Your 2011 Toronto Blue Jays: Will Probably Own

This guy and I feel exactly the same way about Blue Jays baseball.

The 2010 Toronto Blue Jays season was awesome.  It was easily the most fun I've had watching a Blue Jays team since 2003, which -- if I may digress briefly -- was about the most fun you can have watching a team that finished fifteen games back: Carlos Delgado and Vernon Wells both hit a tonne (respective tonnes, really), Doc won the Cy Young, and the future seemed to hold, you know, genuine possibility. Then came the muck, shit, and despair: 2004's solid run at one hundred losses (so close!); the unforgivable Carloslessness of 2005; a pretty solid 2006 team that for whatever reason I couldn't really manage to care about except for when Gibbons got into an actual fight with Ted Lilly, which was awesome; a 2007 season where everybody got hurt except Dustin McGowan who pitched a one-hitter but who would of course go on to always be hurt forever; a solid 2008 season that was completely overshadowed and shamed by Tampa Bay's ascendence, which made me hate J. P. Ricciardi so very much more than ever before (it's complicated, yet utterly base); and a horrible 2009 that ended in a player mutiny and, gloriously, the end of J. P.'s reign of smug mediocrity.


After all of that, 2010 was awesome, right?  Going into the season, it was like, "you know what? Young arms. That's what.  Young arms." And then, you know what?  Young arms! Everybody did great! Romero, Marcum (oldest of the young arms), Cecil, Morrow, and sure, Rzepcynski, I've got no problem with that guy. And the bullpen was totally OK: I was disappointed in the venerable Jason Frasor kind of falling apart a little there, but Camp and Downs were steady, and Kevin Gregg, who is both contemptible and the worst, held down the back end of the bullpen admirably when he wasn't walking dudes endlessly and then yelling at Cito for having the temerity and utter gall to take him out of the game.  Jose Bautista emerged as the raddest guy ever and hit a million home runs.  Sure, Aaron Hill and Adam Lind were both wretched, but Vernon hit like the Vernon of old, rather than old Vernon, which was a glorious sight to behold, if you are me, and thus kind of silly on the subject of Vernon Wells.  The Blue Jays got exactly zero men on base throughout the entire season (look it up) but hit a ridiculous number of home runs and pitched well, which made for a totally, completely watchable 85-win team.  Thank you, 2010 Toronto Blue Jays.  I really liked you.


But time is an arrow, man, an arrow. 


THE 2011 TORONTO BLUE JAYS ARE AS FOLLOWS, PROBABLY


Right Field: Jose Bautista. After some deeply odd choices were made, it looks like Jose Bautista will, in the end, be in right, which is great.  His arm is bananas, and in a way where it's actually useful, which is to say, unlike the way Raul Mondesi used to make a big show of gunning it in when there was absolutely no call for it, eliciting oooooos and aaaaaaahs and getting all kinds of attention to for playing the game the right way until somebody said something to that effect to Carlos Delgado in an interview and Carlos indicated (not in so many words) that Mondesi was an asshole and a showboat and a liability.  Carlos being Carlos, though, he classed that up, and probably made an allusion to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But back to Bautista: fuck yeah!  No, of course he will never hit 54 home runs again, but he'll hit a bunch, and walk, and play a really solid right field, and people will be like mwwaaah his coooontract and I will not like those people.


Centre Field: Rajai Davis.  I am not going to pretend to know any more about Rajai Davis than what I have read in Baseball Prospectus, and I kind of forget what they said, actually, and my Baseball Prospectus is not at hand at the moment. He has played most of his career on the west coast and I don't stay up that late. But I will nevertheless predict two things: (i) Rajai Davis will play a better centre field than the slowing, aging, fattening Vernon Wells did last year, and (ii) he will not hit the 31 home runs Vernon hit last year. Also, have I mentioned previously that I am a guy with Vernon Wells feelings? 


Left Field: Travis Snider.  For whatever reason, I remain unsold on -- and in fact completely unenthusiastic about -- Travis Snider.  He has long been projected to hit all kinds of home runs, and obviously I hope this turns out to be extremely true. Keith Law picked him to break out last year and he didn't, and if I'm remembering right, Law is expecting Snider to really turn it around this year. I am not one to doubt Keith Law, generally, despite the extent to which he was complicit in the crimes of J. P. Ricciardi. Snider is still really young, so it would be silly to say he's a lost cause, but with my expert scouting eye I have noticed he can't hit a breaking ball to save his life.  Seriously, this is some Pedro Cerrano level shit going on right now. It's not pretty. 


Shortstop: Yunel Escobar.  I know the word on Escobar was that he was a complete asshole and everybody wanted him out of Atlanta even though he's young and pretty good. So far, he hasn't really turned out to be an asshole, so I'm utterly fine with this guy. You could do worse, is my firm position on Yunel Escobar.


Third Base: Edwin Encarnacion.  So this is kind of crazy.  After spending the off-season saying Bautista would play third and Encarnacion would be our budget DH and relieve Lind at first (more on that in a moment), it turns out as of yesterday that Bautista is back in right, Rivera is going to DH, and Encarnacion -- aka E5 -- will be at third again.  I have no real problem with Encarnacion, especially not at the bargain price he's playing for this year.  Decent glove, hits some home runs.  These are things that I, as a man of taste and learning, value.  But he is just awful with the throw to first.  Awful.  Last year he was sailing it over and around Lyle Overbay, who, say what you will about his drop-off since the wrist injury, is a fine defensive first baseman. This year it's Adam Lind he'll be winging it over.  This could be a disaster.  But Brett Lawrie, who had a great spring (yeah yeah I know I know) will probably be up before the end of the year, so whatever.


Second Base: Aaron Hill.  Had an absolutely wretched year with no luck at all: his batting average on balls in play was I believe the lowest in the league, but I'm not going to look it up, so let's just agree that it was bad. That's pretty much got to improve, right?  And as awful as he was, he still managed to hit 26 home runs and play a nice defensive second base. I actually have no real worries about Aaron Hill.  This is perhaps naive of me. Call me a naif if you must, but the thing about calling anyone a naif is that in the end it is you who is saying the word "naif" out loud, so you sort of lose.


First Base: Adam Lind.  Like Hill, Lind sucked last year.  There's just no way he will suck that badly again.  It borders on impossible.  His batting average against lefties was .117, and I mean, shit, that's got to come up a little.  He'll be fine.  And he's been totally acceptable at first base in spring training.  This will be fine.  Right? 


Catcher: J. P. Arencibia. Last year John Buck was awful at blocking balls in the dirt. Alan Ashby -- who is so awesome on the radio that I honestly prefer Howarth/Ashby to Cheek/Howarth, which I know is pretty much blasphemy -- basically wouldn't shut up about it.  But he hit a bunch of home runs, so all was forgiven, and then he went away and signed an amazing contract, so good for him.  And now it is time to find out if J. P. Arencibia is ready to play everyday, and I mean, sure, why wouldn't he be? Most catchers can't hit a lick.  He might.  Let's do this. 


Designated Hitter: Juan Rivera would have been a perfect fit with the 2010 Blue Jays, in that he doesn't really get on base, but he hits some home runs.  Though he is late to the party, it is through no fault of his own, and I for one welcome him.  Apparently he looked so bad in the outfield they decided to completely bail on the plan to have Bautista play third. 


The Bench: It's the AL, who cares.  


The Rotation: I was as surprised as anybody that they traded Marcum, whose changeup was so cool, but I have every confidence that Marcum for Lawrie is going to look like a pretty good deal down the road (if it doesn't already). And it is without question a drag that Brandon Morrow is going to start the year on the DL, but apparently he's probably only going to miss one start, so I shouldn't be worried (and yet I am).  What this leaves, at least for the first time through, is a rotation of Ricky Romero, Kyle Drabek, Brett Cecil, Jo Jo Reyes, and Jesse Litsch.  You can't necessarily expect everyone to build off of last year; maybe Romero takes a step back, or Morrow ends up having more injury trouble than they know right now.  But you've got to see this rotation as a strength, and something to be excited about. I say again: young arms.  


The Bullpen: Everybody got hurt and there haven't even been any real games yet. That's not great. Frank Francisco and Octavio "Don't Ask" Dotel are starting the season on the fifteen-day DL, but I don't know, you throw Jon Rauch and Rzepczynski and Frasor and whoever else in there, and this shouldn't be abysmal, right? And that's all you ask from the bullpen from a non-contending team.     


And I say "a non-contending team" because, as optimistic as I am about the Blue Jays' long-term and even the mid-term prospects, this is of course not The Year. The Red Sox could very well be the best team in baseball, the Rays will take a step back but are still going to win plenty, and the Yankees, despite their obvious flaws, will probably win like ninety games.  I've run all the relevant data through Baseball Feelings' proprietary and deadly accurate Baseball Objectively Nonsensical Emotional Rating System (BONERS) projection system.  And here are the results.


2011 TORONTO BLUE JAYS BONERS PROJECTION: PROBABLY LIKE 84 WINS I GUESS.  


It's going to be awesome, though.


KS