Thursday Bantering: Bits of Jays stuff

Happy day after boxing day.

We are leaving on holiday early early Saturday morning, so I’ve been busy running around trying to get everything done before Saturday. We are gone for about 4 weeks, so there is a fair bit of trying to figure out what I want to take.

I had nice Christmas. It has been fun having the whole family around. And we’ve had some new board games to try out and get mad at each other over. And we have made a dent in the overstocked liquor cupboard.

I got the new Babe Ruth biography, which was the only nod towards my baseball obsession in my haul. I have a fair number of books to read, trying to pick which I want to take on holiday is going to be tough.

There is depressingly little out there for Blue Jays news or even rumors.

Over in USA Today, Gabe Lacques suggest that the Jays would be smart to go after Bryce Harper. There are a few errors in the story:

• He says the Jays broke a “three decade playoff drought”. It was 22 years. That was bad enough, we don’t need to make it sound worse.
• “Martin’s salary balloons to $20 million in the final year of his deal”. No he made $20 million the last two seasons.

But his idea of signing Harper that the Jays could pair Harper and Vlad Jr. for the next 7 years. Add in that the Jays have a fair bit of ‘financial flexibility’ at the moment and it is an appealing idea.

It does seem like a move I would make in OOTP Baseball. I have Mike Trout on my current Jays OOTP Jays team.

But then, in OOTP Baseball, players don’t look at a team and think ‘do I want to be part of a rebuild?’ It would be pretty tough to convince Harper he should jump in at the low point of a rebuild. Or at least I’d think it would be, I haven’t talked to the guy lately.

And, part of the reason I wouldn’t be looking at Harper at this point in a rebuild is that I would want to see how the rebuild goes before using up a far chunk of my future ballot. I’d want to see what my needs are before spending.

I’d want to see if outfield turns to be a weakness before spending a bunch of money on one guy. Maybe Teoscar Hernandez, Randal Grichuk, Billy McKinney and Anthony Alford all become stars. Or maybe we find we have to move Vlad out to the outfield.

And then if we find we have a need in the infield or the starting rotation, we’d have less money to go after what we need.

So it is very very unlikely to go after Harper (not that you didn’t know that). And not just for the cheap Rogers reason.

But it is fun to think about.

About the only real rumors surround Marcus Stroman and, to a lesser extent, Aaron Sanchez.

Some of the Toronto media (scratch some, just Steve Simmons) is suggesting the Jays want Marcus out of their clubhouse. Here is the Tweet:

I really hate these things because 99% of the time it is just a personal hate that the writer has for a player and he can hide it between ‘others have the issue’.

I get that Marcus likely wouldn’t be my favorite person to be locked in a clubhouse with for 6 months. I mean maybe not, maybe I would find him fun, but there are types of personalities that I have troubles with. I’m a extreme introvert, and sometimes I have troubles dealing with people at opposite end of the spectrum.

But, I think if a writer is going to tell us that the Jays front office wants him out, he really should put a name on it. I don’t think it is fair to take a random shot at a player and hide it behind ‘it’s others that hate him’. I’m sure every player has someone in the Jays organization that has a personal dislike of them. I don’t see a value of pointing that out on a particular player.

And, of course, Simmons has always had players he disliked for reasons that have nothing to do with how they play on the field. Or even how they get along with their teammates.

The nice part about being a blogger is I don’t judge players on how they treat me. It’s the PR department I judge for how they treat me.

The Twins have signed Nelson Cruz. $14 million for 2019 and a $12 million option for 2020, with just a $350,000 buyout. Take that every OOTP player who has rejected my offer because I didn’t offer a big enough buyout.

Am I the only one who has no idea what day of the week it is lately?