We haven't had a Link Fest in a little while so let's see what other folks are saying.
The Tao of Stieb enjoyed yesterday's game but wonders about fans.
Apparently, everyone loves Casey Janssen because he's such a nice boy, so no one is going to give him too much grief for playing hot potato with a bunted ball in the eighth. (And BTW, how weird is it that Janssen only gets charged with one earned run, when it was HIS error that led to the three runs scoring?) Then on the other side, Vernon Wells hits a line drive to the deepest part of the ball park off the other team's closer for an out, and gets booed by the meatheads.
Jeff Blair thinks the Red Sox made a fatal error by not trading for Roy Hallday. He figures they would have made the playoffs easy had they made the deal but that they didn't try hard enough. A nice change from all the stories blaming JP for not making a trade.
Halladay? He was there for the taking. The Blue Jays would have wanted prospects such as pitcher Michael Bowden and infielder Lars Anderson. Several people close to the team say the Blue Jays were not unanimous on the need to include flame-throwing Daniel Bard in the deal, that they would have thought about Buchholz and maybe Justin Masterson (traded to the Cleveland Indians for Martinez). The Blue Jays were right to want more to finalize a Halladay trade within their division – and the Red Sox should have paid the premium.As it turns out, the Red Sox and Blue Jays did talk about Halladay. An offer was made; a counter offer extended. And that was it. Discussions never advanced beyond that stage, not even to the what-if-we-substitute-this-guy-for-that-guy stage. Matters hadn’t even reached the point where the Blue Jays had asked Halladay if he would waive his no-trade clause to go to Boston. But they knew he would. "Very surprised," was how one Jays official described Boston’s tepid interest – especially once it became clear the Yankees weren’t a factor at all.
Want to know how every Canadian player in organized baseball is doing? Go over to Canadian Baseball Network. They list every Canadian in the Majors, Minors and any other professional league they can find. Sometimes how they define someone as Canadian is interesting but it is fun to see how they many Canadians there are in each teams minor league system.
Rob Bradford at WEEI.com has a few questions with J.P. Riccardi. And I'm not bitter that the Jays won't even reply to an email from me. No no.
RB: How do you view your team after all of this dust has cleared?
JP: We like our team, we really do. We like the nucleus we have in place. We think Hill and Lind are going to be stars and are on their way. We think Snider is going to be a very good player. We like our team. We like our arms on the mound. There’s a lot of really good things happening here. What I think we’ve realized is the reality of the division. We know it, but we’ve come to realize it even more so. This is not a division you can be good in, you have to be great in it to make the playoffs. We’ve been good the last three years. The ownership has been great to us. They’ve allowed us to spend some money over the last three years, and the last three years we were high 80’s in wins. We’re not good enough to win the division.
And last and likely least, Heidi Watney from NESN came over to the house and asked me a few questions about the Jays to preview the Red/Jays series. At least that's how I'm choosing to remember it. Ignore that the link has the author of the questions named Neil Keefe, that's just to confuse people.