Off-day Bantering

I avoided yesterday’s game. I might watch this morning, but looking at the recap, I don’t think I’d enjoy it. And I had a fish die this morning, so I don’t need anything else to depress me.

Baseball America has updated their Top 100 Prospect list again (sometimes I think they do that every two weeks.

• #14 (up 1 spot) Austin Martin: The first week of June has gone very well for Martin. He has 2 home runs, 6 walks, 4 strikeouts, and a .368/.478.632 line in 19 at-bats. I’m almost ready to say, ‘let’s call him up to play third.’ We need someone.
• #36 (up 58 spots) Gabriel Moreno: Speaking of guys who I’m almost ready to say, ‘let’s call him up,’ if Danny Jansen is out for any length of time, I don’t see the harm in trying Moreno. People complain about guys skipping over Triple-A, but it used to happen all the time. We had a Triple-A team here in Calgary, and it used to drive me crazy that we didn’t see the top prospects because they would skip us.
• #37 (up 50 spots) Alek Manoah: We did bring him up.
• #38 (down 22 spots) Nate Pearson: I’m not going to worry about him. He’ll come around. Next time they call him up, they better leave him up.
• #52 (up 5 spots) Simeon Woods Richardson: On the list of guys I’m looking forward to seeing in Toronto, he’s near the top. I’m curious to see how he does.
• #56 (down 30 spots) Jordan Groshans: I kind of think it is unfair to move him down that much on 79 at-bats.
• #63 (down 5 spots) Alejandro Kirk: I wonder how different this season would be without his injury.
• #82 (down 4 spots) Orelvis Martinez: Hitting .259/.331/.420 in 27 games at Dunedin.

Anthony Castrovince, at MLB.com, picks his ‘Award Winners’ at the 60 game mark of the season.

Vladimir Guerrero is his choice for MVP, not a surprise. He has ShoheiOhtani, Marcus Semien, Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez.

The post falls apart for me when he mentions Tony LaRussa in his ‘runner up’ group of AL manager of the year bit.

The Jays announced that they are increasing ticket sales in Buffalo to 80% of Sahlen Field for games from June 24 to July 21 (which makes me think they aren’t hoping to move their games to Toronto anytime soon).

We ought to have a contest to guess the date of the next Blue Jays game played in Toronto.

There is some good news:

• Calvan Biggio started his rehab assignment and hit a home run. As much as he didn’t have a good start to the season, I’d love to have him back.
• It seems that George Springer is close to starting his own rehab assignment. I can’t imagine that the assignment would last long (if he is healthy).
• Thomas Hatch has made 2 rehab starts. 5 innings, 3 hits, 1 home run, 1 walk, and 5 strikeouts. At the moment, I’d love to have him in the bullpen right now. I get that it is likely smarter to get up to where he can start for us because we will likely need a starter at some point. But he would look great in our bullpen.

I’ve been reading a lot about the idea of deadline deals. I’m a little nervous about the idea, I hate the idea of giving up prospects. I’d like us to hang on to our prospects at the moment. But we do need a third baseman. Arden Zwelling mentioned Adam Frazier from the Pirates, who would be a nice fit. If they could get him and a reliever without giving up way too much.

Our old friend, Eric Sogard shows us how to avoid a tag...whoops I mean a bag.