Hot Stove (In)action

There's really no joy in passing along some news that pretty much quashes the hopes of the eternal optimists who wanted to see Manny Ramirez in a Jays uni in 2009, but one must face the facts, keep your chin up, maintain a stiff upper lip, and so on.

Ken Rosenthal at Fox Sports quotes JP saying:

"Manny is not priority No. 1. I can't even say he's priority No. 2," Ricciardi said Wednesday. "It would really be a long shot for us to bring him to Toronto. He's on our radar, but maybe not on our radar like some people will report.

"I don't see us getting involved in unbelievable, astronomical numbers. We would not go down that path."

In actuality, priority no. 1 is pretending to do other things that make it look like you're trying to improve the team, while priority no. 2 is secretly praying that you fail to accomplish priority no. 1.

Rather than add the best available free agent hitter (at an exorbitant cost), Ricciardi will instead focus on re-signing AJ Burnett (at an imprudent cost for someone with his injury track record and age) and a lesser DH like Raul Ibanez (sure to re-energize the fan base). You are forgiven for being underwhelmed.

Also of note:

The Jays' current plan is to use Adam Lind and Travis Snider in the left field and DH spots. Ramirez could alternate at those positions with one of those players, perhaps enabling the Jays to trade the other.

Oh yeah? As is sometimes the case with Rosie's pieces, it's hard to tell whether he's paraphrasing JP or just offering some informed speculation of his own. If you spend more than 3 seconds pondering that, you really need to get back to whatever it was you're supposed to be doing before you came here.

Personally I really don't think it's a great idea to have Snider pretty much skip AAA and pencil him in for the big league roster in the spring, but then again surveying the divisional landscape I'm really not too hopeful about the club's chances next year, so it might not matter.

Ricciardi said he is "not convinced" that the Jays will even need to spend heavily in the free-agent market. The team needs a shortstop and leadoff hitter, but Ricciardi said that he was happy with Marco Scutaro at short and would "really need to be knocked over" to replace him.

I think most of us have all pretty much given up hope of finding a "real" shortstop, whatever that means, in the short term and would rather go with the status quo than spend bad money on an over-rated oldster like Orlando Cabrera. I know some of you are gay for Rafael Furcal, but just like the Manny thing, you're going to have to let it go. And Aaron Hill's not changing positions so Inglett can man second, either. So brace yourself for more of the same, but slightly worse.

I'm not at Tao-levels of depression quite yet (seriously, should we be calling the Suicide Watch?), but I can very easily see this offseason shaping up as one where AJ is lost and not replaced and no showtime DH brought in so Rogers can line the pockets of its wool gabardine trousers with the millions of dollars left over. Yes, I know that that was technically a run on sentence.

-- Johnny Was