Christmas Eve Bantering

I hope you are all ready for the big day. We had our big day earlier in the week, as my oldest boy and his girl friend came down Thursday, so we had the big feast and presents then.

Amazingly, there are bits of Blue Jays news:

Shi Davidi gives us the time line of the Jays negotiations with Edwin Encarnacions. The big news out of it is that the Jays offered Edwin a fifth year option (either vesting or team) that would have brought the contract up to a possible $100 million.

The other information of note: Edwin’s agent was surprised at how quickly the Jays shifted to looking at other players. It seems like the Jays thought that Edwin would jump at the 4-years, plus an option (on November 6th) and told Edwin’s agent that they would like a quick answer to allow them to make plans. The next two days the Jays underlined the point that they needed a quick answer.

Perhaps there was some misunderstanding on what ‘quick answer’ meant, because Edwin and his agent were surprised when the Jays signed Kendrys Morales on November 11th.

There was still a chance that Edwin could be signed, but then, when nothing seemed to be happening, the Jays signed Steve Pearce and that was about that for Edwin and the Jays.

Now some of this is likely Jays front office spin. Shi, of course, would have obtained most of this news from the Jays front office, but it does look like Edwin’s agent misunderstood the speed in which the Jays intended to move.

Honestly, I don’t blame either side. It looks like the team really did want Edwin back and it looks like the Jays were Edwin’s preferred spot, it just seems that the Jays wanted to move faster than Edwin was ready to, so it didn’t work out.

This is pretty big news:

I don’t see it happening, the Jays would have to empty out the top of their prospects list to have a shot at Andrew, and even then I don’t see them having enough to make the Pirates interested.

But it is fun to think about.

I’m sure the front office would love to make one big move to change the conversation that Jays fans are having.

Jeff Passan tells us that Jose Bautista would be willing to take a 1-year contract from the Jays. I’d be all for that, course, I’d want him to play first base, not the outfield, but I’d love to have him back.

As mentioned, we are leaving on Boxing Day for Costa Rica. So my posting will be somewhere between slim and none between now and January 8th (you never know, I have a slow day planned, if there is news, I might jump in to talk about it), so I want to wish you all just the best of Christmases and a great start to the New Year. I’m imagining that, by the time I’m back, the Jays will have made some moves and we’ll start feeling a little more optimistic about the upcoming season.

Merry Christmas!