Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Darrell Ceciliani

About a year ago, the Jays traded for Darrell Ceciliani from the Mets. At the time the trade was said to be for a player to be announced or cash. I can’t remember what the Jays sent.

Darrell is 26, he’ll be 27 in June. He’s a left-handed hitting outfielder, doesn’t have much power, steals a few bases, takes a few walks. I said, last year, that he’s roughly a younger, better fielding, slightly faster version of Ezequiel Carrera but he hasn’t earned his 4th outfielder union card. Not that much has changed, except that he is a year older and there are more outfielders in the Jays system catching him up.

Last year Darrell came up when Jose Bautista hit the DL in June, even though Dalton Pompey was hitting better at the time. He was sent back down and then was called back up in August when Kevin Pillar hit the DL. And then he came up one more time, when rosters expanded in September.

He played in 13 games, had 29 plate appearances, hit a big .111/.172/.185. It is kind of unfair, but if he had a couple of good games, when he was first called up, he would have played a lot more. When you are in that spot you have to make a good first impression.

In Buffalo he hit .266/.323/.441 with 10 home runs in 82 games, not bad numbers, but not anything that will make you take notice.

What will the Jays do with Ceciliani this year?

We have 9 outfielders listed on the 40-man and he would be the easiest to dump. The others are Anthony Alford, Jose Bautista, Ezequiel Carrera, Lourdes Gurriel, Kevin Pillar, Dalton Pompey, Harold Ramirez and Melvin Upton. Gurriel could be listed as an infielder, but that’s a pretty large part of the 40-man.

Darrell still has an option left, but then all the ones listed who are likely to be in the minors have options left.

To me, the two most likely to be dropped are Ceciliani and Carrera. The team seems to like Carrera (but he’s out of options, so if they tire of him they would have to DFA him). I think it is possible that, if another team has an injury or two, during spring training, they could ask for Ceciliani and get him cheap. The option could give him value to another team.

I don’t see him having any value to the Jays.