Why Anthony Gose?

The Jays finally cut back from the stupid 8-man bullpen, sent Mickey Storey back to Buffalo and surprised us by calling up Anthony Gose.

Earlier they told us they wouldn't call up Gose unless he was here to stay. Baseball teams should stop saying things like that, because they can't see the future. Yes, in a perfect world, they'd like him to stay in Buffalo until he was ready to come up to Toronto to fill a spot in the outfield for the next several years. When have things been perfect in the Blue Jay world?

Before we look at why Gose, let's look at something Mike Harrington wrote in this piece for the Buffalo News blog:

It won't play well in the Buffalo clubhouse otherwise, e.g. the prospect gets the call no matter what he's doing even though out-of-organization veterans are producing much more.

He's right, it won't play well with the Buffalo players, but then nothing really plays well with Triple-A players. They know they are close to being where they want to be. Most of them feel like they should be there now, if those front office guys knew how to do their jobs. So pretty much every move 'won't play well' in the clubhouse.

If you are Jim Negrych, you just saw a guy hitting roughly 160 points worse than you get called up, that can't be easy to take. You can console yourself with the thought that the team wanted an outfielder, but you'd have to be thinking 'I have been batting .400 and the guys above me, in my position, aren't hitting at all. If I can't get the call now, it is never going to happen. So, yeah, I'm pretty sure he can't be terribly happy.

For Moises Sierra, he might not be hitting .400 but he is hitting pretty decent, .324/.373/.497 slash line, much better than Gose, the team wants an outfielder and they pick Gose? He might not be so happy

Josh Thole? You think Josh doesn't know what Henry Blanco is hitting? And J.P. Arencibia, I'm sure he knows that JP has two walks. He knows how many passed balls Blanco has, how many strikeouts Arencibia has. Someone else gets called up and he has to be wondering why his .330/.411/.495 line hasn't carried him to Toronto yet.

So, yep, I'm sure calling up Gose hasn't made the Bison's clubhouse the happiest of place

I guess the Jays don't want to change anything about the batting order, even with a bunch of guys not hitting. If they called Negyrich, then Bonifacio would have to sit. Not that bad an idea to me, but Gibbons has said he wants Emilio to play every day and hope that he finds his stroke. I might think that it would be smarter to give Negrych few days that Rajai is on the DL, give him a chance to prove the hot bat he has in Buffalo will work in Toronto.

Or, I'd get Moises up to play against lefties. But, the Jays decided that they just want someone to be a defensive replacement for Melky Cabrera. And we all saw his defense wasn't great when he was up last year. There is nothing worse than putting in someone for his defense and then watching him make an error. So Gose it is.Lots of people are worried that this will screw up his development. I don't, he'll get to work with Chad Mottola for a few days. He loses a few game at bats, but I think he can live through it. Maybe the change in scenery will do him good.

I'm ok with calling Gose up, how about you?