There are a bunch of Blue Jay stories out there at the moment.
Hardball Times have their Top 10 Blue Jay prospects up. It is almost a whole new list, since Snider, Cecil and Rzep have graduated to the big leagues. It is nice to see a couple of outfielders on the list.
Tao of Stieb, yesterday, made the Case for Impatience. I agree with him. We keep being told that we'll compete in a couple of year. 2008 wasn't to be our year. So when we released Thomas, we couldn't pick up a good bat to fill the slot, we had live with Wilkerson/Mench. 2009 wasn't our year, because we had Marcum and McGowan hurt, so instead of getting a real player we have Millar and we can't sign a pitcher to fill one of the rotation slots left empty by AJ and the injuries. 2010, we are already told, won't be our year, so we can't sign anyone to fill the obvious holes. "Can't sign anyone, cause that would be mortgaging the future".
Well, no, if you signed someone like Cameron to a two year deal, why would it cost us when the mythical prospects start appearing. Lots of teams, last year, signed good free agents to one or two year deals. Yeah, it is great that Anthopoulos is planning for the future. I like they are signing scouts and fixing the development side. But someone has to play the positions where we have holes, why does it have to be 2010's version of Wilkerson/Mench/Millar.
If Rogers is, apparently, willing to put in money, when needed. So why not put a little money in now. Yeah we might not win, but we might not win in two years too. And when you tell the fanbase you aren't going to win yet again, what do you think going to happen to attendance? If you go into this season planning to win just 60 games, you might as well close the doors at Rogers for the last couple of months of the year, no one will be trying to get in anyway.
No, I'm not saying spend $70 million for 4 years of Jason Bay. But how about a few million so we don't have to watch Kevin Millar again.
There is a nice profile of Alex Anthopoulos in the New York Times. They like him. Everyone likes him.
The Jays have added to their scouting staff.
And everywhere you look there are Roy Halladay rumors. I'm not going to link to them because there are too many and they are all just rumors. The neat thing about Halladay rumors is: if we put up a post that says Halladay trade rumor, we get double the visits that day. I'm sure it works the same for other sites. So whether they have something real of not there is a strong incentive to talk about trade ideas.
And Vernon Wells had the surgery on his wrist yesterday, all went well.