Deal, or no deal?

According to Ken Rosenthal, there's now a two-team competition for David Ecksien - the Arizona Diamondbacks want him to start at 2B (the Angels have been negotiating with the Jays for a reserve IF).

This can only be good news for the Jays because the winning team will have to give a bit more than they would have without competition. In theory, the Jays could deal two of their infielders but no one is suggesting that will happen.

There's really no way to speculate on the return. But the guy we are reportedly getting from Stairs (Fabio Castro) has some decent promise, albeit he's tiny and has control issues. Expect something similar for Eckstien.

Nice comeback win for the Jays today, the interesting thing is that for a big part of the season when you tune in and see the Jays are down 6-2 you move on to other activities. Not so much lately.
Tidbits of the Game:

* Wells hit his 15th HR, driving in 2 and drawing a walk. check this out-
Wells has played 54 games now, since May 1. In that time his line is prety damned impressive.
.319
.353
.545
.898

And if you take the counting stats x3 (since 54 games is 1/3 of a season)...
39-3-33-129

If we can ever just get him to do that for 162 games on a regular basis.

*Newest Jay Jose Batista finally got off the snide, going 2/4 and driving in runners in both cases, including the tying run of the game. Hopefully the pressure will be off some now.

~WillRain

The Wheel Is Indeed Turning

There's always a future risk to your credibility when you make bold statements with an online pseudonym, but hearing that The Oracle agrees with your point of view helps wash away most of the self doubt. (I'm talking about my incredulity at the Jose Bautista-Robinzon Diaz trade.) Still, after some reflection I think I might be second guessing my own second guessing on the deal, if such a thing is even possible.

Looking at the acquisition in isolation, it really doesn't make enough sense to warrant the dollar cost to this mid-market team. Bautista will be kind of expensive for a utilityman if he's retained next year after going through through arbitration. He's making $1.8 million this year and the deepest pay cut allowable (20%) puts him at a floor of $1.44 million, with a ceiling probably just north of $2 million. He's been pretty steady over the past three years and I'd be mildly surprised if you got him for less than he's making this year.

The money is one thing, but Bautista's really not that much of better of a hitter than Scutaro. More pop, yes, and this is a club that lacks for homeruns, but over the past three years Bautista has OPS+'d 94, 96, 89 compared to 96, 89, 87 from Scutaro. Bautista has hit lefties well (though not Kevin Mench-well) over his career (123 OPS+), but I wouldn't exactly call him a lefty-masher. He also has less defensively flexibility than any of the current bench players being unable to play short. As I said the other day, I just don't see the point of keeping Bautista around for a 3-man battle royale for UTIL playing time with Scoot and Inglett capable of doing a bit more with the glove and pretty much the same with the bat.

And here's the thing: maybe it's not a 3-man battle royale for UTIL playing time JP's envisioning after all.

I'm wondering if the Bautista trade signals that JP has Inglett pencilled in for starting duties at second next year (with Hill to short), leaving Scoot, Bautista and J-Mac as his 3 main non-catcher bench guys. Now, that makes sense, in fact, it just might be a classic JP bargain bin coup.

The free agent SS market is what it is, a bunch of early to mid-30s vets with good-ish track records and gaudy price tags. None you'd enthusiastically welcome aboard in 2009, well, none I would. I'd want to avoid going more than 2 years on a guy like Orlando Cabrera, Edgar Renteria seems to have angered Jobu and should be avoided entirely, while Rafael Furcal would cost the moon and the stars. And for what, really?

Furcal's career line is .287/.352/.412 and he's seen as a catalyst out of the leadoff spot. He plays good defense and has speed, posting 25 stolen bases in 2007. For that, you'll have to go at least 3 years at $13 million per to even enter the bidding for his services.

And what of Joe Inglett, a 30-year old sophomore who's controllable for as long we want him? He's got a remarkably similar career line of .296/.348/.415, albeit in far fewer ABs, though he'd been putting up that sort of line through his long minor league career. If Inglett can play adequate D at second, and Aaron Hill can improve on his play at short (with more tutelage from defensive whiz Brian Butterfield), that's a big savings passing on a few dozen stolen bases...

Inglett's not the same player as Furcal and I'm not attempting to pretend that he compares in all facets of the game. But if it saves more than $10 million making him a regular over chasing a free agent who's no guarantee to hit any better, I think I'm comfortable with a bigger picture that includes Bautista in a bench role. Especially if there's a hard budget and limited cash to bring in the starter (like Derek Lowe) and DH (like Jason Giambi) so desperately needed if the 2009 Jays are really planning on being competitive.

-- Johnny Was

An Uncharacteristically Bad Trade

Word is that Robinzon Diaz, he of the 4-AB cup of coffee and awful injury luck this year, is the PTBNL (player to be named later, what? you didn't know that by now?) headed to the Pirates in exchange for utilityman Jose Bautista. We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that Russ Adams is still a Jays' farmhand.

Now, I'm going to leave aside the fact that Bautista would probably be a non-tender candidate in the winter had he remained a Pirate because of his cost after arbitration, thus making him freely available had JP held off a few more weeks. And I also won't mention that he's really not that much better, offensively or defensively, than Hector Luna, who's already in the Jays system. Or that the Jays had no better than a 3% chance of making the playoffs when Bautista was acquired and really didn't need to add a veteran. I didn't just say all of those things and am now moving on to Diaz...

Let's take a look at the young catcher. He has his flaws (the typical Latin disdain for the base on balls, defensive rawness), but he was always a good hitter for average and had chalked up slow, but steady improvements in his slugging percentage starting at A ball at age 20 right up to his short stint at AAA last year at 23. And then he was struck by an assortment of injuries this year (a bad ankle sprain cost him 2 and a half months) that really hampered the incremental progress he'd been making and robbed him of at least a short-term stint with the Jays.

Of the three top catchers in the system (Diaz/Jeroloman/Arrencibia), Diaz was the closest to being big league ready and I would have given him a mulligan on 2008 and let him try to make the big club as Barajas' backup in spring training. When we had three young catchers with upside we had the luxury of letting them develop at their own speed, albeit with a bit of friendly competition to spur them on. Now we're down to two and should one flame out Guillermo Quiroz-style, then all that depth behind the plate is gone.

JP Ricciardi rarely makes bad trades and that is to his credit as a GM. Still, when the initial speculation was that he'd be sending Russ Adams or a redundant reliever like Frasor (non-tender candidate) or Tallet (probably would've been traded for something like Bautista in the off season) over to the Pirates, I could accept the logic of trading for Bautista. But to give up a younger player who might've been useful in 2009 as a stopgap until JPA's ready for veteran filler with only the longest of Hail Mary shots at the post-season? And where do you find playing time for this guy next year with Hill and Rolen hopefully healthy and J-Mac, Scutaro, and Inglett already filling out your bench?

Time will tell, but I'd say JP got snookered on this one.

-- Johnny Was