Lind is now in the 5 hole.  Apparently hitting .370+ will bump you up from 7th or 8th eventually.

I just noticed it today, but if you drill through the links to the player stats they're much more detailed.  Now you get splits, the last 10 games, last year's numbers, and height/weight/age info.  Here's Lind for example.

i think the jays have sort of botched it all up with McGowan this year.  being that he's out of options, they have panicked and dropped the ball.  when i watch him pitch, i see stud starter written all over him - given time.  but the jays have been bouncing him around from rotation to bullpen in both 'cuse and TO in a panicked fasion trying to figure out where he should pitch.  in hindsight (there's that word again), the jays should have left him starting in syracuse all year long.

for me, i'd have him as my fifth starter next year.  i'd have rosario in the pen.  i think both will mature into excellent major leaguers.  they seem to be a year behind their options (developmentally speaking) though.  the other option with Dustin is to make him the long reliever next year - with chacin, towers and marcum pencilled in as 3-4-5, he's bound to get some good innings in.  maybe he'd make a liriano type move to the rotation by june.

btw, was McGowan's only start against the Yankees?  i went on holidays shortly after and may have missed another.  but i thought the yankees start would warrant another look against lesser opposition.

Though I don't think there's any need to panick if a pticher struggles at the beginning of the year in Syracuse.  Jason Hirsch struggled at Houston's AAA affiliate (?) early and then starting in mid-June, went on a tear wear he didn't allow an earned run in 42 innings and has since earned a stint in the bigs.

McGowan started the year as a reliever at Syracuse, which shows that the Jays were thinking along your lines that, with his options expiring and coming off TJ, the quickest route for success was relief.  If they believe that he shouldn't handle more than 140 innings this year, then I guess I have no quabbles.  I'm no doctor.  But if he could handle 170 innings, he should have been getting a regular role every five days.  Again though, this is hindsight and blurred at that.  I'm not sure I'd have acted differently than the Jays did.

As for the bullpen next year - Accardo, League, McGowan, Frasor, Rosario are all fireballing righthanders, are all out of options and are all at roughly the same stage of development.  Is there room?  That leaves Ryan, Downs and sometimes Tallet/Romero?

At this point I would seriously consider League for a starting role next year.  If he can pitch 2-4 great innings as a reliever then why couldn't he pitch 6-7 solid innings as a starter?  And what's going to be worth more to the Jays in the coming years considering how utterly disastrous the back of the rotation has been this year and the fact that Lilly is 90% likely to leave?

I'm not sure what they could have done with McGowan but he needs to stay in one role in a given season and no matter how poorly he does he has to be allowed to work his way out of it.  It's basically a command issue though command could be related to anything from mechanics to health or both.  I'd rather see him start since that's the greater need.

The Jays mentioned when they traded for Accardo that he had options left (whereas Chulk didn't), although he'd have to really struggle not to be on the team.

There's seemingly always an injured pitcher or two so I wouldn't be concerned about making enough room.  There's also the possibility of trades.

it looks to me like Lind has filled out quite a bit since his days in Auburn (NY).

Yeah, I filled out after college too, although unintentionally.

He see's Thigpen in the mould of a Jim Leyritz

The guy voted best defensive catcher in the Eastern League isn't good enough defensively to catch regularly in the majors?  Wow, that's... weird.

I guess the flipside of that remark is, if he's a competent defender but also Leyritz with the stick, you're looking at an All-Star.

Leyritz, of course, was a mediocre hitter until the Yankees decided to give up on the catching and third base "experiments" in his late 20s.

Leyritz hit quite well as a rookie playing mostly third base and doing a little spare catching, then had a bad sophomore slump.  He came back to the Yankees in '92 as a play-everywhere guy and spent most of the next five years as his teams' primary backup catcher, hitting .270 with walks and power and also playing 1B and DH to keep his bat in the lineup some.  I think we're reading the same data differently... he was a major league quality hitter (especially for a catcher) as far back as '89, when he had a .419 OBP in AA, it just took time for him to be moved up to the major league level.  Even his "slump" in 1991 wasn't reflected in his AAA stats, he hit .267/.361/.485 at Columbus.

With a guy like Leyritz's career, you'd have thought he'd have a massive platoon split, but he hit righthanders quite well for a catcher over his career (.263/.348/.405, close to his numbers against lefties).  What's more, and more important, Leyritz always was a fantastic hitter as a catcher.  When he caught, he hit .288/.379/.454, well above his normal levels and well into All-Star territory for a backstop.

I don't think McGowan can get an extra option year, first it's too late and secondly McGowan missed parts of two seasons, he didn't miss a full season.

I saw Thigpen catch this season and I thought he was a good receiver with an average to below average arm.  Remember Thigpen didn't catch much in his last college season, Taylor Teagarden was the #1 catcher.  Thigpen is short for a major league catcher, maybe 5'10" or 5' 11", and if I remember correctly his favorite player was Craig Biggio who was also a catcher when he came up.  Thigpen appears to be a fast learner and looks now like he will make it to the majors. 

With respect to John Sickels, his base is around Kansas City and he travels by road from there to see some teams, but the Blue Jays have no teams in that area.  It is only at season end that John talks with scouts about teams such as the Blue Jays to get information for his book.  What Sickels probably didn't realize about Chavez is that he is only 17 years old, his numbers look a lot better as a 17 year old versus a typical 19-20 year old in that league.