Hot Stove (In)action! Part Deux

I had a mini solo road trip of sorts this morning and was looking for something appropriate for a 90 km drive on a brisk, overcast, autumnal Southwestern Ontario day and was pleased as punch when I found a dusty copy of Slint's Spiderland in an old CD bin from the later 1990s. My heart was gladdened; the day was off to an auspicious start. And then the cruel bitch goddess fate intervened as I would later discover that this treasured and near irreplaceable album from days of yore is now scratched to the point that "Good Morning Captain", the most hauntingly emotional song of one of the finest decades in the history of music, is completely unlistenable. On the off chance that anyone reading has Spiderland and would be willing to burn me a copy, well, I'd owe you an eternal debt of gratitude.

Baseball-wise, there's nothing like the pure comedic gold of the Toronto Star's senior Jays writer and mailbag answerer, Turd Ferguson. The high and low lights:

* we used to shit on JP for not being Dave Dombrowski, but now let's shit on him now for not being Rays GM Andrew Friedman; oh, and we're totally fucked on payroll in 2010 when Wells becomes a $21 million albatross and warm bodies like Scott Rolen and BJ Ryan are each costing $10 mil plus

* signing recently-released and ?injured? Orioles SP turned OF Adam Loewen just because he's Canadian is a pretty stupid idea, even for a mailbag questioner; but yeah, the Blue Jays should replace the Canadian government as the primary social services provider in this country

* Scott Richmond, Olympics rabble rabble, is a AAA grade beefcake, whereas Rickey Romero can suck JP's fat one; and, finally...

* the distinguished writer used to work for the Expos, who were God's gift to baseball in case you hadn't heard

The Sun's resident cigarette muncher, Bob Elliot, is, however, predictably enthusiastic about signing Loewen. Cito Gaston's even working the phones! Loewen would have to be paid $700g per and require a spot on the 40-man roster? He hasn't had an AB since 2006? Meh, he's Canadian, suspend logic and giterdone!

Some payroll clarity from Cathal Kelly: the Jays have $82.4 million committed to 11 players for next year and JP's saying he's counting on a $100 million payroll next year. Let see, that means... less than $17.6 million to play with? I can't fathom the stupidity of even considering allocating pretty much all of that money to AJ Burnett, but I've been on this so much you wouldn't be out of line calling me a broken record.

JP's playing coy, but let's face it: the Jays really can't afford to keep BJ Ryan and dumping Overbay on someone (like the Mariners?) would create a bit more flexibility. Call it a yard sale rather than a fire sale if you like, but some roster changes need to be made over the winter. Mark it down, Donnie.

Further confirmation that baseball is far down Jeff Blair's priority list.

PSA of the day: just got a cheque for $204.26 from the federales for my day of work as a registration officer in South Sarnia on election day. Sure, a couple of crusty old people told me to go fornicate myself when I wouldn't let them vote with just their bus pas and one of those old red and white health cards with no photo as ID, but it was a pretty easy gig on the whole. Call Elections Canada before the next one (spring? summer? fall? your guess is as good as mine) if you're interested in tapping this semi-lucrative source of income.

-- Johnny Was

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