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Breaking News Non-Roster Invitees to 2012 Spring Training
Blue Jays web site now lists 23 Non-Roster Invitees for 2012 Spring training.  The list includes 13 Pitchers and 10 Position players.

Pitchers -  Andrew Carpenter, Jesse Chavez, Robert Coello, Nelson Figueroa, Jerry Gil, Jim Hoey, Drew Hutchison, Chad Jenkins, Aaron Laffey, Deck McGuire, Garrett Mock, Scott Richmond, Ryan Tepera.

Catchers - Yan Gomes, Brian Jeroloman, A.J. Jimenez, Carlos Perez.

Infielders - Brian Bocock, Jonathan Diaz, Ryan Goins, Chris Woodward.

Outfielders - Anthony Gose, Ricardo Nanita.

 

Nice group.  What say you Bauxites?

Posted by mamboon on Friday, January 20 2012 @ 08:06 PM EST.
Non-Roster Invitees to 2012 Spring Training | 17 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
TamRa - Friday, January 20 2012 @ 10:46 PM EST (#250908) #
When did the re-sign Woodward, and Nanita for that matter?

The presence of Goins and Tepera is surprising to me.

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TamRa - Friday, January 20 2012 @ 10:49 PM EST (#250909) #
looks like virtually the whole projected Vegas roster (save 3B and some bullpen candidates) Mostly uninteresting lot except the catchers and the three AA starters. And Gose.
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Gerry - Friday, January 20 2012 @ 11:15 PM EST (#250910) #
I am not sure how significant the list is, minor leaguers get called up to play with the big club all the time. For minor league free agents an invite to major league camp is often part of the deal.

There is always a demand for catchers so reaching down to bring in Jimenez and Perez is not a surprise.

Ryan Goins will likely be the shortstop in AA but why invite him and not Hechavarria? The early part of spring training has a lot of pitcher fielding practice and catching drills. You need shortstops for both of those drills.

I know the Jays like Ryan Tepera and his invite suggests he might be headed for AA as well.
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jgadfly - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 12:11 AM EST (#250913) #
 I wonder if the roster that they are referring to is the 40 man ... guys like Hechevarria , Crawford, Beck, Snider, Cooper, et al are on the Major League roster and therefore do not require the invite and subsequently burn an option when they are assigned to the minors , if and when they don't make the final 25 man active roster . The non-roster invitees are not on the 40 man roster.
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TamRa - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 03:31 AM EST (#250914) #
^^^
Bingo. Adeiny will be there. Everyone on the 40 will be.

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DJRob - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 06:12 AM EST (#250915) #
A little surprised to see Woodward invited. I thought he'd put plans to become a player agent on hold last year. I guess he's signed up for another year of mentoring in Vegas which is interesting. Does anyone know if he speaks Spanish?
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Gerry - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 12:20 PM EST (#250918) #

Dan Szymborski has his Zips projections out:

Player            Age   BA   OBP  SLG  OPS+
Jose Bautista     31   .273 .408 .566   158
Brett Lawrie      22   .275 .333 .498   119
Edwin Encarnacion 29   .261 .331 .457   109
Adam Lind         28   .264 .315 .466   106
Colby Rasmus      25   .250 .322 .454   105
Yunel Escobar     29   .272 .351 .393    99
Kelly Johnson     30   .242 .323 .434   101
Ben Francisco     30   .253 .326 .418    98
Eric Thames       25   .250 .313 .428    96
Travis d'Arnaud   23   .253 .299 .421    90
Travis Snider     24   .247 .304 .407    89
Rajai Davis       31   .259 .299 .365    77
J.P. Arencibia    26   .229 .281 .442    90

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Gerry - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 12:25 PM EST (#250919) #

Only 2 starters are projected to be above league average: 


Player           Age    ERA   ERA+
Ricky Romero      27    3.72   117
Brandon Morrow    27    4.12   106
LEAGUE AVERAGE - - - - - - - -  96
Henderson Alvarez 22    4.65    94
Brett Cecil       25    5.00    87
Dustin McGowan    30    5.00    87

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Chuck - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 01:03 PM EST (#250920) #

Colby Rasmus     25   .250 .322 .454   105
Yunel Escobar    29   .272 .351 .393    99
Kelly Johnson    30   .242 .323 .434   101

League average offense at 2B/SS/CF would be huge since the average at those positions is a fair bit below 100.

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Richard S.S. - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 02:15 PM EST (#250921) #

Non-Roster usually means not on the 40-man Roster.  (And that makes sense).   Non-Roster Invites to Spring Training are invited to the Minor League Camp, not the Major League Camp.  (And that makes sense).   Otherwise 23 players get waived from the 40-man Roster to make room for them - not likely.  (And that makes sense).

At MLB SS: we have Yunel Escobar, with Lius Valbuena and Mike McCoy as backups / Bench; at AAA SS: we have Adeiney Hechavarria with loser of Valbuena/McCoy and Jon Diaz as backups/Bench.   Ryan Goins (A+) looks to be the most advanced (will be moving to AA).   Our brightest lights at SS are D.J. Thon JR. (RK+), Christian Lopes (late 2011 signing); Dewal Lugo (DSL in 2012?); Jorge Vega-Rosado (RK); Andrew Burns (late 2011 signing) and Shane Optiz (A-).   It's safe to say that after the abyss at 2B in our system, our area of most need is SS for the next few years. years.

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lexomatic - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 03:34 PM EST (#250924) #
I would be very happy if Lawrie hit that well this season.
IF Thames and Snider hit that poorly, LF is looking like a bit of a black hole. I'll take the over on Escobar too, though that seems ballpark accurate.
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TamRa - Saturday, January 21 2012 @ 08:12 PM EST (#250930) #
I'm sure I complain about these every year.

Escobar: 4 of his 5 seasons he slugged .401 or more, who project it to drop? Take out that one lost year and it's 30 points higher than the projection. OBP is 15 points off his career figure, and without that one year it's more like 25 points off. Why? He's not over 30, he's not prone to injury, is there some aspect that just depresses everyone by 10% off what's reasonable or something?

And what math says d'Arnaud would do better than Snider?

I'll take the over on Snider, Rasmus, and wouldn't be surprised by an over on EE and Thames.

I'd be real happy with that from Lawrie...but at the same time (and this is not a complaint about the prediction) i wouldn't be surprised if he hit much better than even that. I see Longoria parallels.

On the pitchers:

I think they are considerably pessimistic about Cecil and McGowan and somewhat so on Alvarez. I also think if Listch were starting he'd do much better than 5.81 - as a reliever, better still. Luis Perez as a reliever is too high as well by at least a run.



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Ryan Day - Sunday, January 22 2012 @ 12:04 AM EST (#250934) #
Zips was pretty lousy last year:


Bautista
Zips: 249/362/524
Actual: 302/447/608

Lind
Z: 269/321/471
A: 251/295/439

Hill
Z: 257/312/444
A: 246/299/356 (total)

Escobar
Z: 268/345/381
A: 290/369/413

Arencibia:
Z: 230/273/432
A: 219/282/438

Thames:
Z: 236/307/402
A: 262/313/436

Snider
Z: 260/320/465
A: 225/269/348

Rasmus:
Z: 262/341/443
A: 225/298/391 (total)

Johnson
Z: 275/350/478
A: 222/304/413 (total)

Spot-on for Arencibia, but some pretty huge misses for Bautista, Rasmus, and Johnson.

There's a certain averaging-out approach that doesn't make much sense. It projects Johnson with a .323 OBP, but his OBP by year goes 334, 375, 349, 303, 370, 304 - aside from his first season, he's either been >349 or
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hypobole - Sunday, January 22 2012 @ 01:33 AM EST (#250935) #
per Dan Szymborski, the originator of ZiPS

"I use 4 years of weighted statistics (8,5,4,3) for players between the ages of 24 and 38 and 3 years for younger and older players."

for aging:

"My ZiPS program generates growth and decline curves based on player type. I don't try to find particularly similar players but instead large groups with similar characteristics, such as K rate for pitchers, Speed Score for batters, BABIP for batters, handedness, and a lot of other stuff"

Small wonder the Jays projections are off, they are the antithesis of consistency.

AA traded for Johnson, Rasmus and Escobar exactly because they were struggling despite previous success. Jose is a one in a generation turnaround from scrub to MVP, while Lind and Hill turned from All Stars to sub-replacement hitters.
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John Northey - Sunday, January 22 2012 @ 11:46 AM EST (#250936) #
Love spring training invites and projections so this is a fun thread for me :)

Projections...
The bullpen is quite interesting with Santos, Oliver, Janssen, and Frasor all projected to be above league average. Oliver & Santos & Janssen by a lot. Camp (not signed but listed) right near it, Villanueva near enough, then blech for the rest but the rest are mainly AAA cannon fodder.

The starters are a massive group and thanks to youth and injury recovery extremely hard to guess with any accuracy I suspect. Still, with just Romero and Morrow above average and Alvarez close you can see why AA was chasing top quality this winter (according to reports). Cecil & McGowan at 87 and Litsch at 84 sounds low but certainly possible. Carreno, Perez, and Litsch are all far more likely to be in the pen all year than starting though which changes projections one would think.

Odds of an ERA+ over 130 hits double digits (10%+) for Oliver, Santos, Janssen, Romero, Frasor, Morrow and Camp. The same 7 are 50%+ likely over 100. 14 more are at 10%+ for 100+ in ERA+.

I just wish he'd give a link to definitions of some of his terms. ODDIBE (odds of important baseball events) sounds good but what qualifies as 'EX' 'VG' etc.? If it means 'excellent results' (as I'd assume) then Bautista is up at 85% (makes sense), Lawrie at 41%, in the 20% range you get Rasmus/Escobar/Johnson, and EE in the teens. Very Good adds in d'Arnaud/JPA/Gose in the 20's, Francisco/Thames/Valbuena in the teens. Snider, for average or better, is down to just 18% with a 64% shot at being 'PO' (the worst rating) vs Thames at 26% Avg+ 46% 'PO'.

Generally we view AA as chasing guys with the massive 'EX' potential but slumping right now. Given those ODDIBE odds it sure explains his 3 biggest traded for guys and keeping EE around along with the 3 kids (JPA/d'Arnaud/Gose) who could all be very good hitters at prime defensive positions. Snider I suspect is nearing his end here and this year is his last regardless of option issues - if he succeeds the options don't matter - if he fails they again don't matter as AA will be willing to let him go at that point. I've been cheering for Snider but at some point his actual ML stats become an accurate assessment of who he is as a player. Hopefully he beats the odds and hits the 2% shot at being 'EX' instead of the 64% shot at being 'PO'.
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Mike Green - Sunday, January 22 2012 @ 12:40 PM EST (#250938) #
It is interestting that ZiPS takes the view that Gose would be a useful platoon player already.  The projections are also consistent with the view that the club could benefit from having a "#3" starter who could give 180 innings of league average pitching. 

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Chuck - Sunday, January 22 2012 @ 01:34 PM EST (#250939) #

The projections are also consistent with the view that the club could benefit from having a "#3" starter who could give 180 innings of league average pitching. 

I concur. Much is being asked of the rotation this year and I'm not convinced they are manned to meet the task. A lot of things have to break right.

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Non-Roster Invitees to 2012 Spring Training | 17 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.