Tuesday Bantering: A One Stop Winter Tour?

The Blue Jays announced their ‘Winter Tour’. I guess it’s Winter and Winter Fest.

I don’t understand calling something a ‘Tour’ if it only has one stop. Winter Tours, in the past, have had a few stops. They have alternated going east and west and would hit a few cities each year. They would show the players doing ‘winter’ things, as well as doing autographs for hundreds.

Anyway, if you are in Vancouver, the ‘winter tour’ will visit you January 12-13. It will include visits to schools, to Ronald McDonald House, a baseball clinic and autograph session ‘by lottery ticket’.

In Toronto, there is a Winter Fest at Rogers Centre. There will be players appearing, ‘exclusive’ ball park tours, spring training activities, Canadian Hall of Fame exhibit, and more.

Joe Morgan feels that PED users shouldn’t be voted into the Hall of Fame, and he’s sent a letter our stating that (in lot more words than that).

Morgan, of course, doesn’t believe that the amphetamine users (of his generation) should be also be blocked from the Hall, because.....oh I don’t know, because he did it. Because it wasn’t the same. Because there are levels of cheating. If you cheat his way, you are a good guy, if you cheat a different way it is wrong.

He doesn’t tell us that if PEDs were available at the time he played, the players that used amphetamines would have used PEDs (I guess amphetamines are also performance enhancing drugs, but lets make a distinction for now).

Joe doesn’t feel that the voters should be making decisions on who should be in and who shouldn’t. He (as a former player) should be the one deciding these things.

He is pretty much the same as former players have been saying since the dawn of time, “it isn’t the same as it was in my day”.

He even tries the blackmail of saying other Hall of Famers won’t show up at the ceremony if a ‘cheater’ is indicted. And he invokes children (please won’t someone thing of the children).

I get that there is a fair bit of ‘look at me, look at me’ involved in this, it is tough for a former player to deal with post player life. Others are getting the glory they feel they rightly deserve. Morgan was one of the 2 or 3 best second basemen of all time. You could easily argue that he was the best of all time. I would think that should be enough, but it isn’t enough for him.

You can read the full letter here.

There were a ton of roster moves yesterday. And the Jays were given a Gift (Ngoepe). Connor Greene, Danny Jansen, Reese McGuire, Tom Pannone, and Rowdy Tellez were all added to the 40-man roster.

Max Pentecost, Jordan Romano, Patrick Murphy, Justin Shafer, Angel Perdomo, Francisco Rios and Andrew Case weren’t added.

I guess there is a chance Pentacost gets picked in the Rule 5 draft. If you were a team that doesn’t expect to compete, would you take a shot at a player who could become a star, if everything goes just right. The problem would it that it is tough to hide him on the roster. He’s really not ready to catch, in the majors. When teams have 13 man pitching staffs you can’t have someone on the roster who can’t do anything. In the old days, when they had 10 or 9 man pitching staffs, you could carry a pinch hitter or a pinch runner, a guy that can only do that one thing and appear in a handful of games a year in a very narrowly defined role. It’s tougher now.

I wonder if Alex Anthopoulos will consider picking up Pentacost?

Is there any Jay farm hand you expect to see lost in the Rule 5 draft?