The Nemesis

I eagerly await the renaming of the Commissioner's Trophy to The Derek Jeter Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Jeterian Excellence. In a speech about the rename, Selig will admit that it made no sense to continue to name a trophy about winning after his office when the winningest winner in the history of winning was walking away from the game. Thus it was only right to name the trophy after Jeter as a retirement gift. And in related news, it will no longer be given out to the winner of the World Series. Instead it will be awarded to Jeter every November and he will be declared the sole world champion of baseball. And 29 of the 30 little flags on the top will have pictures of Jeter's face inscribed on them. The 30th one will have Nick Swisher

I don't really see how it makes the market smaller. Yoon is a #5 at best and a bullpen guy at worst (well, really he's an injured non-factor at worst, but you get the idea). And if their budget is tight enough that signing Yoon is enough to basically finish their FA spending, they likely didn't have the money to throw at a bigger pitcher to begin with. Wouldn't surprise me at all to see them try to make a play for Santana/Jimenez still.

http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/10446150/new-york-yankees-derek-jeter-does-right-always That has got to be the most hilarious thing I've seen all day. Only Derek "his holiness" Jeter could be worthy of an article of fawning praise over the timing and style in which he chooses to announce his retirement.

Huh, once upon a time the Diamondbacks traded Bonifacio to the Nationals for Jon Rauch. That's like one nice little encapsulation of Blue Jays suckage right there.

He deserves respect for his bat, absolutely. He is unequivocally among the very best offensive shortstops in the history of baseball. I don't believe you can question that at all. Where I draw the line though is the over-the-top gushing that people go through over his defence. He was a mediocre defender at best. And a bad one at worst. With the exception of that time he came flying out of nowhere on the cutoff to make that shovel throw to home in the playoffs vs Oakland, basically every play on the Derek Jeter career defensive highlight reel is massively, massively overrated. The famous "flying into the stands" catch is one of my picks for the most overrated baseball highlight ever. His defence wasn't awful enough that it should tarnish his place in history, but the ridiculous way that people throw around terms like "the perfect baseball player" or "excellent in all facets of the game" or hold up his gold gloves (and let's be realistic, he only won 6 in 19 years, and you can make a pretty good case for him not deserving a few of those) to try and make him out to be a baseball god irks me. It is a shame that his defensive overratedness drags down his offensive prowess, but it's equally awful that the way he gets fellated by general baseball media is largely responsible for the knee-jerk way that lots of people dislike him.

can't point that out. It would tarnish his image. And we can't have that. Seriously, Jeter feels like a throwback to the 40s and 50s where the media protected players to heap fawning adoration on them. It's like they're all afraid to admit that Jeter kind of sucks defensively (and historically has through his whole career).

Not gonna happen. This is a guy that fell like 4 PAs short of posting one of the worst OBPs in the history. There's no way a team that wants to contend like Texas will let him get enough plate appearances to get to 30 HRs. Especially when he also... uhhh, "struggles" with all that behind the plate stuff that he doesn't seem to think is important to being a catcher. Honestly I'd be shocked if he topped 20-22.

Hey, I will not have you badmouthing Tomo Ohka. You will respect the greatness of Ohka.

Baseball fans? Blue Jays fans? People who want to see quality prospects move up through the organization and play for the Jays one day? Dunno, seems like we should care.

well..... That's a thing on the internet. And I guess it can't really hurt his credibility any more than it already is.

Nah. He'll sign with the Yankees, but then demand a trade once his mom complains that Tanaka is getting all of the attention.

Well, that changes everything, lol.

I will eat my hat if that happens. I'd almost think they would give Kawasaki 2Bs reps with Toronto before Morel.

So he gets some extra reps at a new position and the Jays have more depth in the minors if they need it. Not really seeing the downside here. Or the big deal considering it would take a minor miracle for him to see MLB innings at 2nd.

pretty much

Goins comes down entirely to whether or not he can hit at a replacement level. If he can just not suck like JP with the bat and not get himself out, his defence is good enough that he can be stashed in the 9 hole and let the rest of the lineup can cover for him. A healthy and performing-up-to-snuff Reyes, Melky, Bautista, Encarnacion, Rasmus, Lawrie, Lind, and even Navarro should be able to put up enough runs to overcome 1 offensive non-factor with a great glove.

hard to say without knowing what the Blue Jays side of that proposed trade was. Maybe Texas was willing to practically give him away at that point. Or maybe this just about fell into Toronto's lap and they would've taken Buehrle's contract back if the Jays ate some value. Too many variables in play to really pin down how serious/important management was treating this possibility.

3rd best option in terms of talent? No. Absolutely not. But 3rd best option in terms of talent and cost and ease of acquisition and all that stuff? maybe. If Drew goes back to Boston or basically anywhere that's not Toronto, it's going to get hard for AA to deal with other GMs without them figuring they can just bend the Jays' front office over and extort whatever price they want in exchange for a 2B.

Going with Goins (dur hur hur....) may not be the ideal plan B, but it just might be the only realistic plan C if you consider the pursuit of Drew as the real fallback in this situation. Because if the team strikes out on Drew and already struck out on Kinsler, then what? Not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of trying to pry someone like Kendrick from the Angels or another tradeable 2B out there when the rest of the league knows that the Jays tried and failed twice on an upgrade and might be getting desperate. Or in some situations (Barney) I wouldn't want to pay a trade price when really Goins isn't that bad of a backup-backup plan to have. Even if he can barely hit at replacement level, if he provides awesome defence up the middle that will be enough to help keep run totals down and let the rest of the offence do its thing. Because I think a healthy 1-8 in the Jays lineup should be good enough to carry the team along if they can avoid a repeat of 2013's pitching meltdown.

And then what? Baseball is not hockey or basketball or anything like that where hoarding prospects guarantees success. You blow up the talent on the roster and pray that maybe a few years down the line it turns into a better team, but there's no guarantee that it will or even that it won't fail spectacularly. The bust rate on baseball prospects is so monumentally high that the risk of a complete tear-down and prospect-laden rebuild isn't worth it IMO. You should always keep some talent in the system and hope that they can pan out in order to sustain the org moving forward, but the tank-and-start-fresh mentality of the NHL or NBA now just doesn't really work for MLB. The underperformance was due in no small part to an insane rash of injuries that nobody saw coming to the extent that it did. Anyone who says they saw 400 innings out of Dickey and Buehrle combined and less than 100 from each and every other projected potential starter at the start of the season is lying. There's also no way that practically all of the starting lineup missing a couple dozen games apiece was foreseeable too. Or the fact that JP sucked beyond the history of any other amount of suckage in the last century of baseball. People were overzealous handing the WS crown to the Jays from day 1, but let's not pretend that it was commonly held that the team would implode and suck. At the very least they were supposed to be competitive.