Archive for July 31st, 2012

Game Threat: Jays (51-51) @ Mariners (48-57)

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Game Threat, Seattle Mariners on Jul 31, 2012

Travis Snider already has a run scored for the Pittsburgh Pirates, coming home on a Neil Walker grand slam after getting on base via an infield single. National League baseball, everybody!

At the time of writing Snider is 1-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout in his debut as the playoff-hunting Pirates’ number two hitter. (And that’s not even the most interesting ex-Blue Jay-related thing happening in that one!)

Stilllllllll a lot of people not quite processing the concept that Snider’s value was kinda poised to fall off a cliff if he didn’t secure a starting job with the 2013 Jays in what was to be slightly more than a two month cameo, in which he was already showing the signs of having trouble making contact. Nor are many grasping the positive signs in the peripherals Brad Lincoln has registered when pitching in relief this season, or the uptick in velocity.

Yes, it’s a risk to bet that Lincoln will keep this up and that everything finally clicking for Snider isn’t potentially right around the corner. But let’s stop talking about Lincoln like he’s been a dime-a-dozen reliever this year, or pretending that there wasn’t great risk going the other way too, by potentially passing on adding an on-the-upswing Lincoln to a thin stable of late inning relief arms under team control in order to try to the last to wring some measure of success out of Snider in one final Big League opportunity before his lack of options craters his value entirely.

And– not that it’s reason to feel comfortable about the deal in and of itself– the fact that the Jays have so much scouting power that’s backing their decisions ought to make you feel that, at the very least, Anthopoulos wasn’t stumbling around drunk in the middle of the night when this one went down.

Not that that’s going to stop anybody who really desperately fucking wants to from thinking that Anthopoulos suddenly went ether-blind, but… just sayin’.

Scuttlebutt

Holy shit, that sure is one lineup with which to start a new era of Jays baseball, isn’t it?

“We thought we were moving toward something late last night,” said Anthopoulos, according to Shi Davidi’s post-deadline piece at Sportsnet, not getting into specifics, and specifically not-specifically talking about Matt Garza (though, technically not). “We had a late night here, really late, didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, it carried over to the morning and it ended up falling apart.”

TV: Sportsnet One

And now the lineups, by way of the live box score at theScore.com. And for those of you who’ll be out and about, be sure to follow all the action on your phone with Score Mobile…

Toronto Blue Jays

B. Lawrie 3B
C. Rasmus CF
E. Encarnacion DH
D. Cooper 1B
Y. Escobar SS
K. Johnson 2B
R. Davis LF
J. Mathis C
M. Sierra RF

A. Laffey RHP

Seattle Mariners

D. Ackley 2B
C. Wells RF
M. Saunders CF
J. Montero DH
K. Seager 3B
M. Carp 1B
M. Olivo C
T. Robinson LF
B. Ryan SS

J. Vargas LHP

Image via Twitter.
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Alright! It’s the Getting Blanked Podcast: Super Special Trade Deadline Edition!

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Getting Blanked Podcast, Talkin' Trades on Jul 31, 2012

Alright! It’s time for our rundown of all the day’s wheelings and/or dealings as the window closed for MLB clubs to make trades… um… without players passing through revocable waivers first. Er… it’s the Getting Blanked Podcast: Super Special Trade Deadline Edition!

This week we spoke to Twitter’s @CrashburnAlley (aka Bill Baer of Crashburn Alley!) about the Phillies being in the odd position of selling off assets, and Twitter’s @hangingsliders (aka Wendy Thurm of Hanging Sliders, FanGraphs, Baseball Nation and Getting Blanked!) about the Giants’ new acquisitions and the arms race in the NL West.

If you prefer to have a listen later, you can download the podcast right here.

Alternately, you can hit up the Getting Blanked iTunes page, which is humming along these days, and from now on until the end of eternity will have all our podcasts, mp3s and whatever other audio goodies we dream up posted there in a timely manner.

As always (again! finally!), Mint Musical Interludes courtesy of The Constantines, Arts & Crafts Records, Deathwish Records and Optical Sounds. Be sure to check them out and buy every single fucking thing you hear at their sites.

And, in case you missed it, once again here’s our pre-deadline version of the Getting Blanked Show, with our guest @MLBTRBen (aka Ben Nicholson Smith of MLB Trade Rumors!).

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You’re Allowed To Care About Travis Snider

Posted by Archi Zuber under Travis Snider on Jul 31, 2012

Editors note: This isn’t analysis. It’s not sage, level headed reasoning with statistical backing. It’s just a fan being a fan. Stoeten did all the reasonable reacting here and here This post is reserved for flippant, irrational fanboyism at its highest.

Travis Snider has been traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

My first post with actual words in it on DJF was an ode to how much I missed seeing my favourite player suit up for my hometown team. A number of the comments echoed the sentiment “Who the fuck is Archi Zuber?” which is a question even I’ve battled with in my own head. I decided to not bother explaining myself or why I was here or what I’d be doing, instead opting to let the words speak for themselves and let all the comment mongerers figure out my personality by following my writing. Now, as I stand faced with a white page to be filled up with my second ‘real words’ post, it seems only fitting that the departure of that same player is the topic at hand.

The first time I ever commented here at DJF was March 2nd, 2008. A younger version of Dustin Parkes ran a live blog of the Jays first televised Spring Training game and I was through the roof excited to watch 20 year old prospect Travis Snider take an AB in a Blue Jays uniform. Parkes was obviously impressed:

And I quote:

Archimedes when you were watching those videos of Snider in HS I hope it was on a friend’s computer. I don’t have time to post comments, but I’m sorry, that’s pathetic.

He’s right, you know. Four and a half years later I’m less excited, and probably still exactly as pathetic.

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Counting Down to the Trade Deadline…

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Talkin' Trades on Jul 31, 2012

The 4 PM ET deadline is closing in on us, and rather than sit here and wait for something to happen, then start a new post when it does, write as little detail as I possibly can, the “MORE FORTHCOMING” and the scramble to not take 45 damn minutes to write up my thoughts, I’m thinking, why not just live blog the details as they start flyin’. Join me, won’t you?

4:31 PM: That really appears to be it. I know it’s going to be a disappointing way to end a trading period where it looked as though the Jays would have some real prospect capital to expend in order to strengthen the core of their club at the expense of just a few of the vast riches they possess in the low minors, but as we can see, not only were they unable to come to an agreement for someone like Matt Garza or Josh Johnson, but nobody really could. There were no Cliff Lee-like deals made by anybody, and while I’m sure that’s not going to be satisfactory to a whole lot of fans who expected something big, it has to be at least a little bit heartening that no other GM in the game was willing to pull off the kind of moves we expected AA to execute either.

The club has officially announced, via Twitter, the roster moves detailed below, which puts an official stamp on the end of business today. But let’s not forget that there is still the possibility for some August deals to be done– as the Jays did last year, acquiring Kelly Johnson for Aaron Hill and John McDonald.

Another thing we shouldn’t forget is that we’re not operating from the same pool of knowledge as clubs are. For example, Ken Rosenthal tweets that the Rangers ended up turning their interest to Ryan Dempster because they weren’t comfortable with the medicals they saw on Matt Garza. Obviously that kind of thing would have been a concern to the Jays as well, so… it’s hard to kill them for not going there, even though I’m sure lots of fans will insist on doing so.

We’re about to record a special, post-deadline edition of the Getting Blanked Podcast, so stay tuned for that. Afterwards, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming, I guess.

What a letdown!

4:12 PM: Here it comes: According to a tweet from Shi Davidi of the Rogers-owned Sportsnet, the Rogers-owned Toronto Blue Jays have stood pat on the final day of non-waiver wheeling and dealing, and have confirmed the earlier roster moves, sending Joel Carreno and Evan Crawford back to the minors, and calling up Moises Sierra and adding Steve Delabar to the active roster in order to take their places. Welp, that was fun…

4:10 PM: Yes indeed, it’s quiet. Barring a late announcement, Brendan Kennedy tweets, it looks like the Jays did nothing. Again, not the most emphatic thing I’ve ever heard.

4:07 PM: Wilner and Griffin each tweet that things appear pretty quiet for the Jays as the deadline passes. Alex Anthopoulos will provide an update later today. Griffin specifically says that it’s quiet “re: Garza.” Hmmm. Not exactly the most emphatic “no deals” tweets I’ve ever read…

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Jays Scouted Garza Side Session

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Matt Garza on Jul 31, 2012

Bruce Levine of ESPN Chicago reports that the Jays and the Rangers both had scouts on hand to watch Matt Garza’s side session on Monday, as you’ll be able to see from the tweet below, where he says pretty much exactly that…

A lot of the “scout spotted in process of doing his job” stuff that gets tossed around this time of year doesn’t really mean quite as much as we often like to believe, I don’t think. But watching a side session, I think, demonstrates a higher level of genuine, serious interest than basic due diligence, if only because there has been plenty of opportunity for the Jays to watch Garza over the last month– and over the course of the whole season, which I’m sure they would have been doing, seeing as Garza has long been known to be one of the more likely pieces to be on the block, and since Levine mentioned earlier that the Jays were interested as far back as the Winter Meetings.

Does this mean anything is imminent? Definitely not. And with the Rangers, and their far more legitimate playoff shot, interested, I can’t help but wonder– as I’ve mentioned a few times in the lead-up to today’s deadline– if maybe they’ll have the incentive to be just that much more aggressive than the Jays.

Still, where there’s smoke…

So… there’s that.

 

Image via Jonathan Daniel/Getty.

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Getting Blanked: Deadline Talk with @MLBTRBen

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Getting Blanked Show on Jul 31, 2012

A few things have happened since we sat down this morning to talk about last night’s flurry of activity and to talk to Ben Nicholson-Smith of the ridiculously invaluable MLB Trade Rumors about what to expect leading up to today’s 4 PM ET deadline. See if you can’t figure out what as you watch today’s earlybird version of Getting Blanked…

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Remember Matt Garza?

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Matt Garza, Talkin' Trades on Jul 31, 2012

Garzas gonna Garz.

Before Twitter went absolutely fucking ape goof over the sad, possibly premature, end of the Travis Snider era, you may have noticed a few rumblings about the Jays’ renewed interest in Cubs pitcher Matt Garza.

There’s a “very high chance” he gets dealt today, tweeted Jayson Stark of ESPN, after speaking with an unnamed executive who also told him that the Jays “have been bearing down on him.”

Ridiculous imagery aside, it certainly did seem like the Jays were very interested, as their name came up from a number of different sources: Ken Rosenthal tweeted that they were a more realistic landing spot for him than the Texas, and Bruce Levine of ESPN Chicago pointed out that the Jays are interested– and have been since the Winter Meetings– and the Cubs have been extensively scouting the pitchers at Lansing.

Most interestingly, perhaps, is the report from Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star, who says that “the Jays are believed to have already asked the Cubs for permission to conduct a physical exam of the ailing veteran.”

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