What Will the Jays Do With Travis Snider?

Over at MLB Daily Dish, Satchel Price has a post saying that it is time to either play Travis Snider or trade him. I agree with a lot of it, but I don't think that this has to be the moment they decide to do one or the other. But at some point this season, I think they either use him or see if someone is willing to give them something they will use for him, but that's not until mid-season or later. He is out of options at this year so it will be play or trade him by next spring. The question is do they wait til next year to pick one of those options.

Right now? They decided during spring training, or actually before spring training that Eric Thames was their guy for left and they shouldn't let 8 games of a .250/..296/.292 line change their minds, even if the much talked about improved defense hasn't shown itself in game yet. If you send a guy down after 8 games, it suggests, to me anyway, that you don't trust your ability to judge talent.

Obviously other teams are pitching Thames different than they did early last year. That's pretty normal, a player comes up, teams see if he can hit a major league fast ball, he proves he can, they try something else. Someone has success against him, the other teams see it and try it too. It's up to Thames to show if he adjust to what they are doing.

Travis? He's doing amazing in Vegas, leading the team with a .439 batting average, .489 on base and .780 slugging average (leading the team by 238 points in that). He has 3 home runs and 16 RBI in 10 games. It is Vegas and all but that's a pretty good start. If he keeps doing that for the rest of the month and if Thames still isn't hitting with much power, then I could see the Jays switching them around.

Satchel's two choices for the Jays:

They could keep him and eventually give him a real shot in the majors, instead of yanking him around like a Wii remote.

Yes please. Give him that shot finally. I'd love to see him get 500 uninterrupted at bats in the majors, without the threat of being sent down if he goes 0 for 4 three days in a row.

Trade him. His value isn't really going to go up that much further further given how numbers coming out of Las Vegas are looked at, so trading Snider in the next couple months has to be seriously considered. He's too damn intriguing to sit in Triple-A, not when someone like Josh Reddick is the primary No. 3 hitter on a MLB team.

Unfortunately, I don't see him as having that much trade value. If he is being blocked from the majors by Eric Thames, you can't figure someone is going to give you a lot of value back on the guy. Satchel suggests 5 teams that might like to have him. Course, if there was a left fielder like him on another team, that was sitting in the minors, and you made a list of teams that might trade for him, the Jays would be on the list of potential trade partners.

Poll Time.