Sunday Bantering: Weekend Jays stuff

Congratulations to the Dodgers for their 7 game win over the Brewers. It was a very good, very interesting series.

The Brewers look like that should be good for the next few seasons. Their best players are young and under team control, they have a manager willing to try things and a good front office. We might be seeing them again in the playoffs.

Cross a name off the list for Blue Jays manager. David Bell signed up for the job with the Reds.

That should leave us with four possibilities: Rocco Baldelli, Brandon Hyde, Joe Espada and, maybe Ed Sprague. I’ve only seem the one mention of Sprague, in a tweet from Bob Elliott (and people quoting his tweet), so I have no idea if he is in the final four or if he just had an interview in the first round.

I don’t have a favorite. I’ll trust the front office to make a good choice.

We should run a poll.

If the Jays gave a thumbs down to your application for the manager’s job (I’m still waiting for my phone call), They have another job posting up: Coordinator, Media Relations with Dunedin Blue Jays in Dunedin, FL. It has the draw of living in Dunedin, which is a beautiful town.

Listed as a ‘paid internship’, so I’m imagining there isn’t a lot of pay, and there will be a ton of work, but it is baseball. It isn’t breaking rock. Among the duties is: Potential broadcast of Dunedin Blue Jays home games.

Keith Law has been watching the AFL and has scouting reports on the Jays playing there (subscription required).

On Vlad he mentions that Vlad is clearly the best player in the AFL and one of the best in the history of it. This worries me a bit:

He’s so far ahead of the pitchers he’s facing that he seems like he’s bored and isn’t showing his normal, disciplined approach at the plate, instead swinging earlier in the count and often swinging for the fences to try to create some highlight moments for the crowds (who cheer every time he’s up, regardless of the ballpark).

He does mention that his defense at third is not good and that it is likely to get worse as he gets older, but also says that “a few weeks in the AFL isn’t going to make any difference”.

Also:

That said, Vlad is clearly having fun in Arizona, making the best of the situation. . He’s bouncing around and laughing during batting practice. He’s still animated and runs hard when he puts the ball in play. My guess is he just knows he’s too good for the league, so he’s relaxing and enjoying it, rather than sulking and mailing it in.

Law says Nate Pearson’s bad start, saying he didn’t have his release point and he couldn’t ‘consistently repeat his delivery’. But then he didn’t pitch much this year.

He didn’t have anything good to say about Cavan Biggio:

...he appears to barely be a major league prospect. He has no position at all. He doesn’t have the speed or athleticism to obviously profile anywhere. He drew a slew of walks this season, but it’s because he’s passive, not because he’s disciplined; I saw him strike out looking four times this week, always on pitches that were clearly strikes, at least two of them fastballs from right-handers that he should have seen better than he did. I know his superficial line this year has some fans thinking he’s a future regular, but I see an up-and-down guy.

Joe Girardi has taken himself out of the running for the Rangers and Reds’ manager job. Generally I think guys take themselves out of consideration when they figure they are unlikely to get the job. But maybe not in this case: