Friday Bantering: Jays move up in organizational prospect rankings

Little bits of Blue Jays stuff.

Baseball America has redone their “Organizational Talent Rankings” to take into account happenings at the trade deadline. Our Jays moved up 3 spots, from 9th to 6th. The list Bichette (who will come off the list soon), Pearson, Groshans and Pardinho as top 100 prospects.

When Bo comes off the list we’ll move down a few places. I’m figuring Simeon Woods-Richardson will end up on the top 100 list at some point.

Our friend Marc Hulet, over at RotoGraphs, has ranked the top 6 organizations by pitching prospects and he has the Jays #4. He lists our top pitchers in this order: Pearson, Manoah, Woods Richardson, Pardinho, Kloffenstein, Kay, Murphy, Winckowski and Williams.

He suggests the 2021 rotation will be Pearson, Manoah, Murphy, Wood Richardson and Kay. I think Marc is saying they could be in the rotation in at the end of the 2021. I think that’s optimistic, but why not be an optimist.

Of course, some will flame out. The line ‘there is no such thing as a pitching prospect’ isn’t true, but things happen with pitchers. They don’t always progress the way we expect. But then there are a number of guys behind Marc’s list of nine who might surprise us in a positive way.

That noted expert on baseball prospects, Don Cherry thinks Billy McKinney is being mistreated by the Blue Jays.

I played 16 years, was GM and Coach in the American Hockey League, I was coach of the year, also I was coach of the Boston Bruins and Coach of the Year in the National Hockey League so I didn’t fall off a turnip truck. I watch the Blue Jays every game and I know they’re on a youth kick. But to see the treatment of Billy McKinney is beyond me. McKinney is called from Buffalo. He hits a homerun that night, they win the game and he doesn’t play the next game. In hockey, the young players see this and they say to themselves “if this can happen to him, what’s going to happen to me when I get in this organization”? Also, I wonder who tells McKinney he’s not going to play that night? I remember I played for a few gutless coaches, they let the trainer tell the player or if the trainer had no guts he just didn’t put up the sweater in the stall the night of the game. Never happened to me, as I could throw them, but I used to feel sorry for the guy when he came into the dressing room and didn’t see his sweater hung up. I still would like to know who tells McKinney he’s not playing that night. I remember when I was coach in Rochester the league had a dumb rule you could only play a certain number of players over 26. I had to tell a forward he was not to play that night, before the morning skate. He said to me,” I understand Grapes”. I know one thing; I had tears in my eyes when I had to tell him. I guess baseball is different than a successful hockey franchise. I just don’t understand it. I am so happy with twitter I can get something like this off my chest.

Well ok.

Sorry Don. If I’m running the team, the guy I’d like to get 100+ at bats between now and season end, is Anthony Alford.

I think McKinney could be a perfectly fine fourth outfielder, but he has had 200 mlb at bats this year and he hasn’t proven to be more than a fourth outfielder.

In the Athletic, Jim Bowden lists his top 20 MLB free agents for the upcoming off-season and suggests who might bid on and who might sign the top 10. The only one he sees the Jays bidding on is outfielder Marcell Ozuna. That would really surprise me.

In the world of unwritten rules, this is a new one on me. Twins outfielder swung at a 3-0 pitch (they were up by 8 at the time) and the Rangers threw at the next batter Max Kepler in retaliation. There really better be a suspension.

Both Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman started last night.

Aaron was great for 3 innings. He ran into troubles in the fourth. He gave up a leadoff double then had a ground ball come back to him. Instead of taking the easy out at first, he tried to get the runner who had wandered a little far from the base. Aaron’s throw wasn’t great and he didn’t get the out. After that he had trouble with the strike zone, fell behind batters. When he found it, he was hit hard. He gave up 2 home runs in the inning.

He ended up going 5.1, with 7 hits, 6 earned, 2 walks, 4 home runs and 3 strikeouts. I felt he lost focus after the what-should-have-been-but-wasn’t-called-an-error error.

There was a lot of “so the Astros didn’t really fix him” comments on Twitter, but I’m thinking it might just be one bad game. OR maybe I’m just hoping the best for Aaron.

Stroman had a lot of runs scored for him, which must have felt great after the Jays seemed to refuse to score for him. Marcus wasn’t great, 5.1 innings, 4 hits, 3 runs, 2 earned, 4 walks and 5 strikeouts. After 3 starts he has a 5.17 ERA for the Mets. Batters have hit .313/.397/.516 against him. Not the way he would have wanted to start his Mets’ career but I’m thinking he’ll do better.