize this.

Wait... people STILL want to extend him? I would have thought the last few season would have put some rain on that parade.

I don't remember TwistedLogic from the old board much less what he might have said about Romero but I don't think it's that far-fetched that he would have been against the Romero extension. Question marks about Romero go back to well before the extension. He had a pretty s***** minor league career and he only seemed to figure things out once he worked with Arnsberg. He turned it aroung pretty dramatically. I could understand why someone would have been skeptical of his turnaround. I believed in it myself mostly for the simple reason that I wanted to believe it. His turnaround was a great story but there were skeptics. Keith Law for one always spoke poorly of Romero. I don't think it's crazy to think TwistedLogic might have subsribed to Law's point of view.

Maybe his worst free agent contract but it certainly doesn't compare to picking up the Reyes contract via trade. As far as free agent contracts go, the Melky contract is pretty bad but mostly because of last year's completely unforeseen implosion which can't really be pinned on AA. The Maicer contract was pretty terrible especially when you consider how much better off the Jays would be if they had just went with Aviles and not signed Maicer and made that disaster of a trade with Cleveland.

Conversely, you can look at Tim Lincecum. The Giants went year to year with him and they ended up giving him a ton of money in arbitration but by the time the years of control were up, he wasn't the same pitcher anymore and he wasn't commanding the kind of money it would have cost to lock him up earlier. There's something to be said for paying more in the short term to avoid the risk of a long term contract. This looks like the route the Jays are taking with Lawrie, for one, and as Moogy pointed out, his troubles staying on the field have vindicated the patient approach the Jays have taken. A couple of years ago, there were some fans just screaming for the team to lock Lawrie up. If that had happened, we would probably be asking ourselves today if it was really worth it because frankly he hasn't done a whole lot in recent years to justify an extension.

It's just about the ones that walk away, it's also about the ones that should have (Wells). That beind said, I get your point. The Jays generally extend players when they get close to free agency and they will probably continue to do it as long as the contracts are not of the Vernon Wells scale. On the other hand, what I think the Jays won't be doing anymore is the Lind and Romero type deals where the player is far away from free agency. That's what we're seing right now with Lawrie.

I think anyone who thought he wasn't a top prospect actually SHOULD change their mind because that's a dumb thing to believe in the first place. I'm practically the leader of the trade Sanchez train but I would never say he's not one of the Jays best prospects. The whole point of trading him is that he does have good stuff, he is a legit prospect and you should be able to get something out of him if you trade him now but since he's also spun his wheels a fair bit, you might want to cash him in rather than risk him having another bad season and losing value. Do you risk having him come back to haunt you if you trade him? Of course you do but that risk is the whole reason why you can still get something for him if you trade him soon. If he was just a struggling pitcher with o.k. stuff he wouldn't be much of anything really. There has to be something there. He's a guy with great stuff and serious question marks about his ability to put it together. A legit prospect with legit question marks. That's what he was coming into the season and that's what he is now. He flashes amazing potential at times (most notably in the AFL) and he undeperforms overall. Nothing has changed really but if someone who thought he was just a bum and a complete lost cause (and yet somehow still a ranked prospect for reasons unknown) has had their eyes opened a bit, that's actually a good thing.

No of course no one knew that but Romero illustrates the risk you take when you extend a pitcher.

Exactly. A couple of starts, even crappy ones, could be very helpful.

Stroman seems like a terrible candidate for an extension anyways. He's a guy you ride for whatever years of control you have and then move on. If he hits the wall à la Kazmir or Tom Gordon or Tim Lincecum, let someone else deal with it. I mean I hope for his sake that doesn't happen and that he's Pedro 2.0 or something but why take any risk? Taking what you can get from the control you already have is the smart play.

True and thanks to Romero, I don't have much doubt at all that the lesson has been learned.

I think there's a non negligible chance that the Jays need a few Morrow starts down the stretch. The rotation though effective is paper thin right now. There are no contingencies in place if Hutch or Stroman are fatigued and injuries could always happen. The only other starters waiting in the wings right now are Nolin and Hendricks and they are coming back from injuries of their own. Redmond isn't stretched out and pretty soon Rogers won't be either.

J.A. Happ 4.18 Fip, 4.31 xFIP R.A. Dickey 4.53 Fip, 4.18 xFIP Hutch 3.81 Fip. 4.06 xFIP (and trending the wrong way) Not much to choose from. All crap shoots really. Dickey is the most painful to watch but his fielding probably makes him a little more valuable than the nerd stats indicate although not necessarily more valuable than Happ. I think Dickey on a strict pitch count is the best option. The guy simply cannot give you length without gas canning it but you can usually trust him to be good for 5 innings. Something like Dickey then one of Happ or Hutch then the bullpen might work. At his best Hutch is the best pitcher of the group but who knows what he has left in the tank now much less what he'll have at the end of the season. He might already be in the bullpen by then.

Could you imagine if things line up so that Happ has to pitch in a play-in game? After all the debate about the trade, after a spring training where his job looked in jeopardy, he ends up having the hold fan base rooting for him but also chewing their nails to see if he becomes a hero or the ultimate goat. I don't want it to happen but it would sure make for some drama. (I really, really don't want it to come to that. Division please!)

I think the Jays are not big fans of extensions any more. There's a certain school of thought that goes that free agent contracts are almost always player friendly and extensions are team friendly and that's obviously simplistic. A team like the Blue Jays that never doles out free agent contracts has still gotten burned by bad contracts, some were acquired by trade but many were extensions (most dramatically Vernon Wells). In any case, it seems like the Blue Jays are no longer keen on extensions. There's been no talk of extensions for Lawrie, Rasmus or Melky. The team kind of seems like they're done with them. I think the last major extension was Encarnacion and he's almost the definition of a special case.

"Doing everything they said I couldn't. With a smile and chip on my shoulder!" - MStrooo7

This is totally a dick thing to say but doesn't he always look a bit dumm?

Reimold is not a 4th OF. He's either a 5th OF and part time DH or he's a low cost (and somewhat high risk) alternative to Melky in LF with a better defender in place behind him.

A lot would depend on how Stroman finishes the season. If he's not showing any signs of fatigue, I would definitely go with him. Buehrle always keeps you in the game but in a game like this, you want someone who can keep the opponent right off the board.

Reimold tends to gets ignored when the OF picture is discussed but as things currently stand, he would be the 2015 LF.

Might as well post this here too.

Man I had completely forgotten about Morrow. Even if he's a far cry from vintage Morrow, the team could really use him for extra pitching depth. There's really nothing behind the current group at the moment.