Not the place for this BUT AJ just pitched two innings with 0 hits, 1 walk and 3 strikeouts! Chacin was good too!

On topic, I've invested five years in watching GQ grow and get injured, grow and get injured, etc. I hope for his sake he finds some calm waters to grow with health to his potential. Gone but always an "old friend" we'll follow fondly.

Just a note Sportsnet has redone their website. They now have a very extensive stat page with some I'd never seen before (i.e. extra bases taken by runners). Also Bauxite gv27 has a blog now.

When we look back on this year, AJ's injury will turn out to have been a blessing.

We made a BIG splash this off-season and were getting a lot of attention from around the league. When AJ got hurt that attention turned to derision and they all sneered at us thinking we'd been overly generous and were already starting to pay the price. In essence, they wrote us off, they went from thinking we might be serious contenders to just maybe contenders. Well now that WE know AJ is OK despite our big off-season splashes we are actually going to able to sneak up on a few people. We're going to surprise some people and I for one am REALLY looking forward to it.

Geoff Baker in the Star has a WONDERFUL article about "Man Child Glaus..."

Rotoworld is reporting it's Vince Perkins.

Very strange. Perkins has pretty good stuff.

Maybe there's a trade in the works. There's no way someone with an arm like his will get through waivers.

Aforementioned Baker article.

My favourite Glaus quote: "I'm not big on arbitrary banter. That's just how I am. I'm typically quiet, but if something needs to be said, I'll say it." The Jays traded Hudson for the anti-O-dog.

The written report on todays game said that AJ went two inninigs BUT the Box Score, allegedly approved by MLB (or so it says) says:

Toronto IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
Burnett (W, 1-0) 6.0 2 0 0 1 8 0 0.00
Chulk (S, 1) 1.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00

Anyone know which is right???

If Burnett went 6 innings there'd be no reason for him to start the year on the DL.

Chacin was supposed to pitch as well today.

Let's hope whoever is the next Jays catcher of the future doesn't end up like Cash or GQ.

Great article by Blair as usual. The Jays bent over backwards and took a lot of heat for the AJ signing.

I find it a little bit amusing the Jays also gave AJ's wife 8 round trip limo rides. I would have hoped 55 million would have been enough to cover a few limo rides. What the article didn't mention is that AJ also agreed to donates $50,000 per year to the Jays Care foundation.

Wow. The Jays sure are paying for injuries already and the season hasn't even started yet. This is the commentary from some site called Sandbox.com which I ran into trying to get more info on Brian Tallet

"Blue Jays designated RHP Vince Perkins for assignment. Rather than Ryan Houston or John Hattig? Hattig is still sort of interesting, but he's a 26-year-old third baseman and we can't imagine the Jays will have room for him any year soon. Houston has never been much of a prospect. We'd be very surprised if Perkins went unclaimed. It'd be a high price to pay just to get Brian Tallet on the roster for two weeks."

Weren't the Jays sorta high on Vince Perkins? I guess it just shows the depth of our pitching in the minors. It just seems like an unnecessary price to pay just to keep Tallet in the club. Wouldn't it have been better to just keep Marcum for a few weeks until AJ is back since he's already on the 40 man?

Holy rounded corners, Sportsnet. They needed to fix that junk of the previous design but that's looking silly. Sorry, I know this isn't a design critique site. The link to aforementioned blogs on Sportsnet.

And a link to the excellent Blair article, that trumps Baker's piece, IMO, quite handily. Very well done. A few pages of well-detailed backstory to the season.

And Contreras has agreed to a 3-year extension. That's a ridiculous amount of pitching the ChiSox have locked up. Buehrle, Garcia, Vazquez, Garland and Contreras.

According to article on CBS Sportsline, Burnett only went 2 innings and thew 33 pitches. Chacin went 6 innings for the Chiefs.

It is a sad day for the fans when Quiroz leaves town. I met Guillermo several times and he was always friendly and polite and would actually come over and say hi, which is unusual among ball players who have lots of demands on their time.

Unfortunately Quiroz has not impressed since 2003 and there was no way the Jays could keep him on the 25 man roster.

Best wishes Guillermo.

Perkins might have an arm injury, his performance in spring training might support that theory. If so Perkins might get through as another team might not want the headache and medical bills.

The new sportsnet.ca design is nice, I like it. Best of all it loads much faster and doesn't use java :D.

I'm looking forward to Jamie Campbell's blog throughout the season, it should be good. I like the new Sportsnet setup however, it's probably only a matter of time before they take down the comment portion of the blogs (especially since the first comment in response to Campbell's entry labels Hinske a jerk). Although, I generally prefer Sportscentre to Sportsnet news, the Sportsnet website is far superior to what TSN has to offer (OTR podcasts and reading a text-version of whatever Bob Mackenzie reads off the teleprompter doesn't do it for me).

Some interesting rumors in the Star and the Globe today about temporary replacements for Ted Lilly if his back troubles continue. The Star mentions Marcum or Banks as possible call-ups, but it's a vague and unsourced comment. Jeff Blair in the Globe, who sounds more authoritative on this, predicts that Janssen would be the call-up to replace Lilly. My own comment: I'm a little surprised that Janssen and Banks have jumped ahead of McGowan on the depth chart. I guess this means that McGowan is definitely projected as a reliever now. And it suggests that Banks and Janssen -- especially Janssen, judging by Blair's report -- are seen as the best starting-rotation prospects for the Jays in the high minors at the moment. Blair, incidentally, reports that McGowan and Marcum are now projected as relievers because the Jays expect to lose several relievers to free agency and they want to develop low-cost replacements internally.

Here is the link to the Star article:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1144015810625&call_pageid=969907739730&col=970081600908

And here is the link to Blair's article in the Globe:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060403.JAYS03/TPStory/TPSports/

It makes sence to develop some relief pitching as cost effective replacements, but wouldn't McGowan be better served as the #3 starter in a year or 2 then BJ Ryan's setup man?

Has anyone checked out the previously highly rated catchers who have recently been cut? It's not just Quiroz, but Dane Sardihna in Cincinnati and Koyie Hill in Arizona, too. Catchers might be even harder than pitchers to predict!

As the Toronto Sun points out today, neither Janssen nor Banks has pitched a single inning at AAA yet. So it's amazing to learn that they are being considered as call-ups if Lilly misses a start.

Here's the link to the Sun article:

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Baseball/MLB/Toronto/2006/04/03/1517711-sun.html

I guess it depends on McGowan's quality as a reliever versus as a starter. If there is a very significant disparity then it's probably worth keeping him as a reliever.

However, even if that disparity exists then he still may be worth more as a #2/#3 quality starter. Considering the Jays paid $11M a year or so for Burnett, losing possible young starters like Bush and McGowan will take its toll down the road. I hope the door on starting hasn't been closed completely for McGowan.

Research in the Book (by Tango et. al.) supports the view that pitchers generally perform significantly better in short-inning relief stints than as a starter. In other words, the experiences of Eckersley and Smoltz are not really flukes. There is some anecdotal evidence that this may be particularly so for post-TJ pitchers.

I'd rather see McGowan as a starter, but having a top notch setup man is usually pretty important to playoff level teams.

For what it's worth, this years BP annual states that McGowan asked to move to the bullpen. This decision is fine for now. I wouldn't mind the Jays bringing him up when he's ready and having him assume the Santana/Liriano long relief role until he's ready to start.

Moving McGowan to the pen is a mistake. Chulk and Frasor will both be cheap next season. Even if SS Loogy and Justin bolt as FA's, the Jays still have League, Marcum, and Rosario in AAA. And of course you can always obtain players through trades or FA.

It seems odd to all of a sudden move your best starting pitching prospect to the pen.

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060403&content_id=1382173&vkey=news_tor&fext=.jsp&c_id=tor

Third baseman Corey Koskie, who was dealt to Milwaukee after Toronto acquired Troy Glaus in December, spoke out against his former organization in Monday's edition of the National Post.

Koskie told the newspaper that he turned down a more lucrative offer to play for the Dodgers in favor of signing with Toronto last winter with the belief that he'd be with the Blue Jays for an extended amount of time.

"I accepted the Toronto offer because, for one thing, my dream was to play for Toronto, but also because I was told by J.P. that if I signed the deal I'd spend, at least, the next three years of my career with the Blue Jays," Koskie told the newspaper. "I listened to J.P. That's something I never should have done. I look back on it, I just should have taken the money."

As much as I'd like the GM of our team to stick to his word, I prefer it when he realizes that he's made a mistake and moves to correct it.

I feel bad for Koskie, though.