The destination was the same as ever. The route was certainly different.


Let's talk about injuries for a moment,  Yes, the projected "everyday" lineup  - Navarro c, Encarnacion 1b, either Goins or Izturis 2b, Reyes, ss, Lawrie 3b, Bautista rf, Rasmus cf, Cabrera lf, Lind dh - played exactly zero games together this season. None whatsoever. Bugger-all. Not a sausage. And I grant you, that is fewer than one would have hoped. Nevertheless, it's my view that the Blue Jays were not especially unfortunate. Compared to the Orioles and Yankees, I think the Blue Jays were pretty lucky overall on the injury front. As a rule, the lineup on the field consisted mainly of guys on the wrong side of 30.  And those guys stayed healthy for the most part. Jose Reyes (age 31) played 143 games - which is more games than he played in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013.  Jose Bautista (age 33), still the team's best and most important player, played 155 games; this after missing 70 games in 2012 and 44 games in 2013. Dioner Navarro (age 30), a veteran catcher, started 100 games behind the plate for the first time since 2009 and established a number of career highs for playing time. On the mound, the Jays lost just one starting pitcher to injury, which was quite an improvement on the three previous seasons.  Yes, Edwin Encarnacion missed 30 games, but the overall trade-off is one I can live with.  There were injuries to Lawrie and Rasmus (the two youngest players, naturally), and Lind as well - but  why would anyone be surprised when players who hurt themselves every year get hurt again? While the Jays may have encountered more injuries than they had the depth to deal with, that's not so much a matter of good or ill fortune as one of preparation. Which appears to be the lesson that the GM himself is taking from the experience.

Anyway - the grades.

A - Outstanding
B - Good
C - Average
D - Below Average (Replacement Level, more or less)
E - Fail
F - Epic Fail

As always, a great many players passed through town, but their appearances were so fleeting that we just don't care. No one believes more whole-heartedly in the Small Sample than I do, but some samples are too small to bother with. So the old INC for Incomplete is handed out this term to Chris Getz, Brad Glenn, Cole Gillespie, John Mayberry, George Kottaras, Daniel Norris, Kendall Graveman, Brad Mills, Jeremy Jeffress, Bobby Korecky, Kyle Drabek, and Sean Nolin.

Finding a grade for Mills would have been a challenge.

We begin with the guys who didn't play. Let's get them out of the way.

John Gibbons C
- There are people who just love John Gibbons, for reasons that completely elude me. I don't know what they're seeing. Obviously, it's not his record. Perhaps it's his bubbly personality. Anyway, the manner in which the 2014 Blue Jays totally collapsed after the disappointment of the Trade Deadline Whiff is not something I want to lay at John Gibbons' door. Obviously it's not a mark in Gibbons' favour. But  I don't think it was anywhere near as bad as what happened in somewhat similar circumstances in 1995, when Cito Gaston's team just checked out completely, and Gaston checked out along with them. And this year's team was able to regroup and put together a face-saving early September charge.... Anyway, Gibbons kind of strikes me as the J.A. Happ of major league managers. He's not exactly good, but he's certainly decent enough to hold the job. As a game manager, he's generally competent enough, not that I've ever regarded that stuff as a very big deal either way. (We've all seen the tactically incompetent - hello, Bob Brenly! - manage their teams to World Series championships.) I don't think Gibbons is the solution to anything, but I don't think he's a problem. As you read on, you may perceive that Gibbons did a few things that made me crazy. True enough, but this is what managers do. All of them. Every manager does things that make their team's followers crazy, on a fairly regular basis. As long-time minor league manager Rocky Bridges once quipped, there are three things every man thinks "he can do better than any other man: build a fire, run a hotel, and manage a baseball team."  And every man is wrong. There is only one absolutely indispensable attribute for any major league manager - everything else can be worked around, everything else is negotiable - and as far as I can tell, Gibbons has the respect of his players. They think he knows what he's doing. Even more important, they believe that he's the one who's making out the lineup cards.

Alex Anthopoulos C
- In the beginning it's so very simple. When you don't have much major league talent - and Anthopoulos began his tenure as the GM by trading Roy Halladay for prospects, which reduced the amount of major league talent on hand by quite a bit - the job is really, really simple. Acquire young talent. Acquire as much as you can. That's all there is to it. It's when the time comes to turn the talent into results on a major league field that things get complicated. That's when the rubber hits the road, that's when we separate the sheep from the goats, that's when the cliche metaphors start running right off the page. After this year's All-Star Break, Anthopoulos found his team contending for the post-season for the first time in a generation. There was genuine excitement in the air down at the old ball yard, also for the first time in a generation. Unfortunately, his team had some pretty serious holes, some of which had been there all along,  as well as the usual inconvenient injuries (which almost every team that fancies itself a contender has to deal with.) The Jays had spent two months treading water (27-26), giving up the lead they had built up with their May hot streak, but still holding on to one of the Wild Cards. But they badly, badly needed  an infusion of fresh talent. And when the GM didn't pull the trigger on anything to help them out... there's no looking away from what happened. The team went completely into the tank. They played themselves out of contention with dizzying speed. By the time September came around they were effectively out of the running.  What should we take from this experience?
- Hey, going for it is risky as all hell. It can blow up in your face, and haunt you for the Rest of Your Days. Ask any Expos fan about Dave Dombrowski and Mark Langston. And when you think about it, 366 home runs from a second baseman is an awful lot to give up for 7 September starts. If the Jays hadn't won in 1992, watching Jeff Kent's career unfold would have been almost 20 years of pain and remorse. But even so, at some point, you have to go for it or there's simply no point to being in the game at all. If you're going to sit at the table, at some point you have to place a bet. You can't just keep folding your cards, waiting for the next hand. Maybe Anthopoulos simply isn't as hungry, as desperate for a title, as Gillick was in 1992. Maybe this really wasn't the time. Maybe the price this time really was too damn high. Maybe Anthopoulos thought paying that kind of price was wasted on this year's team (which is not something he could say out loud, of course.) We can't actually know whether he's been cunningly patient or overly cautious or whatever. But at some point that price will have to be paid. And then... we'll see what's what.
- In other news, all the widely heralded kids began to make an impact at the major league level, and some of the pitchers look particularly exciting. Anthopoulos has decided to entrust John Gibbons with the job of transitioning these young arms into major league starters. In his first tour, Gibbons made first time starters (20 starts in a season) of Dave Bush (2005), Gustavo Chacin (2005), Shaun Marcum (2007), Dustin McGowan (2007), and Jesse Litsch (2007). Within two years, Chacin, Marcum, McGowan, and Litsch were all under the surgeon's knife. That could very easily be mere concidence. After all, most young pitchers look extremely promising the first time you see them, and most of them would probably be pretty effective if they didn't get hurt.  But most of them will get hurt. It's Chinatown, Jake. This is why, this is exactly why there is no such thing as a pitching prospect. But still... I hate those kind of coincidences.
- Anyway, the team heads into 2015 with all kinds of strengths marred by a few obvious, gaping holes. This is not a bad place to be - it's much easier to fill a couple of holes than it is to upgrade an entire roster of average guys. The obvious hole at 2b still hasn't been filled; one hopes that will really get addressed this off-season. Jose Bautista is the only outfielder under contract for 2015; even if the team re-signs Cabrera they will still need to find someone to play centre field. Hopefully, a lesson has been learned from the Ryan Goins experiment, and the team will not place its fate in the hands of Anthony Gose, Kevin Pillar, or Dalton Pompey. If one of these young players forces his way into the lineup, wonderful. But let's not assume that this is going to happen in 2015. Young players will always develop at their own pace, whatever that may be - what's convenient for the major league team seldom enters into it. The other major problem shouldn't be all that hard to fix  - the Jays had a lousy bullpen, yet again. It often appears that the team has settled on a policy of shuttling half the bullpen back and forth willy-nilly between the minors and the big team -  whenever someone has a bad game, or someone still has options, or some other mysterious reason. This needs to stop. There is no shortage of pitchers who can help you. Identify them, and give them a chance to do the job, without having to glance over their shoulders every minute.

Rogers Communications F
The Blue Jays are one of three major league teams with corporate ownership, and Rogers Communications is one fabulously wealthy corporation. They reported a second quarter profit of $405 million dollars this year. That's not revenue - that's profit, earned in three months. The Blue Jays play in one of the game's largest markets. and beyond that they are major league baseball's sole representative for an entire country. And they now have the longest streak of seasons without making the post-season of any team in the majors.  It's true that Rogers hasn't owned the team for the entire post-1993 period, but it makes no difference. Since Rogers took over ownership in 2001, every team in the majors has made it to the post-season. Every team but one. Until that changes, I see no reason to change this grade.

Enough of those guys. On to the people who actually play the games. The fun stuff.

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************


Jose Bautista A
- What a ballplayer. The man plays hard. He might be the most aggressive baserunner on the team. Only Reyes was more likely to score from first on a double or from second on a single. And no one else on the team, not even Reyes, was as likely to go from first to third on a single. Unlike Encarnacion, Bautista can actually help the team when he's playing the field. I think he's become a pretty good outfielder, although he often does look like a guy who only started playing the position in mid-career. Blue Jays right fielders - which was mostly Bautista - were second in the league in putouts, BaseRunner Kills, and holding opposing runners from taking the extra base. But Bautista is reaching the age where his progress as a defender begins to be cancelled out by the fact that he's beginning to lose some of his athleticism. He does turn 34 next month, and many people think his future is at first base. That may be true, and I certainly don't believe he's up to playing third base anymore. But Bautista plays so hard that I'd really rather not see him involved in every defensive play, which is what would happen if he moved to first base.  I'd rather he get to relax a little between at bats. That's always where we're going to love him best. (I know that no matter what else I might happen to be doing around the homestead while the game is on, I drop everything to watch Jose hit.) Someone can look this up, but I have the distinct impression that Bautista doesn't see nearly as many fastballs in the strike zone as he used to. That's one reason he doesn't threaten to hit 45 HRs anymore. There are good reasons for this, of course. Normally, pitchers are proud of their fastballs. That's why most of them are in the big leagues. They like to challenge hitters with them. But challenging Jose Bautista with a fastball is like challenging a gorilla to a wrestling match. You might do it once, if for some reason you didn't know any better. But then you know better.

Edwin Encarnacion A-
 - Missing 30 games reduces his value, and he's just an awful first baseman. Not Prince Fielder bad, but the next worst thing. He's fairly mobile, but if an infielder's throw doesn't hit his glove, Edwin just isn't going to catch it. But in the batter's box, all is forgiven. He's an absolute Beast. His last three seasons are basically interchangeable. Since his big step forward in 2012, when he was taken off third base forever, he's become a remarkably consistent offensive performer. And Buck Martinez was right - when Encarnacion is really going well, the bat starts flying out of his hands all the time. It's how you can tell he's locked in. What an amazing stroke. We're all familiar with Bautista's swing - Jose has his arms raised like he's about to hammer a spike into a rail, his timing kick, and then he whips his bat through the zone at the ball.  But  Encarnacion - he's just kind of standing there with his open stance, not looking quite ready at all - and then his bat somehow just explodes on the ball. The stroke is so short, so sudden, and so violent that Edwin has a lot of trouble controlling the bat if he doesn't actually intercept the baseball. He's beginning to remind me just a little of another Domincan born RH Blue Jay slugger with a really violent swing. Like George Bell, Encarnacion doesn't strike out as much as most sluggers; he's only cleared 100 Ks in a season once, and just barely that time (102 whiffs in 2008); Bell himself never struck out 100 times in a season. Edwin has more raw power than Bell - Edwin has more raw power than just about anybody - and since coming to Toronto he's become a much more patient hitter than Bell ever was. Bell did hit for a higher average and he was a much better baserunner and defensive player. And like Bell, Encarnacion has now played more than 1200 major league games, and has never laid down a sac bunt. Not a one. Jose Bautista has 23 of them (9 as a Blue Jay); even Adam Lind has 3.

Melky Cabrera B+
- Obviously, did much better playing without the freaking tumour. He's had such a strange odyssey through the majors that it's hard to know just who he really is. It's hard to believe, looking at him now, that this guy was once a slightly built singles hitting centre fielder. Cabrera's past season, however, was very much like his out-of-nowhere breakout season with the 2011 Royals. So perhaps he'll be stable at this level for the next couple of years. Cabrera's a switch-hitter with no real platoon split, which isn't as common as you might expect. By the way - lots and lots of teams need an upgrade in LF in 2015. Melky is going to get paid by someone this off-season.

Aaron Sanchez B+
- That was extremely impressive. But what he's been doing - throwing his fastball all the time, as hard as he can - absolutely will not work if he has to go through the lineup more than once. The fastball won't be as overwhelming, he'll have to start mixing in the breaking stuff, he'll start to walk a few people. He'd probably be a fine closer right now, but as long as he's got a chance to be a starter you need to give him a chance to become one. I'd much, much rather see him open next season in the Buffalo rotation rather than the Toronto bullpen.

Mark Buehrle B
- Buehrle lives at the extremes, where the normal rules do not apply and where paradoxes emerge. It's a basic fact that players with speed age more gracefully - a fast player can lose a step and still be fast enough to play. But when a player with average speed loses a step, he's got a problem. It's often the same with pitching. If you throw 96 mph, and you lose a foot off your fastball, you can still get the job done, throwing 92 or 93. But if you start out throwing 91, and the fall takes you to 87 mph... well, there can be Trouble. But none of these truisms apply to Buehrle, just as they didn't apply to Tom Glavine or Jamie Moyer. He's playing a different game. One of the keys to his season was a new-found ability to keep the ball in the park. He allowed just 15 HR all season - only once before in his long career had he allowed fewer than 20 HRs (17 in 2010.) Almost made it through the season without allowing a stolen base, but Javier Baez of the Cubs caught Danny Valencia playing too far off the bag and stole third in early September. Once you get past Buehrle and Dickey, nobody on this team is actually good at controlling the running game, and some guys are downright awful. (Ricky Romero and Kyle Drabek are both very good, but...) Anyway, Buehrle picked off 4 baserunners this season (the rest of the staff had 6), and now has 97 career pickoffs. He's worked 3084.2 IP, so that's one pickoff every 31.8 IP.

Marcus Stroman B
- As Buehrle's entire career has demonstrated, there is art to this pitching stuff, and folks, it's just a beautiful thing. Watching a pitcher set up a hitter -  changing his eye level, getting him looking inside and out, destroying his timing to the extent that he can't catch up with a mid-80s fastball.... well, it's like poetry. I love it to death. Some pitchers seem to have picked up this ability in the womb - Maddux comes to mind, Bret Saberhagen; others pick up some of these dark arts along the way. Many never do, of course. But there's a flip side to the poetry, and that's naked aggression. Throwing your best punch, in the unshakeable belief that it will knock your man down. Stroman is the most aggressive starter the Jays have come up with since Josh Towers was around. Y'all remember Josh, don't you? Like Stroman, Towers was an under-sized RH (Stroman is short, Towers was just scrawny). Unlike Stroman, Towers had a distinctly below-average fastball (oops!) and he couldn't change speeds to save his life (Big Oops!) His aggressiveness was pretty much all he had, and he still managed a three year run when he went 30-22 with an ERA+ of 109 for the Jays. Stroman has that same quality, and much, much more besides. Like a fastball and an off-speed pitch. And he can pitch a little, too. He's a ballplayer. Successful RH starters of Stroman's size don't come around very often, but this may turn out to be one of those times.

Brett Cecil B
- Seemed to be pitching in tough luck for a good chunk of the season. Which is tough, but there are no points for style and no rewards at all for the unlucky. Baseball isn't fair. But Cecil sucked it up, kept taking the ball, and kept pitching. Eventually his luck turned.  Cecil's strikeouts and walks both went up significantly in 2014 - his K/9 from 10.4 to 12.7, his BB/9 from 3.4 to 4.6 - I wonder if this reflects a reaction by Cecil to the game situations he found himself in. In his first year as a full-time reliever, Cecil usually came in with the bases empty. This began to change in September 2013, and continued through this past season. In 30 of his 65 appearances, there were men on base when Cecil came into the game. Only Aaron Loup was more likely to inherit someone else's baserunners. I think Cecil responded to the different game situations by trying to strike people out. It worked, and the extra walks allowed were the price, a price worth paying in my view. RH batters have generally had their way with Cecil in the past, and Gibbons has gone out of his way to protect Cecil from them. In 2013, Cecil took the Aaron Loup approach with RH batters (proceed with Extreme Caution) and naturally issued a truckload of bases on balls; this year he was actually very effective against them. I'm wondering if he's figured something out or if it's just a one-year blip. Until then I won't completely trust him to take on a larger role (although his role is pretty large already, come to think of it.) But because of his delivery and repertoire he's got a much better chance of getting there than Aaron Loup. Cecil doesn't have a great move to first, but until this year he had always been able to keep the running game under control. But in 2014 the opposition was basically stealing at will against him, which was kind of odd.
 
Chad Jenkins B
- Last year I called Jenkins the David Cooper of Jays pitching prospects (I'd already called Cooper the Rodney Dangerfield of the hitting prospects.) Why? Well, the man gets absolutely no respect.  None, I tell ya. And did that change this year? Well, let me give you a hint. Jenkins posted the best ERA on the team of any reliever not named Sanchez. While this was going on, the Jays sent him to the minors not once, not twice, not - oh forget it, we don't have all day - they sent him to the minors six times.  Was it because he's not supposed to be any good? So that what he actually accomplishes on the mound can just be disregarded? Look,  if you don't walk people and you keep the ball in the yard, you can get things done in this game.

R.A. Dickey B-
- A solid, better than average starting pitcher. He really needs a big park (and fast outfielders) to forgive the knucklers that forget to knuckle. And the RC ain't Citi Field. Was killed by the long ball in his first season here, allowing 35 HRs; he cut that down to 26 this season. The strange thing about that is that he gave up a huge chunk of those HRs in just one month - his HRs allowed by month are 3, 3, 10, 3, 4, 3 - and stranger still, he didn't really pitch that badly at all in June (1-3, 4.11), even with  those 10 HRs. Go figure. Like Buehrle, Dickey does all the little things he needs to do to support his game. He fields his position beautifully and he does a truly amazing job of holding baserunners. He's got 23 career pickoffs, 1 every 64.3 IP, which is quite good for a RH pitcher.  Despite the fact that his best pitch a) tops out at around 80 mph and b) is very hard to catch, Dickey allowed just 3 stolen bases against all season, in 215.2 innings. Aaron Sanchez allowed more than in 33 IP, Sergios Santos in 21 IP. Redmond, Loup, McGowan, and Cecil all allowed twice as many SBs as Dickey while pitching less than 80 IP.

Jose Reyes B-
- As a hitter, Reyes used to be pretty even from both sides, maybe slightly better hitting right-handed. Since coming to Toronto, however, he's been a fair bit better hitting left-handed. This is something that I've seen happen to other switch-hitters as their careers progress - I wonder if there simply aren't enough LH pitchers around to keep the stroke sharp. Reyes, of course, is the Blue Jays answer to Derek Jeter - a fine offensive player whose defensive range at shortstop has become... somewhat less than optimal. I think history proves quite conclusively that you can still win championships - lots of them, in fact - with that precise combination. I also thought Reyes' defensive play began to improve in the second half of this season - perhaps he's beginning to figure out how he needs to play on turf. But I do have some concerns, and they don't all involve the enormous amounts of money he has coming to him. Reyes has been nowhere near as durable as Jeter, and this is not something one would expect will improve as he gets further into his 30s while playing half his games on artificial turf.  Reyes is also nowhere near as sharp a player as Jeter, not as alert and aware. Granted, almost no one is that alert and aware - Jeter sets that bar extremely high - but Reyes isn't in the same ballpark. And Reyes takes more plays off in the average week than Jeter would in a decade.  Sometimes Jose is just being careful with his hammies, and that's fine by me. That's Jose being smart. But sometimes I just don't know. I also think Reyes' skills and his body's capabilities are changing on him, slowly and subtly. Which happens - he's not 22 anymore. He's almost as fast as he ever was - and that's really fast - but he's not as quick. I wonder if Reyes is just a little surprised by these changes, hasn't quite adjusted to them, and they've put him off just a little bit.

Adam Lind B-
- This was a thoroughly weird season from Adam, starting with the Ohmigawd-he-ate-Garfield beard. There was the injury diagnosed by his mum, which was certainly weird. It took him out of the lineup for more than a month - between that and the back injury that knocked him out for another month earlier on, he missed about 60 games. All that took a big bite out of his value and knocked down the grade. When he was able to play, he contributed a fine, productive year with the bat - but that was weird, as well. He accomplished this despite the complete and inexplicable disappearance of his home run swing for most of the season. His home run swing had been just about the only remotely useful thing about him during the dark times of 2011 and 2012. But weirdest of all - he has emerged as a reasonably competent first baseman. This is utterly shocking to me. I'd have been less surprised if he'd started stealing bases, or pitching right-handed.  In truth, it's probably just the contrast with Encarnacion that makes him appear that way. Because he's still quite the klutz, and watching him chase after a pop fly is just endlessly amusing.  But at least he can catch the damn ball when you throw it his way. Lind now played more games with the Blue Jays, without playing a single game for another team, than anyone in franchise history. Garth Iorg, stand aside.

Dioner Navarro C+
 - He was obviously a massive upgrade on the guy who held the job before him, both with the bat and behind the plate. But it sure looked to me like he wore down quite a bit as the year went on. Navarro hadn't played this much since he was 25 years old, and I think he could have used more rest. It seems very, very strange to me that he didn't get it, seeing as how the club was actually carrying three catchers for a considerable spell. It didn't affect his hitting, and there's certainly an argument to be made that playing practically every day was good for his bat, that it kept him in a steady offensive groove. But every catcher worth his salt will tell you that playing defense is the most important part of the job and Navarro looked positively sluggish behind the plate in the second half of the season.

Todd Redmond C+
- That was a pretty decent season. His ability to work multiple innings may have kept him away from being used in the late innings. He certainly would have been a better option than some of the guys who were being called on to get the ball to the closer in the first half of the season.  The role also made his usage patterns somewhat erratic - the worse the starters were, the more work Redmond got. When the starters were pitching well, he had trouble getting into a game. Like a lot of pitchers, Redmond was far more effective when he was being used regularly, and like a lot of sinker-ballers, Redmond was far more effective when he was being used often. He made 13 appearances with 0 or 1 days rest, and posted a 1.20 ERA in 30 IP.  (His ERA was 4.32 the rest of the time.)  Like a lot of sinker-ballers, he gets more double plays behind him than most pitchers (Buehrle led the team with 1 DP every 8.4 IP, Redmond was next at 1 every 9.38 IP.)  But like a lot of sinker-ballers, Redmond pitches to contact, and therefore he is not the guy you want to bring in when there are already runners on base. He allowed an unsightly 48% (10 of 21) of his inherited runners to score, by far the worst figure on the team (well, there were worse guys - Happ and Wagner - in miniscule samples.) Unlike a lot of sinker-ballers, Redmond had all kinds trouble getting outs on the grounders hit against him. AL batters hit .250 on ground balls in 2014; against individual Blue Jays pitchers they hit anywhere from .162 to .270 - Cecil (.229), Stroman (.241), Loup (.162), Buehrle (.270), Dickey (.191), Happ (.262), Hutchison (.267).  Redmond was the exception  - AL batters hit .320 on ground balls against Redmond.

Brett Lawrie C+
- Paul Molitor was drafted 3rd overall out of the University of Minnesota in 1977. He made his pro debut playing shortstop in the Midwest League (A ball), where he hit .346/.457/.504. The next spring, with just 64 pro games under his belt, Molitor was the Brewers Opening Day shortstop. In early May,  Robin Yount - who had been a) troubled by a foot injury, b) contemplating giving up baseball for professional golf, and c) holding out for more money -  got healthy, decided on baseball, and signed a contract. But Molitor had done enough to ensure that his minor league career was over. The Brewers moved him over to second base. He'd never played there in his life, but that didn't stop him from hitting  .322/.372/.508 in his sophomore season. But the next year, a rib cage injury knocked him out of the lineup for six weeks. Third baseman Jim Gantner, in his first season as a regular, filled in at second - and Gantner, another newcomer to the position, turned out to be a much more natural second baseman than Molitor. So the next year, 1981, the Brewers decided to make Molitor their centre fielder. This did not sit well with veteran slugger Gorman Thomas, who was being moved to right field, and Molitor did not take to the outfield naturally. The experiment ended soon enough anyway, as Molitor suffered a serious ankle injury in early May that took him out of the lineup for two months. By season's end, he was playing right field and Thomas was back in centre. In 1982, now 25 years old and in his fifth major league season, he was switched to his fifth major league position - third base. He stayed there for two healthy, uninterrupted seasons, until he suffered a serious elbow injury in April 1984. He missed 149 games, and his throwing arm was never the same. In 1986, he began tearing up his hamstrings on a regular basis. First while charging a bunt at third base, and later chasing a fly ball while playing left field, for reasons now lost to history. The hamstrings cost him another month out of the 1987 season, by which point he was serving as the designated hitter as often as he took the field. He managed to play more than 150 games, mostly at third base,  in both 1988 and 1989. This inspired the Brewers to switch him to second base for 1990. This was partially because Molitor now had serious shoulder issues along with the bad elbow, and his arm was no longer adequate enough for third base. That year, he missed one month with a broken thumb, another month with a broken finger, and finished off his year by breaking his arm in a collision with Gantner. Finally, the Sisyphean task of getting this man on the field on a regular basis was abandoned. In 1991, he became a regular DH and occasional first baseman. That's what he did for his last two years with the Brewers, and what he did during his three years with Toronto, and his career-ending coda in Minnesota. Over those final eight seasons, aged 34 to 41, Molitor hit .316/.380/.462, was the World Series MVP for a championship team, cleared 3000 career hits, and punched his ticket to Cooperstown.
- See? This can still have a happy ending!

Aaron Loup C+
- I like Loup, and I think any bullpen can use a guy who destroys LH batters. Loup's biggest problem is his manager, who still doesn't seem to understand the most basic fundamental truth about pitchers who throw the ball the from Loup's arm angle.  Hello? These kinds of pitchers always have huge platoon splits, always. So in Loup's case, pretty well any RH batter with a pulse is dangerous. But once again, Loup faced almost twice as many RH batters as LH batters. All this while Brett Cecil - who actually had a reverse platoon split this season - was being protected from facing RH batters. Again. As usual, LH batters were helpless against Loup's sidewinding stuff. Which leaves the other guys, the ones who have beat up on him in the past. This year,  Loup seems to have decided that discretion really is the better part of valour. He pitched to RH batters as carefully as he possibly could, circumstances permitting, just trying to avoid Real Trouble. They didn't hit him as hard as in the past, although he issued a ton of walks to them in the process (roughly 5.84 BB/p vs RH batters, roughly 2.49 vs LH batters.)  Probably a wise trade-off, all things considered. Interestingly, Loup, even more than Cecil, was Gibbons' go-to choice in the middle of an inning with men on base. That's surprising at first glance - you'd think Brett Cecil, a pitcher much more likely to get you a strikeout, would be the preferred option. But until Sanchez showed up in August, it was actually Aaron Loup who was the hardest pitcher on the staff to get a hit against (.207 BAVG against.) There were runners on base in 41 of Loup's 71 appearances - no AL reliever had to deal with as many inherited baserunners as Loup - and he did just as well as Cecil when it came to stranding them. The Jays bullpen allowed 28% of inherited runners to score, which is exactly the league average: Loup (23%) and Cecil (24%) were both a little better than that (the guys who were really good were McGowan and Delabar; the guys who were really bad were Redmond and Santos.) Loup is a little slow to home, which makes him fairly easy to run on - but he does have a helluva move to first, though. He picked off another runner this year, and now has 9 pickoffs in just 165 career IP. That's 1 pickoff every 18 IP, which while not quite Jerry Garvin level amazing is still extremely impressive.

J.A. Happ C
- Something doesn't quite add up.  It's as if all the pieces are there, but they don't fit together. He's certainly not bad as it is, and it's not like I was hoping for him to be an All-Star. I just think he ought to be a little better than this. Puzzles me. Well, if I knew what it was, I'd be a pitching coach, wouldn't I?

Drew Hutchison C-
- Still pretty green, still doesn't really know how to pitch. When his stuff is working, he can win, but that's true of most pitchers. When it isn't - and for most pitchers, this happens just as often - he doesn't really know what to do about it. Why would he? He's barely cracked 500 professional innings. He couldn't hold a baserunner if you gave him a lasso.  Like most young pitchers, Hutchison generally pitches as if he thinks the job consists entirely of making good pitches. Which is certainly important, but it's still only part of what's required. I really wish he'd had a chance to learn some of the lessons of his trade in the minor leagues, but that ship has long since sailed. Obviously, he's still becoming whatever he's going to be. Your guess is as good as anyone else's. Fun fact - Hutchison allowed 92 runs in 2014 and every single one of them was charged as an earned run. No pitcher in the majors pitched as many innings without allowing an unearned run (Hisashi Iwakuma was next); no pitcher in the majors allowed as many runs without allowing an unearned run (Mike Minor was next.) Stroman and Hutchison are both 23 year old RH pitchers (Hutchison is eight months older.) If you're having trouble telling them apart, Hutchison is the one who strikes out more batters and gives up fewer hits. Stroman's the guy who gives up fewer walks and fewer home runs. I'll let you decide which is better.

Dustin McGowan C-
- He was more effective coming out of the pen, because he was quite a bit harder to hit. He was still kind of mediocre, mostly because he had some trouble keeping the ball in the park.  As a reliever, he allowed 8 HRs in 43 IP, which led the bullpen, and not in a good way. But he was still okay. I think he would probably do better if he went into the season knowing that this is his role on the team and prepared himself accordingly. That hasn't been the Blue Jay Way for a long, long time (if there's one word I'd use to describe team management over the last two decades, that word might be flighty.)  Anyway, McGowan made it from April to September without hurting himself, which was good to see. Heaven knows he deserved it after his star-crossed history. McGowan is the anti-Buehrle in so many ways that it's practically spooky. It's got to be hard for two pitchers to be such perfect opposites.  One way Dustin expresses his anti-Buehrle-ness is by being just about the worst pitcher you will ever see at holding baserunners. At this point, it's just funny. I'd be tempted to try to steal against him, and I can't even run for the bus anymore. Are you wondering why? Well, besides not having a move to first base, or a useful slide step, he's extremely slow to home plate. McGowan's natural pitching motion begins with the rather slow and deliberate raising of his left leg. Which tells baserunners around the world that it's time to run. Marcus Stroman actually has a bigger leg lift, but Stroman is very quick with his (it reminds me a little of Stieb, actually.) The result is that no matter how much harder McGowan throws the ball - and he throws it much, much harder - Mark Buehrle will still get the ball to his catcher in literally half the time it takes McGowan. Which is why this past April it was a fairly big deal when McGowan picked Nick Markakis off first base, where he was then thrown out trying to make it to second. It was the first pick-off of McGowan's career.  It took him 416.1 IP to get one, but he's got one, and now it's Drew Hutchison with the most major league innings without a pickoff.

Colby Rasmus C-
- By far the most significant thing that happened to Colby was very simple, something which had been foreseen by one and all. His luck changed. Rasmus was exceptionally lucky on his Balls in Play in 2013; this year, his luck simply returned to normal. That's all. Along the way, he suffered his annual injury, didn't have a particularly good year in the outfield, and rubbed his manager the wrong way. Not the trifecta he was hoping for. So - see ya round, Colby.  Rasmus never became the star many thought he'd become. He never even became Lloyd Moseby, which is closer to what I was hoping for. He never developed from where he was when he made it to the big leagues. In the end, all the strikeouts simply swallow up too much of his offense. He has some power and some plate discipline, but he certainly doesn't have the kind of power and plate discipline that's required to make up for striking out in a third of his plate appearances. If his defense really has slipped to the point where he's no longer a viable centre fielder, hard times will be coming. I don't know if there's enough dependable offense in his bat for him to make it in an outfield corner. Which will be a shame, because I've come to find him quite appealing. Most great players are driven - some of them by furies, some of them simply  by the need to be great. That ain't our Colby, who'd rather just try to have a little fun playing ball, and that's probably why he makes his managers crazy. Incidentally, Liam swears that Rasmus has become by far the best baserunner on the team, despite being a guy with just above-average speed at best. That would make him kind of the current version of Eric Hinske, who was a wonderful baserunner for a guy with very ordinary wheels. It's true that Rasmus almost never makes outs on the bases anymore, although this year it was mostly because for the most part he stopped trying to take the extra base.

Casey Janssen D+
- If things didn't end badly, they wouldn't end at all. As everyone knows, Janssen pitched brilliantly in the first half of the season: (3-0, 1.23 14 SV. ) He hadn't walked a single hitter - not one - since walking the very first man he faced in his season debut back in early May. He had yet to allow a home run. After that kind of first half, it took a remarkable non-performance to drag his season down to this level. A six-week stretch when Janssen went 0-3, 8.47 with the opposition hitting .351/.395/.595 did the trick. You see, Casey took a little trip to the Dominican sometime during the All-Star Break, which ran from July 14-17 this year. Whatever happened -  a virus, food poisoning - Janssen lost 7 pounds in 10 hours. He spent almost two days being fed by an IV. He was too weak to pitch that Saturday (July 19), so Aaron Loup closed the game. But Janssen took the mound on Sunday, and pitched in five of the next eight games. And man - wouldn't you like a do-over on that last part? Don't you wish they'd put him on the DL for two weeks and said "Maybe you feel okay now, but you still need to rest and get your strength back." The player always wants to get back on the field, always, and sometimes it's in everyone's best interests to not allow that to happen.  Ah, hindsight! Where everything is so clear!

Munenori Kawasaki D+
- Kawasaki was born about 100 years too late. He would have been a wonderful player early in the 20th century. His Japanese record always suggested he was a much better hitter than his major league record had shown, and 2014 was when he finally began to figure out what he needs to do against major league pitching. This is who he was all along; what he did with the bat this year is much closer to what he was always capable of. But it's far too late, of course. He's 33 years old now, and he's clearly well on his way down the wrong side of the hill.  He's been a useful guy at the end of the bench, and he's lots of fun to have around, of course. He really shouldn't be anyone's starting second baseman at this point in his career - five years ago, sure - and the fact that he turned out to be the team's best option for most of this season is a little troubling. I kind of hope he's back, if only because his very existence seems to drive Jeff Blair absolutely crazy, and an irritated Jeff Blair is immensely entertaining.

Danny Valencia D+
- Back in August 2008, the Blue Jays decided that their injury-prone third baseman needed a regular caddy. So they swapped a minor leaguer to Pittsburgh for Jose Bautista, who had once been a regular but had fallen out of favour. That worked out pretty well. The acquisition of Valencia - once a regular, but someone who had fallen out of the lineup - was made for the same general purpose (once again, the Jays have an injury-prone third baseman.) It's still early days (hey, Bautista did nothing special for an entire year after coming to Toronto) but this deal is unlikely to prove quite so wonderful. Valencia is a bit more of a specialist than your modern bench player (see Steve Tolleson comment below.) He plays just one position (sure, they used him at first base some, but this team thinks anyone can play first and they don't actually need Valencia there.) However, back-up third baseman really is a genuinely important roster spot for the Blue Jays, more than it is for the other teams. Valencia didn't hit as well for the Blue Jays as his career record would lead you to expect - but he is a real, honest-to-goodness third basemen (unlike the other pretenders who filled in for Lawrie), and the team should be able to find some other uses for him during those periods when Lawrie is actually in the lineup. Obviously, it would sure help if he could remember whatever it was he was doing against RH pitching in his rookie year.

Juan Francisco D+
- Curious. John Gibbons did everything short of lighting his own hair on fire to indicate to the world, to his GM, and to Juan Francisco himself that he, John Gibbons, no longer had any use whatsoever for Juan Francisco on his baseball team. And yet, Francisco remained, his considerable girth taking up a considerable chunk of space on the bench. What was that all about? In May, Francisco hit .477 when he put the ball in play, which made him very useful indeed for that moment in time. But regression to the mean is a cruel, cruel mistress. Over the course of the season as a whole, Francisco struck out 116 times in just 287 at bats, which leads us into another dimension altogether, between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. One where Colby Rasmus and J.P. Arencibia are going "Dude - you need to make some contact once in a while."

Josh Thole D+
- Should have played more than he did. As I said, I think Navarro began to wear down, and Thole was a perfectly serviceable backup this season. I assume Gibbons was so utterly traumatized by Thole's brutal work in 2013 that he simply couldn't bear to write his name in the lineup. Hey, we can all sympathize. We saw it too. Thole started all of Dickey's games, but just 7 other times.

Rob Rasmussen D+
- A little LH, who had a fine year in AAA and acquitted himself rather nicely in his limited opportunity in the majors. I'm not sure what they didn't like about him, besides his height. Couldn't even get a September call-up.

Neil Wagner D+
- Pitched well enough in April (3.12 ERA in 9 appearances), but was sent to the minors anyway because... well, who knows? Maybe they wanted to show his agent who was boss.  Wagner came back a couple of weeks later and got shelled in one meaningless mop-up appearance (6 ER at the end of a 15-4 loss to Cleveland.) He was immediately sent back to the minors and never heard from again. He hurt himself, had TJ surgery, was released in September, and promptly signed with Tampa Bay.

Kevin Pillar D+
- Still trying to turn into the next Reed Johnson (more speed, less pop), which would make him downright useful besides being fun to watch. The jury is still out on whether he'll hit enough. I can't see it, myself. A guy with his power and plate discipline (not much of either) needs to be a .300 hitter in order to be a useful offensive part.  Pillar was able to do that in the minors. But in the majors, he's had too much trouble making contact to give himself a chance. He's striking out in 1 of 4 major league plate appearances - against both LH and RH pitchers - which is roughly twice as often as he struck out in the minors.  The deities of BABiP may let you get away with that for a while, but not forever. Pillar (and Gose) represent a trait in young contemporary hitters that utterly baffles me, so I'm going to get on my old fogey horse and vent for a moment. Pillar, you may have noticed, has no power.  Yet for some reason he (and Gose, and every other young hitter that comes along) grips the bat right down at the end and swings hard at the ball. What the hell for? So he can hit 10 HRs instead of 5? Whoop-dee-dam-doo. Sooner or later, some little guy with good speed and no power is going to come along and do it right - he'll work the count, just try to make contact, and let the laws of BABiP work for him, as he dumps soft shots between the infield and the outfield. And if he's at the top of a lineup with some genuine big boppers coming up behind him, he'll score 150 runs. And when that happens - and it will - well then everyone will want a guy just like him, and then maybe some young hitters with similar skill sets will try to copy what he's done. But in the meantime, the memory of Brett Butler (was Butler really the last of this type of player, or just the last one who comes to my mind?) grows colder and colder....

Anthony Gose D
- As a hitter, he's rather similar to Kawasaki at this moment - Gose's OBP/Slug was .311/.293; Kawasaki's was .327/.296-  he's just not as good. Kawasaki's singles are more useful than Gose's stolen bases. Gose is nine years younger, of course, and still has time to develop into more than this. I've long believed he would be a late, slow bloomer and I still think he'll be worth the wait. But the waiting is the hardest part. He may still be years away from being a good everyday player. I can see it taking him until he's 26 or 27 before it happens. Devon White has always been the player Gose is compared to, and White was a late bloomer himself - through age 27 White had hit .247/.295/.389 in 612 major league games, and had been traded away by his disappointed original organization. But at the moment, Gose still doesn't know how to put all his athleticism to use as a baseball player. I don't know how it's possible that Jose Bautista is more likely to take an extra base than Anthony Gose. But possible or not, it's true.

Dalton Pompey D
- It's as if Anthony Gose and Kevin Pillar were negotiating their way through a tight auto race, trying to keep pace with the other guy - and then this sleek, gorgeous machine just zoomed right past them, leaving them peering through the dust and muttering "What the hell was that?"  Pompey is a very exciting young talent - and partially because he is so young, his game hasn't yet shown us the evident holes that Pillar and Gose have revealed for all to see. I wouldn't want to count on him being the guy to take over in centre field next spring. He's still got fewer than 200 ABs above A ball. But it sure looks like he took a Big Step forward this year. I can't really grade him higher than this on 9-39 in 17 September games... but like everyone else, I really, really like what I've seen so far.

Ryan Goins D
- Good glove, no hit. Really, really, really good glove. But the bat, I'm sorry to say, is simply unplayable. Would an AL team really decide that they can afford to go without the DH and let the pitcher hit? I don't think so, and that's what playing Goins amounts to. He's Madison Bumgarner without the power, and he's certainly not as good a hitter as Mike Leake or Travis Wood.

Steve Tolleson D
- You thought Valencia had trouble with RH pitchers? Tolleson makes Valencia look like Miguel Cabrera. Guys like this, who can do pretty much everything, but don't do anything particularly well, aren't really my cup of tea. I always liked guys on the bench who did something really well. They're on the bench because they're not complete players, but you have them around to make use of that one thing that they can do. But that approach was probably best suited to the larger benches of the Days of Yore. It may be that the tiny bench of the modern game makes a multi-purpose mediocrity like Tolleson a more serviceable commodity.

Brandon Morrow D
- Sometimes, when you see him working short relief, with his fastball hitting 97 and 98, it's hard not to think - hey! He can do this! Maybe he can even stay healthy pitching just one inning at a time. The Blue Jays are thinking the same thing, but it's not going to happen. The Blue Jays are also looking forward, with almost unseemly eagerness,  to buying out his option, and Morrow still wants to start. If he doesn't think there's a real chance for him to do that in Toronto, he will find someone who's willing to give him a chance. I think that's the right thing for him. Morrow's fastball velocity has always looked impressive, but AL hitters haven't always been that impressed. Mere velocity simply isn't enough. Major league hitters can catch up with velocity, and Morrow's fastball doesn't actually do much of anything. So he needs to pitch to be effective - he needs to be able to mix the fastball with his other pitches - which is not something most pitchers are really able to do working in one inning spots. It's worth noting that while injuries have indeed destroyed Morrow's last two seasons, and took a sizeable chunk out of the one before that, he hasn't had any shoulder or elbow problems. Just a lot of misfortune. It's been an oblique muscle, a nerve in the forearm, and a finger that have put him on the shelf. He could easily be an upgrade on both Happ and Hutchison at the very least. I would definitely pick up his option, but I realize there's absolutely no way this organization is going to spend $10 million on the possibility. I mentioned the $450 million second quarter profit, right? Did I mention that the corporation was disappointed by that?
 
Steve Delabar D
- He's always had trouble throwing strikes - that's just who he is, you have to live with it - but it got totally out of hand early this season. They sent him to Buffalo to sort out his problems, and while he made a little progress, it wasn't enough to earn a trip back.  He should be in the running for a bullpen job next spring - there will be openings - but he's got to get the BB/9 below 5. If he does that, he's an effective pitcher. He'll always be on a short leash, of course. He's the type of pitcher who will drive his manager crazy - they hate those bases on balls with a fiery passion, every one of them. It's like a job requirement for managing a major league team.

Maicer Izturis D
- Last year, I suggested pretty strongly that he was probably washed up. In the first week of this year a few singles fell in, so he was carrying a decent enough .286 BAVG before season-ending knee surgery.  He's probably even more washed up now.

Eric Kratz D
- I assume he was only here because Gibbons went into the season terrified at the prospect of having Josh Thole as his only alternative in case Navarro went down for a day, or needed a rest.  Very little point to him being here otherwise.

Dan Johnson D
- Was making himself useful as a bat off the bench until he hurt himself. Curiously, his rehab program had the strange side effect of rendering him completely invisible to his manager, who seemed unaware that he was even on the team after he came back.

Nolan Reimold D-
- All he had to do, the one thing they brought him here to do, was be able to fill in for a couple of weeks in the field while Bautista eased his way back from a minor hurt. That's all. And he couldn't even stay healthy long enough to do that. If you can't play, it doesn't much matter how well you can play.

Jonathan Diaz D-
- He might be an even better defender than Goins. And an even worse hitter.

Esmil Rogers E
- I thought they gave up on him pretty quick, but in all fairness he was pretty terrible.

Darin Mastroianni E
- He's surely not this bad a player. But he managed to make 31 outs with 32 plate appearances, which is worse than useless.  It's downright harmful.

Moises Sierra E
 - Also not nearly as bad as he looked here, as he went on to demonstrate with the White Sox. But while he was here, he was even worse than Mastroianni. Made 34 outs with 35 plate appearances.

Sergio Santos F
- Yikes. It's got to be unusual for a pitcher to be a Three True Outcomes player, but almost half of the plate appearances with Santos on the mound resulted in a strikeout, a walk, or a homer. And almost half of the rest resulted in base hits.  Gruesome.