Friday Bantering: Happy Birthday Pedro Borbon

There really isn’t all that much for Blue Jays news. And there isn’t much in “Jays History” today.

There is a birthday, Pedro Borbon turns 52 today.

I don’t have much to say about Borbon, other than to complain about the stupid trade that brought him to us. The Jays had hired former manager Cito Gaston to be hitting coach and Shawn Green had bad memories of him as manager. Cito wanted Green to pull the ball, Shawn liked using the whole field and their relationship was not good. Green has a short autobiography that tells some stories about it.

So Green asked for a trade. I wasn’t a big fan. I figured a star player is worth more than a hitting coach. But Gord Ash had a different opinion.

Ash traded Green to the Dodgers for Raul Mondesi and Pedro.

Pedro was with the Blue Jays for 2 seasons, plus a month. A lefty reliever, he pitched in 146 games, had a 4.93 ERA. In 107.2 innings he allowed 105 hits, 16 home runs, 56 walks and 85 strikeouts. Kind of your LOOGY type but he wasn’t all that successful. His best season as a Jay was 2001, he pitched in 71 games and had a 3.71 ERA.

Career he was much better vs lefties (.628 OPS) than right-handers (.900).

We traded him to the Astros in a conditional trade that didn’t net us much. He had a 9-year career, playing for the Braves, Dodgers, Jays, Astros and Cardinals. After his time with the Cardinals he was signed and released by the Padres, Expos and Angels without playing a major league game for any of them.

He played in 368 MLB games, all in relief, had a 4.68, 6 saves in 271 innings.

Mondesi would spent a couple more months with the Jays, before being traded to the Yankees. He wasn’t bad, hit .251/.328/.470 in his 2.5 seasons with the Jays, but he was being paid a lot and he was hitting .224/.301/.435 in 2002 when the Yankees volunteered to take him off our hands.

Happy birthday Pedro, hope it is a good one.

The Jays have announced their Winter Fest and the Winter Tour.

I don’t understand how they can call something a ‘tour’ when it only makes one stop, this time in Calgary. To me tour means multiple starts. The Jays are bringing Cavan Biggio, Rowdy Tellez, Trent Thornton and Danny Jansen. I’m not really into standing in line for autographs so I’m not sure how much of the ‘tour’ I’ll take in. They are in Calgary January 10 and 11.

Winter Fest is January 18 and 19. You guys in Toronto get Randal Grichuk, Reese McGuire, Bo Bichette, plus alumni Roberto Alomar, Pat Hentgen and Cito Gaston. And a lot more interesting things to do than we’ll get in Calgary.

The Jays won’t be getting Jake Odorizzi. He signed the qualifying offer with the Twins. It sounds like he listened to offers from other teams and then decided taking the one-year deal, and hitting the free agent market next year, would be the better plan. The Jays or any other team interested would have had to make a pretty good offer to beat that.

Over in the Athletic, Kaitlyn McGrath talks about the case for signing Mike Moustakas. I’m not sold on the idea but he can play a couple of positions.

He had a 3.2 bWAR last year, his best number since 2015 and the second best number of his career. I’m not big on signing guys after a career season. If we pay him like he’s going to continue at last year’s level, I think we’ll be disappointed.

I’d like him more if he got on base a little better, but he would give us a fall back if Rowdy doesn’t to well and he can spell Vlad.

This is cute: