http://economics.about.com
Very nice.. took me a couple minutes to get that one, and it's one I wouldn't have thought of using. A+

Cheers,

Mike

Hey, I really like these Jays media summaries. I've just made 'Da Box' my homepage in part because of this convenience, and also this page loads up so quickly (thrice as fast as canada.com). Great job: we should get that 'Bauxite #' up to half a million in no time. Any planned celebration or are you waiting for 'A Cool Million' hits.

Bah humbug, I don't see the difference betwen 499,999 and 500,000 or any other number. I say open a cold one for every hit...Well it looks like I've got 486,763 rounds to catch up on!

http://economics.about.com
I say open a cold one for every hit

I can't imagine what your liver is saying!

Or are you just opening the "cold ones" and not drinking them? :)

Cheers,

Mike

Baseball Prospectus has the Jays in their "Triple Play" feature. Its a review of the Jays options at the corner outfield spots

http://premium.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2642
Thanks, Ducey. COMN for the link to the PTP, which concludes:

The recommendation here is to leave left field to Catalanotto until he does something to prove that he doesn't deserve it, but to open right field up for one of the young'ins, restoring Johnson to the fourth outfielder role for which he is naturally suited. The Blue Jays' best hope to reach the playoffs this year involves hitting big on a parlay of breakout and career seasons, and that means giving every opportunity to those players who are most capable of them.

Poor Sparky gets no respect. He sounds typically upbeat, telling Tom Cheek on the radio pregame that he will continue to play the same way, no matter what. We can look forward to more HBP, push bunts and aggressive baserunning.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=philsthomehurt&prov=st&type=lgns
Jim Thome broke a finger during fielding drills. Out 3+ weeks. COMN.

I like Sparky a lot, and he's a treat to watch; I'm very happy to have him on the Blue Jays. But he should be the fourth outfielder on this squad by September, if not earlier; a platoon with Gabe Gross by July is realistic. I just don't think he can be an effective leadoff guy over a full season; I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

I thought that this PTP was pretty weak.

The primary spot in which the Jays are scrimping in order to be able to pay people like Roy Halladay and Eric Hinske the money that they are worth is in the corner outfield spots.

You can leave Hinske off that list; at $15 million over five years, the Jays have him signed for less than market value, and the only reason he's making more than half a million bucks this year is that they chose to structure his deal that way. Miguel Batista would be a better guy to name.

Rios and Gross, the youngest players in the group, have the highest variance, whereas the veterans Catalanotto and Johnson have the least.

Johnson isn't a veteran in the usual sense of the term. He has spent less than one full season in the major leagues.

The recommendation here is to leave left field to Catalanotto until he does something to prove that he doesn't deserve it, but to open right field up for one of the young'ins, restoring Johnson to the fourth outfielder role for which he is naturally suited.

This argument is based on (1) a forecast for Jayson Werth which is admitted to be overly optimistic, and (2) PECOTA's prediction that Gabe Gross has a 10% chance of hitting for an EqA 16 points higher than Reed Johnson. Wow, a 10% chance of ... two wins? Gross's lack of experience above AA is ignored, as is the service time issue. Why would the Jays want to call Gross up before he's ready and lose the opportunity to have him around for less than market value in 2010?

Forgive me if I sound like I have a chip on my shoulder about BP. There's no one out there doing better work than them, but it annoys me to see this kind of analysis bearing their imprimatur.

Oh, and Johnson's PECOTA projection is being dragged down by the lousy .233/.317/.358 line that he put up in 159 AB in Syracuse two years ago while suffering from a wrist injury.

A better argument against giving Johnson the job is his poor play in the outfield last year according to the better defensive metrics:

Metric  Runs below average
Rate2   -19
WS       -4
UZR     -19
Pinto    -9
BP       -5

Personally, I'd like to see him fight Werth for the job, with Gross or Rios taking over later in the year (assuming that they play well in Syracuse.)

John

http://www.startrekfans.net/index.php?showtopic=3090
Are you old school? Do you wish for the days when pong was the rage? well now here's your chance for 3D pong! (COMN, yea its a Star Trek site but hey my friend linked it to me and its fun)

As if the Yanks needed any more brittle, aging, righthanded starters... they've signed Orlando Hernandez to a 1-year $500,000 contract, which could be worth $1 million more in incentives.

John, I understand what you mean about BP. My expectations for them are way too high. I pick on them quite on a bit, but, as you say, they are the best outfit going, because they combine interesting numbers and theories with good, crisp writing. Given how much information is available, on the Internet in particular, I'm spending my time reading something I enjoy. And their book is just plain pleasurable to read, above and beyond the analysis.

Why would the Jays want to call Gross up before he's ready and lose the opportunity to have him around for less than market value in 2010?


One reason is this:

the "common wisdom" right now is that Rios and Quiroz will virtually demand a job in 2005, very likely one and maybe two starters will be rookies, Peterson may very well become the closer or at least a key bullpen member, and there's a small but noticable possibility that Adams will make the leap.
Add Gross to that and you have SIX key members of the team getting their first full time role in the majors in a year in which we hope to contend.

That don't happen successfully very often - if ever.

In that regard, working any of these players we can into the lineup this year is a plus.

Now, if one considers Johnson to be superior to Gross long term then there's no reason to assume Gross will EVER make the starting lineup, but I've not seen that argument made.

In contrast to all that, whether we pay him an extra couple of mil in 2010 is probably a pretty small consideration (BTW: even if he doesn't come up until 2005, he'll be on his last of arbitration (under the current CBA) so he won't be "on the cheap" in any case unless we buy out his arbitration as we did with Hinske and Wells...which is something we can do whether we call him in 2004 or 2005)

On another subject:

Is there any resource out there which has a list of the players who are out of options?

It seems to me that if lily starts the year on the DL and other possibilites to fill out the rotation fall short, that picking up a guy who get's sqeezed out of another teams plans might be not only an ideal fit but a nice way to snag a sleeper.

I've read that Bud Smith and Aaron Harang are among those, but what about others? Carlos Hernandez, for instance, would be particularly attractive.

This would be interesting info.

Maybe someone should e-mail stark or Neyer and give then the idea for a column...

WillRain,

I don't think Gross should spend the whole year in AAA, but I also don't think he should win the RF job in spring training. Leaving him in Syracuse for two or three months would:

1. likely keep him away from free agency for another season
2. allow him to get necessary AAA experience before being called up
3. give him plenty of time to get used to the Show before 2005

John

Incidentally, Cat's defensive metrics are significantly worse than Reed Johnson's. He doesn't look that bad out there to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Unless, i'm missing something in the BP piece, nothing about it has to do with integrating the up and coming talents. BP's great, but this piece, like a couple of their others from the last twelve months concerning the Jays is off the mark with what's actually taking place.

According to Ken Rosenthal, "the Dodgers are informing clubs of their willingness to trade RHP Edwin Jackson or LHP Greg Miller for the right hitter, but their options are limited..."

Can the Jays pull the trigger?

John,

I'm in agreement there...I wasn't reading the article as advocating Gross be up all year, so I wasn't picking up that this was what you were arguing against.
I too think he needs to spend some months in AAA.

Ideally, if the progress as we would hope, I'd like to see Gross come up at the break and, if he does well, Cat possibly traded at the deadline and Rios called on Aug 1. And Quiroz come up sometime in mid-August.
That's assuming we aren't so heavily involved in the race that we would suffer from dealing Cat.

A similar advancing of Arnold or Bush or even McG into the rotation after the break would be smart too. Forget Towers, he's not the future. He's Pete Walker II

Disgusting event in Vancouver last night. I'm glad MLB doesn't tolerate the same level of senseless idiocy as the NHL.

http://economics.about.com
Disgusting event in Vancouver last night. I'm glad MLB doesn't tolerate the same level of senseless idiocy as the NHL.

I hope criminal charges are filed. That was just unreal.

NHL won't tolerate it either ... I think his suspension will be a minimum of 13 games without pay (the rest of teh regular season) and if I was "Colie" Campbell I'd hit him up for, ummmmm, I'll say 17. It really was disgusting...

When Otis Nixon was kicked in the face sliding into second, was their criminal charges?

Leafs get Francis!

Francis and Leetch ... Now *that*'s how you build a dressing room ;-)

And we Torontonians complain about the Yankees!

Off-topic here, but I was wondering if anyone had any luck getting the new MVP Baseball 2k4 from EA today.

I live in Ottawa and went everywhere I could think, even EB didn't have it. In fact, they looked at me like I was trying to rob the place when I asked, and from the looks of the EA board, a lot of other people are having the same problems too (not to mention that EA's page now is changed from 'now in stores' to 'now shipping'); I've heard everywhere from today to Friday as the release date.

Guess I'll try again tomorrow, but it's a long trip to Rideau Centre. Damn I need my baseball fix.

Off-topic here, but I was wondering if anyone had any luck getting the new MVP Baseball 2k4 from EA today.

There was nothing available here in London. But I slapped down some money for a pre-order today, and I should have a copy of the game tomorrow. Good luck hunting.

Thanks Brent :)

I should have pre-ordered a copy at EB too, but the attitude I got there today was rather off-putting, so I'll go in tomorrow and hope this city's fear of baseball carries over to the game corner; you can find a scandal anywhere here, but try finding a baseball game at Future Shop. The only one I found yesterday was a dusty copy of High Heat 2000, ridiculously overpriced....

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/writers/tom_verducci/03/09/steroid.testing/index.html
COMN for Tom Verducci's article on the weaknesses of the 2004 steroid testing regime. In short, there are two weaknesses:

1. the player's opportunity to "correct" within 5 to 7 days without penalty, and
2. the player's assurance that they will be tested only once during the year.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1756081
Bonds back is acting up. They say it isn't anything to be concerned about but if it's acting up already, what'll happen in August? COMN.

The Box passed the 500,000 mark. Congratulations authors.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-athletics-dodgerstrade&prov=ap&type=lgns
Looks like the A's-Dodgers trades have begun, that didn't take long.

COMN above, nothing significant by the way but maybe a sign of things to come.

http://slicedbread2.blogspot.com
How can a hijack thread die like this?

Anyway, I've started a . . . I don't know what to call it. To say it's an online journal is somewhat deceptive. Anyway it's a kind of a website and I hope to be updating it often; daily if I can, but that may be a bit ambitious. It's not baseball-related, but COMN if you're hurting for stuff to read.

http://www.wtnh.com/global/Story.asp?s=1717195
Check [i]this[/i] out! (COMN.) I want to keep the Expos in Montreal as much as anyone else, but this seems like a very decent plan B.

I looked up Alevisos in my copy of [i]Diamond Dreams[/i], and to say he had any real role in MLB coming to Toronto is a bit of an exaggeration. He's not much more than a footnote.

Matthew, maybe the Jays Roundup act as new hijack threads.

Anyway, ESPN reports that the A's have signed Eric Chavez to a six-year deal.