Bluebird Links - 5th Starter Debate

Here are your Tuesday morning links. A little quiet around regarding the Jays after the off day yesterday. I think maybe the most interesting Jays related information is that Gregor Chisholm, in an fan mail piece, thinks that Drew Hutchison might have a chance to pitch for the Jays whenever they need a 5th starter again. He thinks that it's between either Joel Carreno or Hutchison and that Cecil and Laffey probably won't have a chance. Who would you rather see pitching? Do you think Hutchison is ready to pitch in the majors, or would you rather see him pitch a couple of months of AA? In the same article, Gregor noted that David Cooper could be trade bait later this season. Is Cooper actually worth anything as trade bait?

JAYS LINKS

Eric Thames: Outside Adjustments
Matthias Koster takes a look at how pitchers are pitching differently to Thames this year than they were when he first made the majors last season.

Blue Jays and Rays built the same way
Griffin compares the Jays and Rays position by position. And also supplied this tidbit that I hadn't heard:

The Jays now have inherited the longest current MLB streak of under-30 starting assignments, The last 30 or older to start for the Jays was 275 games ago, Brian Tallet on June 8, 2010. The next will likely be Dustin McGowan when he comes off the DL to become the fifth starter.

Toronto Blue Jays get some country flavour with Colby Rasmus, Evan Crawford
The National Post has a little piece about how Rasmus and Evan Crawford have known each other since they were 12.

Blue Jays Batting Order Optimization
Scott Barber at Jays Journal goes through the optimization exercise. I would have liked to see him run the optimization with projected wOBA instead of career wOBA. Career numbers give a huge boost to Lawrie thanks to small sample size. Anyone care to let me know the results?

The rest are after the jump!

#42
Joanna at Hum and Chuck with an interesting recap of Sunday's win.

Blue Monday - Five Things We Vaguely Recall from the Weekend
The Tao of Stieb has a few thoughts from the weekend. 500 Level Fan has a similar post up, here.

Kelly Johnson’s strong start encouraging for Blue Jays
Mark Zwolinski writes about Johnson's early contributions for the Jays.

Remember David Cooper?
Vaguely, he's the awkward looking Overbay clone, right? Drew mentions a few tweets about the Jays trading Francisco Cordero for Brandon Belt in this article. That would be a great (but totally unrealistic) trade for the Jays. Belt is a far better prospect than Cooper.

MINOR LEAGUE LINKS

51s dealt two losses at hands of Sky Sox
Game recaps from Las Vegas.

Fisher Cats earn first home win
Kevin Gray has the recap from yesterday Fisher Cats win.

1BJW Interview: NH Pitching Coach Tom Signore
Jay Floyd has an interview with the New Hampshire pitching coach.

AROUND THE LEAGUE

10 Games Into Season, Bobby Valentine Walking Tightrope
Rob Neyer wonders how long Valentine will last with the Red Sox.

I suspect that Valentine gets one more strike, or maybe two. If he says another stupid thing or two in the next month, he's probably gone. Especially if the Red Sox still are just muddling along somewhere in the middle of the American League East standings. And a few more of Valentine's moves don't work.

Crazy. Does anyone think he'll be gone before the all-star break?

Giants Extend Madison Bumgarner
Dave Cameron thinks the Bumgarner extension is a win-win deal. Interesting that this deal is the first to top Romero's contract, which was the largest ever given to a pitcher with 1+ year of service time.

World Series opponents St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers on top
I won't link power rankings very often but these are linked because Sports Illustrated is now using the FanGraphs system. Nice to see them getting more and more mainstream attention.

Braves will retire Smoltz's No. 29
Title says it all.

A's San Jose plans grow murkier
Oakland Athletics San Jose move latest developments over owners' meeting in New York agenda as owner Lewis Wolff and San Francisco Giants argue territorial rights

120th anniversary: the NL goes to hell
120 years ago, the NL played a game on Sunday.