Update III: The Blue Jays have acquired Carlos Villanueva, a reliever, from the Brewers for a player to be named to later, according to the Brewers twitter page. He is eligible for arbitration for the first time this season after putting up a 4.61 ERA in 50 relief appearances last year, while striking out 67 batters in 52.2 innings. He is not the enemy.

Update II: Some of the more notable players non-tendered: Jeremy Accardo, Willy Aybar, Taylor Buchholz, Jack Cust, Ryan Church, Edwin Encarnacion, Scott Hairston, JP Howell, Bobby Jenks, Fred Lewis, Russell Martin, Lastings Milledge, Dioner Navarro, Hideki Ojakima and Joel Peralta.

Fox Sports is reporting that Brian Tallet has been signed by the St. Louis Cardinals.  In addition tonight is the deadline for free agents who have been offered arbitration to accept or reject the offer.

A recent episode of CBC's Quirks and Quarks featured a segment on curveballs. Despite a right-off-the-bat gaffe (Bob McDonald equates "breaking ball" with "curve ball"), it's an interesting segment that is unlike anything I've read in the online research community. Wanna hear about it?

Toronto's AFL affiliate, the Peoria Javelinas, played in the championship game on Saturday and lost 3-2 to Scottsdale. Let's finish up our AFL coverage by looking at how the Jays representatives performed over the month-and-a-half-long season.

It's a Gang of Four: Downs, Frasor, Olivo, and Gregg.

Texas Rangers OF Josh Hamilton is your 2010 AL MVP. (To which I can only say, "Well ... duh!")

That said, it wasn't quite the blowout award that yesterday's Votto-for-NL-MVP slamdunk proved to be.

Four players were named on every AL ballot -- Hamiltion, Miggy Cabrera, Robby Cano and Toronto's own Jose Bautista. And Hambone received "just" 22/28 first place votes (Votto was 31/32) with others going to Cabrera (5) and Bautista (1).

Trivia: four Rangers prior to Hamilton have won the AL MVP. Who were they? (Hint: three should be pretty "-ez" to think up!)

Toronto-born Joey Votto, Cincinnati's young slugging 1B, is your 2010 NL MVP.

It wasn't close -- Votto collected 31 of 32 possible first-place votes (the other went to Phat Albert Pujols) in easily outdistancing Pujols, Carlos Gonzalez, Adrian Gonzalez. (Two Gonzos in the top four? Huh!), and Troy Tulowitzki, who rounded out the top five. Roy Halladay, who earlier this month received the NL Cy Young Award unanimously, was the highest-ranking pitcher in the voting at sixth.

Votto is the third Canadian-born MVP, after Larry Walker and Justin Morneau. Just 27, Votto hit .324 with 37 homers and 113 RBI; the first-time All-Star also posted a seasonal OPS of 1.024.

Batters Box recently caught up with Alex Anthopoulos as he returned from the general manager meetings in Orlando.  As Alex has mentioned in other interviews, and specifically around the Rajai Davis trade, he is still working on the roster for 2011 and he doesn't yet know how it will all come together and who will play where.  So given that, I did not ask Alex about things such as playing time for JP Arencibia, who plays third, who plays first, etc.  Alex either doesn't yet know the answer to these questions or, if he does, he doesn't want to share it with us yet. 

So given that Alex has just finished his first year on the job I asked him to answer more philosophical type questions so that we, as fans, know where the team is headed and what we should expect over the upcoming winter.

Alex last joined us in Da Box last February.  Prior to that Alex explained his background  and how he came to the Blue Jays in May 2009.

It’s 9:00 on a Saturday evening. Do you know which team Justin Upton plays for?

The Blue Jays have added five players to their 40-man roster.  Brian Jeroloman; Joel Carreno; Moises Sierra; Alan Farina;  and Darin Mastroianni are the lucky guys.

On the heels of a frankly pedestrian 13-12 won-loss record in the 2010 regular season, Seattle Mariner SuperArm Felix Hernandez is the '10 AL Cy Young winner.

I suspeect CC Sabathia and David Price are less than happy today., as are many fans -- the majority? -- who don't pay much attention to secondary statlines. I am not personally unhappy with the voting, but admit I am surprised. And a little, tiny piece of Nolan Ryan might be thinking today, "Dang, where were y'all in 1987?"

San Diego's Buddy Black and Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire are your NL and AL managers of the year, respectively, continuing an awards season that lacks anything remotely categorizeable as "surprising." Blue Jay leader Cito Gaston finished fifth in the AL balloting, one spot ahead of Joe Girardi.

Comments, Bauxites?

So Shawn Hill has been released, Uggla was traded for a LH reliever and a guy who has had 3 good years but still has a lifetime OPS+ of 90. Ken Rosenthal is reporting the Jays have acquired Rajai Davis for Trystan Magnuson and Dan Farquhar.  What else is going on?

It's been three weeks since the last update. What have the guys been up to? Playing baseball, probably.

2010 NL Cy Young Award winner? Roy Halladay. Unanimously. QED.