The baseball gods will surely mete out punishment for this act of hubris.  What sayeth the soothsayers? Will Adam Lind be dispatched from Olympus and returned to his mortal self? Will overachievers in the bullpen assume a more human form? The gods have been angered. There will be retribution.

Esmil's been our best starter - last night excepted

I thought the time difference in BC was 3 hours. Is it actually 27? If that's the case, those of us in the east can probably help you with a head's up on the markets.

May I suggest trying Cecil back in the rotation.

Even athiests can see how this would be poking the baseball gods with a stick. Cecil looks like he has a fighting chance to be Scott Downs and now you want to get greedy? 

I feel for Kawasaki, but there was no way the Jays were going to send down (and lose) Bonafacio.  Kawasaki was the only one that they could send down and know that they can call him back up if someone gets hurt again.  It makes sense.  He is just a light hitting 200 hitter.  A good backup in Buffalo.  That is it.  A fan favorite is no reason to keep him on the roster.

Bonafacio has tools.  Tools that people dream of.  You can't just let that go. 

Cecil as a starter.  Interesting thought.  He has been successful as a reliever, so you be afraid to change that.  But...  He deserves the opportunity to prove he can be a starter.  But what is best for the team?  Right now, if the Jays are winning in the 6th right now, you feel that the game is just about in the bag. 

As far as losing 2 in a row to tampa.....  Good pitching > Good hitting....   

 I like today's lineup.  Cabrera protects Lind nicely.

I also like R. Davis in the lineup(vs other options).  Don't love EE at 3rd, but it is the lineup is strong.  It will be nice when Lawrie comes back and he bats behind Cabrera.  I think the catcher, 2b and Rasmus should be the bottom third.  (BTW, that is will be 40+ HR in the bottom third.  I don't think the Mariners have that anywhere in thier lineup.)

I think It is about having assets and doing what is best for the organization. 

In July, when the Jays are shopping around.  Bonafacio is an asset that could be part of a trade.  Kawasaki has no value at all in a trade, but does have value in Buffalo as a backup if someone gets hurt. 

He doesn't need to be the main part of the trade.  He could be the finishing touch to acquire a player. 

I live in Seattle, and I think he would be a nice asset here.  What about a project on Dustin Ackley as an example?

Bonifacio's tools might be exciting if he was 22. But he's 28, and he's got 542 MLB games that show he has no power, poor plate discipline, and problems making contact. Even if he reaches his ceiling - something like his 2011 season - he still tops out as a pretty good player, while his current performance makes him ill-suited for anything but pinch-running.

I could see the Marlins or someone like them taking a chance on Bonifacio, but there's no way he belongs on a contending team when there are superior options available.

As of now, the Jays are 5 games behind Oakland and 3.5 games behind NY for the wild card spots.  If you look at the A's record vs the 3 divisions, you can see the huge impact the unbalanced schedule is having on the wild card race.  If you take the Jays current winning percentage vs each division, and apply that to the number of games the A's have played vs each division, the Jays would be 13 games over .500 in their AL games (plus, they have a winning record vs the NL).  This would be good enough to put the Jays right there with Boston for 1st place in the entire league (of course, Boston has had a similar unbalanced schedule).  Oakland, on the other hand, would be back around the .500 mark if their games were distributed like the Jays games are.  It seems grossly unfair to me that the ultimate outcome of who gets the wild card spots depends largely on who has the easier schedule.  This is something that is significantly wrong with the game of major league baseball and needs to be corrected.

I agree with the decision to send Kawasaki down, FWIW.

I was really just correcting this weird misconception:

When Garza was acquired by the Rays, he had a very good minor league record without the honking fastball to go with it

I'd say his fastball was pretty honking at the time. He still also had refinements to undergo at the major league level (control, which hadn't been an issue in the minors, still needed work to get to major-league quality). It just seems like it's twisting things a bit to imply that it was a tools vs skills thing - he happened to have plenty of both. There's nothing wrong with being both talented and knowing how to use that talent.

An aside: Aaron Sanchez has thrown 215 1/3 more minor league innings (45 2/3 more A+ innings) than Garza had at the same age :). Patience is required with the high school draftees.

NIce win today.

Next, Red Sox.  Minimally, they need to 2/2.  This would make them 6-4 against the Orioles,Rays and Sox.  Nice... 

Then, two more weeks to the all star break.  The Jays are now buyers.  The Jays have lots of moving parts and it could be interesting.  My wish list would be to solve our 2b situation + one more starter.  I don't want the season to hinge on Wang.  I think the bullpen is solid and has solid callups waiting in the wing. 

Wow. I was just looking back at Delmon Young's minor league record to remind myself what he was at that point, and I have to admit that he was performing far better than I remembered: plenty of power and hard contact, speed indicators, better K/BB rates than in the majors. There was skill behind those tools, too. Then, at the age of 20, he stopped developing and started taking up the Caber Toss.

Looking at those numbers as an 18 and 19 year old, I can't help but wonder what I'd be thinking of a prospect like that today. I'm thinking there would be butterflies in my belly, a glint in my eye, and thoughts wondering if the tools supported the performance. My jaw would be shattered on the floor once I was told that the tools actually exceeded the performance.

it seems easy to say let's expose a Perez/ Bonifacio to waivers - who cares if they're claimed - same could be said for LInd earlier this year / Cecil last year  etc. - with this year serving as a prime example of the wide variability of player production from year to year... I'm for trying to keeps assets whenever possible

Lind was exposed to waivers last year. The fact that he has turned his career around and is still in the organization is not a testament to their unspoken recognition of the variation in player production (especially since his last good season was 4 years ago), but rather because no one else wanted him and the organization wasn't about to simply eat the balance of his contract.

Not every warm body is necessarily an "asset". Some not considered assets can turn things around (like Lind, like Cecil), but roster decisions have to be made based on probabilities, recognizing that there are no absolutes and you're going to be wrong sometimes. The odds were that Lind was not going to resurrect his career, but they were not 0%. The Jays got lucky here. They were not prescient. A non-asset has become an asset. The odds would also seem to not be in Bonifacio's favour. Yes, he could magically return to his 2011 status, but cutting him loose based on the belief that he probably won't would not be an unsound move.

Some not considered assets can turn things around (like Lind, like Cecil)

like Janssen, like Wagner, like Encarnacion, like Cabrera, like Rasmus, like Bautista, like Santos, like Davis....etc.

This organization is chalk full of performing assets that this fanbase and/or other organziations had given up on at some point in the past.  All the Jays have done this week, is buy themselves a couple more weeks (until Lawrie returns) without having to give up on the next one that turns it around.  By then, the issue may have resolved itself.  I can't fault management for this particular case of asset management

Perhaps he's looked fooled on a lot of pitches because he's shown no evidence throughout large parts of his career that he can be an effective major league hitter?

If's it's taken him time to adjust, you'd think he'd be showing signs of gradual improvement as opposed to batting under .200 and putting up a .451 OPS in june. And how does his elite speed help the team when he's never on base? It's interesting how Kawasaki has adjusted to turf and to a new team better; hasn't looked fooled on nearly as many pitches; has proven himself a very capable bunter; stolen bases at a better percentage than Bonifacio without elite speed and has improved his monthly splits each month he's been on the team.

Since Bonifacio's shown no signs of "adjusting" any better, perhaps a team that is clearly in a win-now mode should side with the player who has shown the ability to adjust?

Honestly, I can see both sides of the argument and at the end of the day I don't understand the emotional investment in either position. Both decisions are equally defensible and only if you view the facts in the vacuum of the winning streak can you make a definitive argument against the demotion. Of course, running a baseball team in a vacuum is impossible, not to mention it is hard to breathe.

I agree with your point about having a proper bench and, if I had been in charge when Reyes came off the DL, Bonifacio would still be on the team right now (but, if everything else held equal, probably not once Lawrie returned) as there would be seven relievers.

I'm sure I've made this point before, but I think there is a difference between Perez and Wagner. I don't know if Wagner is "for real" or not, but he serves a clear role in this bullpen that Perez does not. Wagner is the short-relief/setup option for a primarily right-handed portion of the lineup on a day when Delabar is unavailable or is being saved for later in the game. McGowan clearly isn't trusted in this role. Perez seems to be a duplicate of McGowan in that they're both mostly pitching to get work and their primary purpose appears to be long relief. I like Perez, but he seems to be anything but essential to the team right now.

So? It's entirely possible they made a mistake when evaluating his talent. I don't think anyone is arguing the Jays didn't want him or that the front office doesn't value him. They clearly do.

Contending teams regularly carry one or two players who don't have a bat

Just because some contending teams do carry those sorts of players, it doesn't mean that every contending team has to. Especially when that player isn't strong defensively.