Richmond took it on the chin from the LH batters yesterday. If my math is correct, the lefties (7 of the 9 starters) went 350/435/450.

For his career, his L/R OPS split is 937/577. It was 1191/313 last year. This year, the gap has narrowed to 880/643.

Notwithstanding his brilliant performance against the lefty-heavy Phillies earlier in the season, his achilles heel seems clear and problematic for a starter. On a team loaded with lefty starting pitchers, Richmond could have a valuable role as a long man, facing long strings of RH batters that the team's lefty starters will invite.

I'm with you Jdog.  I'm actually hoping the Jays lose games now so that they can get higher draft picks (assuming they'll actually sign more than 25% of their picks in the top 3 rounds this time). 

Where do they select the supplementary and 2nd round picks that they missed in in this years draft?  Is it another supplementary pick and the same 2nd round slot as this year's terrible draft?  If so, they could be looking at a 5th - 10th overall pick, a 16th - 30th overall pick, 2 supplementary first round picks, and 3 second round picks (assuming Barajas walks and Scutaro goes to a team that finished in the top half of the standings in 2009).

Can't agree with Blair.  He says Cito has to take the heat, then goes on to point out all the reasons the year wasn't his fault.

BJ Ryan, injuries to the starters, the Halladay saga, the Rios saga, Wells sucking, the trade of Rolen, the lack of a bat once Snider was sent down.  Are these Cito's fault? 

Hell, before the season, management announced they were aiming for 2010!

If all under .900 teams win over the rest of the season at the same pace as they have won since May 18, the Jays will indeed reach pick #5 but the margin between #4 (I think) and #8 is only 3 games or less so it's close enough that "thangs can happen"

the "good" news for the Jays is still in the fact that most of the remaining games are against teams with better records.

I've been trying to keep out of threads like this because I can't believe how pessimistic I've gotten, and I don't want to bring everyone else down with me. One of the effects of this pessimism is that it leaves me with no opinion about, for instance, Dopirak vs. Millar. The way I see it, it doesn't make any difference what the Jays do about Dopirak and Millar because it's not going to help anyway. It could be years before the Jays finish above .500 again and they may not contend for anything more interesting than third place for decades. (Or longer!) I just don't see any basis for hope. I almost wish I wasn't a fan of this team.

Of course, that's just me; I don't insist that anyone agree with me about this. And in fact I hope I'm wrong.

I assume you are aware at what a staggering over-reaction that is.

You can no more forecast what will happen even 5 or 10 years in the future than you could have forecast in October 1993 that the jays would spend the next (almost) two decades as a non-factor.

Sports is simply not remotely that predictable. Take Snider for instance - he could be the next Russell Branyan or he could be the best slugger in the league or anything in between. There are easily 30 or 40 other variables just like that which make absolutist pessimism OR optimism totally unsupportable with anything except emotion.

I AM more concerned about the future than I have been since 2001, I don't wish to minimize the potential ways they could continue going over the cliff on their way to being the Royals.

But by no means is such an outcome certain. I could describe a future where they spent $120 million and contended in 2010-2011...I could describe one where they cut back to $60 and the kids developed well and the team was a 2012 incarnation of the 2008 Rays - and I could also imagine a scenario in which either $120 mil or $60 mil resulted in a train wreck, or simple mediocrity.

None of them grossly more likely than the other.

I do confess to a sense of declining interest that I fear may become permanent though.

I assume you are aware at what a staggering over-reaction that is.

You can no more forecast what will happen even 5 or 10 years in the future than you could have forecast in October 1993 that the jays would spend the next (almost) two decades as a non-factor.

Sports is simply not remotely that predictable. Take Snider for instance - he could be the next Russell Branyan or he could be the best slugger in the league or anything in between. There are easily 30 or 40 other variables just like that which make absolutist pessimism OR optimism totally unsupportable with anything except emotion.

As I said, I'm not trying to persuade anybody to start thinking like me. And one of my baseball-fan axioms is, "never is a really long time."

But you haven't persuaded me either. Sure, Snider looks good. So do Hill and Lind and Romero. I have no doubt that they're the kind of guys who will be able to keep the Jays closer to 70 wins than 40 over the next few years, just as Halladay and Delgado and Wells have done over the past decade. But you need quite a few players of that quality to put together a really *good* team, and where are they all going to come from? I don't see a source, or combination of sources, that will be up to the job now or in the future.

It's a long list of questions to which I'm pessimistic about the answers. Will ownership be willing to pony up enough dough to pay what a good team in this division costs? Will the GM and his people draft astutely, trade shrewdly, sign free agents intelligently, and let their own free agents walk away when appropriate, with enough success to staff a championship-quality team? Will the players ever rise to the occasion? Are there circumstances under which the fans will ever support the team in quantity again?

I'd like to be able to say 'yes' to any of those. But, as Dennis Miller once said, I'm just not getting that vibe.

One of the effects of this pessimism is that it leaves me with no opinion about, for instance, Dopirak vs. Millar. The way I see it, it doesn't make any difference what the Jays do about Dopirak and Millar because it's not going to help anyway. It could be years before the Jays finish above .500 again 

Your pessimism may well be founded, but sometimes the longview has to be ignored. Sometimes (my Zen friends tell me)  what's of interest is only today's game. Do the team's chances improve on winning today with Dopirak over Millar? Perhaps, and maybe only very, very slightly. It's hard to imagine Dopirak being a drop-off from Millar.

The Dopirak non-callup aside, Millar is a kind of lightning rod for the fans right now. Ricciardi refuses to drop him. Gaston refuses to bury him. And Millar will be $50K richer any day now. All of these can be construed as the organization flaunting its indifference towards the fans. When the organization says "we don't care", they should not be surprised to hear the same thing back from the fans in the form of empty seats and lower TV ratings.

Overbay has wild platoon splits. All you had to do was find a guy who crushes lefties, a Craig Wilson/Kevin Mench type and platoon him with Overbay. They would have cost no more than Millar and would represent better options than a guy with no platoon splits and worse defense than the regular guy.

I also really hope the empty Dome tonight is viewed as the opportunity cost of giving the fans such a craptastic team.

In short, there's no excess crowding on the 40 man roster.

In other words, there is no excess of talent on the major or minor league rosters...

If the Jays are going semi-cheap and want to move Doc, I hope they address their dire need for positional players. All of these guys are on different teams, but I would gladly take this return for Doc AND Downs AND Frasor.

Carlos Gonzalez, Brandon Wood, JJ Hardy and Chris Snyder.

I'm thinking Downs and Frasor is not too far off Hardy and Snyder (heck, teams may balk at Snyder and the 10+ mill left on his contract for all I know).

But, at least the team would fill it's major position player holes. Lets say that Overbay is gone too...your 2010 Blue Jays:

Wells (21), Hardy (5), Encarnacion (4.75), Snyder, (4.75) Hill (4) & Lind, Snider, Gonzalez, Wood, Ruiz, Chavez, Coats and Inglett (4) = $44.5 million

Romero/Richmond/Zep/Marcum/Cecil/McGowan/Litsch (3.5) = $3.5 million

Ryan (10), Tallet/Camp/Accardo/Janssen/League/Carlson/Roenicke (7) = $17 million

Total: $65 million

I think that is selling low on Doc/Downs/Frasor (Overbay is probably tradable but won't fetch much back) but I think it is a more interesting mix than the current team, other than the fact that Doc is gone. But at least there is some offensive potential in Gonzalez and Wood and guys who have had decent careers that are at a good age to bounce back (Hardy/Snyder). I say that team wins 75 games (though it is hard as hell to predict with so many volatile players). Heck, if Snider, Wood and Gonzalez break out that team could be an ace and a closer away from contention. I don't really think that is much to ask for Doc and friends...I am just sick of having a bunch of pitching that blocks other pitching (before breaking down) while there are some major position needs...this team is frustrating...underwhelming...

Signed

A bored Blue Jays fan

While the Jays are trading for CarGo from the Rockies, maybe they should also pick up Feliz and Holland from the Rangers. those kids are pretty good. And what about that Joey Votto in Cinci, wouldn't he look good replacing Overbay at first?

If this is sarcasm...are you saying CarGo is too much as the centrepiece for Halladay? I'm not necessarily disagreeing...I mean, this is just a random fantasy...basically, for once, would rather the Jays address their holes instead of "stockpiling pitching"...unless it is someone like Feliz...Gonzalez has less value to the Rockies as they have Fowler as their CF...and it's not like Gonzalez has received a ton of ABs this year...it's not that long ago that he was merely a piece for Matt Holliday, who was presumably worth less than Halladay is now...

Dave, you are clearly not issuing your challenge with the severity it demands or you would have opted for the double-dog-dare.

BTW, you made mention of Russ Adams earlier. He is now in the Padres organization.

It could be years before the Jays finish above .500 again and they may not contend for anything more interesting than third place for decades. (Or longer!)

Perspective check:  The Jays finished second in the AL East in 2006 (A.D.).  They finished ahead of the Red Sox three years ago, which happened to be two years after and one year before the Red Sox won titles.

The Jays were a brutal 67-win team in 2004 that drew 1.9 million fans and had the following pitchers age 25 or under appear in big league games:  Bush, Chulk, Douglass, Chacin, League, Peterson.

The '09 Jays have played the following pitchers age 25 or under:  Romero, Cecil, Zep, Litsch, Ray and Mills.  (Position players are more comparable -- '04 had Wells and Rios; '09 has Lind and Snider.)

The '04 Jays went into the offseason and promptly lost their only legitimate offensive threat for nothing, not even compensatory draft picks.  They were 12th in HR and 11th in OPS and lost their only known source of either, purely for financial reasons.  And yet, they won 80 games in '05 and the following offseason, they spent money on Glaus, Molina, AJ, BJ and hope (such as it was).  What kind of odds would you have gotten in October 2004 that the Blue Jays would finish ahead of the Red Sox within two years?

Youneverknow. 

Mike G, did Hill and Hudson play more than 10 games together up the middle?  And haven't they been reasonably competitive with a parade of Adams, Johnny Mac, Eckstein and Scutaro at short?

And don't they still have Hill?  (And Wells, but I get your point there.)

They don't have much in the way of third base now, but in the 2004-05 offseason, in which they came off a last-place finish and lowered payroll from $50 to $45 million and jettisoned Delgado, they signed Koskie.  Then they traded for Glaus, and then for Rolen. 

Today on sportsnet they said that not only is JP's job security in question this offseason but there are now rumblings that Cito could be on the firing block again.

Also as far as a new GM this out of nowhere candidate was mentioned on Yahoo sports (at the bottom of the article under Fungo Hitting):

"A name that could potentially surface as a GM candidate in Toronto if the Blue Jays decide not to keep J.P. Ricciardi, as is widely speculated, is Rob Ducey, one of the team’s pro scouts. Ducey is a Toronto native and former big-league outfielder who spent the first five-plus seasons of a 13-year playing career with the Jays. …"

I would have never thought of Ducey, I always assumed Alex A was next up.

The club saw it a little differently, and moved Hill to second and traded Hudson for Glaus.  In either event, they had one major hole rather than three, as this club does. 

If you weren't sold on Hinske, who had a very poor year in 2004, then that's two major holes (1B and 3B).  2004 Hinske had a lower OPS than 2009 Wells!  Phelps also had a poor 2004 at DH, although I guess that may not have qualified as a major hole.

And as for shortstop, if the team has been able to win 86-87 games with Johnny Mac, Eckstein and Scutaro, why be pessimistic that they can't find a similarly adequate short-term fix?

Carlos Pena was considered a failure for the most part before he got to Tampa,

If anyone did so, they were being unfair. From ages 24-28, the years prior to joining TB, his OPS+s were 106, 108, 113, 112, 96 (in just a handful of AB). He may have underachieved expectations, but he was hardly a failure.

By the end of his age-25 season, Pena had logged over 1000 PAs with an OPS+ around 108. This year is Dopirak's age-25 season and he has yet to log a single major league AB. So while Dopirak may yet defy the odds and achieve something with a late career start, Pena is not really a good comp.

I would have never thought of Ducey, I always assumed Alex A was next up.

Man, was I ahead of the curve picking my handle or what?

Point conceded. I have to modify my opinion of the Tigers downward a good bit for letting him leave. My foggy memory had assumed he was much worse for them at the end than he actually was.

Now, the club needs a shortstop, a centerfielder and a third baseman, and there are no answers likely at hand for years unless the club is willing to spend gobs of money.  I like Cecil and Zep a lot, but I worry that development may be impeded by a poor defence behind them. The problem is bats: the Jays have no hitting talent in the minors (except for people who are already here, such as Snider). Their best remaining hitters in AAA are old warhorses such as Russ Adams and Howie Clark. And they have nobody hitting above .271 in AA, except for Dopirak (who is now in AAA). The classic saying about a championship quality team is that they are strong up the middle. The Jays, while they have Hill at second, have soon-to-be-free agents at SS and C, and nothing in the system to replace them.

Suggestion for next season: can Jose Bautista play shortstop? If so, Jose can be the next guy at short if Marco Scutaro declines with age.  Inglett will be the go-to-guy for utility. The lack of hitting talents is not easy to be solved: how many Randy Ruiz of late can be called from AAAA veterans? Still, for next season they need a shortstop a catcher, an outfielder and a third baseman.

Hopefully that Ducey rumour is just someone desperate for a column idea who happened to notice that Ducey is a Canadian and works for the Blue Jays.

If they change general managers, fine. But what you do is look at as many qualified candidates as possible, interview them and make an informed decision. I don't know how qualified Alex Anthopoulos is, and I doubt anyone here really knows either. But giving the most important job in the baseball operations department to somebody just because he happens to be here already is the height of folly.

Of course, that's assuming that the idea is to try to build a winner.

Smallest crowd in the Dome's history tonight 11,400 and  change.  Hopefully this is a message to Rogers to wake up as opposed to things going the way of the Expos.

Given Dopirak's age, his relatively low walk totals, and the seeming fact that Vegas inflates hitting stats a bit, I don't expect much from Dopirak. I like him better than Millar, though, and you never know - he could take another step forward. (It seems to take him a season to adjust to each level. Whether that's a good sign or not, I don't know.) That's why they play the games, after all - we're always constantly surprised.

For now, Dopirak is not expected; if he was, he would not have been substracted from the Cubs minor league system. Probably his learning curve for baseball is flatter than those of prospects. 

One quick-and-dirty way of judging whether a class-AAA ballplayer can help a team is by comparing him to any former major leaguers who are now his teammates. Dopirak is currently hitting .330 at Las Vegas - but Russ Adams is hitting .319, and David Dellucci hit .317. Of course, Randy Ruiz hit .320 in Vegas, but with more power.

How about comparing these players in Quality Plate Appearances? By the way, is there a sabermetrical relationship between a batter's QPA and OPS?

Okay (deep breath):  here's an attempt to be optimistic about the Jays in September 2009.   Consider their win over the Twins tonight.  Does it perhaps demonstrate a way for the Jays to win games in 2010?   Even with an inconsistent and inexperienced starter, even without much hitting, even with a lineup composed almost entirely of has-beens and never-wills, the Jays managed to scratch out a win.  And they used a formula that just might possibly work next season: a decent six innings from the starter, followed by a cobbled-together 7th inning from three relievers, followed by an inning from their natural set-up man (Downs), followed by an inning from their new closer (Frasor).   The optimist in me is suggesting that Downs-Frasor might be a very strong combo in the bullpen next season.  The bullpen, arguably, was thrown into disarray and confusion in 2009 by an unlucky series of events:  Ryan's implosion, the freak injury to Downs, the shifting of Tallet to the rotation, and the overworking of Carlson and League.  A more stable bullpen in 2010, anchored by Downs and Frasor, might just do it.  Meanwhile, the raw youngsters in the rotation, a year older and a year wiser, might offer the consistency that the Jays need.  If you've got a strong rotation and a solid bullpen, is it possible that the Jays could prosper with a lineup anchored by Lind, Hill, Snider, Overbay, maybe Scutaro, and (dare I dream) a bit of a rebound from Wells?

Of course it was only the Twins tonight, and it's September when not much matters.  But I need a reason to care about 2010, and this -- for now -- might have to be it.

...Of course it was only the Twins tonight, and it's September when not much matters.  But I need a reason to care about 2010, and this -- for now -- might have to be it.

Unfortunately China Fan, this is the same line of thinking that has gotten us in trouble each of the last 3 years.

I'm of the mind that the Jays have to reload/rebuild because there are just too many holes at the key positions (SS; C; CF; 3B & closer).  Other than seriously bumping up  the payroll, the only way to plug most of these holes in short order is via trading one Roy Halladay.  Last night was the final evidence to this fact.  I mean only 11,000+ show up to watch arguably THE greatest pitcher in the franchise history, and maybe the most consistant RH the AL has seen since Pedro!  If the paying fans won't come out for him, then turn him into 3 near MLB ready players for those holes mentioned above!

Get a grip John ;)   It makes way too much sense for any of the 30 conservative management teams, let alone the Jays. I'm sure J.P. or his replacement will follow the tried and true....... but then again you never know. It sure would be interesting if someone had the balls to try it and especially so if it worked.... OMG  we might have a whole new way of thinking. :)