Cleverly, I waited until the roster had been set before I started to write this. No point in previewing a bunch of guys who won't be on the roster, right?
Actually, it won't matter. But I'll get to that later.
First, let's check out just how good the Jays' pitching and defense was last year. You probably remember that it was good, but the details may have drifted away a little:
In 2008, the Toronto Blue Jays led the league in:
- fewest runs given up per game (3.77) (by a *lot*--next fewest was the Rays at 4.14! The Jays led in this category both at home and on the road.)
- fewest runs allowed (610)
- ERA (3.49)
- fewest hits allowed (1330)
- fewest hits per game (8.2)
- fewest home runs allowed (134)
- complete games (15)
- complete game shutouts (5)
- ERA+ (122)
- fielding percentage (.986)(for what it's worth)
and they were close to the league lead in:
- strikeouts (1184, just one behind Boston, the league leader with 1185)
- team shutouts (13, tied for second)
- fewest errors (84, just one more than the Yankees' first-place 83)
- defensive efficiency ratio (.703, second place)
What I'm trying to get at is this. If you thought that the Jays' pitching and defense was good last year, you were wrong. Because it was actually really, really good.
Normally, when something like that happens, you expect it to happen again the following season, only maybe not so much. Can we agree on that? If the Jays returned the same roster as last year, the P&D probably would have slipped a bit just due to normal regression toward the mean? Because you can't stay that good for that long. Doesn't happen.
Let's recall what is staying the same before we move on to what's different. Roy Halladay is still one of the starting pitchers, and Roy Halladay’s science is tight. Jesse Litsch is still another, and I’m sure we’re all glad to see him back. The defense in the infield and outfield is largely the same as last year. The major figures in the bullpen are, one way or another, still around.
What’s different? You don’t need me to tell you, but A.J. Burnett has moved on to eviler pastures, Shaun Marcum is out for the year with a mangled framistat and Dustin McGowan is out for at least a lot of the year with an advanced case of screwedness in the armal region. The Blue Jays, in their endearing way, are attempting to replace them via the quixotic strategy of using three basically untried young starters in their rotation (four if you count Litsch, and I do). Much has already been said about this, and there’s more to come, and I’m not sure if I can bring anything new to the discussion, but I will try to make sense as far as I can.
Other, less sensationalistic changes: Michael Barrett replaces Gregg Zaun as the backup catcher. From what I gather of Barrett’s reputation, this is something of a step down defensively. Plus, Barrett isn’t as familiar as Zaun would be with all these young pitchers. I’m not sure how much weight to put on that. Also, David Eckstein isn’t around this year, and Aaron Hill should get the playing time he’s vacating. I guess that’s a good thing.
Let’s deal with the starting rotation first. I’m trying to think of another time when the Jays tried something like this, having a rotation of one good veteran and four young question marks. I’m not sure there has been such a time. For very good reason, too; as plans go, it’s… hold on, the French have an expression that I’m trying to think of, now what was it… oh yes: crazy as a rat in a coffee can.
I jest. It’s only crazy depending on what you want to get out of it. It seems to have been decided that the Jays can’t hope to really compete this year (which does not make my heart soar like an eagle) and so what they’re after is not consistent high-quality starting pitching (not that they’ll complain if they get it). What they’re after is to sort out who they’ll be able to use in the future and who they won’t, and to get some guys back from injury in good order.
One implication is that you really can’t look at this as a five-man rotation. See, with so many starters around who pitched a minor-league schedule last year, you want to be careful about how many innings they throw. There’s a rule of thumb that if you increase a young pitcher’s IP more than X percent from year to year, he’ll be way more likely to get hurt the year after. And minor-league schedules are significantly shorter than major-league schedules. Therefore, if you’re not really expecting to play ball in October anyway, you’ll want more than four of these guys around to spread out the work and keep everyone healthy.
Well, for that reason, and also because the odds against the first four young guys succeeding well enough to keep their jobs all year are astronomical. The rotation may start off looking like Halladay-Litsch-David Purcey-Ricky Romero-Scott Richmond, but you know and I know that Halladay’s the only one whose job is safe, and Ricciardi’s quick enough on the draw that the other four guys are never more than two bad starts away from being replaced. Casey Janssen is waiting in the wings, and so are Brett Cecil and Brad Mills, and there are other candidates behind them. We’re going to see them all this year, and stap my vitals if I can tell you which ones are going to be any good. They all could be good, but young pitchers are like the Deck of Many Things: you never know if you’re going to come up with the Jester or the Euryale this time.
Now the bullpen. In my understanding, it’s unusual to keep the same set of relievers together year after year. There are several reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that the average reliever’s hold on a major league job is pretty tenuous. There’s nothing special about most relievers, see, and there are always other pitchers coming along who want their jobs and work cheap. It makes for a lot of turnover. Right now, the Jays have a seven-man bullpen of B.J. Ryan, Scott Downs, Brian Tallet, Jesse Carlson, Brandon League, Jason Frasor and Shawn Camp. All seven of them pitched a notable number of innings for the Jays last year.
But it won’t last, because in all probability, some of those guys are going to get hurt and/or pitch badly this year and will be replaced. We’ll see Jeremy Accardo again at some point, and Brian Wolfe. Nothing to worry about, though; both Ricciardi and Gaston have shown the ability to make a decent bullpen happen. It’s not reasonable to expect the 2009 bullpen to be as good as the 2008 one was, but it shouldn’t be a weakness of the team. Which is good, because with this starting staff, there’ll be a lot more work for them.
While I’m on the subject, I might as well mention again here the unusual nature of the Blue Jays’ list of transactions over the winter. Historians will want to study it someday. The Jays entered the off-season with an unusually strong left-handed contingent in the bullpen, some left-handed starters at or vaguely near the major-league level, and various other notable left-handed pitchers throughout the minors. Then, for some reason, the decision was made to try to acquire more of them. The Jays used these left-handers during the 2008 season:
Jesse Carlson
Scott Downs
John Parrish (now with Baltimore)
David Purcey
B.J. Ryan
Brian Tallet
and had these ones in their minor-league system (among others! These are just the important ones, based on whether they got a look in spring training or not):
Brett Cecil
Tim Collins
Brad Mills
Bill Murphy
Luis Perez
Davis Romero
Ricky Romero
Nathan Starner
I think that's a lot of left-handers. And, as I say, the Jays had many more scattered throughout the minors. Wouldn't you say it's enough? I mean, obviously, you wouldn't turn down a talented pitcher just because he was left-handed. But with all these guys, there's no pressure to add lefties specifically. And yet, sometime in September of last year, it started...
Reid Santos (claimed on waivers Sep 23)
Fabio Castro (acquired in trade Sep 29)
Les Walrond (claimed on waivers Nov 4)
Mike Maroth (signed Dec 30)
Brian Burres (claimed on waivers Feb 4)
Ken Takahashi (signed Feb 6)
And it doesn’t look like the Jays are actually going to use any of them now (Burres, Castro and Santos have been sent to the minors, where they are not at the top of the depth chart; the other three have been released). What was it all about? Fifteen of the thirty-four pitchers to pitch for the Jays this spring were left-handed. That's close to half.
For some reason, the only thing that comes to my mind is my favourite part of a now-forgotten Walter Matthau movie, A New Leaf. In this one scene, rich society matron Mrs. Cunliffe is fretting about something spilled on her carpet. Matthau, who doesn’t care, takes this as his opportunity to make a dramatic exit:
Matthau: Madam, I have seen many examples of perversion in my time, but your erotic obsession with your carpet is probably the most grotesque and certainly the most boring I have ever encountered. You're more to be scorned than pitied. [Sweeps out.]
I can't quite put my finger on why that occurred to me, but I would like to know just what was the deal with the southpaws.
All these young pitchers will have the luxury of working in front of a very good defense. That’s the gift that keeps on giving: it gives them confidence, it keeps their pitch counts down and sometimes it outright saves them from the worst consequences of their inconsistent, emerging competence. Some features of this defense:
- Lyle Overbay and Scott Rolen are very good fielders on the corners.
- Aaron Hill and John McDonald (when he’s playing) have in the past been superheroic on the middle infield, although both had off years with the glove last year.
- the outfield defense is pleasant enough, although Travis Snider isn’t an entirely known quantity in left and people are starting to make noise about whether Alex Rios and Vernon Wells should switch spots.
- Adam Lind will provide the league’s best defensive performance by a DH.
- the defense provided by Rod Barajas and Michael Barrett behind the plate will probably not be a conspicuous factor in the team’s play this year.
A word on shortstops. The shortstop position has been a problem for the Jays since… Since Alex Gonzalez got healthy and they moved Tony Batista to third. Gonzalez was an awesome defensive shortstop, but he couldn’t hit. Once J.P. Ricciardi was hired, he moved Gonzalez off the roster at his earliest opportunity, and has since then pursued a two-pronged strategy for the position: 1. use whatever spare parts can be assembled together to play the position in the short term, and 2. select many shortstops in the draft and hope that at least one of them will become a major-league All-Star.
It has… *sorta* worked. The various Frankenstops (Dave Berg, Chris Woodward, Mike Bordick, Chris Gomez, etc.) certainly haven’t embarrassed themselves, and have at times even won fans over with their play. But the position hasn’t been a strength for the Jays in years, and that’s nothing to accept about your team. Meanwhile, Ricciardi draftee Russ Adams looked good for a little while but then started antideveloping, Ricciardi draftee Aaron Hill turned out to be not much of a shortstop but an excellent second baseman, and Ricciardi draftee Ricky Romero turned out to be not much of a Troy Tulowitzki* but instead a left-handed starting pitcher.
Currently Marco Scutaro is the starting shortstop, and he can play the position, but really he’s there because the other option is John McDonald, who’s a wonderful defensive shortstop in small doses but couldn’t hit the floor with his hat. He’d take a Golden Sombrero in tee-ball. He could coat his bat with chocolate in April and still be able to give it to a kid in a Shrek mask the following Hallowe’en. But I digress. There’s some talk about moving Aaron Hill to short, on the theory that now that he’s an established major-leaguer he’ll do better at it than he did when he first came up, but:
a) Hill has enough to worry about, what with coming back from a concussion-shortened season in which his defensive numbers were down in the first place, and
b) What do you do at second base? Play Scutaro there? Seems like a lot of trouble for nothing.
The long-term plan seems to be for Justin Jackson, who can pick it, to learn to hit and take over the position in, I don’t know, a couple of years. Wake me when he gets to Triple-A, because I’ve seen the start of this movie lots of times.
All right, so. What’s the outlook for the Jays’ run prevention this year? Magpie already touched on this in his A Few Questions About the 2009 Blue Jays article, but I have some other thoughts. There is certainly the potential here for the starting pitching to be a strength of the team. Halladay is here. Pick one of the other young pitchers to take the league by storm, and that’s two good starters. If you have two good starters and some plausible candidates for the other three spots, you can get by okay, especially if you have (as the Jays do) a fine bullpen and helpful defense. And maybe Dustin McGowan can come back strong at some point. Let’s say, optimistically, that they slip to 4th in the league in runs-against. That’s all right.
But that’s the best-case scenario. What’s the worst? I’m not sure there’s a bottom to that hole. What I’m mostly worried about is a negative feedback loop. The more the young starters get beaten like rented mules, the harder the bullpen gets overworked, and the more the young starters have to take their punishment… and then people start getting hurt. And that makes it harder for everyone else, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends... (Remember: the Triple-A pitchers are going to be worked harder this year than last year, because they're in Las Vegas.) And we know that the offense isn’t going to bail this team out more than once a month. It’s easy for me to see this team finishing with about 68 wins.
I’m not saying that’s what will happen, mind you. But I know damn well that it could. What if Roy Halladay steps off a curb the wrong way and snaps his ankle? The Doors said it best when they said, “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”
In last year’s team preview I said that the Jays were counting on their players being able to do something unfamiliar to them: seize opportunities and rise to the occasion. They finished fourth. Now they get to try it again this year. Where have you gone, Mike Maksudian? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
--
Here are some other things we can pay attention to. Roy Halladay and Jason Frasor are tenth on the Jays all-time games pitched list with 281. This year they should pass Kelvim Escobar (ninth place, 301), Mike Timlin (eighth place, 305), and David Wells (seventh place, 306). If he turns out to be one of Gaston’s go-to guys, Frasor could even pass Jimmy Key (sixth place, 317).
B. J. Ryan is currently fourth on the all-time franchise saves list with 73; he could pass Billy Koch at 100 this year but probably not Duane Ward at 121. Jeremy Accardo is eighth on the same list at 34; if he gets a chance he could pass Miguel Batista (seventh, 36) and maybe even Timlin (sixth, 52) and Escobar (fifth, 58).
--
*not that Tulowitzki is all that and a Fisher Cat himself. I mean, he’s a major league player, but—look! So’s Ricky Romero! There are enough legitimate grounds for criticizing J.P. Ricciardi that everybody should drop this one, because it’s really not legitimate.
Actually, it won't matter. But I'll get to that later.
First, let's check out just how good the Jays' pitching and defense was last year. You probably remember that it was good, but the details may have drifted away a little:
In 2008, the Toronto Blue Jays led the league in:
- fewest runs given up per game (3.77) (by a *lot*--next fewest was the Rays at 4.14! The Jays led in this category both at home and on the road.)
- fewest runs allowed (610)
- ERA (3.49)
- fewest hits allowed (1330)
- fewest hits per game (8.2)
- fewest home runs allowed (134)
- complete games (15)
- complete game shutouts (5)
- ERA+ (122)
- fielding percentage (.986)(for what it's worth)
and they were close to the league lead in:
- strikeouts (1184, just one behind Boston, the league leader with 1185)
- team shutouts (13, tied for second)
- fewest errors (84, just one more than the Yankees' first-place 83)
- defensive efficiency ratio (.703, second place)
What I'm trying to get at is this. If you thought that the Jays' pitching and defense was good last year, you were wrong. Because it was actually really, really good.
Normally, when something like that happens, you expect it to happen again the following season, only maybe not so much. Can we agree on that? If the Jays returned the same roster as last year, the P&D probably would have slipped a bit just due to normal regression toward the mean? Because you can't stay that good for that long. Doesn't happen.
Let's recall what is staying the same before we move on to what's different. Roy Halladay is still one of the starting pitchers, and Roy Halladay’s science is tight. Jesse Litsch is still another, and I’m sure we’re all glad to see him back. The defense in the infield and outfield is largely the same as last year. The major figures in the bullpen are, one way or another, still around.
What’s different? You don’t need me to tell you, but A.J. Burnett has moved on to eviler pastures, Shaun Marcum is out for the year with a mangled framistat and Dustin McGowan is out for at least a lot of the year with an advanced case of screwedness in the armal region. The Blue Jays, in their endearing way, are attempting to replace them via the quixotic strategy of using three basically untried young starters in their rotation (four if you count Litsch, and I do). Much has already been said about this, and there’s more to come, and I’m not sure if I can bring anything new to the discussion, but I will try to make sense as far as I can.
Other, less sensationalistic changes: Michael Barrett replaces Gregg Zaun as the backup catcher. From what I gather of Barrett’s reputation, this is something of a step down defensively. Plus, Barrett isn’t as familiar as Zaun would be with all these young pitchers. I’m not sure how much weight to put on that. Also, David Eckstein isn’t around this year, and Aaron Hill should get the playing time he’s vacating. I guess that’s a good thing.
Let’s deal with the starting rotation first. I’m trying to think of another time when the Jays tried something like this, having a rotation of one good veteran and four young question marks. I’m not sure there has been such a time. For very good reason, too; as plans go, it’s… hold on, the French have an expression that I’m trying to think of, now what was it… oh yes: crazy as a rat in a coffee can.
I jest. It’s only crazy depending on what you want to get out of it. It seems to have been decided that the Jays can’t hope to really compete this year (which does not make my heart soar like an eagle) and so what they’re after is not consistent high-quality starting pitching (not that they’ll complain if they get it). What they’re after is to sort out who they’ll be able to use in the future and who they won’t, and to get some guys back from injury in good order.
One implication is that you really can’t look at this as a five-man rotation. See, with so many starters around who pitched a minor-league schedule last year, you want to be careful about how many innings they throw. There’s a rule of thumb that if you increase a young pitcher’s IP more than X percent from year to year, he’ll be way more likely to get hurt the year after. And minor-league schedules are significantly shorter than major-league schedules. Therefore, if you’re not really expecting to play ball in October anyway, you’ll want more than four of these guys around to spread out the work and keep everyone healthy.
Well, for that reason, and also because the odds against the first four young guys succeeding well enough to keep their jobs all year are astronomical. The rotation may start off looking like Halladay-Litsch-David Purcey-Ricky Romero-Scott Richmond, but you know and I know that Halladay’s the only one whose job is safe, and Ricciardi’s quick enough on the draw that the other four guys are never more than two bad starts away from being replaced. Casey Janssen is waiting in the wings, and so are Brett Cecil and Brad Mills, and there are other candidates behind them. We’re going to see them all this year, and stap my vitals if I can tell you which ones are going to be any good. They all could be good, but young pitchers are like the Deck of Many Things: you never know if you’re going to come up with the Jester or the Euryale this time.
Now the bullpen. In my understanding, it’s unusual to keep the same set of relievers together year after year. There are several reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that the average reliever’s hold on a major league job is pretty tenuous. There’s nothing special about most relievers, see, and there are always other pitchers coming along who want their jobs and work cheap. It makes for a lot of turnover. Right now, the Jays have a seven-man bullpen of B.J. Ryan, Scott Downs, Brian Tallet, Jesse Carlson, Brandon League, Jason Frasor and Shawn Camp. All seven of them pitched a notable number of innings for the Jays last year.
But it won’t last, because in all probability, some of those guys are going to get hurt and/or pitch badly this year and will be replaced. We’ll see Jeremy Accardo again at some point, and Brian Wolfe. Nothing to worry about, though; both Ricciardi and Gaston have shown the ability to make a decent bullpen happen. It’s not reasonable to expect the 2009 bullpen to be as good as the 2008 one was, but it shouldn’t be a weakness of the team. Which is good, because with this starting staff, there’ll be a lot more work for them.
While I’m on the subject, I might as well mention again here the unusual nature of the Blue Jays’ list of transactions over the winter. Historians will want to study it someday. The Jays entered the off-season with an unusually strong left-handed contingent in the bullpen, some left-handed starters at or vaguely near the major-league level, and various other notable left-handed pitchers throughout the minors. Then, for some reason, the decision was made to try to acquire more of them. The Jays used these left-handers during the 2008 season:
Jesse Carlson
Scott Downs
John Parrish (now with Baltimore)
David Purcey
B.J. Ryan
Brian Tallet
and had these ones in their minor-league system (among others! These are just the important ones, based on whether they got a look in spring training or not):
Brett Cecil
Tim Collins
Brad Mills
Bill Murphy
Luis Perez
Davis Romero
Ricky Romero
Nathan Starner
I think that's a lot of left-handers. And, as I say, the Jays had many more scattered throughout the minors. Wouldn't you say it's enough? I mean, obviously, you wouldn't turn down a talented pitcher just because he was left-handed. But with all these guys, there's no pressure to add lefties specifically. And yet, sometime in September of last year, it started...
Reid Santos (claimed on waivers Sep 23)
Fabio Castro (acquired in trade Sep 29)
Les Walrond (claimed on waivers Nov 4)
Mike Maroth (signed Dec 30)
Brian Burres (claimed on waivers Feb 4)
Ken Takahashi (signed Feb 6)
And it doesn’t look like the Jays are actually going to use any of them now (Burres, Castro and Santos have been sent to the minors, where they are not at the top of the depth chart; the other three have been released). What was it all about? Fifteen of the thirty-four pitchers to pitch for the Jays this spring were left-handed. That's close to half.
For some reason, the only thing that comes to my mind is my favourite part of a now-forgotten Walter Matthau movie, A New Leaf. In this one scene, rich society matron Mrs. Cunliffe is fretting about something spilled on her carpet. Matthau, who doesn’t care, takes this as his opportunity to make a dramatic exit:
Matthau: Madam, I have seen many examples of perversion in my time, but your erotic obsession with your carpet is probably the most grotesque and certainly the most boring I have ever encountered. You're more to be scorned than pitied. [Sweeps out.]
I can't quite put my finger on why that occurred to me, but I would like to know just what was the deal with the southpaws.
All these young pitchers will have the luxury of working in front of a very good defense. That’s the gift that keeps on giving: it gives them confidence, it keeps their pitch counts down and sometimes it outright saves them from the worst consequences of their inconsistent, emerging competence. Some features of this defense:
- Lyle Overbay and Scott Rolen are very good fielders on the corners.
- Aaron Hill and John McDonald (when he’s playing) have in the past been superheroic on the middle infield, although both had off years with the glove last year.
- the outfield defense is pleasant enough, although Travis Snider isn’t an entirely known quantity in left and people are starting to make noise about whether Alex Rios and Vernon Wells should switch spots.
- Adam Lind will provide the league’s best defensive performance by a DH.
- the defense provided by Rod Barajas and Michael Barrett behind the plate will probably not be a conspicuous factor in the team’s play this year.
A word on shortstops. The shortstop position has been a problem for the Jays since… Since Alex Gonzalez got healthy and they moved Tony Batista to third. Gonzalez was an awesome defensive shortstop, but he couldn’t hit. Once J.P. Ricciardi was hired, he moved Gonzalez off the roster at his earliest opportunity, and has since then pursued a two-pronged strategy for the position: 1. use whatever spare parts can be assembled together to play the position in the short term, and 2. select many shortstops in the draft and hope that at least one of them will become a major-league All-Star.
It has… *sorta* worked. The various Frankenstops (Dave Berg, Chris Woodward, Mike Bordick, Chris Gomez, etc.) certainly haven’t embarrassed themselves, and have at times even won fans over with their play. But the position hasn’t been a strength for the Jays in years, and that’s nothing to accept about your team. Meanwhile, Ricciardi draftee Russ Adams looked good for a little while but then started antideveloping, Ricciardi draftee Aaron Hill turned out to be not much of a shortstop but an excellent second baseman, and Ricciardi draftee Ricky Romero turned out to be not much of a Troy Tulowitzki* but instead a left-handed starting pitcher.
Currently Marco Scutaro is the starting shortstop, and he can play the position, but really he’s there because the other option is John McDonald, who’s a wonderful defensive shortstop in small doses but couldn’t hit the floor with his hat. He’d take a Golden Sombrero in tee-ball. He could coat his bat with chocolate in April and still be able to give it to a kid in a Shrek mask the following Hallowe’en. But I digress. There’s some talk about moving Aaron Hill to short, on the theory that now that he’s an established major-leaguer he’ll do better at it than he did when he first came up, but:
a) Hill has enough to worry about, what with coming back from a concussion-shortened season in which his defensive numbers were down in the first place, and
b) What do you do at second base? Play Scutaro there? Seems like a lot of trouble for nothing.
The long-term plan seems to be for Justin Jackson, who can pick it, to learn to hit and take over the position in, I don’t know, a couple of years. Wake me when he gets to Triple-A, because I’ve seen the start of this movie lots of times.
All right, so. What’s the outlook for the Jays’ run prevention this year? Magpie already touched on this in his A Few Questions About the 2009 Blue Jays article, but I have some other thoughts. There is certainly the potential here for the starting pitching to be a strength of the team. Halladay is here. Pick one of the other young pitchers to take the league by storm, and that’s two good starters. If you have two good starters and some plausible candidates for the other three spots, you can get by okay, especially if you have (as the Jays do) a fine bullpen and helpful defense. And maybe Dustin McGowan can come back strong at some point. Let’s say, optimistically, that they slip to 4th in the league in runs-against. That’s all right.
But that’s the best-case scenario. What’s the worst? I’m not sure there’s a bottom to that hole. What I’m mostly worried about is a negative feedback loop. The more the young starters get beaten like rented mules, the harder the bullpen gets overworked, and the more the young starters have to take their punishment… and then people start getting hurt. And that makes it harder for everyone else, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends... (Remember: the Triple-A pitchers are going to be worked harder this year than last year, because they're in Las Vegas.) And we know that the offense isn’t going to bail this team out more than once a month. It’s easy for me to see this team finishing with about 68 wins.
I’m not saying that’s what will happen, mind you. But I know damn well that it could. What if Roy Halladay steps off a curb the wrong way and snaps his ankle? The Doors said it best when they said, “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”
In last year’s team preview I said that the Jays were counting on their players being able to do something unfamiliar to them: seize opportunities and rise to the occasion. They finished fourth. Now they get to try it again this year. Where have you gone, Mike Maksudian? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
--
Here are some other things we can pay attention to. Roy Halladay and Jason Frasor are tenth on the Jays all-time games pitched list with 281. This year they should pass Kelvim Escobar (ninth place, 301), Mike Timlin (eighth place, 305), and David Wells (seventh place, 306). If he turns out to be one of Gaston’s go-to guys, Frasor could even pass Jimmy Key (sixth place, 317).
B. J. Ryan is currently fourth on the all-time franchise saves list with 73; he could pass Billy Koch at 100 this year but probably not Duane Ward at 121. Jeremy Accardo is eighth on the same list at 34; if he gets a chance he could pass Miguel Batista (seventh, 36) and maybe even Timlin (sixth, 52) and Escobar (fifth, 58).
--
*not that Tulowitzki is all that and a Fisher Cat himself. I mean, he’s a major league player, but—look! So’s Ricky Romero! There are enough legitimate grounds for criticizing J.P. Ricciardi that everybody should drop this one, because it’s really not legitimate.
