Colorado's park effect seems to be trending back up the last few years, and the team is falling back into the problem they had for so many years - an offense that looks so good at home, it's hard to believe it actually stinks overall. There's something about adjusting away from Colorado that seems to be harder that anywhere else (pitch movement differences? I assume pitch f/x has been examined pretty thoroughly there), which I think makes the park effect look even worse - it's like Coors gives you a +40 at home, but then a -10 on the road.

Philadelphia with 216 runs allowed at home in 71 games...so there's a chance of <3 Runs a game alllowed there, which is crazy, especially in a neutral/hitting favourable park. The home ERA of 2.75 for the entire team would be 8th in the NL, 5th if you don't count the Phillies starters. It's seasons like this that the baseball playoffs seem especially unfair - the Phillies are so clearly the best team in the NL (and MLB most likely), having to win three series just seems wrong somehow.

I'm also more bullish on the Jays' chances the next few years. Everything went wrong with pitching this year, the lineup looks to be better. The best positional free agents this year are at spots the big two already have filled (DH/1B), and the pitchers are a risky bunch (aside from CC, who the Yankees must resign). And there's the ever-present matter of the old guys actually playing that way. Rodriguez has apparently succumbed

I have a question......  First, let's set it up

1. Toronto is the 4th biggest market in North America. 

2. The three markets ahead of Toronto, have 2 teams (Chicago, New York and LA)

3. The Canadian Dollar is strong right now (and not going anywhere in the next couple years)

4. For the Toronto market, you could include the rest of Canada.  (Maybe minus Vancouver, who tend have more Mariner fans)

Why can't the Jays be spending the money with the big boys?  I am not expecting them to spend it like New York, but at least be on par with the Red Sox.  If you go by market size, they SHOULD have simular revenues.  (And if they don't have simular revenues, they really need to question thier marketing department).

If one "can't see them seriously contending in this division before 2014" I don't see how it makes any sense to keep Bautista.

It doesn't.

There now;  I feel moderately better.

2 spaces after a semi-colon?  : (

FWIW, an article in Slam Sports today indicates that the Jays have ZERO interest in Fielder, as they are interested in athletic type players. 

Slam Sports is wrong. First, the Jays "sources" seemed to be very free with their teams stance on Fielder, despite the organizations reputation as being very tight lipped.

But more importantly, all players who are potential upgrades are of interest to the Jays, It's just that the Jays have assigned, or are assigning (as with Yu Darvish) values to these players. If the pricetag exceeeds the value assigned they will walk away (as we saw with Tyler Beede).  And as the history of Free Agency has shown, pricetags rarely settle in at the value of players, and often far exceed them. A special bat like Fielder's will command a much greater premium over value, whether it be an owner wanting to make a splash, a team believing they're ready to contend, a team thinking he'll put them over the top or simply a case of the Brewers not wanting to lose him.

So even though the Jays do have interest in him, they know that as long as they stick with their value philosophy, they will have ZERO chance of actually signing him to a contract, because they won't offer him more than they believe he's worth.

.  

Thus I must point out to our head nitpicker that two spaces between sentences is incorrect.

I don't believe it is incorrect, just obsolete with auto-spacing.  In the old days of handwriting and typewriting, it was certainly correct.

John, I agree with you that Darvish's cost won't be $25-30 million per year and the Jays should stay far away from him. However, I don't think equating Darvish with either Matsuzaka and especially Igawa is useful. It is worth noting that some Japanese pitchers have had more difficult transitions to the majors than statistical translations would have suggested. Nevertheless, Darvish is a different, and superior, pitcher to both of those individuals.

AP Style: Has always called for one space at the end of a sentence.

Chicago Style: Used to call for two spaces up until approximately 1927. However, since Chicago Style is only used in an academic setting, they are more lenient with the rule. The problem is that a good majority of teachers/professors only have academic experience and therefore only know the Chicago Style. Thus, they inadvertently teach students to use two spaces, which, unfortunately, does not apply in most industries outside of academia.

Maybe these punctuation ideas should be pitched to a TV network.

"This is a space. The final frontier"

I wish I knew which players were which in that picture.

If that's Perez on the far right, where's Thames?

Okay, here's my attempt to assess the future of the Blue Jays.  I'm going to use what I call the "Dick Cheney method" (patent pending):  I'm going to divide the Jays into "known knowns" and "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns."  The first category, the "known knowns", are the Jays who seem predictably good for the forseeable future: the ones that can be reliably counted upon to have good seasons in 2012.  This list includes Bautista, Escobar, Lawrie, Romero -- and that's about it.  Then there's the list of "known unknowns" -- those who have the potential to have excellent seasons in 2012, but also have the potential to decline or stagnate.  This list includes Morrow, Rasmus, Johnson (or Hill), Arencibia, Lind, Thames, Snider, Cecil, Alvarez, Drabek and Encarnacion. Notice that this is a much longer list. Finally there are the "unknown unknowns" -- the trade acquisitions, the free agents, the unexpectedly injured, the suddenly slumping, etc.   By definition, we have no idea who's on this list, but it could include players from the previous two lists, despite our assumptions.

My contention is that we tend to focus on the "unknown unknowns" -- the Prince Fielders and Yu Darvishes etc -- the mystery men who could swoop onto the Jays roster, like a deus ex machina, to save the day and propell the Jays into the playoffs. Instead we should be focusing on the "known unknowns" -- those already on the team who have the potential to improve considerably on their 2011 seasons.  It would only take two or three substantially improved performances -- let's say from Rasmus, Drabek and Morrow -- to push the Jays into contention if the others can maintain their current production.

I was watching the game yesterday and they pointed out statistics comparing this year to last year.  I am very encouraged by the fact that we have the exact same record and we are younger and we don't have Well's contract.

The one that stuck in my mind was blown saves  Out of 53 opportunities, we have saved 30 games(56%).  In 2010, they save 45 of 61 games(73%)  Simularly, this year, Boston saved 73% of thier games (Papelbon only blew one of them.  I am choosing Papelbon, because he is a free agent).  At the same rate, if the Jays would have had 53 save opportunities, they would have had 38 saves.  8 more wins.  That is the difference of 73-73 vs 81-65!   That would make us tied with Tampa.

This year, Philidelphia saves 84% of thier save opporunities.  If the Jays had the same rate, they would have 45 saves!    That is 15 more wins.  88-58.  That makes us tied with the Yankees.

(note: this is based on the assumption that a blown save = loss.  I am going to make that assumption because if we had a better bullpen, we might have been able to come back in more games as well.)

I have to say the Jays are close.  Real close.  I see us competing in 2012.  In our offseason, we just acquired 2 bullpen arms(Closer and a situational lefty), what we do at second and 1st is icing on the cake.  I would love to see Pujols and Johnson, but I won't cry if they are not here.

Oh, you're right, it was Rumsfeld.  Sheesh, 5 minutes after I develop my theory, I've already got to correct the name....

Here's a recent link re Pujols' age.

http://thecardinalnationblog.com/2011/03/05/cardinals-concerned-about-albert-pujols-age/

I've even heard Keith Law mention on McCown's show the scepticsm about his age.

McGowan seemed to really make a breakthrough in 2007.  He allowed only 146 hits in 169 2/3 innings, and K'd 144 to only 61 BB.  His ERA was 4.08, and his Component ERA was 3.07 (a Bill James stat that shows what a pitcher's ERA should have been based on his raw numbers).  He looked like one of the best young starters in the league.  In 2008 he got hurt and who knows how much it was affecting his pitching.  The numbers were worse than 2007 and he made only 19 starts.  I think a lot of the reason for people's excitement about McGowan is based on how good he looked in 2007.

The blown saves stat keeps getting misused to gauge how many more wins the team would have.  Blown saves do not equal losses.  The Jays have won quite a few games this year when they have a blown save.  They also have a couple of games with more than 1 blown save.  That being said, the bullpen is a problem that needs to be addressed. 

Richard, there are different ways to get to the same final number. Here is a blog from last year, showing how seemingly reasonable pitch totalsl/innings can be cause for concern. In particular "In total Yu Darvish threw 140 or more pitches NINE different times during the 2010 season. Only one MLB pitcher, Edwin Jackson’s no-hitter (149) hit the 140 mark."

http://mopupduty.com/index.php/yu-darvish-pitch-count/

It may be reasonable to assume health in most individual cases, but it's also not reasonable to assume health when assessing the odds of a group of pitchers, as there will inevitably be injuries. I'm sure you know that, but it underscores the reason why one cannot just pencil in McGowan and Morrow.

Secondly, I also don't understand how one can be "very optimistic" about a pitcher who has come back from three surgeries and thrown less than 10 major league innings in three years. Good scouting reports are evidence the comeback is progressing well and the fact he's even pitching again in the majors is a testament to McGowan's determination. However, baseball's litany of failed or subpar prospects also had good scouting reports in their portfolios. Like Magpie and others, I don't think it's reasonable to assume either health or performance from McGowan, but rather to hope for it.

Well, this may be the crux of our disagreement. Perhaps my hope is contingent on signing one of the big three free agents (which isn't a guaranteed at all), but if that happened I'd like the front office to position the team so that "everything" didn't have go right, but merely "most things." That difference is more than just semantics.

I'm not advocating signing Joel Pineiro, but I guess I place more importance than you do on either signing Darvish or pursuing a legitimate starting pitcher through trade if the Jays want to have more than minuscule chance of contending in 2012. As John said, I'd rather watch Drabek struggle than Jo-Jo Reyes scuffle (although I'd rather have a Reyes type around if the front office thinks Drabek's development will be better served in Triple-A), but there was every reason to be optimistic about Morrow, Cecil and Drabek in 2010 and we all saw how that turned out.

I'm not quite that pessimistic. As i look into the old crystal ball, i forsee...

The world is made up of two groups of people, each with their idea on how those groups should be labelled. It's either realists and optimists. Or realists and pessimists. In these two scenarios, the groups that self-identify as realists are not the same.

In a realists-and-optimists us and them world, the "them", the optimists, are often ridiculed as polyannas. We're positive thinkers, the optimistcs will reply, not naive fanboys. Dustin McGowan could put it all together. And so could Snider. And d'Arnaud could be the next big thing. Romero defied expectations. So did Bautista. Surprises do happen. Things sometimes go better than expected.

In a realists-and-pessimists us and them world, the "them", the pessimists, are often ridiculed as cynics. We're skeptics, the pessimists will reply, not perfunctory wet blankets. All teams have talented young arms that could put it together. Young minor league stars like Snider don't always become superstars. Morrow may have tremendous physical talents but there's no law that says he has to become top notch pitcher. Bautista's second half might be a window into what's to come.

The unspoken argument over who the realists are is one that plays out at this forum all the time. Many of the forum's contributors can be counted on to consistently fall into one of the two categories and dutifully defend their camp. And to that I say vive la difference. We're all wired a certain way which I'm sure introduces biases into our reasoning, even if we don't realize it. It's useful to sometimes hear from the other camp (even if they are obviously deluded).

So have it, cynics and pollyannas. Jays in 2012... 95 wins? 75 wins? Ticker tape parade down Yonge Street? 5th place finish?

ME. Yes, I agree. As in the case of the Red Sox. "Quite a few minor and major things are going wrong", right now. That scenario throws them into a slump.

He who cannot mess with the hitter's timing finds that the hitters mess with him.

What interests me is what a player has to overcome to reach the potential many expert evaluators see. In young pitchers that is, many times, control. But in Morrow's case, I think Magpie is correct. He will be inconsistent until he consistently interrupts hitter's timing.

There is a reasonable argument to pursue this course of action.

However, it also depends on what the front office is trying to determine. Are they trying to evaluate whether Alvarez and Drabek will be effective big league starters in 2012 or whether they will ever be effective major league starters? If it's the latter, which I doubt is what you're suggesting, I'm hoping that the front office wouldn't use about 10 starts (1/3rd of a season) to evaluate their long-term effectiveness.

If it's the former, then the counter-argument to this plan would be that the Jays could be relying on three of those starters (assuming Romero is a given and they bring in a quality starter from outside) during the first third of that season and have one less rotation spot potentially in question. That leaves one less potential hole to fill and one more arm that they could potentially fill it with. It wouldn't have mattered to this team, but if the Jays see themselves as outside contenders, 10 starts from, say, CJ Wilson instead of, say, this year's Kyle Drabek could make a difference of several games in the standings, even over a third of a season.

The counter-argument would be that Wilson is, effectively, a couple of years younger than most starters his age, given his years as a major league reliever. He's not your typical 30-year-old starter hitting free agency.

Without a blockbuster deal and taking the team as it stands now - with some additonal bullpen help - my prediction is for 5 games over - so 84 wins -78 losses

With 1 blockbuster trade at 2nd, LF or 1b/DH - 89 wins - 73 losses - and a run at a playoff spot.

All this assumes we will no longer bring back players like Patterson/Rivera/Podsednick/Wise/etc...

If that occurs - sub 500 again.

Assuming any player will put up a 1.070 OPS in any season a mug's game.

You might want to consult Dante Alighieri.

Maybe this is the special knuckleball-hitting lineup.

Farrell likes to go very right-handed against Wakefield (who's OPS splits this year are 703/855).

Do your advance metrics actually suggest that Morrow has been a better pitcher than Romero the past 2 seasons?  That's preposterous. 

I argued in another thread that FIP is not terribly appropriate for Morrow. The gap in his performance when pitching from the stretch (i.e., with men on) and from the windup (i.e., with no one on) is much larger than the average pitcher's. Like Burnett, his actual results will never match his peripherals because his performance degrades terribly in the highest leverage situations.

There's an argument to be made that this is not just random chance, but skill-related.

I have a question......  First, let's set it up

1. Toronto is the 4th biggest market in North America. 

2. The three markets ahead of Toronto, have 2 teams (Chicago, New York and LA)

Ok, I've seen this posted many times - usually by John N. However, it just didn't sit right, so I did a little research. Depending on where you look, you will see Dallas/Ft. Worth, Washington/Baltimore and San Francisco Bay Area listed above TO, or Miami and Philly. Miami doesn't have 2 teams (and both Florida teams are really struggling with attendance) and neither does Philly.. nor Dallas.

I guess it does depend on how you count market size, but..

And if you want to include the rest of Canada aside from BC, then I'm sure you can easily add various other populations to these markets. For example, Portland, Sacramento or San Antonio can easily add 2M people to whatever market you want to assign them to, and those are a LOT closer to some markets almost the same size as GTA than say, Alberta or Labrador.

 I'm not saying the Jays don't have a big market - but, IMHO, it's not QUITE as big as some people here are imagining..

I didn't mean to imply it was. Just that there is a chance they won't all rebound in the way we hope. And, relying on McGowan and Alvarez is as likely to result in similar problems in 2012.

Most teams have guys like the ones listed above. You need bench guys. Unfortunately there are times (i.e. when one of the regulars is injured) when those players get more playing time than they normally should. It happens.

The Blue Jays won a World Series with Darnell Coles and Alfredo Griffin on the bench. Retreads on the bench aren't the problem.

1st base facts:

In his last 3 games with 3+ AB's, Cooper twice had 3 hit games. In his last 30 games with 3+ AB's, Adam Lind has had zero 3 hit games.  On the season, Cooper now has a higher OBP than Lind (.316 vs .296) and a higher SLG% (.456 vs .439).

I don't think it's fair to ever consider AA's "predictions". What he believes in his heart and what he says out loud are very likely two very different things. And they should be. His job tacitly demands that he only present the guise of objectivity when it comes to public pronouncements. He has nothing to gain by sharing what he actually believes.

1st base facts:

In his last 3 games with 3+ AB's, Cooper twice had 3 hit games. In his last 30 games with 3+ AB's, Adam Lind has had zero 3 hit games.  On the season, Cooper now has a higher OBP than Lind (.316 vs .296) and a higher SLG% (.456 vs .439).

Anyone else see the interview with Lind before the game on Sportsnet's pre-game show last night? He was specifically asked about his slumping season, and he said something similar to what I heard Hill say last year about his poor numbers. Something to the effect of "Yeah, my batting average isn't quite where I want it to be, but I still have 24 homers and almost 100 RBIs, so I haven't been that bad."   Ugghh..

"Yeah, my batting average isn't quite where I want it to be, but I still have 24 homers and almost 100 RBIs, so I haven't been that bad."

I'm hoping AA can find another team in need of a 1st baseman who thinks the same way.

"Yeah, my batting average isn't quite where I want it to be, but I still have 24 homers and almost 100 RBIs, so I haven't been that bad."

......And the 8th/9th hitter (Arencebia) is right there with you while you hit cleanup.

J.P. Arencibia's playing time was Cito's decision, AT THAT TIME.

I love how people are more than willing to imply AA is a flat-out liar to support their pet theories, and bash Cito at the same time.  Yeah, AA made up the Buck playing time story to take all that media pressure off Cito this year.

Yes, bball12 you're correct that at times GM's have to be less than forthright  and obfuscation is used and may even be necessary.

But for AA to make up a story to allegedly protect a manager who was gone anyway makes little or no sense.