Friday Bantering

The new CBA is a bit of a disappointment to me. Or not so much disappointment, but, I was expecting more change. The owners were floating the lockout idea, I figured they were planing on pushing through some majors changes.

Of the changes I guess the one that we’ll notice most is the change from 15-day DL to 10-day. I’m imagining we will see starting pitchers going on the DL for 10 days fairly often, because the pitcher will only miss one start.

I imagine we’ll see more players of all sorts ending up on the DL. I think teams will use the DL more to give a phantom roster spot, since they aren’t moving to a 26-man roster.

Getting rid of the stupid ‘winning the All-Star game gives your league home field advantage’? It is about time. I like my fake games to be meaningless.

No international draft. I kind of figured that would be too complicated for MLB to figure out anyway.

Here is a change I hadn’t heard about:

Oh and this one:

Had to figure they would close up the loophole that allowed us to send guys down for until the end of the minor league season. And, I think it is much fairer for the players not to have to sit in DFA limbo for 10 days.

It will be interesting to see which players are non-tendered tonight. The Jays will be looking to see if there is anyone worth picking up.

With a huge need in the bullpen (never mind outfield and first base), I’d imagine we might be grabbing up a couple of guys. But please not Ben Revere.

The Jays seem to be playing on my mood swings with their comments about Edwin Encarnacion. A couple of weeks ago the front office was saying that signing Morales didn’t affect the possibility of signing Edwin. Now it’s ‘you don’t want too many players of the same type’.

I’m not believing any of it.

I’m expecting Edwin to get 5 years and $100 million. I’m not sure I’d want to pay that.

With the Winter Meetings starting Sunday, we should soon be awash in rumors.

I’m hopeful for Fowler (and I’m still worried he’s going to get more years than I’d be comfortable giving out). Beyond that I’m not going to get my hopes up. I don’t want Chapman, especially we the rumor he’s looking for $100 million.

There was this, at the bottom of a post from Ben Nicholson-Smith:

Asked to choose between Jay Bruce and Michael Saunders, Atkins played it safe, saying "both guys are great alternatives for us"

I’ll admit I have a different definition of the word great than Atkins uses. I guess Bruce would be an ok platoon partner with Upton, but ‘great’ wouldn’t me what I’d call it.

Ben also had this:

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays continue planning for renovations at Rogers Centre, and met Tuesday with construction and design firms.

"I wouldn't call it the first meeting, but it was the first formal meeting to begin to move the design process forward," Shapiro said.

Could I ask that they make the seats wide enough to, you know, sit in?