Here’s one of the many little-known difficulties of being a baseball fan in Newfoundland: evening ballgames don’t start till 8:30 pm, and can reliably be counted on to not finish till well after 11:00. Combine that with numerous family events during my week-long trip to The Rock, and this is why I haven’t laid eyes on a game in several days. It used to be worse, actually: when matches started at 7:30 ET instead of 7:00, it was 9:00 in Newfoundland. And west coast ballgames didn’t get underway till midnight. We Jays fans had a lot of crosses to bear growing upon the east coast.
Anyway, now that I’m back from my jaunt to my natal seat, where the reconstruction of the provincial economy and culture is well underway (for better or for ill), I can finally hold forth about all the excitement that occurred while I was gone.
Count me among those who liked the Shannon Stewart deal. Naturally, it would have been preferable had JP been able to obtain starting pitching in return, but since that wasn’t available, he was smart to take the next best thing out there. And Kielty is a good acquisition in his own right, pretty much exactly the type of talent I hoped Stewart would be able to fetch. Given 500 at-bats, I figure Bobby could post something in the range of .270/.370/.450, maybe crack as many as 20 HRs a year, all of which is solid: an 820 OPS would put him in the company of guys like Austin Kearns and Mike Cameron.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call the trade a steal, though: unlike Kearns, I think Kielty has relatively limited upside. He’s never hit more than 14 homers in any professional season, and as he’s turning 27 next month, he’s unlikely to experience a power surge. He has no base-stealing ability to speak of, and he’s good, though not sparkling, defensively. A better comp for Kielty’s productivity might be another former Twins outfielder, Matt Lawton (the pre-trade version), only with more power and less speed. In other words, he’s a solid corner outfielder for a mediocre club and a fine fourth outfielder and pinch-hitter for a contending team. As it happens, that fits the bill exactly for what Toronto needs over the next couple of years, as it evolves from the first type of club into the second, and he’ll make the league minimum doing it. So there’s no question he’s valuable, but I wouldn’t say the club has found its right fielder of the future.
As for Stewart, he may go down in team history as the most anonymous longtime Blue Jay ever. He was here for parts of nine seasons, and in all that time I don’t remember a single profile of him or anything much about the guy personally. He showed up for work (as often as his hammies would let him), said next to nothing, stole when able and required, played left field gamely if poorly, and simply got on base. Here are his OBPs in his seven mostly full-time seasons: .368 / .377 / .371 / .363 / .371 / .371 / .347 (part of 2003). That’s consistency itself. But with no more steals, little power and a $6.2 million annual salary, that’s also way-overpaid consistency, and there are options coming up behind him that are cheaper and better. The remainder of his Jay career was going to be measured in months, not years, and Kielty represents close to the high-water mark on return for him. So long, Shannon, and thanks for all the memories; I’m just not sure I can remember what they were.
With Wells in center and Catalanotto in left (where he’s infinitely better and more comfortable defensively), the question becomes: should Kielty or Reed Johnson play right? Their very limited major-league service time shows that both murder lefties (plus-1.000 OPS) while holding their own against righties. Still, they’re very different types of players: Johnson really is a prototypical leadoff hitter (at AA in 2001, he stole 45 bases with a .383 OBP); Kielty could lead off too, with that batting eye, but his power and generally slower nature invite a posting lower in the order (or perhaps at #2). I think Tosca will mix and match them both as the situation demands, but Kielty will get the lion’s share of the work: Johnson’s OPS has dropped about 80 points in the last month, as the rigours of everyday play expose his shortcomings, and Cat will do just fine in the leadoff slot. Plus, Kielty has real value to other teams, and it behooves the Jays to be able to maximize his eventual trade value when Alexis Rios and Gabe Gross arrive.
The other effect of the Stewart trade, of course, is that Josh Phelps will get a second chance at full-time employment. There’s been some misapprehension, I think, that Phelps has been squeezed out of regular time, when in fact he’s rather earned his bench time: he’s struck out in 30% of his at-bats this year and had just seven extra-base hits between May 15 and his trip to the DL on July 6. Josh’s fast start in the majors last season was the exception in a career where he has required at least a year to get acclimated to a new league; I suspect he’ll start coming around in the second half and will really break out in 2004.
A few quick thoughts on the rotation, following the pounding laid on the team by Boston on Sunday. I wasn’t a fan of the John Wasdin acquisition when it first happened, and I haven't seen any reason to revise my opinion in his two brief starts since. I suppose he's not that much worse than the other stiffs the Jays have had to trot out there this year, and was never meant as anything but a stopgap anyway, but still, he’s been brutal. Tanyon Sturtze hasn’t exactly improved upon further acquaintance, either. I wouldn’t be surprised to see either of these guys cut in the next week or so; at this point, they really look like they’re just taking up space. JP has done most everything right this season, but he has really had a tin ear for pitchers not named Aquilino.
Presuming Cory Lidle will be dealt in the next few weeks, what can we expect the rotation to look like from this point onwards? This is how I would arrange things.
Halladay
Escobar
Thurman
Hendrickson
Walker
It’s very early, but Corey Thurman looked really sharp upon his return from Syracuse (he was sent down again last night when Hendrickson was called back up). I suspected he might turn it up a notch when he got back to the bigs, and I still think I’m right; we'll just have to wait a little longer to find out, apparently. I really don’t know why the team keeps yo-yoing him like this, but it’s getting tiresome; just leave him in the majors, in the pen or the rotation, and see what he can do. There’s reason to hope Hendrickson can be more consistent in the second half, and Pete Walker can reasonably be expected to alert the medical staff if his shoulder so much as twinges this time around. So if the veteran chaff gets released, I think there are enough arms available to fill out the rotation through the rest of this rebuilding year.
If Kelvim is traded, however, then I second someone else’s sensible nomination of Jason Kershner as a rotation candidate. He was a starter in Portland as recently as 2002, starting in 12 of his 31 appearances. I don’t have rotation-bullpen splits for that season, but his overall line was terrific: 86 IP, 65 H, 26 BB, 83 K – all this in the Pacific Coast League. To the extent he was ever envisioned as a situational lefty, his very brief (24 IP) major-league experience doesn’t justify it: 588 OPS-against versus righties, 845 vs. lefties. Kershner’s been getting longer relief stints lately, so maybe they’re thinking along these same lines. I’d sure prefer to see what he can do than to see another episode of The John Wasdin Half-Hour.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20030721102920999