Jays Roundup - I Wake Up
Wednesday, October 06 2004 @ 08:10 AM EDT
Contributed by: Pepper Moffatt
Feel just fine
Your face
Fills my mind
I get religion quick
- What can we expect this off-season?
- Mike Rutsey:
There was a time when Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi wouldn't contemplate trading his prospects or his rising stars.
Those times are over.
After a 67-94 season, the gloves are off.
"When you win 67 games no one's untouchable," Ricciardi said yesterday during his annual state of the union address. "But the chances of us trading someone like a (Roy) Halladay are unrealistic."
- How should we grade JP's reign so far?
- Bob Elliott:
The new and improved bullpen was only new.
We thought Frasor was a keeper as a closer. Management didn't.
Miguel Batista, signed to a three-year deal worth $13.5 million US as a starter, closed the final two weeks.
Meanwhile, Jayson Werth, sent west for Frasor, was an outfielder the Jays didn't like. He has 16 homers and 47 RBIs, playing on the same Dodgers team as ex-Jay shortstop Cesar Izturis.
The Jays passed on Trever Miller and signed Valerio de los Santos for $850,000 -- $350,000 more than Miller wanted. Miller pitched in 60 games (49 innings) for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, while the injury-prone de los Santos worked 11 2/3 innings.
- What's the story on these new coaches? Why was Gibbons hired as manager?
- Mike Rutsey:
Ernie Whitt is back in the big leagues.
Whitt, one of the most popular players in Blue Jays history and the manager of Canada's team at the 2004 Olympics, returned to the major leagues yesterday as Toronto's bench coach, succeeding Joe Breeden, who was not rehired.
Brad Arnsberg was selected as the Jays pitching coach, replacing Gil Patterson.
- Steve Simmons:
Why John Gibbons?
At the end of a baseball weekend of sadness and tragedy, why him and why now?
How does this make us believe more in the Blue Jays? How does this bring us back to the park? How does the least interesting manager in Blue Jays history make a disinterested public interested again?
- Remembering John Cerutti:
- Mike Ganter:
The day after the shocking news, Rogers Sportsnet play-by-play announcer Rob Faulds still was having trouble believing his broadcast partner and good friend, John Cerutti, was dead. A cause of death has yet to be determined but foul play was not suspected.
"You still float around in a fog thinking this isn't right, this isn't happening," Faulds said yesterday. "You think you're going to wake up and say 'I didn't like that (dream) at all.' "
- Mike Ulmer:
"There's no crying in baseball," an incredulous Tom Hanks bellowed in the baseball movie A League Of Their Own.
Baseball has no clock.
There's not supposed to be any dying, either.
That's what makes the news about John Cerutti's death on baseball's final day of the regular season feel so jagged.
Cerutti, 44, was a trim ex-jock, a gracious, studious guy. To everyone he met, Cerutti was untouched by the fatty self-abuse that comes with the good life. He was a father of three and died for no obvious reason in bed Sunday, separated from baseball, even in death, by a few feet of wall at the Renaisssance Hotel.
- Mike Ganter:
Anyone who crossed paths with Cerutti has at least one uplifting story to tell. Jim Lozano, a former high school teammate of Cerutti's, sent this along:
"John was a down to earth individual who never went 'big league' even though he had made it," Lozano wrote.
- CP:
John Cerutti, the former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher who died suddenly over the weekend, will be buried Thursday.
The funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. EDT at the Church at Saint Catherine of Siena in Cerutti's hometown of Albany. A memorial service is planned for next week in Tampa, Fla. Cerutti lived in nearby Oldsmar.
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