The Jays bullpen did not have a fantastic Sunday, and defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory in the second half of a twin bill. It would have given the Jays a 3-game winning streak and put them at 7-3 to finish their road jaunt. With the Orioles coming to town the Jays could have run their streak to six games before getting the Indians, who have been playing better as of late (and have given the Jays trouble to boot all season) but still aren't very good. So maybe the Jays would have been 12-4 coming out of the All-Star break before a difficult stretch that includes 12 straight against the Beasts of the East, an Oakland/Anaheim west coast swing, and then the Sox and Yanks again. And if they could hold their own there, then have a good September, then maybe they had an outside shot at the playoffs...

Ok, so none of that seems particularly likely, and let's face it, the Jays are going to miss the playoffs for the umpteenth straight time. Despite all this though it still seems, well, like an exciting time to be a Jays fan. There's a lot happening right now.

First and foremost in my mind at least is that, for the first time in a while, the Jays have players of some genuine talent manning practically every position on the diamond. Some of them have scuffled to start the season (Overbay), or of late (Wells), or really the whole time (Lind, Hill), and some of them are not necessarily long term solutions (Buck, Lewis), but none of them out and out suck. Several current starters look to be mainstays with the team for at least a couple of years more - Snider, Lind, Hill, and Escobar immediately come to mind; you can add Bautista, Wells, and Encarnacion to that list, though all have caveats. The Jays two best hitting prospects (arguably), Brett Wallace and JP Arencibia - also seem ready, and fill positional needs going forward. For comparisons sake, on July 25th, 2008 Joe Inglett hit leadoff, Rod Barajas hit 5th, and Brad Wilkerson and a 40 year old Matt Stairs helped to round out the lineup. Johnny Mac and his .524 OPS also came to the plate over 200 times that year, and Shannon Stewart and Kevin Mench had a significant number of at bats. So yeah, I think there is as much hitting talent from 1 to 9 in the lineup as the Jays have had for a while.

This is without even mentioning the pitching, which has been a strength of the Jays for a while. The team has the 3rd best overall FIP in the AL, and are tied for 4th in starters FIP. After jettisoning Dana Eveland and Brian Tallet from the rotation, the team has received consistently strong performances from Shaun Marcum (age 28, 3.57 FIP), Ricky Romero (25, 3.41), Brandon Morrow (25, 3.30), and Brett Cecil (23, 3.81). The fifth starter role hasn't been definitively claimed, but there are numerous candidates going forward, including Jesse Litsch (25), Marc Rzepczynski (24), Brad Mills (25) and top prospect Kyle Drabek (22). If anything the problem may be of having too many starters, and at some point the Jays are probably going to have to make a trade to clear some room. The bullpen is more in flux, as Casey Janssen, David Purcey and Shawn Camp seem the only likely returnees next year, as Kevin Gregg, Scott Downs and Jason Frasor are all trade bait. Still, the Jays have had a lot of success filling out the pen in recent years, and their are numerous candidates in the high minors (Carlson, Accardo, Stewart, Roenicke, etc.) An interesting subject for a later post would be to try to figure out who the team should use going forward.

The last point to make about the team's current roster is how strong the financial picture looks to be going forward. Vernon Wells has 4 years and $85 million to go on his anchor, er, contract, but the only other Jays with a 2011 contract at the moment are Aaron Hill ($5 million, options for 2012-2014), Adam Lind ($5 million, $12 million total 2012-13, club options 2014-15) and John McDonald ($1.5 million), while Kevin Gregg and Jose Molina have team options. Everyone else is in arbitration or pre-arbitration, while a couple of players, including Overbay, Downs and Buck, are free agents. Nobody other than Jose Bautista and Shaun Marcum (and maybe Encarnacion) figure to make much money in arbitration either. Several important players - Cecil, Romero, Snider - are in their second year of eligibility and seem like candidates for longer term deals. Brandon Morrow has not yet hit arbitration as far as I can tell (his service time is weird because he kept getting yanked up and down by the Mariners.)

The guys that aren't gong to be back with the team are all strong trade candidates, and I think that there are only positives in AA's resume to this point. Whatever one's take on the Gonzalez-Escobar trade, I think it's fair to say that the Jays got back the best player, at the cost of three nice but non-essential pieces. Much of the scuttlebutt, with the trade deadline fast approaching on Saturday, is that Anthopoulos is trying to improve the team's overall level of talent, and looking into multiple team deals to do so. He also, according to Rosenthal, seems to be asking a lot for the Jays talent. This strikes me as eminently reasonable in the case of players such as Scott Downs, who is lefthanded and perhaps the best non-closing reliever available, and likely a Type A free agent to boot. Kevin Gregg, whose numbers don't look all the bad superficially, has also drawn interest, and he has two reasonable years of team options. Lyle Overbay seems less likely to draw interest as a moderate hitting first baseman, while there is little chatter about John Buck. In this corner it seems like the Jays should be looking for young hitting talent, perhaps buying low on players like an Alex Gordon who have fallen out of favour with their respective organizations. The biggest positional needs for the team long term would seem to be outfield and 3rd base, or perhaps second base if the team moves Hill to third. While one can never have too much pitching, the Blue Jays have too much pitching, as they have more guys that they can fit in their rotation, and have gone something like at least 60/40 towards pitching in the draft over the last several years.

 The last thing that I find very exciting about the 2010 Blue Jays is Yunel Escobar, who has had a good first week and a half with the Jays. My (admittedly unscientific) impressions from this time have been good. Defensively he seems to have decent range and a howitzer for an arm. He also has a bit of flair. He barehanded a ball deep in the hole and almost threw out a runner at first against the Royals on a tough play I've never seen another shortstop attempt; he's made a couple of fancy flips to Aaron Hill to turn two as well. At the plate he seems like your typical Jay hitter so far - aggressive early in the count, willing to be patient and protect later on. He walks a fair amount, something we haven't seen much of yet. He is one of the best bunters I've ever seen, and has bunted successfully for hits with runners on at least three times, each time laying the ball down so perfectly as to be undefensible (if that's a word.) He doesn't seem particularly fast or slow either way, and he definitely has some power, as he has homered twice so far in 37 PA (Alex Gonzalez Braves Home Runs: 0.) I don't necessarily believe in distinctions like this, but he really seems like the perfect number two hitter - great bat control, walks, a bit of pop.

There is plenty to be excited about for the rest of this year also. We figure to see at least one interesting debut (I would bet on Arencibia, maybe Wallace, probably not Drabek, who is apparently going to get shut down rather than come up for some bullpen appearences in September). None of them are on the 40-man, which is almost all pitchers (seriously), many of whom wouldn't be claimed by other teams right now (Reidier Gonzalez, Luis Perez, Scott Richmond, Robert Ray, etc.) A couple of other interesting organizational guys might make their debuts when the rosters expand - Emaus, Dopirak, Lubanski come to mind, though the Jays have traditionally not used a lot of September guys, other than relievers. Travis Snider should be back on Friday, and has been hitting well in his rehab/who knows why minors stint. I would put the over under of trades the Jays pull off at 1.5, and would guess they make 2 (Downs, Buck or Gregg). In the end, this team isn't going to make the playoffs this year, or perhaps even the next. Still, the combination of young, good pitching, and enough interesting position players moving forward (Lewis, Escobar, Bautista, Wells, Snider, Lind, Hill, Wallace, and Arencibia could be the starting lineup next year, with Encarnacion somewhere) has me excited about this team than I have been in a long while.

In more mundane news, its Brad Bergesen v. Brandon Morrow from the Rogers Centre tonight, first pitch 7.07. It's eighties night, whatever that means, Bergesen might be the worst starting pitcher in the majors (apologies Ryan Rowland-Smith), the Jays are -220, some of the shortest odds on them all year, and they are 9-0 against the Orioles on the year. So yeah, that pretty much means the team is going to blow the game in a most heartbreaking fashion... or win 10-3. You heard it here first.