we could see Rolen traded mid-season

I highly doubt this will ever happen. If Rolen is healthy he will be productive, the team will keep him as he is by far the better defensive option and probably offensively too. If he isn't healthy, I dont think any other team is going to want to take on the salary of a guy with a bum shoulder.

Rolen's health as a BIG if. Even then I doubt he'd bring back as much as you think.  It'd be more like a B-level prospect at best unless we were willing to eat some of his contract (which we need to stop doing).

Looking at Burnett's ERA and WHIP, you can see that he really didn't pitch better last year, he just pitched more.  Plus he got fantastic bullpen support.  Hence the higher number of wins, despite similar performance.  I think he is going to get a contract that is far beyond what he should get, given his injury history, pattern of pitching well when he has a contract coming up, and other issues.  Has the potential to be one of those disaster-type pitching contracts like Carl Pavano's.  I wouldn't touch him for the kind of money and contract length he will be offered.  There are safer options if the Jays want to sign somebody, but I think the 2009 rotation is looking OK with Halladay, Janssen, Litsch, McGowan (for most of the year) and Purcey.  Looking ahead to 2010, and the return of Marcum, and the addition of Cecil (who may be a possible for part of 2009), and other candidates (Romero, Mills etc.) I think things look very good for the rotation.  I'd rather see the money go to improving the offense.

Rotoworld is reporting that the Jays offered Seattle Frasor and Overbay for Ibanez at the deadline and were rejected.  They say the Jays still want to trade Overbay to Seattle and would eat some salary.http://www.rotoworld.com/content/playerpages/player_main.aspx?sport=MLB&id=3184

How can you say "Despite" when FIP and xFIP do not take those LOB and defense efficiency ratings into account? That's the whole point of FIP.  Yes he had a good FIP, but the knock on Burnett is that he typically does have bad LOB %'s because he's not mentally tough.. not sure if that is the case though.

Rely on a healthy Rolen, Overbay, and Hill.  Keep Snider in left.  Trade Lind and Cecil/Mills/Romero for a bat.  Thanks.

2008 proved this does not work, and that was with a Yankees team that was down and not likely to stay there after a busy FA market. This idea that the Jays can survive with 7 average to slightly above average hitters simply will not fly in the AL East, especially with a weakened rotation not expecting too much from McGowan and Marcum, like we did entering 2008.

Rely on a healthy Rolen and Hill, but continue to pursue trading Overbay away to free up salary. If that can be accomplished, the Jays will have around $25m to spend on Milton Bradley, a SP, and a RHB to complement Lind and Snider playing every day. Don't waste the few $s you have to spend on a #2 pitcher when you're lineup simply is not good enough to contend as is.

Hopefully Greg Genske and Brian Peters receive a call from the Jays. The Dodgers didn't pick up Penny's 8.75 mil option and now he's a free agent. Based on his injuries and struggles last season, he's probably going to want a one year deal to rebuild his value. This is a perfect buy low opportunity. Countdown to the Zambrano, Okha, Thomson comments.................

If the Dodgers retain Manny, I would call about the services of Andruw Jones. Even with the Dodgers picking up most of his salary, he could probably be had for 3 baseball's, 2 INF gloves, and a pack of big league chew. Does Jones have any baseball left in him? If sure doesn't look like it, but I'm willing to find out at a really low cost.

Vernon's contract.

When vernon was awarded his contract, I wonder what the working assumption for team payroll was. going forward. If it was the current $100m then II'd be interested to understand how that contract was justifed, especially after the Delgado complaints re. % of payroll.

It just seems like in the situation we find ourself in, this contract is handicapping the whole franchise. We have a guy playing RF who is a better CF than VW, whose value is diminished by having to play RF.  RF/ LF/ DH could be filled in for maybe 9 or 10 of the 22 million we are paying VW going fwd, with a better CF, with $10+ million left.

We have all sorts of platoon possibilities with a free DH spot and Lind and Snider.

If we are not going to $125/m$150m then the only kind of production that would justify the kind of money  (and % of payroll) VW is getting is Halladay like  performance.

For 6 or 7 years.....

Just worth thinking about re AJ - although none of the other options seem very palatable right now

I just wish JP and the Jays hadn't gievn away so much salary flexibility for so little upside (Overbay would also fit into this category, as would Scott Rolen). Pay for superstar level players and retain flexibility for the Tier 1a and 2 guys.

But it's always easier from the sidelines...

Jamey Newberg, who wrote the story you provide  a link for, might disagree, but I can't imagine the Rangers would make that deal. It's an absolutely reasonable "hey, how about?" starting point for JP to go to Jon Daniels with, but I think the boy wonder down in North Texas would almost immediately take Holland off the table.

That said, I know Jamey has had his eye on Halladay, as evidenced by this Box thread from late August. Maybe the Rangers would include Holland, but not Holland AND Hurley.

IMO any move of Halladay needs to be accompanied by a shedding of Vernon's salary... completely.

I'd rather get rid of that albatross of a contract than pick up an extra A-level prospect.

If we don't clear Vernon's salary we're still not going to be able to rebuild properly, so there'd be no point in moving Roy (beyond doing him a solid).

Also, no way- not even if he reaches his ceiling- does Campbell have the power to play 3B in the AL East. That is a power position and you have to have power guys at power positions in our division. Its not like we have Chase Utley or Hanley Ramirez making up for it at "non-power positions".

I have been screaming since mid season for a rebuild.  It is the only senario that makes sense.  Attempting to sign a big name or two is simply going to prolong the 3rd and 4th place finishes as I think everyone agrees the 2009 starting staff has too many holes to fill.

2010 looks better for the starters as everyone will be back and have their arms rebuilt but Doc is then a free agent.  It makes it pretty tough to put everything togther (like more useful bats in 3 or more position positions) in 2010 knowing your ace is out the door in 2011. 

Trading Doc and anyone else of value now will allow the Jays to stockpile the prospects for 2010 and beyond.  Mesh these prospects  with the ones they have and the young starters they have in the majors and they might have something.

Could JP do a rebuild and still keep his job now that Godfrey is gone?  I doubt it.

• AJ should be allowed to leave, take the two picks who will help in the 2012-2015 area. 
• Trading Halladay should be thought of but not a priority as he is signed for 2009/2010 and appears to want to stay around - see how he feels in the 09/10 offseason about signing an extention taking him through 2014.  Aces are not easy to find.
• Hope Rolen is healthy and productive so you can trade him mid-season for a prospect or two
• Trade Ryan if interest is strong (ie: an A or B level prospect plus a C mixed in) otherwise hold off until the trading deadline and/or 2010
• Find a taker for Overbay so Lind can get settled in at first/DH while Snider goes through growing pains in LF, keeping 1B warm for Cooper (we hope)
• If someone wants Wells take advantage of them - perhaps LA would look at a contract trade in Wells (productive but long term expensive getting 10/21/23/21/21/21) for Jones (horrid but just one year left on contract worth $22.5 mil in 2009) due to their playoff window being open right now - of course they'd probably want us to take Juan Pierre too (10/10/8.5 over next 3 years)  So spread would be $22.5 extra in '09, but $11 less in 2010, $14.5 in 2011 and 21 less in 2012-2014.  Of course we'd have two useless players in 2009 and one useless in 2010/2011 rather than 1 useful guy.

Two points.  First, I have to take issue with the concept that the Jays enter 2009 from a perspective of "losing Burnett, McGowan and Marcum."  In 2008, McGowan pitched 111 league-average innings and earned 5 win shares.  He is as likely to contribute more in 2009 as he is to contribute less, compared to 2008 year-over-year.  Obviously, he would have been a promising replacement for Burnett if healthy.  But the Jays have two holes to fill in the rotation compared to last year.  Not three.  There are obviously plenty of conflating factors, but the Jays frankly flourished without McGowan last season.

I'm going to buck the conventional "don't trade within your division" wisdom and say this:  If you really want to trade Halladay now -- and it is a trade of choice, because there is no financial thumb on the scale necessitating a trade -- I would try to trade him to the Rays.  As daunting as 2009 and 2010 look, the high-end minor league talent in the TB and BOS organizations do not make for a clear path to 2011-12 contention if you shed Halladay for prospects, especially since the Red Sox and Yankees always have the option of adding top-tier veterans.  If, on the other hand, you can make a blockbuster now-for-later deal with the Rays, you can concede the short term while lessening their long-term competitive advantage.

I have yet to see anyone in the "rebuild" camp propose a timeline and path to contention in the AL East.  I tend to go with Mike Green's option of a 2010 with Halladay as probably the best bet.  Or, I suppose, you can just revert to blind, panicky pessimism and hold an undifferentiated fire sale.  Whichever.

Your pessimism is my realism.

The stay-the-course people don't want to watch a bad baseball team and are afraid of the team leaving.  Its all "lets put together a good team and maybe we will get lucky".  I don't see anyone saying this will be a dominant team or God forbid, it will win a championship.

I see a lot of 3rd place finishes behind clearly better teams.  This is not acceptable.

My rebuild would involve dealing Ryan, Doc, Wells, Overbay, Rolen.  Maybe you move Hill if Inglet's 2008 was for real.  You would keep Rios, all your young starters, Lind, Snider, League, a few arms from the bullpen.  Everyone else could stay unless you could get some good value for them.

In 2010 you have a decent starting staff (McGowan, Jansen, Litsch, Purcey, Cecil, Romero, Marcum, Mills, Repczinski, Ray etc).  You have a good bullpen.  You have Rios, Lind ,Snider as your OF (maybe Lind plays 1st).  You have Hill/ Inglett at 2B.  You have prosects like JPA, Cooper, Campbell, Ahrens, Jackson knocking on the door in the IF. 

On top of all this you have 4 or 5 A level prospects from  trading the above, a bunch of B level guys from trades, two 1st rounders from losing AJ, a mid level 2009 pick, a likely top 10 first rounder for 2010.  Of these you need to find an above averge starter or two, and players for 2 or 3 positions (assuming some of the prospects in the org. don't pan out).

What do you get? 

In 2010 -A pretty good pitching staff, probably a below average offence but with some prospects in 3 or 4 positions.
2011 - intro of a few more prospects, better offence, better staff,
2012 - still more prospects, still have pitchers under control, lots of money to spend on FA to supplement a few positions.

By 2012 that team will likely be better than the stay the course team except with payroll flexibility and players on the way up instead of down.

In my word, "A" is a better pitcher and the one I want on my team. ...i don't know of a stat the easily expresses whether or not a pitcher's ERA is skewed by a couple of really bad starts.

I believe that support neutral W-L takes into account each of a pitcher's individual starts.

Pitcher A may have had a more valuable runs allowed distribution than Pitcher B, but will he next year? It seems you are suggesting that Pitcher A demonstrated a repeatable skill.

My rebuild would involve dealing Ryan, Doc, Wells, Overbay, Rolen....On top of all this you have 4 or 5 A level prospects from  trading the above, a bunch of B level guys from trades

How would the Jays get 4 or 5 "A" prospects for those players? Nobody is going to trade an "A" prospect for any of those players but Halladay. Who is going to give an A prospect for Overbay and his league average production at first? For Rolen and his injured shoulder? For Wells and his huge contract? For two years of BJ Ryan when Rodriguez and Fuentes are on the free agent market?

Being generous, maybe there are 50 "A" prospects in baseball. And you think the Jays could get 10% of them by trading a bunch of players who have some use but are either overpaid or wouldn't really be missed (and Halladay)? Expand it to the Top 100 prospects in baseball and I still don't think the Jays are getting them for those players. I can see the argument for rebuilding and I think those are the most logical names to trade if the team decided to rebuild. Dealing Halladay would help the system and eating some salary on Overbay or Ryan might add a few pieces around the edge, but it's not going to give the Jays the best system in baseball, which is what any system with 5 or 6 A prospects would be.

This year, the choices of Michael Young and Nate McLouth did the trick

Joe Posnanski had a good line about the Young selection. He says it isn't that the voters were blind to Jeter's defensive shortcomings; it's that AL voters have absolutely no idea how to evalute defense at shortstop.

Keith Law touches on the Jays' rotation a couple of times in his chat wrap.  He thinks Ricky Romero has a shot at the rotation (that's the second time I've read that somewhere), and he says that Romero has a couple of average pitches and a better than average change, but we knew that already.  Law isn't very high on Purcey though.  He also added that J.P. personally told him that Cecil wouldn't be rushed, so we aren't likely to see him until at least later in the year.

http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=23438

I've never given up on Romero.  Three ML average to above average pitches from a lefty who may have rediscovered the command he lost when he was first promoted to AA.  With his stuff he could be a solid #3 starter and we can only hope that his strong finish to the 2008 season was the proverbial light switch being turned on.

One potential starter for the Jays next season (albeit not likely out of the gate) is Robert Ray.  He isn't getting much attention, but last year was a big year for him as he put injury issues behind him.  It looked like, if his sinker was on, he was dominating at AA.  Games where he was roughed up he had few GB outs.  He's 6'5" and throws a hard sinker.  He also has a plus curve and solid change. 

I don't think he has much of a shot of making the Jays out of ST, but if he dominates at AA, I could see him in the mix for a midseason jump to the Jays.  Also, as a sinkerballer, he might be a good option for Las Vegas to start the year.

Jon Heyman at Si.com is saying the Jays are in the Manny hunt.

Sounds like a good segue for a new poll: what will be the length of Ramirez's next contract?

While I think that 2 + a club option is reasonable, I am guessing that somebody will bite on a 3+1 or 4+1. Times are indeed changing when players are being signed to long-term contracts that take them into their early 40's.

And imagine, in the early days of free agency some were speculating that players would retire younger because of the money they could make at a young age. Bill James countered that with a resounding "huh?". He posited that the opposite would happen, that players would hang on longer motivated by the extra millions they could potentially squeeze out at the end of their careers.

I just don't think that signing Manny is the right answer.  He could command the same amount of money per year as Furcal and Giambi combined, and personally I'd rather have a lefty DH and switch hitting lead-off hitting SS than Manny Ramirez.  Besides, the Jays could sign Ramirez AND Furcal and I still wouldn't like their chances if there wasn't enough money left to address the pitching issue.  The Yankees had a great offense too, but their pitching problems kept them out of the playoffs. 

My ideal off-season doesn't involve signing Ramirez because of the cost and the fact that it would keep the Jays from doing other things.  The only way I would like to see it happen is if trading Ryan and/or Overbay and their salaries or packaging them with Lind, some bullpen arms and/or prospects could net a low cost #3 starter via trade.  Then the pitching issue would be dealt with (to a degree) and the Jays could have enough money left to sign Manny and take on salary at SS.

Everything I've read on-line suggests that the Jays are actively shopping Overbay, so there's a strong likelihood that Snider could end up in LF and Lind at 1B, unless the Jays want to keep Snider in AAA and find a stop gap measure in LF.  I do expect offensive improvements from Rios, Hill (obviously) and Lind, while I suspect Wells and Rolen will repeat their 2008 performances, though hopefully with more plate appearances.  It seems that the Jays are satisfied with Barajas at C, but Arencibia could force their hand by the end of the summer, dude has power.  So the areas in which the Jays could and should improve offensively are SS and DH.  It has been reported that they've spoken with the representatives for both Furcal and Giambi, and adding a legitimate lead-off hitter and left-handed power bat in the lineup would be huge.  Both could likely come with relatively short-term contracts, while Ramirez and Boras (yuck) are going to demand at least 4-years.  While I'd like to see Ramirez here, it's not going to happen.  And it's not the responsible thing to do either, unless management increases the payroll by $20 million or so.  Hopefully the Jays can trade Ryan and/or Overbay, move Lind to 1B and use League and Downs in the 8th and 9th innings and Carlson as the LOOGY, and free up enough salary to snag a hitting SS, a DH and a starter like Lowe or Burnett. 

If those moves happen and someone like Romero steps up or McGowan bounces back from surgery the Jays can be competative.  If they spend all of their money on Ramirez it might make for exciting baseball, but they'll probably finish in 4th place again.

MyLegacy, do I ever love your posts.

The Jays run differential is great at 104 (AL East avg is +65), but TB is there at 103, while Bos is 151 and NY 52. Balt was at -86 for those people worried about them. How did the Jays get there? Tor runs scored = 714 (AL avg 775)  Tor runs against = 610 1st overall in AL (AL avg 758)

Realistically, how much more could one expect from the pitching staff? Available dollars should be put into the offense. If the signings don't make sense (dollars or years committed to a player not worth them), then the money should be put away to wait for an early deadline deal (like the Sabathia one that was early). IMO, there is no shame in living and dying by your young players or players that the team developed in the system. The Jays would be better off trying to get a salary dump at mid-season rather than letting the Yankees or Red Sox get it. Burnett will not be worth the contract he is going to get from someone. A bat like Ibanez or Giambi would certainly help solidify the lineup, but the Jays are still counting on bounce backs from a lot of players. It is better to go into the season with reserve cash and prospects (and draft picks) than going in empty.  JP seems to try to max the budget out before the season and hopes to go hat in hand to Rogers to get more cash if they are going to make a run. Why give up extra (the throw ins) prospects when you could give a team some salary relief? I think it always sends the right message to the minor leaguers when you give players in your own system a legitimate shot at earning a major league spot.