In his most recent mail bag for the Toronto Star– in a passage I came about via MLBTR, not because I was reading any of his answers– Richard Griffin wrote about Alex Anthopoulos and 2013, explaining that the judgement of this season “being a total failure can only be made if he starts a firesale at the deadline and continues in the off-season to quickly turn some of his off-season acquisitions into prospects. He would invariably receive less in return than what he surrendered to get them and that would turn this into a massive failure.”
That, to me, seems pretty screamingly fucking obvious– especially when you add in the fact that the 2014 Jays already have Bautista, Encarnacion, Reyes, Cabrera, Lawrie, Lind, Rasmus, Arencibia, Bonifacio, Izturis, Dickey, Buehrle, Morrow, Happ, Janssen, and everyone in the bullpen, save Darren Oliver, under contract. And, y’know, because other potential 2014 contributors in the system include Anthony Gose, Marcus Stroman, Drew Hutchison, Kyle Drabek, Ricky Romero, Sean Nolin, A.J. Jimenez, and perhaps eventually even Aaron Sanchez.
They don’t have a tonne of payroll flexibility, but they have a very strong core of players– currently playing at a 89-game pace for over a month, since May 5th, despite hardly having Morrow, Happ, and Johnson, over that stretch, with Reyes having been out for the entirety of it, and R.A. Dickey only having started to turn it around in his last two starts– and plenty of moving parts that will allow Anthopoulos to tinker.
Pretty simple, right?
Not according to Nick Cafardo, who once again is stoking the fires of dumbfuckery in the pages of the Boston Globe, and seemingly using the Jays’ notorious tight-lippedness to do so.
