fireballW

Good team, not great. Not like some of their teams in the past.

I would really like another bat like Butler in our lineup. Honestly, if you replaced Rasmus with Butler then we are talking about a lineup that pitchers would hate facing. We'd have a very solid group of hitters. No easy strikeouts anywhere. It would really only make sense to even think about Butler if we were getting something decent for Lind from someone though. It sure would be awesome to have more hitters that we KNOW about what we will get. Rasmus and Lind could be good or could be just awful.

As good as AA was at punting away good prospects last offseason, he is equally as good at building a farm system.

It is actually pretty ridiculous that so many people here think we should be looking to trade for prospects if we trade Rasmus. Getting good value on a trade is important, but come on. Whether you are bitter over the Dickey trade or not, at least be honest with yourselves on the position and mindset of the team when coming up with potential deals.

Nah. I did like the Nationals until they shut down Strasburg and didn't even make him available for the playoffs. Babying of pitchers is probably my most disagreed with concept and the thing that annoys me the most about current day baseball.

JPA is terrible and not on our team. This discussion seems pretty over. No he was not the second worst player of all time if that is what you were actually wondering. He still deserves to be treated like he was though.

Halladay is a tricky situation. Here is a short, cryptic article on his "underlying health issues." Really I believe it is just a matter of how hard he can throw now. I think if he is healthy the command will be there. http://www.montgomerynews.com/articles/2013/09/24/sports/pro_and_college/doc5241999046caf948453037.txt

I don't think anyone has seriously claimed it was the "2nd worst season of all time." Unless they were doing it just because it is fun to bash JPA. Either way, the guy belittles people left and right and had a horrendous season, preceded by other horrendous seasons. The things people are saying are both justified and hilarious, even if not supported by facts.

I don't see where trading Morrow for a pitcher upgrade would be a bad idea. Morrow would still have great value with this contract in this market. I don't think ANYBODY has a problem with one of Stroman, Hutchinson, Drabek, McGowan, Happ taking the 5th spot. That is 5 pretty decent pitchers and I think you could bank on at least 2 of them being serviceable pitchers. Romero will still be around too but we won't count on him at all. Even though his stuff is still there. The problem is when we have all our top pitchers are injury prone guys (Johnson, Morrow) last year. An ace would be awesome to have. I think we could get decent prospect for Morrow that could be used to complete a three way trade while allowing us to keep Stroman. The trade would leave us needing one more pitcher. But it'd help.

lol?

Would enjoy trading Morrow + some stuff for Price. Morrow is a bit cheaper for them both this year and next. We'd still need one more pitcher, but at least we'd have three guys with a solid history of pitching a lot of innings. So tired of pitchers going down.

Should be more on him. Was awesome, then had shoulder problems. Had surgery to fix those problems though, only problem was he tried to come back too fast so arm/results weren't there. Shut down for the rest of the year. Should be fully healed now and would be a good pitcher imo if he can even throw 88-90. I would definitely take a shot. Oh, also found another article on him talking about a health issue, one that his father had. Didn't sound like a good situation, he had been sick a bunch of starts, sweating bullets. Apparently a rare problem but now he knows he has it so can probably control it. However if he felt good I would expect him to be throwing for teams or something. That he hasn't been (or we haven't heard) is maybe a bad sign?

FA have a choice where they go, traded players don't. Toronto isn't a dump, quite the opposite, but we know that all things being equal (or even close to equal), many players don't want to come here. Remember even just all the articles about Johnson and M.B. about pitbulls and Johnson being unsure at first until talking to Buck.

I know you are pretty troll, but still. Sure "JPR" had to sign off on the deals, but it was said in an interview by either Ricciardi or AA themselves that AA put the deal together to get Rolen out of town. Not to mention he held onto him for years. Sure there was to Oakland thing, but he got him back as quick as possible and year after year it was AA saying he thinks EE will break out. JPR never put together a team on paper that was as highly regarded as our team was going into last season. People talk about trading off talent but our farm system is better now than it ever was in those days. Are you saying Reyes, Lawrie, Dickey, Morrow, Delebar, Santos, Rasmus etc... aren't good players? The only players you could be thinking of our Bautista, EE and I guess Casey? Do you not remember JPR? People talk about AA in free agency, but AA at least has the stones to make some big trades. JP could never pull off a big trade. He didn't pull one off in the 7 years or so he was here. The only time he went after FA was that one offseason and there was no plan. Just paid as many guys as they could to come here in hopes of winning. AA is fine, the team is still in a good situation and if they fail they are in a good place to trade off their players for good prospects quickly and retool.

Fan base that wants to sell each time the team is close.

He can always backload contracts anyway. A lot of contracts coming off the books after 2015. Our farm should be pretty good by 2016 with all the talent in the low minors, so a couple backloaded contracts won't kill us.

.....

Younger and better? What if Profar never pans out? The trade would put us in a much different situation. Getting all that young talent would be pretty cool. But you are underestimating how good Reyes and Bautista are on offense. With Bautista and Reyes gone and only Profar to replace them that would be a large hit. Of course if you talk about replace their salaries with McCann/Ruiz and Choo or even a guy like Cruz if he is cheaper and on a shorter deal, then yeah, it'd be lovely.

Bautista is starting the break down. He is awesome but if there is some decent things along with Brown then it could work out. I mean this provided that the money saved is spent on a new player. (i.e: Brown + some good things + money to sign McCann / Ruiz) makes our team better. Other piece obviously needs to be better than Kyle Kendrick though.

If this was a real thing it would probably be on MLB trade rumors by now.

Not if player x is JP Arencibia.

AA took a bottom five farm system and turned it into a top 3 farm system within three years of being on the job. He traded many of those prospects, but for a team that many people (and we're not just talking Jays' fans) thought were a favourite to make the playoffs. One year after those trades that people were convinced depleted our system, we're ranked 11th. The Dickey trade was bad. A few others have equal arguments on both sides. The rest of the trades have been good to great. We're still doing well to have AA as our GM. I think player development is still the biggest problem in our system. Hopefully that aspect of the organization keeps improving.

You sign Roy Halladay for cheap, put him on the weighted ball program and keep your fingers crossed.

It really is astounding to see how easily you guys will get excited over players who clearly don't have the plate discipline or pitch recognition to become really good players. It's like seeing people get excited about Arencibia all over again.

Pitching has been a mess since Arnsberg left and Walker took over. Mottola seemed to do just fine, so there must be something behind the scenes.