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Using Gose to get Franklin seems pretty reasonable to me, but we'll be screwed all over again by next season when we have no CF options. Rasmus extension will be hard to pull off.

Why would an aging middle infielder want to come play on turf? They really wouldn't if they had other reasonable offers. Not to mention there are a lot of patriotic Americans out there who wouldn't want to go to Canada to play. Maybe we could get some of these players with a big overpay but still not as easy as you guys think.

If all those things happen we would end up close to 100 wins. Melky being the guy we thought he was when we signed him would help a lot. If he could be a competent defender in LF it would be lovely. Remember how sexy the top of our lineup looked with Reyes/Melky at the top hitting in front of our big guys? People are also underestimating the difference that Navarro will have. It's going to be about 100 extra balls put in play instead of strikeouts right there + better defense. I blame walker a lot how our pitchers always underperform as a whole, whereas with Arnsberg it was the opposite. But that could largely be due to JP being the catcher during basically that whole time.

His control was better to a point beyond "luck" or "small sample size". He walked 6 guys in over 40 innings in the minors, which is a Halladay-esque turnaround. Halladay walked just under a guy per strikeout for multiple years, just like Drabek. Both pitchers were not known for great command, but not overly wild as young prospects, both prospects became very wild. Halladay fixed it. Drabek is not Halladay but sample size be damned, you cannot ignore only 6 walks in 40+ innings. Drabek has what it takes, but granted he needs a couple good early performances in the MLB to get his confidence. I would bet he is ready to go this year. I can understand why others are more skeptical though.

Too bad for your that I meant the 2 years prior and typo'ed so in your face.

I'm just going to go way out on a limb and say it. We have enough pitching right now and don't need Ubaldo. Drabek, Hutch and Stroman are all legitimate, MLB caliber pitchers right now. Redmond and McGowan are nice backups. Actually believe Happ should not even make the team as a fifth starter and should be depth. Drabek is ready to break out now. Dickey Morrow Buerhle (sp?) Stroman Hutchinson with: McGowan, Drabek, Redmond all on deck and long shots like Romero, Sanchez, Rogers further down is enough. Jimenez... could be nice but the three years prior to last season he hardly even out-pitched Happ. There is no reason to blame AA for not wanting to commit 48 million to him (not that anyone here actually knows any details about what happened anyway). The problem with our rotations are more than none of them have really exceeded expectations since Walker got here (like they did constantly under Arnsberg). The most annoying thing this offseason is not getting rid of Walker in my opinion. The guys on our depth chart are all upside guys now though. People are too used to having guys like Wang as the 6th option that they are realizing that isn't the case this year finally.

I really have no idea how this stuff works, but looking at some of these it seems it wouldn't be that hard to do well. How do you make bets on these things? Online?

Yeah of course because IF the Mariners actually made their young 2B available no other teams would be interested either. Jays can just offer Casey and Happ and no doubt Mariners would accept and we'd have a middle IF the next 5 years (end sarcasm) Now cue the idiotic Mariners trading Franklin for s*** after AA probably tried countless attempts to over decent deals and everyone blaming AA, like for Fister when he was told outright Detroit didn't see any match.

Olerud363 - Personally I see no problem with more and shorter threads. But that is my preference. I like to use these things as a news feed. Scanning the thread headlines to see what is up. eastcoastjaysfan - You finally say something that I agree with. eastcoastjaysfan a couple hours later - How is this a thread? What is the Around Baseball thread for?

Great work JFaS!

Damn you guys get more and more ridiculous with almost each post. It's actually impressive all the complete BS and revisionist history that comes from this board.

Who cares? Probably Burnett. It's Toronto first of all, which is a tough sell even to begin with for pitchers on a one year deal. We just finished with under 80 wins in a disaster season. We way overpaid to get him the first time, including basically starting the whole "player can opt out" idea. He did opt out of his contract here and did not sign an extension. He was bood out of town, which is an understatement in this case. Ask anyone what their most memorable games were in the last 10 years and most of them will say AJs return vs Halladay. Halladay has pitched many gems so I'm pretty sure his performance wasn't what made it so memorable. There was a (unwarranted) hatred for this guy and it went well beyond a normal booing of a returning player. Fans were VICIOUS to AJ o his departure. There are many other contending teams who will want him on one year deals. How are you saying c'mon man when you are actually trying to make a case for AJ BURNETT wanting to return to Toronto. He almost retired. He cares about his happiness and comfort and isn't going to come to Toronto for his possible final year. The amount we would have to overpay to have him come here would be ridiculous. It is scary this isn't common sense to EVERYONE on this board. There is zero argument for why AJ would want to come here. Like I said, you would need probably at least 5 million above the next highest bidder.

Umm yeah ok.

That some people are getting excited about this shows just how out of touch with reality most of you ball experts are. As if Burnett will come back to Canada for a second time, especially after that Halladay/Burnett game. Good God! We would have to overpay by 5 million probably. Then we will have to listen to you geniuses whine about why AA didn't sign them because you live in a world of numbers instead of people. One of the only smart things I read in this whole thread is AJ playing another year might take one more team off the market of Ubaldo. Otherwise there isn't even a reason to have this thread because Burnett will definitely (and obviously) not be coming back to Toronto End note: Please don't be bothered to say how Burnett said he loved his time here. That opting out of his contract was a hard decision etc... Like really. 99% of players say that for obvious reasons. I don't even think he hated it here but he's not coming back.

This type of thinking isn't going away unfortunately. I used to be so frustrated knowing Bonds would not get into the HOF, but it isn't changing so it's hardly worth bothering arguing any more. Most people know that there have been performance enhancing substances around for a long time. They are probably more effective now, but other then that the only thing that really has changed is that the media decided to attack and make a story out of it. I would never take any of that kind of stuff, but I've been around sports more than enough to know how many meatheads there are that will put just about anything into their bodies if they think it will help. That isn't a new mentally and so I have no doubt there was lots of wrongdoings for many generations of baseball. We don't know how much steroids help people hit. I'm sure there are plenty of guys who tarted taking steroids and didn't get better. Offense is down a LOT so it could have something to do with it for sure, but there has almost always been cycles of pitching and hitting eras in baseball. Either way, don't see the big deal. If a guy like Bond's juiced, he did it while most of the league did. Even with help I really doubt anybody else would have the season he had. He was well beyond anyone else in the game and the pitchers and other hitters were mostly doing it too. Just something we have to deal having high and mighty people just pick and choose what players to witch hunt.

If AA uses the young arms/prospects/in-house it is an "oh God" moment. If AA trades those players for more elite pieces, people whine. If AA doesn't sign players who, likely, have no interest signing in Toronto, he deserves to be fired. Conclusion: You guys are idiots. With all the complaints from last year, you guys should be excited for this option. We all know how much you will whine about the alternative. But yeah, keep harping on signing FA that probably have no interest in coming here.

I don't even get what you are saying. Gibbers post has nothing to do with what I said, a post that wasn't even directed at him. He is responding to my post wherein I am calling out any bozos who are acting like AA didn't say many times part of building the farm was to use the prospects to acquire elite level talent in trade. He had many interviews, MANY where he talked about acquiring elite level talent as the priority. Many times he specifically referred to the 3 ways to do this: through the draft, through FA and through trades. That someone is sitting here saying he only liked AA because of a plan that said person has completely fabricated in his own mind, is ridiculous. I really don't need to defend this as this thread gets lost in Gibbers unrelated and misguided replies and Spanky's nonsense.

Really just go fap with your pal Spanky in a corner. There is no point talking to people like you. You call me making s*** up for saying AA said over and over he would use prospects to acquire elite talent? Like come on? I listen to all the interviews dwad. I can't count on two hands the amount of times I have heard AA specifically say he would do this, and talk about prospects as currency in trade. Or are you trying to argue that Reyes, Dickey and Johnson aren't elite type talents? I really don't have the patience to have someone who belittles people on a regular basis come on and say I am making s*** up when I've specifically heard what I said AA said many times. If you had the blinders on and just heard what you wanted to hear then that's really your own fault. Nobody is saying you need to like the trade, or like AA. But to just ignore things he says that you don't like so you can keep in a happy bubble didn't seem to work. There is really no doubt at all that you as a major league GM would never have a winning team because you'd be perpetually sacrifice your team to have a good prospect list like in your fantasy leagues.

How so? And how is it a 180? You guys just believe whatever you want. AA talked FROM THE BEGINNING of using a good farm system in trades to acquire elite talent. He did exactly what he said he would do the whole time. One of the trades was ill-advised, but in the context of the situation, if it actually got us over the hump and turned us from an 88 win team into a playoff contender, like it was supposed to, then the financial gains would have far offset the losing of the trade. AA has also admitted that there are times it might make sense to "lose" a trade and that was probably one of them in his mind, because just missing the playoffs to keep those prospects would have been kind of dumb. If the trade did what many thought it would at the time (put us into contention) the benefits financially, as well as in terms of other things like attracting free agents, would have made it pay off for sure. Not to mention that AA has shown he is EASILY one of the best GMs at building up value in his farm system. Just because it is hard to look at that trade (even though a lot of people are a lot higher on D'Arnaud than I ever was), doesn't really mean this nonsense has to happen where people just continue to whine about it a year later (not you on this last part).

Too bad. Okay mods can delete this thread if they want. I will just google "sites like xtranormal". Thanks.

Ugh. Okay thanks. Any similar sites anybody knows about?

Yes off topic, but I need to know quickly if possible and nobody checks the off-topic thread. What was the site you guys used to mmake those funny animations of people talking (ie: Cito talking ______ telling them to pull the bad), the eventually Grant talking to whoever haha. Somebody must know what I mean.

He has averaged less than 50 games a year over the last four years. That is not really helpful at all as a guy you'd want to make your starting 2B. I mean, it makes sense if AA realizes he definitely has no other options but Goins for 2B, has filled all his other holes and still has a few million to spend. Then you could roll the dice and if he gets hurt you are just in the same situation you would have been anyway. You need to explore all the other options first though. Would a guy who has had a bunch of leg injuries want to play on turf though? I can't imagine it unless we are offering much more than anyone else. So probably a moot point.

My same thoughts. Weighted ball program, try it out for a year and see how it goes. He's a competitor and he's not so old. There is a chance he is satisfied with his career, but I think he still has some unfinished business.

Don't want Floyd. No reason to expect him coming of TJS to be ready and his old self. Could just see the team sticking with him while he struggles for a while, with better options in AAA. Don't believe that THIS year Floyd will be better than even Hutchinson.