TwistedLogic

And this is why I was puzzled at some of the offers being thrown around this board... like JFaS proposing Goins and Lugo for Souza. That's just flat out insulting the Nats front office, lol. There aren't many teams that are that dumb anymore.

http://i.gyazo.com/cf6a69618cb0cd826239a6051e227bd3.png Rays receive: Rene Rivera (from Padres) Steven Souza (from Nationals) Travis Ott (from Nationals) Burch Smith (from Padres) Jake Bauers (from Padres) Padres receive: Wil Myers (from Rays) Ryan Hanigan (from Rays) Gerardo Reyes (from Rays) Jose Castillo (from Rays) Nationals receive: Trea Turner (from Padres) Joe Ross (form Padres)

His contract is also not the problem, the bitter ragers that are still salty about the Marlins trade are. Reyes has been more than worth his contract so far, and he'll probably be worth it in 2015 as well. The positive value he provided in 13, 14 and 15 will carry over and compensate for the years he's no longer very useful in 16 and 17. Not every player on the roster will be signed to a Bautista/Edwin-like contract. Up until now, Buehrle and Reyes have provided significantly more value than their respective deals. There are far worse contracts around the game.

Romo back to the Giants for 2/15 (lol).

Yeah, I feel like he's still got some great seasons in him if he can just get healthy.

lol weird...

Except that Barton's been a lot better than Johnson throughout his career, both over time and at his peak. He's also 6 years younger, and he's had more good stints at the majors than bad ones (provided positive value in 6 of the 8 seasons he's appeared in the majors, compared to Johnson's 3 out of 9).

Daric Barton's reverse splits (career; 577 PAs against L) http://i.gyazo.com/943deb2e0aede7b63f8f1d3082eba04e.png Also, irrelevant trivia!

Anyone remember how desperate we were to sign Floyd last year? That was a dark, painful offseason.

Really like this as a depth option. Has a 4.8 WAR season in his past, still only 29 years old. Between Barton, Colabello and Smoak, I think you could do worse than throwing a bunch of low-risk, low-cost, high-potential guys at the wall and hoping something sticks.

http://wapc.mlb.com/cutfour/2014/12/15/104150686/chase-utley-surprises-phillies-fan-who-has-cancer-on-ellen It would be pretty brutal if Utley was traded now, lol.

Lucroy giving a shout-out to Jose Molina on MLB Network. Nice.

f*** off, Padres fans. He belongs to us.

A guy on a DJF comments thread said that it "sounds like" Tori's decision will be made today (December 15). Not sure if the guy deduced that because he understood Japanese, or if he picked it up based on the shoddy translation, which can't really be counted on.

http://i.gyazo.com/4bd96cf4140c4974d4328c4b0f65cd21.png

We didn't acquire any of Martin's pitchers. And of the guys I mentioned in my post, only three were pitchers (Janssen, Happ, McGowan), who only threw a little more than a quarter of the Jays total non-Dickey innings (285 of 1227). Even if you assume Navarro caught the entirety of the innings pitched by those guys, and give him back the value already accounted for with them, it wouldn't really push the needle much.

I did. Navarro had 2.0 fWAR last season, and taking into account his -13.8 framing runs (a cost of 1.53 fWAR at 9 runs per win), he falls down to a 0.47. Rasmus (0.6) + Happ (1.3) + Lind (1.6) + Lawrie (1.7) + Cabrera (2.6) + Janssen (0.1) + McGowan (-0.2) + Navarro (2.0) + Navarro's -13.8 framing runs (-1.53) = 8.17 WAR Donaldson (6.4) + Saunders (1.9) + Martin (5.3) + Martin's 19.3 framing runs (2.14) = 15.74 WAR

http://i.gyazo.com/7b928d2c33e05320219b16ef3d437c13.png In 2014, Colbuh Rasmus, Jay Happ, Adam Lind, Bredbull Lawrie, Melky Cabrera, Dinner Navarro, Casey Janssen and Dustin McGowan combined for 8.1 wins above replacement? Their optimistic 2015 projections predict 9.5 WAR. In comparison, Josh Donaldson and Jussell Martin alone combined for 13.8 wins above replacement in 2015. Their pessimistic 2015 projections predict 11.1 WAR. A is a win is a . Even if Pompey sucks, Saunders has a season-ending injury on opening day and Estrada and Smoak remain replacement level scrubs, the 2015 Jays > 2014 Jays.

Ha, homerboner.

Oh I absolutely agree that none of those guys were on the level of jerkoff that Everth is, which is why I don't think there's a chance in hell AA signs him. And I agree with that. There's a certain point where the negatives in a player's personality start to outweigh the buy-low profile.

Janssen is seriously perfect for this team, and frankly, the general opinion towards him around these parts has gotten way overboard. Three straight seasons of brilliant work out of the pen from 2011-2013 (top 15 in the majors kind of brilliant), never posted negative value at any point in his career, and he entered the All Star break in 2014 with a 2.00 FIP and a 1.23 ERA. People have really been s***ing on him because of 23 bad innings in the second half of the season, after he got ludicrously sick and lost 8 pounds in 10 hours over the break. If we're looking at bounce-back candidates like Romo, Ogando and Grilli, Janssen should be first on that list. And what blows is that I really don't think the Jays are looking at bringing him back. Whoever does give him a chance is probably going to get a steal. Bring back Janssen, pick up Crain, trade Navarro for a third arm, and the bullpen is probably set.

Funnily enough, AA has actually been at the forefront of capitalizing on the market inefficiency surrounding "bad eggs". Lawrie had drama with the Brewers, Escobar with the Braves, Rasmus with LaRussa, Donaldson and Beane, Saunders and Jack Z, Melky off the PEDs... he constantly gets valuable players in very very reasonable deals as soon as they fall out with their previous teams. That said, I really could live without Everth Cabrera. The guy's an absolute jackoff, and he's not good enough where it's a worthwhile trade off having your news feed full of all the dumb garbage about clubhouse chemistry

Rule 1: Ignore everything you EVER see written about the Jays payroll. Sports media, especially that of the Toronto variety, is an endless stampede of sweaty out-of-breath donkeys that desperately believe that they know far more than everybody else knows they know. Every few weeks some moron beat writer draws up some idiotic story about payroll out of complete head-up-your-own-ass speculation and then every other writer from every imaginable outlet runs with it until all we're left with is an indifferent hipster Stoeten blog, a comment on this forum about how dark the depths of Twitter really are, 16 Bob Elliott typos, and a shitstorm of angsty raging trolls in comment threads on sites like TSN, Sportsnet, the Sun and the Globe and Mail. The Jays 2015 payroll is whatever it's going to be on the first week of April. We know nothing outside of that, the writers we quote know nothing outside of that, and there's zero merit in trying to speculate. All we can do is discuss who we think are good, valuable players that the Jays should pursue, and have a collective hive-wide, circle-jerk orgasm if Alex actually acquires one of them. If there's ample payroll space, I think they should get Lowrie. If there's little payroll space, I really like the idea of this Taka-Tori guy. If there's no space at all, oh well, I can live with platooning Izturis with Valencia/Tollhouse and an eventual Travis call up.

This past season, 20 teams missed the playoffs because they all had a terrible "clubhouse atmosphere". Two teams were then eliminated in wild card games because they were never actually good enough, fluked their way there, and shouldn't have been there to begin with. Six teams then lost in the division and pennant series because has confidence issues and can't "perform under pressure". And the Royals are great and all, but maybe they just "can't win the big one". Everyone should learn from the Giants, who have a perfect clubhouse, full of hard-working, gritty, big game players that play the game the right way, show up when it matters, work as a single cohesive unit and can always be counted on... That is until they're traded away or leave via free agency, and then they're just some combination of fat, aging, inconsistent, injury-prone, selfish one year wonders.