Juan Francisco was placed on waivers by the Blue Jays and claimed by the Red Sox.
I don't really know what to think about it. As MjwW wrote in today's post on the Rule 5 Draft, there are:
definitely candidates to be removed from the 40-man to make room to protect several prospects, including but not limited to Cory Burns, Colt Hynes, Bo Schultz, Matt Hague, Kyle Drabek (who is out of options) and various non-tender candidates.
I would have given up any one of those guys over Francisco, but then Juan was out of options.
Juan had a great start to his time with the Blue Jays, after 35 games with the team he was hitting .277/.364/.598 with 9 home runs and 24 RBI. We thought we found another power hitter, pulled off the garage bin, to fit with Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion.
Unfortunately, from June on Juan hit .185/.237/.371 with 7 home runs and 19 RBI. And he struck out 36.3% of the time. Batting coach Kevin Seitzer couldn't seem to get him to do any better at the plate and the team seemed to tire of him, he only had 5 at bats in September. And his defense, at third base, was pretty poor. I thought he was ok playing first.
On the season as a whole, he hit RHP ok (.238/.306/.504), and many of us thought he could be useful if used just against right-handers.