Well… at least his face hasn’t aged in 15 years.
Hell of a dispiriting tweet right here from Barry Davis of Sportsnet:
John Gibbons tells me that if Ramon Ortiz isn’t needed in bullpen tonight, he will start tomorrow in Boston. #bluejays
— Barry Davis (@SNBarryDavis) May 9, 2013
Yes, it’s come to this. Unless Ortiz gets used, in which case it’s going to– somehow– probably come to someone even worse.
It never quite ceases to amaze me that there’s this conception among fans that athletes should think the same way about the good of the team and the sanctity of the game as they do. This arose earlier this winter in the fan reaction to the bluff made by Darren Oliver’s agent in an attempt to extract more money from the club, and I’m seeing it again today after sixth starter J.A. Happ voiced his displeasure with appearing to be ticketed for Buffalo to start the season.
“Considering it’s spring you’d think he would just keep his mouth shut and do what is good for the team. There’s no way AA is going to trade at this point in time no matter how much he cries? He’s still making major league money, time to suck it up,” says one comment.
“Happ needs to check his ego at the door and realize its all about winning,” says another. “Yeah, playing in the minors sucks but hes the 6th starter for fucks sakes. Its basically a given he will be up at some point and it could be even earlier if romero continues to suck.”
There are elements of these comments that I can’t help but agree with. The first is absolutely right that Happ doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter and should probably do a better job of not talking about it. The second is bang on about the fact that Happ isn’t very likely to wind up as John Lannan, who spent the bulk of 2012 in the minors after making 122 big league starts over the previous four years. The Nationals had remarkable health in their rotation last year– remarkable effectiveness, too– and it’s a solid bet that the Jays’ collection of arms aren’t going to quite be so otherworldly fortunate.
What’s missing, of course, is that Happ is concerned about his earning power as he heads into his third and final year of arbitration. Being “stuck” on this team as opposed to a number of others, where he’d actually get to start, could end up costing him two- or three-million dollars– if he stays down for a significant portion of the year. That’s not a tiny amount for a player of Happ’s stature in the game, even though it drives fans batty to think that someone could have the audacity to be upset when he’s already being paid more money than most of us could ever dream of. These players have a very short window in their lives in which to capitalize on the earning potential their baseball abilities, and at least a decade of full-on dedication to the sport have afforded them.
I somewhat scoff, but it’s not exactly going to be an easy task tonight for the Jays, as we’ve learned from Tom Haudricourtt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that they’ll be taking on one of the Brewers’ better prospects, Tyler Thornburg, who comes up from Double-A Huntsville to make his Major League debut in place of Shaun “North of Steeles” Marcum.
Marc Hulet of FanGraphs had him as the Brewers’ number two prospect, while Keith Law had him at number four at ESPN.com. In mid-May Hulet wrote that “Thornburg has defied the early scouting reports that pigeon-holed him as a future reliever because he was a short right-hander with a less-than-smooth delivery,” while Kevin Golstein of Baseball Prospectus spoke to a scout in April who was optimistic, because “with a 91-94 mph fastball, good curve, and change, we’re talking about three plus pitches.”
Hulet’s write-up adds that “on the down side he doesn’t get a great downward plane on his pitches, in part because of his size, and he tends to leave pitches up in the zone, which leads to more fly-ball outs than one would like to see,” so… maybe we’ll knock the fuck out of him. But the feeling I get based on completely unscientific remembrance of past Jays performances against barely-known rookies that they very well might not.
The Jays send Jesse Chavez to the mound.
Image via Cooper Neill/Getty.
With Joey Votto having now bankrupted Cincinnati for generations to come, the folks at CBS Sports are going to require a new dimension by which to acknowledge the Jays’ existence. Danny Knobler gave it a go yesterday, calling the club’s decision to promote Joel Carreno in place of Brett Cecil “stunning and understandable, if that combination is possible.”
What appears stunning to him, however, is kinda odd…
Imagine if the Red Sox were starting a guy who had zero starts above AA. The Blue Jays are doing just that. cbsprt.co/HcfVj6
— DKnobler (@DKnobler) April 3, 2012
Right. Like Kyle Drabek and Henderson Alvarez did last year… because the Jays triple-A affiliate is in the shitty Pacific Coast League, and the Red Sox at least have Pawtucket.
No matter. It’s doom and gloom for the Jays, who “end spring training with a patchwork rotation that calls into question their chances of survival in baseball’s toughest division.”
Maybe I’ve just cooled on Cecil and Dustin McGowan, and am overly optimistic from what I saw of Kyle Drabek this spring, but… is it really such a step down from what was originally planned to Drabek and Carreno? Is it a step down at all, frankly?
Having followed the Jays through camp, I don’t think it is.
Besides, as Knobler himself acknowledges on Twitter, Carreno is only to be a temporary fill-in, ostensibly until Dustin McGowan gets back.
Of course, the “end of April, at a minimum” timeline on McGowan’s return– as John Farrell gave over the weekend, according to John Lott of the National Post– is probably overly optimistic, seeing as it relies on him being healthy enough to start throwing again on schedule by the end of the week, then building his arm back up, setback-free, over the course of the month. Still, it’s not going to be long before some of the guys at New Hampshire start knocking on the door anyway. The Jays weren’t afraid to call up Henderson Alvarez after just 14 starts and 88 innings in double-A last year, and the best arms who’ll start the season there– Drew Hutchison and Deck McGuire– already have three Eastern League starts under their belts.
It was always going to be a patchwork rotation here, so it’s hard to be too concerned about it now.
It appeared last week that the Jays may have shielded struggling pitcher Brett Cecil from the media, failing to let anybody know that he’d been moved to a minor league game until it was already in progress. And with many members of the local media having already headed north, maybe they hoped they’d get away with it again, and not have to face the questions that have uncomfortably built over the course of camp, first about Cecil’s lacklustre velocity, then about his overall terribleness, and the tenuous grasp he held on his rotation spot– which for most of the spring was believed to be third in line, behind Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow.
Not so, as reporters like Shi Davidi of Sportsnet, Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star, and others made it to Lakeland to witness the absolute catastrofuck of a day that Cecil had on Monday against the Tigers.
“There’s concern. There’ll certainly be discussion and evaluation and internal talks that will take place today and tomorrow,” said John Farrell, after Cecil left “a lot of pitches up over the plate; a lot of pitches found the middle of the plate.”
Oh my. Brett Cecil pitched the Jays’ penultimate Spring Training game today against the Detroit Tigers, and not to continue what seems like an eternal game of piling on Cecil– I’d like to see him succeed– but, um… it didn’t go so well.
I’ll leave it to Shi Davidi to elaborate…
Farrell says current thinking is Alvarez likely for four spot in rotation. That leaves Cecil, Drabek, Laffey vying for 3 and 5.
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) April 2, 2012
Farrell mentioned Cecil, Drabek, Laffey potential for Game 3 in Cle. Then added: “We wouldn’t limit it to those guys as well. … (cont)
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) April 2, 2012
(cont) … “There are other guys who pitched over here during spring training that would also come into the conversation.”
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) April 2, 2012
As a continuation of the club’s policy of hiding starters from clubs they’ll be facing early in the season, today’s scheduled starter for the Blue Jays, Brett Cecil, ended up pitching in a minor league game instead of against the Orioles. On the surface, it seems normal enough– the club did the same with Brandon Morrow yesterday, sending Kyle Drabek to face the Yankees regulars instead– but at Miked Up, Mike Wilner tells us something a little curious.
“The second reason to have Cecil work at the minor-league complex was because in the more controlled environment, they could make sure to get him seven ‘innings’ of work by ending innings early just to get him the ups and downs. As it turned out, they didn’t need to. It was an intra-squad game, so there wasn’t any scoring kept, and we didn’t find out Cecil was pitching until after the game had started (and weren’t told it was going to happen in the morning), so none of the media assemblage was there to see him.”
I’m not knowledgeable enough of the situation to suggest something fishy is going on here, but seeing as Cecil has been easily the most scrutinized of the Jays projected starters, and– given the way Kyle Drabek has pitched this spring– is the rotation member with perhaps the most tenuous grasp on his spot, you can see how there’s benefit to not further deepening the image problem, or allowing the media to push the magnifying glass harder down onto his head.
I hope it’s not that, because by essentially creating a closed session from which only Alex Anthopoulos can provide us information– shock: he was very positive– all they’ve done is create the conditions for fans to start wildly speculating about what the club possibly doesn’t want us to see.
Counterproductive, and kind of a bullshit move? Let’s hope it was an honest mistake.
