Friday Links

There isn't a ton of Jay news out there but some folks are still talking about the team.

A week in and Alex Anthopoulos (how long until I can spell his name without having to check to make sure I'm right?) has done some hiring and firing.

Former director of player development Dick Scott and former major league scout Rob Ducey both lost their jobs in organizational shuffling announced in a series of news releases on Friday. Long-time Ricciardi lieutenant Tony LaCava, a close friend of Anthopoulos, will take over as Toronto’s director of player development, with Toronto native Charlie Wilson and Doug Davis promoted to head up the day-to-day minor league operations. 

Nice to see that Alex has his own ideas of who should make up the front office. I always kind of liked Ducey, as a player, but hard to tell how good a scout he is from outside of things. 

The Drunks did the work of transcribing Alex Anthopoulos'  talk with Bob McCown on the Fan 590 the other day. Not a lot of substance and you wouldn't expect there would be, but he does sort of step back from being totally sure Cito Gaston will be back next year.

On whether the manager will stay…

Same sort of thing, it’s all lumped in together: top to bottom [we’ll have] a full evaluation. As I sit here today almost the entire front office, the staff—the big league staff and the minor league staff—almost everyone’s got a contract for 2010, so that has not changed.

Bruce Dowbiggin in the Globe and Mail pines for Dan Shulman to return as TV voice of the Jays. Bruce doesn't seem to totally get that working for ESPN was a move up for Shulman.

Which led Usual Suspects to wonder why Shulman is not still the TV voice of the Blue Jays. Most teams have an iconic announcer - Vin Scully, Ken Harrelson, Chip Caray, Thom Brennaman, the late Harry Kalas - who becomes synonymous with the team. 

I'll admit I like Shulman but everyone deserves to go where the money is. 

The Tao of Stieb stands up for Travis Snider. Now I'll admit I think anyone that is writing off Moonraker off of this season clearly doesn't know enough about baseball to be bothered with but it is likely good someone points this out. At 21...

Matt Holliday was playing high A ball in Salem. Mark Teixiera was finishing his college career at Georgia Tech. Joe Mauer, Vladimir Guerrero and Derek Jeter were getting their first taste of the majors in a handful of games. Kendry Morales was somewhere between Cuba and Rancho Cucamonga. Bobby Abreu was hitting 10 homers over a full season at AAA Tuscon. Todd Helton was hitting one homer over 54 games for the Asheville Tourists.

Jeff Blair has this nugget in his column:

Kevin Millar of the Blue Jays will join the MLB Network as an analyst for the postseason – yet another blow to the sincerity quotient in television sports.

I'm sure he'll be great. 

And last, Sportsnet couldn't care less that many folks didn't get to see the end of the Tigers/Twins game. We should all be paying for all the Sportsnet channels. even the ones we can't get in our area. 

"We are a four channel offering," said David Akande, Sportsnet's vice-president in charge of content. "My job is to push those four channels, push the penetration of each of those four channels so we try to put alternate programming on our four channels as much as possible. Quite frankly, we initially were thinking about putting the game only on East channel."

Nationally, Sportsnet has about 9.1 million subscribers, with approximately five million paying for access to more than one of its regional feeds. Akande conceded that keeping baseball off of Sportsnet Ontario in favour of a sports talk show, boxing and ultimate fighting is one way of convincing those who get just one regional feed to upgrade to a more costly cable package that includes more than one region.

"For those four million that don't have multiple Sportsnet channels, we have to encourage them to get it," he said. "It's something we all do in the broadcast business. We put compelling programs on to our channels so people can pick it up."

Capitalism works. Oh and we have more links but you have to go over to MLB Daily Dish to find them.