Tuesday Bantering: Links

Down to the final 6 games. If we can beat the Orioles, once or twice, we can knock them out of the playoffs. We don't have much to cheer about, we might as well enjoy that.

Anyway just some random notes:

• Moises Sierra has been hitting surprisingly well, .297/.363/.495 and walking a reasonable amount of the time (9.8% walk rate). I'm starting to think I wouldn't mind him as platoon partner for Lind at DH/fourth outfielder. He has reverse splits in his short time (.333/.397/.500 vs. RHP, .226/.294/.484 vs. LHP) but I'd imagine that's just a small sample size issue.
• The Globe and Mail has a story on the work Alex Anthopoulos has to this off-season,nothing in there we don't already know.

On paper it had power, speed and strong starting pitching, but Anthopoulos's 40-man roster lacked the depth to insure against injury or unexpectedly poor performance.

I kind of expect no team would have the depth to handle the injuries we've had. I don't know if we would have won without all the injuries, but the season would have been different if Brett Lawrie and Jose Reyes hadn't missed so much time at the start. And, I'd imagine, the tumor around Melky's spine likely did slow him down a fair bit. How much is anyone's guess, but he had been a decent outfielder before this season.

• Members of the 1994 Montreal Expos will have a reunion at one or both of the Blue Jays exhibition games in Montreal. I guess you have to be my age to remember, but 1994 Expos were about the best team in baseball and would have gone to the playoffs, had baseball not decided to lock the players out. I still think that, had they finished that season, there would still be baseball in Montreal. One of the 45 things I'll never forgive for which I'll never forgive Selig.
• Brendan Kennedy wonders why Kyle Drabek and Ricky Romero aren't getting a start, as the season winds down. Gibbons has a good point, a start now really wouldn't be a fair test, and it might be best not to put a start, that either one really set up for, into our memory banks. As much as I would like to see Kyle get a start.

"You throw them in for a start and they're really not geared for it," said manager John Gibbons. "They haven't been on a steady routine, so it's probably unfair to judge them that way."

• Ken Fidlin (who doesn't seem to have to use the Sun's stupid one sentence paragraphs, or maybe he just uses run on sentences to get around it), talks to Alex about Ryan Goins.
• At ESPN, Keith Law talks about a handful of free agents that have increased their value. One on the list is Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who I kind of though would make a good replacement for JP.

. Saltalamacchia is my early pick for the player most likely to get a deal that shocks everybody -- not because he's unworthy of a large multi-year deal, but because the scarcity of catching around the game means he and Brian McCann are both headed for significant paydays.

Multi-year deal makes it unlikely that it will be the Jays that sign him.

• This little bit about Overbay and Wells (as well as Hafner) with the Yankees, from Baseball Prospectus, cheered me up a bit this morning:

Then they all turned into pumpkins. Hafner hit .167/.249/.286 after April and has spent almost the whole second half on the DL. Wells has hit .225/.266/.309 after April and still managed to approach 500 plate appearances. And Overbay, who might still top 500, has a .238/.300/.354 line since May. Despite their hot starts, the three veterans have combined for a grand total of 0.4 WARP.