Monday Bantering: Alford slugging in Mexico

With the Baseball Winter Meetings underway, I’m hoping there will be some Blue Jays news or, at least, some rumors or something soon.

Until then:

Anthony Alford has been having a great time in the Mexican Pacific Winter League. He’s hitting .457/.444/.629 with 2 doubles, 2 triples, 2 homers, 6 steals in 16 games.

So the team page has different numbers than the Baseball Reference page. They have him .333/.357/.439 with 1 homer, 1 triple, 1 doubles with 5 steals in 16 games. I don’t know why they are different.

I’m hoping the Jays make room for one of their young outfielders. People talk about players being brought up too soon, but I also think you can miss the moment with young players. Sometimes through injury, sometimes through management indecision, sometimes through bad luck, young players just don’t get the shot they need to make it in the majors.

I really would like Anthony to get his shot.

Speaking of young outfielders, Dalton Pompey turns 25 today.

I wouldn’t mind if he got the fourth outfielder job this year. His defense will be better than Ezequiel Carrera. Of course, I’d be worried about him staying healthy, he’s had a couple of concussions. I’m worried that another concussion could be the end of his career.

Sooner or later, the team has to either give him a shot or give up on him.

He has an option year left, I’m sure we’ll see him some this season.

Former Blue Jay Jack Morris and his long time teammate Alan Trammell have be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veteran Committee (or whatever they are calling themselves these days).

Morris....I don’t think deserves to be in the Hall, or if he does, then Dave Steib deserves to be as well. Morris was very well liked by his teammates and the broadcasters of the day (well the male ones, the female ones weren’t treated very well by Morris).

Morris spent two seasons with the Jays, picked up to give us some ‘veteran presents’ or something like that. He was 28-18 with a 4.87 ERA in 61 starts.

He’s going to the Hall because of his 14 years with the Tigers. There he was 198-150 with a 3.73 ERA. Old time baseball people claim that he knew just how many runs he could give up to get a win.

Alan Trammell was a terrific shortstop for the Tigers for 20 seasons (well he played some outfield in his later years). He hit .285/.352/.415 with 185 home runs in 2293 games.

He was on the Hall of Fame ballot for 10 years and never had more than 40.9% of the vote, so the Writers pretty clearly stated that they didn’t think he was Hall of Fame worthy.

SB Nation’s Fake Teams (the fantasy sports blog) has their 2018 Blue Jays preview up. They consider J.A. Happ a sleeper pick and suggest avoiding Justin Smoak, figuring he is a one-year wonder. I hope they are wrong on that.

This is as close to a Jays rumor as I’ve see this morning:

The Jays are one of those half-dozen.

Use the threads to discuss (or makeup) any rumor you’d like.

As soon as I hit post:

I would have loved him to have him back with the Jays but I think $21 million is a lot of money for a reliever.