Aki is going to miss part of most of the year, but if he can get back to where he was with the Rangers two years ago, he's a terrific sign-cheap-while-injured guy!

Julio Franco - not 'cuz he would help the Jays, but because I want to see someone sign him.

Voted Otsuka because it's hard to go wrong taking a flier on bullpen depth.

Voted "other" as a substitute for "none." Signing one of these guys means someone else is edged out on the roster, or a youngster gets reduced playing time in the minors or majors. The question is "what do any of these guys bring that isn't already covered in our current construction, and justifies that cost?"

The answer I came up with is "nothing." Not even for Colon, largely because I don't see the same upside - I'd rather see what one of the kids can do.

Im among the masses that voted for Colon.  If I had to vote for someone it would be him assuming its a minor league deal with an invite to spring training.  The reality is that he isn't likely a good fit for this team, but he's had some great years and if he could stay healthy he would be a steal as the 5th pitcher on this team.   It would also allow a guy like Janssen to stay in the bullpen and give Litsch some more development time in AAA.

If Colon is healthy, he could be the #2 pitcher on the staff, and that is saying something. 

I know some people are hesitant after the Zambrano/Ohka fiasco, but really, Colon isn't either of those guys and has a track record as a major league ace pitcher.

Instead of "other" you should have had "none of the above."

However, since I've never been able to pass up a smorgasborg, I took the "Colon Platter" - BUT, only if it's to a minor league contract and only if I get extra mustard. Strong English, not that fancy French muck.

While I agree with the general sentiments that there isn't really a spot for any of these players right now - if there is one that I think would eventually help out - it's Shannon Stewart replacing Reed Johnson in the platoon in left.  I'm thinking that Reed should be able to do well enough to make Shannon Stewart unnecessary, but if his back flares up or anything, this could be a need (I think Stairs, Lind, and Coats are our next in line OF and each of them are lefties).

I'm not advising picking him up, just saying he may be the eventual best fit in my mind.

From that list, Otsuka was the easy choice for me, but while we were adding the Mike Gosling's of the world, I think the guys we OUGHT to have been stockpiling in AAA are still out there and if we can sign ANY of these guys to a minor league deal, we ought to:

Scott Williamson
Brandon Claussen
B-H Kim
Chad Harville
Mike Marroth
Brendon Donnelly (like Otsuka....if he's still out there, I can't find a signing but I thought he did)

Also, I would be pleased to see Kevin Mench in AAA as a guy who can replace Reed's ability to hit lefties rather than an old guy like Stewart.
I would like to give Koskie a chance to work his way back in AAA just on principle (and maybe as a sort of mentor to Santos)

I picked Otsuka because he is the best of the worst. Otsuka, if he pans out could move Janssen to the rotation while keeping the bullpen strong. Colon's shoulder is a horrible mess and he has looked terribly lacklustre in his workouts in the Dominican this offseason.

I initially went with Colon, but Rotoworld seems to be suggesting he's not completely healthy yet is still looking for solid, guaranteed money. As an incentive-laden reclamation project he's appealing, but not as guaranteed roster spot and $5-8 million.

So Otsuka, I guess, because extra bullpen arms are always nice to have. Shawn Green would be an interesting option - he's still hit righties pretty well for the past few years. And Tony Clark would be an interesting guy to have around in case of injury. But the 12-man pitching staff doesn't leave much room for those guys.

Shawn Green and Shannon Stewart.

And what's Jose Cruz Jr. doing these days?

I see no reason why we shouldn't roll the dice on high potential pitchers like Colon and Otsuka provided that the contracts are heavily incentive laden.

I'm sure JP and the Jays would have no qualms financially if the player achieved the incentives.

I see no reason why we shouldn't roll the dice on high potential pitchers like Colon and Otsuka provided that the contracts are heavily incentive laden.

I don't think either of them would want to sign for heavily incentive laden contracts.  Gagne got $6 mil last offseason (plus incentives that could take it to $11 mil) and he had pitched a total of 15 innings the previous two seasons.  Is Gagne a better pitcher when on than either of those two?  Probably, but Colon's 2005 isn't much worse than Gagne's 2004 (which are both comparable as far as recentness to time of signing their contract).

Otsuka has had even more recent success, but his problem is that he's likely not healthy right now.  My guess is he doesn't want to sign until he can prove he's healthy - given the millions he's made in total the last few years, he can afford to wait out the minor-league/minimum MLB contract that is probably on the table from everyone right now and wait until he can prove to people that he throw.

Also, incentive contracts are not free - in the long-run, in order to get people to sign incentive-laden contracts, you're going to have to pay them more.  Being put in the seat of the player, if you're given an option between two contracts - one that pays a guaranteed amount and one that is not, the upside, and expected outcome, of the non-guaranteed contract is going to have to be a lot higher, especially considering that the guaranteed contract would be one that would set you up for life.  Whether or not such a contract is formally offered, it's always implicitly there - i.e., the team could always just change the offer.

To put some fictional/hypothetical #'s in place, let's say you're a pitcher and there's a 50% chance you're healthy.  If you're healthy, you'll hit all your performance bonuses, if you're not, you'll hit none of them.  You're given the option between 2 different one-year contracts.  A guaranteed contract that pays $5 million, or an incentive-laden contract that pays $2 million base, plus $6 million if you reach your incentives.  The expected pay for both is $5 million.  As a player, you'd take the $5 million guaranteed (actually, most research into risk-aversion shows that you'd be willing to take significantly less than $5 million guaranteed).  As a team, it's cheaper to sign them to the guaranteed contract.

Of course, there are some other factors that go into this:

• the agent's incentives are aligned to do the deal with the higher expected outcome, even though that's not in-line with the player's best interest - reputation hopefully offsets the impact of these incentives (i.e. if players don't think the agent has their own best interest at heart, they won't sign with the agent)
  
• there are some moral hazard risks involved when calculating this type of deal, but presumably, you can interview people to determine whether or not they'll actually put in the effort required to reach a 50% likelihood of success.

Sorry, I don't have links on these studies - risk aversion is an ECON 101 premise though.

Ok, so I should have just checked wikipedia - they have an article that provides a very simplified discussion of risk aversion.  They don't relate it specifically to baseball, but the concept of risk aversion applies to everything.

Kenny Lofton.

Other. Preferably none, but if I had to pick one player, he's still not on the list.


yes, thats right Barry

yes, thats right Barry

Imagine that platoon at DH?  Barry went .283/.486/.587 against righties last year, Thomas went .336/.431/.631 against lefties.  (I didn't realize how incredible he was against southpaws last year until I looked that up)

It ain't gonna happen, but if he wanted to come here, I'd try to find a taker for Stairs and have Barry fill the Stairs role.  There hasn't been much of an uproar about Zaun, so I imagine that Barry would get a free-ride too.

Anyone who doesn't want the NL's best OPS in 2007 on the Jays (who happens to be a LH) is silly. He can still rake, and we can afford one bad defensive player as a tradeoff. Obviously the contract would have to include a jail clause.

I voted Otsuka but I'm guessing he's not in good shape at all otherwise he'd be closing for someone.

Seriously Julio could help more then a 12th pitcher.  If he played 1st against lefties and put up a +100 OPS wouldn't that be better then hanging Overbay out to dry since there is no RH 1st base option.  The 12th pticher is just going to be used in back to back blowouts or when the game is so out of  hand it doesn't matter.  Or to lose an extra inning game because he hasn't pitched in 2 weeks and is obviously rusty.  Plus Julio would get to keep playing.

Did you really just compare the focus and attention paid to Greg Zaun with the focus and attention to potentially be paid to Barry Bonds?

Z does P and B does P, therefore B = Z.

Oh wait, how much has Zaun done in his career? A few less MVP awards, but a championship ring. It all balances out.

Did you really just compare the focus and attention paid to Greg Zaun with the focus and attention to potentially be paid to Barry Bonds?

Z does P and B does P, therefore B = Z.

Oh wait, how much has Zaun done in his career? A few less MVP awards, but a championship ring. It all balances out.


Yes I did.  Toronto has been known to be relatively easy going on athletes that do wrong before their time here.  It's hard to find too many other players who are arguably the best all-time at their sport, so finding a direct comparison for Bonds is admittedly difficult.  However, Zaun is the only current player on the team that has used 'roids, so in my mind he's a decent proxy.  If Zaun were facing any sort of difficulties, I would imagine Bonds would receive it a thousand times more, but the fact Zaun is getting nothing makes me think that it really doesn't matter much.  After all, one of the most popular and respected baseball beat writers in Toronto (Blair) often writes commentary that is quite forgiving to the roid users.

I could also look at other sports in Toronto (Gilmour, with the baby-sitter thing) or past baseball players (Molitor and cocaine or Hillenbrand and the comments he made against Epstein) and we'd find the forgiveness thing.  Are any of them exactly the same as Bonds?  Nope, but they're either illegal, or generally looked down upon, acts, and in the case of Gilmour, it was precisely the babysitter lawsuit that drove him out of St. Louis which may be the same in the Bonds case.

Sorry, I didn't mean to write that "Zaun is the only current player that has used 'roids" ... I think "Zaun is the only current player that has been implicated in the roids scandal" would be more appropriate wording (both in terms of evidence and my own feelings).

Oh, and as for a few more past baseball players, there were a lot of rumors that I heard in Toronto about Canseco and Henderson being on 'roids, but there weren't too many problems with either of them coming to town.

Respectfully: c'mon, get your head out of the sand. There is nobody to point to as a comparison for how Bonds would be treated here. Nobody. Zaun's stature as a public figure here is completely irrelevant.

Nor Doug Gilmour or Paul Molitor or good ol' Shea. Not one is similar enough to Bonds to put them in the same conversation.

The only guy who spent time here to come anywhere close to Bonds in stature alone is Rocket Roger, and he didn't turn up in a boiling pot of water as both he and Bonds get to enjoy now.

And aside from the legal and ethical questions surrounding such a player as Bonds, aside from the stats that are completely astounding he would carry behind him, he's Barry Bonds. He's not going to be invited to become a telecaster anytime soon. He lacks warmth and perhaps humanity.

But sure, Torontonians can be as ignorant or forgiving and merciful as any place on earth, provided the player produces well. Not like Kansas City or Seattle or Cincinnati or Milwaukee or Las Vegas or New Hampshire. Those are places where Barry Bonds could never find peace. Only in Toronto will the people be good enough. Could you imagine Barry playing for Mr. Hicks in Arlington? They'd throw the book at him and get him a date for the electric chair before he had the chance to grant his first TV interview. Or Barry Bonds on the Orioles? Sure the Boston and New York fans will let him have it when he visits, but that's nothing compared to what the people and media of Baltimore would do to him. Or what about Chicago..........those fiends.

Could you imagine Barry playing for Mr. Hicks in Arlington? They'd throw the book at him and get him a date for the electric chair before he had the chance to grant his first TV interview.

Geoff, while I generally agree with your point and can appreciate the attempt at sarcasm -- I use that rhetorical tool myself often enough -- that is a genuinely wrong and grossly unfair caricature of Texas and Texans. (I'm not a native, but I do live here.)

Hicks actually considered a Bonds signing, but the public backlash was enough to convince him it was at best, a poor idea. That said, nobody was running to the elm with a rope or gunning up ol' Betsy in the jail cell for Barry. And if he'd come here and led the Rangers to a title, all would have been forgiven. Quickly.

Respectfully: c'mon, get your head out of the sand. There is nobody to point to as a comparison for how Bonds would be treated here. Nobody. Zaun's stature as a public figure here is completely irrelevant.

Nor Doug Gilmour or Paul Molitor or good ol' Shea. Not one is similar enough to Bonds to put them in the same conversation.

The only guy who spent time here to come anywhere close to Bonds in stature alone is Rocket Roger, and he didn't turn up in a boiling pot of water as both he and Bonds get to enjoy now.

And aside from the legal and ethical questions surrounding such a player as Bonds, aside from the stats that are completely astounding he would carry behind him, he's Barry Bonds. He's not going to be invited to become a telecaster anytime soon. He lacks warmth and perhaps humanity.

You've gone way overboard with the sarcasm - not that you were close to respectful the first time. I don't need that.  You're the king of the internet, congrats.

Mick,

I appreciate the polls, they add a nice piece of discussion to the site. Keep up the goodwork.

 

Y'know, a Barry Bonds deal would help in many ways:

Firstly, any publicity is good publicity. It'll put the Jays on the front page news for at least a week to start off the season and that would bump TV ratings and attendance no doubt.
Secondly, with Bonds platooning with Thomas, we might actually get rid of Thomas' option year because he might not get enough plate appearances!

As for the cons of having Bonds(ie. clubhouse cancer), I'd explain(privately, of course) to all our core guys that it's just a one-year thing. He's most likely done after this year(if he's not done already) and that the payoff of having his bat in the lineup(ie. instantly make us division contenders/World Series contenders) is worth the troubles he might cause.

Hicks actually considered a Bonds signing, but the public backlash was enough to convince him it was at best, a poor idea. That said, nobody was running to the elm with a rope or gunning up ol' Betsy in the jail cell for Barry. And if he'd come here and led the Rangers to a title, all would have been forgiven. Quickly.

Precisely what I would expect from the Toronto culture. The argument that things would be so different here riles me.

My apologies, Chicago, for the antagonism. It was nothing personal. Just the idea that Bonds will have the same experience as Zaun that I wanted to shoot down. Not you.

Sheldon, I'm with you on the first point. I dont think a Bonds/Thomas platoon is remotely feasible, however. If the Jays were truly interested in having Bonds on board - either from a marketing perspective or in order to have one of the game's best hitters - it would be necessary to trade Thomas or Stairs. The Mariners, who are DHing Vidro and seemingly have no interest in Bonds, would perhaps be a good destination for Thomas. Stairs won't be traded. I don't know how much of a difference it would make, but trading Thomas in a salary dump and signing Bonds would provide a certain upgrade.