Wednesday Bantering: Jays Award Winners

The Toronto BBWAA members voted on their Blue Jays awards (we’ll leave the discussion for why there is a Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers of America for another day):

• Josh Donaldson gets the “Player of the Year”Neil MacCarl award.
• Marcus Stroman is “Pitcher of the Year”, winning it unanimously.
• Justin Smoak gets “Most Improved Player”.
• Danny Barnes is “Rookie of the Year”.

I can’t argue with any of the picks. I wish I could, then there would be more to say about it.

Speaking of Marcus Stroman, Jeff Blair give us the ‘old white guy’ view on him. I get it, I’m an old white guy myself, but when I start telling the players how they should be using Twitter, it’s time to put me out to pasture.

Yep, Marcus acts different than players did when I was a kid. But this really isn’t necessary:

Stroman is verging on becoming a cartoon character.

You gotta be kidding.

Stroman does seem to take more than his share of criticism from us old white guys. Zaun hated everything he did. I don’t understand get it. I guess it is the ‘players should be seen and not heard’ attitude. Maybe we can get to the point where players can be individuals, and not expect them all to be the same.

Raffy Lopez signed with the Padres. Maybe he’ll get to catch Shohei Otani? I didn’t mind Lopez, I would have been happy to keep him around, but we had better uses for his roster spot.

And there is this:

Which, to me, falls under ‘saw nothing, reporting same’. But, I’m sure the ones that hate everything Shapiro does will find fault.

I’m enjoying watching the same twitter people that complained about Shapiro hiring his old friends from Cleveland, now complaining that Shapiro is letting Alex take Blue Jays employees away. Pick a side.

I have no real feeling about Poulos leaving. There were times I wished he had been a little more proactive, getting out on the field quicker when guys were clearly injured. And there was a few times when, I thought, guys looked concussed and Poulos didn’t check them out. Beyond that, I can’t tell you if he was the best or the worst trainer in baseball.