Its time to get out top prospect list again. Each of the last 4 years we've added 10 to our list. We've gone from a top 10 prospects list to a 40 player list last year and now a 50 player list this year. The Jays minor league system has improved to the point that it seems worthwhile to look at 50 players in our little rundown.

Woodman663, Hugo and I each put together lists and we've combined them to make this list. We'll post them by groups of 5.

There isn't a lot of information out there about some of the guys at the back of our list.

50. Dalton Pompey: Dalton is the only guy of our 50 that only appeared on just one of our individual lists. Woodman likes him quite a bit. He's a switch hitting center fielder, from Mississauga Ontario. He has a a lot of potential. Just 18 last summer, he split the season between the Gulf Coast League and Bluefield, hitting .239/.358/.367 between the two, with 5 home runs and 23 stolen bases (just caught once). Speed and a good eye at the plate is a good combination. Hitting 5 home runs in pro ball at 18 years old suggests there could be some power there when he fills out.

49. Jesus Gonzalez: An international free agent signing from Venezuela from this past year. The Jays gave him a $1.4 million contract. A 6'1", 195 lb, outfielder, he's got a strong arm and the Jays figure he'll have speed, power and all the things you'd want from a corner outfielder, but, since he's 17, he's a long ways off.

48. Gabriel Cenas: Another international free agent signing, this one from 2010. He just turned 18 in October. He didn't hit much in his first shot in the DSL, just .208/..368/.226 in 19 games, not that you can read anything out of a handful of at bats. The team figures that he'll develop power and he's said to have a good arm at third base. At 6'1" and 175 he has a lot of filling out to do yet. He's a long ways off.

47. Jairo Labourt: An 17 year old international signing from the Dominican. He's a long way from the majors but he's 6'4", and can already throw 90+ MPH. You'd have to figure that, as he fills out, he'll add a few MPH to that fastball. Lefties that can do that are few. They say he has an 'advanced feel for breaking balls'. Jairo made 12 starts for the Jays Dominican Summer League team, posting a 2.23 ERA, allowing 29 hits, and 14 with 29 strikeouts in 36.1 innings.

46. Evan Crawford: Crawford was an 8th round draft pick back in 2008, out of Auburn University. After starting in previous seasons, last year he spent the entire season in the bullpen at New Hampshire. The Jay put him on their 40-man roster this summer. Minor league relievers aren't generally prospects but this one is left-handed, can hit 94 on the radar gun and they say his best pitch is his curve. He struck out 62 in 51 innings, for the Fisher Cats, while walking 21. He gets ground outs, 2.19 per fly out last year. He pitched in the Arizona Fall League this year and did a good job with a 3.18 ERA and 16 strikeouts in 17 innings. He should, at very least, be able to make the majors as a LOOGY.

Hugo should be around with numbers 41-45 in the next day or two.

With Tom's recent post asking which former Jay folks would like on their team, the issue of, possibly the most polarizing (nah, that's not the right word, polarizing people can be liked) player the Jays ever had came up quite a bit. I will not say his name because then I'd be tempted to use foul language (which, according to our bylaws here, would be allowed, which, in turn, is why it would be so tempting).

Anyway, this comes up a lot when we discuss players who took advantage of some of the wonders of 20th century biochemical advancements, but I figured it was worth discussing -- if only to see what you all think about it. It's been posited that, because most players had access (and many also took advantage) of the aforementioned external subsidies to performance, it does not make sense to discredit the more exceptional players who did.

However, I think it behooves us to remember how baseball talent is distributed. Now, of course, as one gets to the upper levels, "baseball talent" refers to specialized talents, but I'm pretty sure you all get the idea.

Pardon the obviously crude illustrations.

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Sorry all, I accidentally deleted this post and, of course, the comments that went with it. Here it is back.

Years ago Bill James used something he called Managerial boxes, where he asked and answered a number of questions about a manager to give a feel for the manager's style. I thought it would be interesting to answer these questions about John Farrell:

The Manager

NAME: John Farrell

AGE: 49

MANAGERS FOR WHOM HE PLAYED FOR IN THE MAJORS: Pat Corrales, Doc Edwards, John Hart, John McNamara, Buck Rodgers, Marcel Lachemann, Mike Hargrove and Buddy Bell. I'd imagine he learned more working with Terry Francona than from the managers he was with back in his playing days.

CHARACTERISTICS AS A PLAYER: A right-handed pitcher, didn't strike out many. He was a member of the Indians starting, full time for 2 and a half seasons, doing a pretty good job, before he suffered an elbow injury that cost him two seasons. He signed as a free agent with the Angels and made 17 starts in 1993 but wasn't effective, he had a 7.35. He wasn't an effective major league pitcher again.

Managerial Record

WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE BALLCLUB

IS HE AN INTENSE MANAGER OR MORE OF AN EASY-TO-GET-ALONG-WITH TYPE? I get the feeling he is easy to get along with. He seems like a good guy.

IS HE MORE OF AN EMOTIONAL LEADER OR A DECISION-MAKER? He is more of a decision maker.

IS HE MORE OF AN OPTIMIST OR MORE OF A PROBLEM SOLVER? He is a problem solver, he didn't tend to stay with a guy who was struggling.

HOW HE USES HIS PERSONNEL

DOES HE FAVOR A SET LINEUP OR A ROTATION SYSTEM? I think he prefers a set lineup, moving guys out of the lineup when they haven't been playing well.

DOES HE LIKE TO PLATOON? No. Or at least he didn't like to platoon last year.

DOES HE TRY TO SOLVE HIS PROBLEMS WITH PROVEN PLAYERS OR WITH YOUNGSTERS WHO STILL HAVE SOMETHING TO PROVE? HOW MANY PLAYERS HAS HE MADE REGULARS OUT OF WHO WERE NOT REGULARS? He seemed to prefer to use veterans, though the term 'proven player' might not be the one I'd use. He got tired of watching Edwin Encarnacion play third so he put Nix in the spot. He didn't like Travis Snider in the outfield so he used Cory Patterson. But then when those two failed he tried rookies Eric Thames and Brett Lawrie.

The players that he made regulars who weren't before last season were J.P. Arencibia, Eric Thames and Brett Lawrie.

DOES HE PREFER TO GO WITH GOOD OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OR DOES HE LIKE THE GLOVE MEN? Good question. He didn't like Edwin at third so he put in Nix, Nix was better defensively (but still not very good), but terrible on offense. He preferred Thames and Patterson over Snider in left, Snider was better than both defensively. He was willing to try Snider in CF, something that I'm not sure many managers would have been willing to try.

DOES HE LIKE AN OFFENSE BASED ON POWER, SPEED OR HIGH AVERAGES? He inherited a power hitting lineup and insisted that they were going to run more. I'm not sure that he prefers speed over power, but he wanted at least balance. I think he likes having speed.

DOES HE USE THE ENTIRE ROSTER OR DOES HE KEEP PEOPLE AROUND SITTING ON THE BENCH? He seemed to try to use the entire roster.

DOES HE BUILD HIS BENCH AROUND YOUNG PLAYERS WHO CAN STEP INTO A BREACH IF NEED BE OR AROUND VETERAN ROLE-PLAYERS WHO HAVE THEIR OWN FUNCTIONS WITHIN A GAME? He seems to prefer veteran role players on the bench.

GAME MANAGING AND USE OF STRATEGIES

DOES HE GO FOR THE BIG-INNING OFFENSE OR DOES HE LIKE TO USE THE ONE-RUN STRATEGES? He used one strategies quite often.

DOES HE PINCH-HIT MUCH, AND IF SO WHEN? Not much.

ANYTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT HIS LINEUP SELECTION? Unusual is a bit of a judgement called. He continued to use Lind in the clean-up spot long after he showed he wasn't the best choice. He used Thames in the second spot in the order when he likely had better choices.

DOES HE USE THE SAC BUNT OFTEN? No. Corey Patterson lead the team with 6 sac bunts but many of those were attempts to bunt for a base hit, that didn't work out. Yunel had 5 sac bunts, some might have been the same, trying to get a bunt single.

DOES HE LIKE TO USE THE RUNNING GAME? Oh yeah.

IN WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WILL HE ISSUE AN INTENTIONAL WALK? He ordered fair fewer than the average AL manager. He did it a few times to load the bases, a play I'm not fond of, when the tying or winning run is at third, late in the game.

DOES HE HIT AND RUN VERY OFTEN? Yes. Especially compared to Cito, who I've been told, didn't use a hit and run in the last two years he was with the team. Farrell did it a lot, especially early in the season. Later in the year, he didn't seem to use it as much.

ARE THERE ANY UNIQUE OR IDIOSYNCRATIC STRATEGIES THAT HE PARTICULARLY LIKES? He sent the runners a lot. Lots of stolen bases. The move I hated the most was having runners on second try to steal third with two outs. Even with Jose Bautista at bat. How many time was Corey Patterson caught stealing third? Maybe he was running on his own, but I'm sure Cito would have put a stop to it after the first time.

I'd have liked him to show a little more patience. He decided, on the last weekend of spring training, to put Edwin at third. When, pretty predictably, Edwin had some troubles, in the first week, he puts Jayson Nix in the spot. Nix had proven he wasn't a major leaguer the past few seasons. Travis Snider has a poor start to the season, we put Corey Patterson in the spot. Patterson finished with a OPS+ of 78, one off his career 79.

HANDLING THE PITCHING STAFF

DOES HE LIKE POWER PITCHERS OR PREFER TO GO WITH THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THE BALL INTO PLAY? I don't think we know the answer to this yet, but he seemed to be willing to work with both. As a pitcher, he was a 'put the ball into play' type so I'm sure he doesn't mind using those. But he seemed to be ok with power pitchers as well.

DOES HE STAY WITH THE STARTER OR GO TO THE BULLPEN QUICKLY? I think he was a fairly quick hook. He rarely left the starters in too long.

DOES HE USE THE ENTIRE STAFF OR DOES HE TRY TO GET FIVE OR SIX PEOPLE TO DO MOST OF THE WORK? He used the entire staff. Shawn Camp led the staff in appearances at 67, but he had 3 others that got into 50+ games and Rzepczynski and Frasor got into 43 and 44 games respectively, before being traded. He used everyone.

HOW LONG WILL HE STAY WITH A STRUGLLING STARTER? Not too long. Actually I think that was what he did best, he seemed to know just when to pull his starter.

ARE THERE ANY PARTICULAR TYPES OF PITCHERS OF WHOM HE IS FOND? He did seem to like guys that could get ground balls.

IS THERE ANYTHING UNIQUE ABOUT HIS HANDLING OF HIS PITCHERS? Well, he did have some problems figuring out his bullpen. Using Dotel against lefties drove us nuts. Using Rauch as closer didn't go over all that well either. As the season went on he seemed to improve.

WHAT IS HIS STRONGEST POINT AS A MANAGER? I think the use of his coaches, he seemed to have a good relationship with his coaches, they all seemed to get along well and he was good at giving credit to his coaches.

IF THERE WERE NO PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL, WHAT WOULD THIS MANAGER PROBALY BE DOING? Hmmmm he seems very thoughtful, a thinker. I could see him being a doctor.

In light of some recent discussions around these parts about pitcher hit and walk sequencing, the tendency of pitchers to give up more or fewer hits when runners are on base or not, I wanted to look at how repeatable sequencing is. The topic came up, as I'm sure you probably know, from Brandon Morrow's seemingly very low strand-rate. The topic was first covered by our very own hugo and was more recently treated by Steve Slowinski over at Fangraphs, with hugo concluding that Morrow needs to mix in his offspeed pitches more against righties and Slowinski concluding that Morrow needs to develop a new pitch.

I tend to agree with hugo on this one more than Slowinski, though I do think that he'd benefit greatly from developing a new pitch (which he started to do with the cutter towards the end of last season anyway). I've said it before, I don't think that working in new pitches is necessarily going to help him strand runners. My guess is that Morrow's strand-rate last season had more to do with bad luck than anything else. Nonetheless, I think major league hitters will adjust to starters who don't mix up their offerings so Brandon's days as an above-average starter who can afford to rely so heavily on just two pitches are numbered. In any event, this piece is not meant to treat the Brandon Morrow subject so much as it is to look at the effects of sequencing throughout baseball.

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Yay, it's February. 14 more days and the pitchers and catchers report to spring training. Here's a look back at what the Jays did (not much) in January:

• The month started out with a trade. Alex traded with the White Sox to get Jason Frasor back. Going to South Side of Chicago (well, to a team in the South Sider's farm system) are Myles Jaye and Daniel Webb. The Jays also outrighted Jim Hoey to Vegas to make room on the 40-man.
• A few days into the month the details of Darren Oliver's contract came out. He's making $4 million for 2012 and the team has a $3 million option on 2013, with a $500,000 buyout.
• With the signing, the Jay released Mark Teahen and will eat the $5.5 million left on his contract.
• All our arbitration eligible players got contracts, expect for Casey Janssen, who will be in front of the arbitrator, unless he and Alex agree to a contract pretty quick. Carlos Villanueva signed for $2,277,500. Kelly Johnson $6,375,00. Ben Francisco $1,537,500.
• Brandon Morrow got the biggest deal. He will be making $21 million over the next three years. The team has a $10 million option for a 4th year.
• We signed Omar Vizquel to a minor league contract.
• We added yet another arm to the bullpen, by signing Francisco Cordero to a 1-year, $4.5 million contract. Like last off-season, we seem to be collecting as many relievers as we can.
• We made a bunch of minor signings: RHP Nelson Figueroa, RHP Tim Redding, LHP Bill Murphy, C Kyle Phillips, SS Chris Woodward and OF Danny Perales. The one that kind of interests me is Bill Murphy. He pitched in Japan for the last couple of years, making 48 appearances, 30 starts, had a 14-11 record with a 3.81 ERA. But then he walked too many, 104 in 196 innings. Still a he's nice lefty to have in Vegas.
• The Jays announced their giveaways for the 2012 season. Minor Leaguer listed them here.

We learned a few things at the State of the Franchise evening, among them:

• The Jays have a policy against signing players for more than 5 years. I'm thinking that Brett Lawrie will be testing that policy.
• Paul Beeston owns socks.
• Some free agents are willing to take less money not to play on the turf at Rogers Centre.
• Buck Martinez can take a minute and a half to ask a very simple question.
• Paul Beeston has considered grass. No not smoking it. Replacing the turf with it.
• Blue Jay fans can ask dumber questions than even Richard Griffin.
• There was more stuff, Minor Leaguer had a complete review of the night here.

Beyond that? Well, we had all the usual stuff around here to keep us occupied while waiting for baseball. My favorite part was my interview with Bruce Walton. If you missed it, it is here: part one, part two, part three, part four and part five.

January's done. We are that much closer to baseball.

Hi again, everyone. As a follow-up to last week's piece on the effects of pitcher arsenal diversity on pitcher luckiness or unluckiness, I decided to do two things which might reduce some of the error. The first was to limit the sample size to include pitchers with 200+ innings in 2011 and the second was to evaluate effects of arsenal diversity on BABIP, instead of the difference between an ERA estimator (such as xFIP or SIERA) and the pitcher's actual ERA. There are drawbacks to both of these changes, of course. A reduction in sample size of roughly 100 pitchers greatly reduces the power of any test and focussing on BABIP only means that we would not be able to evaluate any effects that diversity may have on sequencing.

As per the comments, I used pitch types from texasleaguers instead of fangraphs (quite a pain, actually, since it seems like you can't export all the texasleaguers data at once) and built each pitcher's mean fastball velocity into the model. Given how small the sample size is and how volatile BABIP can be, it should come as no surprise that neither the effects of diversity (p = 0.961) nor the effects of velocity (p = 0.899) come out looking significant.

I also ran a model to determine the effects of each pitch type on BABIP. Although most pitch types did not seem to have an effect, there did seem to be an effect of increasing frequencies of sliders (p = 0.0595) and may have been one when two-seamers and sinkers were pooled (p = 0.0276), both of which corresponded with increasing BABIP. I expected these effects to be due mainly to the effects that these pitches have on batted balls -- essentially, pitchers who throw a lot of sliders or a lot of two-seamers are likely to generate a lot of groundballs and, consequently, have a higher BABIP. Unsurprisingly, this was the case.

Thanks to Bright Eyes for today's post title. Sorry, but I can't give you back the last five minutes of your life.

It's no secret that we are interested in determining what factors allow some pitchers to sustain lower ERAs than their strikeout-, walk-, and groundball-rates would suggest. Hence, this, another installment for this endless series in which we try to determine what factors allow pitchers to outperform their peripherals. In this installment, we'll be looking at whether pitchers with more diverse arsenals are able to keep hitters off-balance, allowing them to induce weaker contact. I have long considered this a possible reason that Shaun Marcum, who is notable for his array of pitches and his willingness to use any pitch in any count, has been able to outperform his peripherals for so long.

Before we can start looking at possible effects of arsenal diversity, we need to quantify the diversity of each pitcher's arsenal. As such, I chose the Shannon-Wiener index, a measure commonly used to estimate biodiversity in ecological communities. I used a sample of all pitchers who pitched 100+ innings in 2011 (a total of 145 pitchers) and exported their pitch type data from fangraphs and used the vegan package in R to calculate Shannon-Wiener diversity. Essentially, pitchers were analogous to communities and pitch types were analogous to species. The index takes both the number of different types of pitches a pitcher throws and the evenness of his usage of those pitches into account. The pitch distributions is an important factor here -- the index should be less influenced by a "see-me" changeup used two or three times a start than by a pitcher who uses his changeup five or six times as frequently. The index scales from zero (which would be a pitcher who uses the same pitch 100% of the time) to the natural logarithm of the number of different pitches a pitcher throws. As an example, a realistic maximum might be a pitcher who throws seven different pitches and uses them all equally. His arsenal would have a diversity index of log(7) = 1.946, so we can say that the index (for pitchers) scales from roughly 0 to 2.

Ever wonder which pitchers have the most diverse arsenals? Well, at the top of the list is actually our old friend, Shaun Marcum at 1.525 (mean diversity = 1.084; see the end of the article for the entire list of pitchers). Remember that these values are calculated on a log-scale, so Shaun Marcum has a much more diverse arsenal than the average pitcher. At the bottom of the list, as you might have guessed, you'll find extreme one-pitch specialists, like Tim Wakefield and Justin Masterson. Due to the innings exception, Mariano Rivera is not included, but his diversity score is 0.407. If you were unconvinced about the method before, I hope seeing Marcum near the top and these other pitchers near the bottom has assuaged your fears.

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It's everybody's favorite Canadian, third baseman's birthday. No not Mark Teahen. Brett Lawrie turns 22 today! Happy Birthday Brett.

22 and getting ready to go to spring training, with a spot on a major league roster. Life must be good.

If you are wondering about SOPA and SB Nation, here is the 'official position'. No we aren't shutting down for a day or anything like that. I'll admit, I'm just a dumb blogger and don't understand it all, but it seems like a mess to me. It isn't clear what will happen if it passes. I understand the point of it,and you would be surprised at how many times articles have been straight copied from our site and put on another site, with the only change being the 'author's name', but this seems to be over reaching.

The Rangers and Yu Darvish contract talks are going right up to the deadline. I think they'll get it done but, if not, I think the Rangers will sign Prince Fielder within a week or so, to make up for it. If I was them, I'd rather have Prince.

I listened to Mike Wilner on talking to Jeff Blair on the radio this morning, Blair is still on the 'Jays need a veteran starter kick. What I really don't get is why he is fixating on Javy Vazquez? Do we really want to give starts to someone that won't be around in the future? I'd much rather see what Dustin McGowan can do than to see if Vazquez can go for another year. We are out of options on McGowan, so we really ought to use him.

Is there a veteran starter, available, that you would like to see Alex pick up? Or are you happy going into the season with the starters we have?

The Southpaw brings up a favorite Jay prospect from the past, Scott Campbell. It makes me wonder where Scott will be playing this year. Will he still be somewhere in the Jays organization? He was so close to the majors a couple of years ago and now it doesn't seem like there is a chance that he'll make it, after missing two years with a hip injury.