Monday Bantering: Jose Bautista returns

Jose Bautista will be back today. The Jays haven’t announced who is on his way to Buffalo to make room but I’m betting his name sounds a lot like Junior Lake.

He didn’t have the greatest stat line with the Bisons, going 1 for 11 with 2 strikeouts, but then that wasn’t the point of him being there. I guess, if he had hit 3 home runs, I’d complain that they were wasted in Buffalo).

I’m hoping that this will mean less playing time and far less leadoff time for Ezequiel Carrera, but I have a feeling that Jose will be DHing more than playing the outfield, at least for the next little while. I might be wrong, Jose played RF in 2 of the 3 weekend games for the Bisons and played right for Dunedin last Wednesday (where he did hit a home run).

Carrera seems to have forgotten how to hit. He’s .172/.279/.276 in 71 PA in July. I’m torn between ‘slumps happen’ or ‘other teams figured out how to pitch Ezequiel’. Likely some of both, but I’d be happier if Carrera played less.

I wouldn’t mind if the Jays would bring up Dalton Pompey, but Carrera doesn’t have options and the team doesn’t seem ready to bet on Pompey. Even if Pompey didn’t hit better than Ezequiel, he’d play better defense and would be a better choice off the bench to pinch run.

While we are talking about Jose, this is a nice gesture on his part. I’ve heard of major leaguers buying means for their minor league teammates, while on rehab, but I haven’t heard of one buying for both teams. Very classy.

Speaking of players on rehab assignments, Ryan Goins is hitting .250/.294/.281 in 8 games as a Bison. I don’t think the team is in any rush to bring him back up, he might end up optioned to Buffalo after his rehab time ends. He can be on rehab assignment for 20 days. Ryan played his first Bisons’ game on July 15th, so they have 10 more days to decide.

Another player in Buffalo, who isn’t on a rehab assignment anymore, he’s been placed on the Bisons’ roster, is Chris Colabello. Chris has hit .158/.227/.316, with 1 home run, in 5 games. He isn’t going to be coming up unless he is hitting, and even then the Jays will have some resistance to bringing him up because he can’t be on the playoff roster. I think his best hope is to be a September callup.

I’m not sure how the rule on playoff roster works. If he was on the roster August 31, I’d imagine the Jays would be able to pick anyone that was on their 40-man roster, at that time, to take his roster spot for the playoffs. If that’s the way it works, I might, if I was running things, put him on the roster for the 31st, just so I have the flexibility to, at the end of the season, choose the player who would be most useful in the playoffs.

I’d imagine there would be a rule that it would have to be a batter to take a batter’s spot or a pitcher to take a pitcher’s spot, but the team could use that choice to cover a position if a player is hurting or use it to pick a good pinch runner.

In a related issue Brendan Kennedy tells us that Chris feels he has ‘nothing to say sorry for’. The story talks about Cody Stanley, who has tested positive for DHCMT for a third time now, which would be a lifetime ban. He insists he never took it.

The lab, in Montreal, says there is no way it could be a false positive:

To be clear, neither Colabello nor any other suspended player tested positive for DHCMT itself; the tests found traces of a metabolite produced by their bodies when the drug is consumed.

“This molecule contains a chlorine atom and there’s nothing in our body that possesses a chlorine atom,” Ayotte said. “It’s so specific to Turinabol. All the cases we have, all the excretion studies, we find this metabolite, and we don’t find it in any other samples. From a chemical point of view we are 100 per cent sure. It’s not an interpretation.”

Ayotte said it’s impossible the players’ bodies could have produced the metabolite naturally. It could, however, be the result of mislabelled or tainted supplements.

Catlin said the spate of positive tests suggests there is a source somewhere — probably China or Russia — where another substance has been altered to include DHCMT.

I feel for Chris, but it does seem like he must have taken something that caused the positive test result.