Saturday Bantering: Bits of Jays stuff

this is a tough time of the year for those of us who like to write about Blue Jays news. MLB doesn’t like teams to make news during the playoffs.

But here are some links:

Gregor Chisholm writes about about how the Jays shouldn’t be thinking of playing Vladimir Guerrero at both first and third. To me this is obvious. Some guys should just play one spot. Vlad is one of them.

“We definitely don’t want to close the door on him having some versatility, potentially playing third for a short period of time, or even an extended period of time,” Atkins said.

“He worked there this year. I would have felt comfortable towards the end of the year with him playing third base. I think Charlie (Montoyo) would have too. But we asked a lot of him, so this year we didn’t want to take him off his first base work in-game. We’re not closing the door on the potential of him playing third base.”

Frankly, that sounds like a terrible idea.

It is a terrible idea, let him work on one spot and let him hit. This idea that every player has to be ‘versatile’ just doesn’t work. Give him all spring training to work at one position and let’s see what happens.

Honestly, I don’t think the versatility thing is working with Cavan Biggio either. I think having a guy play several positions poorly isn’t valuable. And I think the stars should be put in a spot and let the other guys move around them.

Mike Johnston, at Sportsnet, gives us the high points of a ‘Good Show’ interview with Bo Bichette. Bo isn’t all that excited about a contract extension. And he doesn’t doesn’t want to change positions.

“I would say that I’ve worked really hard at that position and it would be definitely disappointing if I had to move off, but at the same time if there was someone that’s a huge upgrade and could help us win a championship it’s something I wouldn’t get in the way of,” Bichette explained. “I would definitely like to play the same position every day – I don’t think a platoon situation would be great – but I think that any way to make the team better I’m definitely open to.”

I think he would be a terrific defensive second baseman, and I don’t think he’ll ever be terrific at short. And I think the team needs to be better defensively.

The team has to decide if they are going to non-tender Travis Shaw and Ross Stripling. Travis is a tough call, Stripling I can’t see not keeping, at least through spring training.

And they have to decide on contract options on Rafael Dolis (easy yes to $1.5 million) and Chase Anderson (easy no to $9.5 million).