KingKat

I don't agree with this. Going all in is dumb but if you're going to do it you might as well go full derp. After the Dickey trade, I was advocating trading Sanchez because if you're going to trade your future to win now, you might as well trade all your future and do everything you can to win now. Part of the frustration with last year was not only all the trades but also the fact that even after all that the team felt unfinished. Going half way accomplishes nothing. No point holding back bullets just so you can have some good players but probably not enough good players in the future. The only thing that will ease the pain of those bad trades is a playoff run before it all falls apart. I say full derp for 2014!

Phillips at 2B with Goins on the bench or in AAA would be a great setup for the Jays no doubt.

Although I think he's a tool, the Jays are in no position to look past an opportunity like this. Even though pitching may appear to be a bigger need (actually the need is better run prevention but AA keeps calling it pitching), if there's a deal out there that makes sense, do it. Your ultimate is to improve the team as effectively as possible.

We didn't get a good look at him behind the plate either.

For the millionth freakin' time... The Score (televison network) was purchased by Rogers hence the rebranded name (Sportsnet 360). The Score (website) that was previously associated with the television channel was not purchased by Rogers hence it not being rebranded. I do agree that Stoeten is a lot like Wilner but his recent posts have been for the most part excellent.

I could be wrong and hopefully I am but that's my prediction.

It looks like AA is going to got with the same flawed approach of bringing in stars and not patching up holes. I expect all the extra money will go to a name pitcher and the lineup will be mostly unchanged with Goins at 2B, Melky in LF, Lind/Derosa at DH and JPA at catcher.

Who votes on that? Can we take it seriously?

Damn you and your truth bombs!

He can fill two roles (platoon partner for Lind and backup infielder) for not a lot of money and he's already under control. AA's comments make it sound like he's really going to focus on pitching. Looks like he's going to use as much of his available money as possible to land a pitcher and go cheap everywhere else. I won't be surprised if Goins starts.

I was surprised how much lower his fantasy value is than his real life value even in a breakout season. I do love the flexibility and how he rounds out a fantasy roster. I'd like to have him but I won't trade for him.

Two potentially useful bench players for a reliever was a lot to pay but it's not like there was a riot over this. It didn't look like a good trade and it seemed symptomatic of AA's weird obsession with relievers but it also seemed fairly inconsequential. As Stoeten stated, we still thought D'Arnaud was the Jays' catcher of the future at the time so it's not like there was a whole lot of attachment to Yan Gomes, a player many including myself had dimissed as a non-prospect because of his poor contact skills. Little did we know that AA would pay more for less in the middle infield and get next to nothing at catcher all season while Gomes killed it in Cleveland.

Literally no one has said that.

I haven't heard anyone claim that they saw this coming from Gomes. People are questioning the wisdom of trading young controlable, catching depth but no one is claiming AA should have seen the offensive breakout coming. That's a way bigger surprise than bounce backs from Kelly and Yunel.

Nah.. the realization has been dawning for awhile and it's been very obvious on his podcasts and somewhat obvious between the lines of his post. He just pushed back a lot whenever it came from someone else. He would just treat everyone like a mouth-breathing reactionary even thought deep down he basically agreed with them. You can see in this article that he's still hedging a lot. He can see the writing on the wall but it's always 1+1 maybe equals 2 with him. To some extent, it's to his credit that he doesn't want to slam the door definitively on AA and wants to keep an open mind and not be too definitive in his judgment. At least he finally understands that negative doesn't equal reactionary and he's not pushing back and insulting his readership like he used to.

No one saw his offensive breakthrough coming and becaue he was hardly used behind the plate, we didn't really get much of a feel for his abilities as a catcher. I remember getting my first good look at him behind the plate during Brazil's WBC qualification. I couldn't believe how quiet he was behind the plate, great target, minimal movement. I was surprised because I had no idea he was a good catcher and even then I didn't feel comfortable enough in my ablility to eye test catchers to trust that I wasn't seeing something that wasn't there.

After reaching his peak level of antagonism, Stoeten seems to have sobered up (perhaps literally) and has been killing it with his recent comment. His lates piece is ostensibly about Yan Gomes but that's really just a jumping point to talk about the relationship between Alex in his advisor. I posted the nuts and bolts of the article below but for the full read click here: http://blogs.thescore.com/djf/2013/09/30/what-to-make-of-yan-gomes-success/ Fans sometimes tend to lump all of last winter’s moves into a single solid mass, when the reality is that they happened in a particular sequence. This is important to keep in mind in the case of Gomes, as he was dealt ondealt on November 3rd. At that moment, before Miami and Dickey deals, the Jays had Arencibia and Jeff Mathis on the big league roster, Bobby Wilson on the 40-man, Travis d’Arnaud slated for everyday at-bats in Buffalo, and A.J. Jimenez recovering from Tommy John and set to return to New Hampshire. It’s easy to kill them for it now, but that situation didn’t present a lot of opportunity for Gomes to get the reps behind the plate that he needed. That’s part of the reason he played more often last year at first base (with a healthy dose of games at third, DH and in the outfield mixed in), and why, as the Cleveland Plain Dealernotes, he was headed for Triple-A Columbus when the season began. That, however, is not close to the most important part of the article. For me, here’s the money quote: Those in the organization who know Gomes best – notably, bullpen coach Kevin Cash – figured the ability was there, it was just a matter of when. Or maybe it’s this: “When Yan’s name came up in trade talks, the question was: ‘Could he catch every day in the major leagues?’’’ Cash said. “I said that, based on what I’d seen, it definitely appeared that way.’ He had everything you wanted in a catcher.’’ Kevin Cash, you may recall, spent last year as a Jays advance scout. Nobody in their right mind would have believed that Gomes would be able to produce the kind of wholly unsustainable rate stats we’ve seen from him so far– a .293/.346/.483 line driven by a probably-high BABIP (though, it should be noted, he fairly consistently produced high BABIPs in the minors) from a guy who walks less than Melky Cabrera– but Cash’s comments make clear that it’s not like nobody in the organization though that he could be an everyday catcher. It’s just– and this is where my mind often starts wandering, especially in the wake of the since-recanted rumour of a turf war among guys in the front office who actually have the GM’s ear, and the loss of a number of scouts– who is the GM listening to? And, more to the point, are there maybe so many competing voices that the GM can reasonably justify pretty much anything? Though we’re told that Tony LaCava and Dana Brown are “two of the few the GM listens to” in the since-excised quote from the Toronto Sun, the list of scouts in the Jays’ front office directory runs 70 names deep. Many of those are amateur scouts or guys with regional specialties, but among them are guys like pro scouting director Perry Minasian, longtime scout Sal Butera, and former full-fledged GMs Jim Beattie, Chuck Lamar, and Dan Evans– voices that you’d at least guess must carry some weight. And, of course, there is also their analytics guys, like Jay Sartori (who, interestingly, just left the club for Apple, and was profiled in the Toronto Star prior to the 2011 season), and Joe Sheehan. No, not that Joe Sheehan– the one you’re thinking of went to USC, while the Jays’ guy’s Linkedin profileshows he went to Oberlin, and from 2008 to 2010 worked for the Pittsburgh Pirates. That means, interestingly, that he worked in the analytics department run by Dan Fox, who was fascinatingly profiled by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last week, where we were told that “his influence as an analyst has reached a peak this season.” I’m not sure that’s the case with the Jays’ analytics guys– AA’s frequent quoting of the very rudimentary OPS in interviews (which I keep telling myself is maybe just his way of appearing to have his foot in both the old and new schools), and the club’s move away from defensive shifts this year suggests as much– but that would such a ridiculous shame that I kind of don’t even really want to think about it.

So chalk up league average production for JPA next year? He's certainly been given opportunities.

+ Espinosa and Lombardozi of the Nationals.

I was disputing the original article not what you said. Guys who make the jump to AA successfully deserve to a boost in prospect ranking because it's such a big step but it's not like they couldn't have made that jump in the Jays system. It's not like they all had a sudden turnaround either. Nicolino was actually much less effective, Syndergaard was awesome but he was nearly as awesome before, Woj looks better now but he's still not a good as was hoped when he was drafted, Desclafani took probably the biggest step going from being an older prospect who was not dominating younger competition to a guy putting much more impressive AA numbers.

It doesn't make sense to lump in Woj with these other guys. They moved Woj in a huge package for Happ. That's giving up on a guy. They traded Synd/Desc/Nicolino in packages to land a starting SS and the top 3 of the rotation. That's cashing in your chips. Equally foolish perhaps but they're hardly the same thing.

O.K. Cool. I was thinking maybe that was why BTS was so eager to move Hunter now.

When do we trim our rosters down to 20?

They got a really good return for Shields. There won't necessarily be someone willing to part with a Will Myers like prospect this time around regardless of who they are shopping. And of course, there's this super scary pitch/fx graph which is like an instant cold shower to anyone considering him: http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxo.aspx?playerid=3184&position=P&pitch=FA

This makes too much sense to ever happen.