AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA; or, Alex Anthopoulos Has Made A Trade

Anthopoulupagus

What can you even say, man, what can you even say? When the news of this Ironborn-reaving of a trade began to trickle out last night, Twitter was awesome, and not just because of the cackling of my bros; there was a broader cackling, too: Bruce Arthur suggested Jeffrey Loria be jailed; Jose Bautista shared his feeling that it was a good day to be a Blue Jay; and Buster Olney argued that MLB's worst fears about the Marlins had been realized, effectively killing Miami as a market for baseball. That is how you know your guy has really pulled something off that is legitimately historic in its proportion: when the other team isn't just looking bad for a couple years, but no longer viable as a major league franchise. Robert MacLeod's Globe and Mail headline this gave me a pretty nice feeling, too: "Blue Jays Plunder Marlins in Blockbuster Trade."

May I begin by recalling the last true Blue Jays blockbuster trade, in fact the only one they'd ever had until yesterday? Not the Vernon Wells deal, mighty though that was, and upon which I have reflected previously in these very pages, but the 1990 trade with the San Diego Padres that brought us Joe Carter, who would later hit a home run you have heard about, and Roberto Alomar, the greatest player we have ever had. At the time, I was like eleven, and with basically no knowledge of any west coast players on account of bedtimes, I was sure we had been robbed, because Fred McGriff had this cool upright stance and Tony Fernandez threw the ball sidearm. How wrong I was on that day! And so I know all too well that judgments made too soon after a big trade can be foolish. 

That said, this trade is ridiculous and I love it and Alex Anthopoulos is the greatest general manager ever and I want to kiss him on his face like all over it. So we got Jose Reyes, who is speedy and neat, Mark Buehrle, workhorse of workhorses, Josh Johnson, who was not awesome last year but who is without question a guy, and Emilio Bonifacio who is no less certainly a guy and in fact just the kind of guy I would like to have thank you, and all for Yunel Escobar who we hated he is the worst the middle-infield needs to be a queer-positive space, Adeiny Hechavarria who is probably going to be good, sure, Henderson Alvarez, of whom I am actually quite fond, and Jeff Mathis, who I don't understand why they extended last year anyway. Also prospects: I will not pretend to know anything about Justin Nicolo and Anthony DeSclafani other than that people who pay attention to prospects think they are good ones of those; I neither know nor care at the moment, if I may be perfectly frank with you on this matter. And oh yeah they are making us take John Buck back.

But this is just completely awesome. I have absolutely no reservations about any of this and I have serious doubts about anyone who does. If anybody goes like hrrrnnnn I don't know that's a lot of payroll to take on hrrrrrnnnnnn I suggest you stop listening to them immediately: Rogers are as rich as anybody who owns a sports team in North America (also Croesus), and they got the team and the building for a song, and nobody should care about baseball business stuff anyway because it's dumb and the worst and if you choose to sully baseball the greatest and weirdest game ever by talking and thinking and writing about it as though it is best viewed as a place to enjoy more capitalism because you don't get enough of that during regular business hours fuck you not because there is something pristine and pastoral that you shouldn't be sullying but because it is really boring to talk about those things you should be more interesting than that. 

In short, and in summation, I am exceedingly glad about this, mostly because of how we got all kinds of good players. 

Thank you for your time. 

KS

Royals 6, Blue Jays 4: But I'm Not Trying to Hear That Right Now

Patience, my pets. Patience.

When I turned the game on last night, the Blue Jays were down 6-0. Brandon Morrow was out of the game, and Bruce Chen yeah Bruce Chen was totally carving up the Blue Jays lineup. I turned it off, thinking I had all the Blue Jays news I needed. Not so! Much to my surprise -- to everyone's surprise, I think -- the Blue Jays shipped Aaron Hill and John McDonald to Arizona in exchange for Kelly Johnson. The way the story goes, the Diamondbacks came calling for Johnny Mac, looking for his smooth-as-silk glove work no doubt, and Alex Anthopolous was pretty much like, " . . . so I heard you liked underperforming second basemen?" and Kevin Towers was like "not really, we've got one of those already" and then AA was like "Aaron Hill is the underperforming second baseman you are looking for, not Kelly Johnson" and Kevin Towers was like "Aaron Hill is the underperforming second baseman we are looking for, not Kelly Johnson," and the deal was done. I don't know anyone who has taken any pleasure at all in the lingering demise of Aaron Hill, who used to be straight-up awesome, but now can't hit a thing, and, what's more, isn't fielding the position well at all, as in, the guy isn't getting the ball out of his glove on double plays. It's awful, and makes me feel bad. Kelly Johnson is also bad, but better, and John McDonald has already indicated he wants to come back in the offseason. Here's how Eric Seidman summarized the deal at Fangraphs:


On the surface, this deal seems completely about the 2011 season, and under that guise it makes very little sense for the Diamondbacks. They downgraded at second base in a more significant way than they upgraded at shortstop, and potentially lost out on better compensation picks in the process. This is a head-scratcher.


I'm with Eric Seidman on this one. This is not a major deal in any way for either team, but I can't see how this makes any sense for Arizona, and I say that as a guy under no illusions on the subject of Kelly Johnson. In a minor way, Alex Anthopolous has totally done it again. The only thing that concerns me is how Jerry Howarth is handling all of this. That guy loves John McDonald like . . . like I don't even know, man. He just loves that guy.


KS

Rays 7, Blue Jays 6 (F/12): Jon Rauch Blows

Curse you, Robinson Chirinos.

So, OK, Brett Cecil couldn't quite hold onto the early 2-0 to which he was staked yesterday, and that is hard to get upset about, because who among us has not, will not, or would not allow a three-run home run to Evan Longoria? Few, I would argue. Jose Bautista tied it up in the eighth with his MLB-leading 33rd home run of the year, and had me thinking good thoughts as we headed into extras, but the tenth was kind of appalling: J. P. Arencibia walked, bless him, and Rajai Davis was brought on as a pinch runner, only to be picked off after he had safely made his way back to the bag on a pick-off attempt. How is that possible? He went back too far.  This wasn't Kent Hrbek wrestling a dude off the bag; this was a guy who just kind of stumbled off the base. Play-by-play man Alan Ashby's earthly body was transmuted into a living sigh as he recounted this incredible, saddening feat. That the Blue Jays still managed to push the go-ahead run across on an Escobar walk and a Rasmus double gave me hope, but, as is so often the case, hope proved to be both wrong and dumb.


Jon Rauch wasted absolutely no time blowing it in the bottom half of the inning. His second pitch to Desmond Jennings landed in the seats in left, and I should have just turned the game off. But instead I was there for Jose Molina's stand-up triple in the eleventh that plated both E5 and Travis Snider (if you're wondering how Travis Snider could have possibly reached base, it was on a fielder's choice). How improbable is that? A two-RBI triple -- a stand-up two-RBI triple -- from not just a catcher, not just a fat catcher, but a notoriously fat catcher. But that still wasn't enough, because there's Jon Rauch running back out there in the twelfth, getting ready to blow the whole damn thing again. Ashby, still audibly shaken from what had happened an inning before, was like, "Jon Rauch . . . Jon Rauch might blow this thing twice." And then he totally did. I know Shawn Camp got tagged with the second blown save of the day, and also the loss, but morally, if not statistically, Jon Rauch blew that game twice. That is absolutely what happened. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, least of all Jon Rauch. 


NEWS AND NOTES OTHER THAN THAT I DON'T WANT JON RAUCH TO EVER PITCH AGAIN FOR THE TORONTO BLUE JAYS THANK YOU FOR YOUR PROMPT ATTENTION TO THIS MOST PRESSING MATTERS YOURS KS:


Brett Lawrie has finally been called up, which means Jose Bautista is back to right field, which means there too many outfielders up, except no it doesn't, because Travis Snider got himself demoted. Alex Anthopolous was on the radio after the game yesterday, and he explained that this isn't the kind of demotion where they're like, Travis Snider needs to go down and get his head straight, or Travis Snider needs to go down and work on the following things in regards to his swing or his approach; this is instead the kind of demotion where he's just not playing well enough to stick, and in fact has been outplayed by Eric Thames, who is quite rightly staying up. Snider is still young enough that it would be misguided to abandon all hope, or to decide, as the loathsome Gregg Zaun already has, that Snider is a AAAA player, but is sure not a guy I want to see playing in Toronto right now, and that is saying something, because my standards are honestly not that high in that regard.


ALSO: Alex Rios is totally at it again. Read all about it at Fangraphs/Notgraphs: "Awful Alex Rios is Awful in So Many Ways" . On yesterday's Baseball Today Podcast, Eric Karabell said he was stunned that Alex Rios didn't hustle after a ball he misplayed in the most egregious possible way, and Keith Law, without elaborating at all and with no venom in his voice, said, "I'm not." And it was devastating. Fun fact: J. P. Ricciardi signed this guy to an incredibly lucrative long-term deal and the White Sox were literally the only team dumb enough to take it on. After this season, the White Sox are on the hook for another $38 million to a player who this year has been worth -1.8 Wins Above Replacement. That is wild stuff. 


KS

Orioles 12, Blue Jays 4: But What Really Matters Here is that Alex Anthopolous is Still Totally a Ninja

Yikes.

It was unfortunate that the Blue Jays' streak of seven straight wins in games started by Brandon Morrow came to a crashing halt against the lowly Baltimore Orioles last night, but what was really worrying was the 0-2 fastball that drilled Jose Bautista in the head and put him out of the game. Seriously, it sucked, but he was back in the lineup Wednesday night, so in the end, no big deal.


The three-way deal that landed Colby Rasmus in Toronto, however, is totally a big deal. The particulars:

To the Blue Jays: Colby Rasmus, Trevor Miller, Brian Tallet, P. J. Walters, and Mark Teahen.
To the Cardinals: Edwin Jackson, Corey Patterson, Mark Rzepcynski, Octavio "Don't Ask" Dotel, and three players to be named later (or cash)
To the White Sox: Jason Frasor, Zach Stewart 

My first reaction to this trade was "oh man awesome," and I have yet to see anyone suggest that this was anything but an excellent deal for the Blue Jays, another totally solid Alex Anthopolous move. "Worst Trade Ever! Cardinals Send Colby Rasmus to Toronto for Spare Parts," writes Aaron Schafer of the Riverfront Times. Keith Law, to whom I look for guidance in all such times of change, said on the Baseball Today Podcast today that this is a horrible long term move for the Cardinals, sacrificing a potential star player (who is already not exactly bad) for a better rotation this year (he was on the Fan590 today, too). But you can kind of see why that might be: this could very well be their last season of Albert Pujols, so you go all-in to win your not-so-s-hot division and make this a championship year regardless of what this does to your team in the medium-to-long term. Also apparently Tony LaRussa doesn't like Rasmus, who is probably a bit of a jerk with a loudmouth dad who is probably an even bigger jerk, but Law was like, Tony LaRussa isn't exactly a part of the long-term future of the club either, so who cares? As has been pointed out at Drunk Jays Fans, the Blue Jays are clearly not averse to picking up players with lousy reputations: Escobar, Morrow, Lawrie. It's a chance to get potential star players on the cheap, basically. All reports are that Lawrie is no longer a dick; Bautista has by all accounts straightened out Escobar; and I actually didn't know Morrow had a bad reputation until like a minute ago.


What did the Blue Jays give up? Chiefly Zach Stewart, whom Baseball America has rated as Toronto's sixth-best prospect, and whom Keith Law thinks could be a number two or number three big-league starter someday (though he is by his own admission a Zach Stewart optimist). Beyond that, it's Corey Patterson, who is pretty terrible, Rzepcynski and "Don't Ask" Dotel, who are both serviceable bullpen arms (and Scrabble is maybe a fifth starter), and Jason Frasor, who if I'm remembering this right is the longest-serving Blue Jay and a guy who was on the cusp of setting the all-time Blue Jays record for appearances. I am fond of Frasor, but he is another pretty basic bullpen guy, you know? And in return, they get Rasmus, who will be the everyday centre fielder immediately and who has the potential to be at least pretty good for a pretty long time for basically no money; Mark Teahen, who is a Moneyball guy who is a total bust; and a bunch of bullpen arms. I am not going to pretend to know anything about P. J. Walters, but Trevor Miller we've seen before, as we have Brian Tallett, regrettably:

But whatever, man, I will take it. I can't see this as anything other than another good move from Alex Anthopolous, and one that nobody saw coming. This Alex Anthopolous is my kind of guy to the extent that he is making things happen, and those things that he is making happen are awesome.


KS

Braves 2, Blue Jays 0: Run Support King Ricky Romero At It Again

This is Ricky Romero's run support face.

"I’m sure those guys are not trying to get out," Ricky Romero said after last night's game. "They’re all trying. I’m not singling anyone out or anything like that. We’re all trying." What if they're not, though? What if everybody else is just coasting? I think we have to at least entertain the possibility. Adam Lind has been tremendous, Jose Bautista has fallen off but is still obviously going hard to the fullest out there, but who knows? Maybe everybody else is just jerks. The only guy who kind of actually actively looks like he's not trying is Yunel Escobar, but I firmly believe he is in fact trying but lacks the gene that makes it look like you're trying even when you are. On that note, I am entirely pleased with Alex Anthopolous' decision to extend Escobar for two seasons at $5 million a year with a couple of club options at the same rate. This is entirely sensible, and I like it. The eighth-best shortstop in either league this year according to Wins Above Replacement, he has been excellent. 


Last night's game, however, was not excellent, and was, on the contrary, a butt. Tim Hudson threw a two-hitter, and I hated it.


EDIT: Somehow I neglected to mention that both runs came on A TWO-RUN SHOT BY TIM HUDSON IN THE SEVENTH INNING GOD DAMN IT I HATE THE NATIONAL LEAGUE WHERE SHIT LIKE THIS IS EVEN POSSIBLE.


KS

Jose Bautista and Podzilla? Alex Anthopolous, you are dangerously close to becoming my everything.

I don't know this for sure, but I bet Jose hit the shit out of that one.

This is great.  I feel awesome about this.  The low-risk, low-reward thing for Alex Anthopolous to do with the Jose Bautista contract situation would have been to take whatever decision was handed down in arbitration, and just go with that.  If he went ahead and had another amazing year, Bautista would be dozens of millions of dollars more costly than he is right now, and Anthopolous could have traded him to a contender at the deadline or taken the picks and nobody would have minded all that much. Conversely, if Bautista statistically fell off a cliff, Anthopolous would be applauded for having played it safe.  And yeah, either way that would have been safe, and ultimately fine, but this is way, way better.

Bautista is of course a weird, weird case, a guy who bounced around and didn't do much of anything until the last month of his age 29 season, and then, after identifying and working through some pretty serious mechanical flaws in his swing with coach Dwayne Murphy, flaws that had caused him to be late on virtually everything and foul off an unusual number of hittable pitches, he put it all together.  (You can read about that process in Sports Illustrated, and there actually used to be pictures, maybe just in the print version, that show the dramatic difference in his swing.)  And then, after an awesome September, 2009, and absolutely monstrous 2010 in which he slugged 54 home runs (.260/.378/.617, 6.9 WAR, omg, wtf).   Albert Pujols (and holy cow, what's going on in St. Louis? isn't that nuts?) hit 42, and sixteen players hit in the 30s.  As Neil and I got all emotional about in the comments to the Hank Greenberg post, we've moved into an era where 50 home runs is genuinely awesome again, and not just, like, pretty cool. And so 54 is once again truly rad.

Also let me say here that if you want to be all "lol steroids" on the subject of Jose Bautista, you can pretty much go to hell.  Bautista has himself been pretty reasonable when people have brought this up, adopting a very patient "I can see why you would ask that, but I assure you this is not the case" approach.  And reporters, particularly the loathsome Damien Cox in a piece called "Gotta At Least Ask the Question", have been so horseshit about it, with the kind of "I'm not saying, I just think it's important that we think about it" stance where they don't dare make an accusation, exactly, but deride anyone naive enough to not make an accusation.  Do they think that (a) performance enhancing drugs are completely out of the game except for those supposedly used by Jose Bautista, which explains his monster year relative to an otherwise clean league, or that (b) steroid use is still rampant but Jose Bautista has happened upon some kind of megasteroid previously unknown to athletics or even science and so has lapped the field?  In the absence of anything remotely resembling evidence, it's just so lame to chalk Jose Bautista's 2010 up to steroids amirite? as though that is the only way to explain it.  (Read the Mitchell Report and be dazzled by the raw power numbers of those named. Dazzled!)  I think Keith Law had the best response to the whole "don't you think we need to ask the question?" thing last year when he said something like this to John Shannon (that guy is the worst, by the way) on the Fan 590 in Toronto: "It's not actually fair, in fact it is completely unfair, because what if I were to ask you, 'John Shannon, are you a horrible racist?  I'm not saying there's any reasonable evidence to support it, I just think it's important to ask the question.' I've just called you a racist in the most cowardly way possible."  I am quoting from memory and probably being meaner to John Shannon than Keith Law was, but not by much.

In the event that Bautista gets popped for fifty games, you can bring this all back up with me, and I will not feel like I need to correct myself or anything.  Could he be on steroids?  Well yeah, sure, why not, who couldn't? But is a monstrous breakout season like his 2010 strong enough evidence on its own to even suggest that it's likely?  Not if you have any knowledge (in the obssessive, guy-with-both-baseballreference.com-and-FanGraphs-open-in-separate-tabs sense) of the history of baseball.  Weirder things have happened before (non-greenie) performance enhancing drugs were a part of baseball.  Much weirder.  It is a weird game where people do things at least this nuts (in one way or another) almost regularly.   

Anyway, I love this deal.  Bautista is hardly getting paid as though anyone expects him to ever repeat his 2010.  They've got him slotted in roughly as a guy who will hit 25-30 HR, draw a bunch of walks, not strikeout all that much, and offer some defensive versatility.  Given the apparent going rates these days, $65 million over five seasons with a team option for a sixth is both fair now, and, if Bautista struggles a couple of years in, still a totally moveable contract, or one that you can simply swallow without too much trouble.  It's really not that much money.  Stoeten, of Drunk Jays Fans fame, is not nuts about the deal, but I really don't see the hangup.  I just like this deal intuitively on its surface, without getting too into the math of it, but Dave Cameron breaks it down pretty convincingly at FanGraphs to satisfy the head as well as the heart.  Jonah Keri was on the Jeff Blair show today, and said he likes it but thinks it comes a year too early, which I think misses the point: if Bautista has another monster year, which is unlikely, or even if he regresses significantly but is still putting up solid power numbers, which is totally likely, there is no way he signs a deal anything like this.  If Bautista is a useful player this season, which I expect he will be, this is not a deal you can sign him to once he gets to free agency.  He is not going to for $8 million and then a bunch of $14s, which is how this one is structured (and, well, the $8 million is buying out his final arbitration year, not a free agent year, but you get what I'm saying here I'm sure). 

And plus Jose Bautista is just awesome to watch.  If you don't like watching Jose Bautista, there is a pretty good chance you don't like watching baseball.  That is my bold and confrontational view on this crucial subject.  If you're as excited about this as I am (note: you almost certainly aren't), here's audio of the press conference, and then Jose Bautista and Alex Anthopolous on Prime Time Sports this evening.  What can I say, I just like that guy.  And in case you were wondering, he's willing to play third this season, even though both Bautista and Anthopolous see him probably returning to the outfield in 2012 if things go the way they expect (this would mean Matt Lawrie as a starter not this year but next, is my guess).  He's not exactly Adrian Beltre out there, but he's way more valuable at third then as a corner voltigeur, so I am completely down with this.   Completely. 

To summarize, this is awesome, and also we got Scott Podsednik for some reason!  When you Google image search his name you mostly get pictures of his Playboy Bunny wife Lisa Dergan who, did you know, holds a degree in Art History as well as the bonered attention of men?  I'm kind of on the fence about posting a racy picture of her though, because I, like all of us here at Baseball Feelings, am a sex-positive feminist and so while raciness itself is awesome, is the sterile, ultimately sexless and woman-effacing pseudoraciness of Playboy or it's lad-mag equivalents really what we want here?  Am I -- are we -- willing to be complicit in that?  Maybe a little, but only a little:

KS

Well, it was fun while it lasted, Mike Napoli. But the Frank Francisco era has begun.

Of all these great reactions my favourite here is the lady in the jean jacket.

That Alex Anthopolous, boy, he is a wheeler and a dealer!  Mike Napoli is now a Texas Ranger, and Frank Francisco -- seen here hucking a chair at a dude who allegedly heckled another Rangers pitcher on the subject of a stillborn child but the chair totally didn't hit the heckler in question but instead his wife who was cut for stitches and then there were criminal and civil charges -- is now a Toronto Blue Jay.  It is like quantum leaps of unclassiness here from Vernon Wells (notably classy) to Mike Napoli (lewd party pics mère et fils) to Frank Francisco (heckler-revenge-by-proxy / lady assault).  But what a name!  Also he's pretty good.  Not that I'm saying he should close or anything but the Blue Jays pen is looking reasonable.  There is, at least, no chance of this happening in 2011, so cool.  


Edit: scooped by Chinballs! I came with the bigger picture though so who is the real winner?

In the next three years, the Angels will pay Vernon Wells more than the Blue Jays paid him for the previous thirteen.

Memories from a simpler time.

Not going to pretend that I'm not still reeling from all of this, but I managed to pull myself together enough to have some lunch.  And whilst enjoying that lunch, it occurred to me that the whole narrative on Vernon's time in Toronto has to change.  It was never really true that Vernon was horrendously overpaid.  It was certainly true that he was going to be super seriously overpaid once his contract really kicked in unless he all of a sudden became his 2003 self, only better every year, plus became a doctor and a lawyer and a really good kisser.  Then you could look at twenty-odd million a year and think, well, we're really getting a lot for that.  

But we never got there.  If you actually look at what the Blue Jays spent, and what they got in return, you would really have to be an asshole to say that Vernon was badly overpaid.  I took a quick look at his contract information at Baseball Reference, and was all set to just go with that, but somebody in the comments section over at Drunk Jays Fans broke it down even better, so you can read all the particulars with all the bonuses and everything over there if you want.  The long and the short of it is that the Blue Jays payed out something like $60 million for thirteen years of Vernon Wells, with 2010 his first year of really making well over $10 million, and some real steals in there early on like 2003-2006 (Fangraphs WAR: 3.8, 3.7, 3.2, 5.7) for basically no money.  

And unless Vernon opts out of his contract, which he's entitled to do pretty much any time now but which would be one of the worst financial decisions anyone had ever made ever, the Angels are going to pay him more than that total in the next three seasons. Both GMs have confirmed that there isn't any money changing hands in this deal at all, not the rumoured $5 million, not anything.  It's just straight up dudes for dudes. Clearly the Angels are banking on him being the 4.0 WAR guy he was in 2010 and not the 0.0 WAR guy he was in 2009, but maaaaaaaaaaan they are rolling the dice on this one.    

Anyway, everybody agrees that Vernon Wells is a totally solid dude, and, when he wasn't playing through all kinds of injuries, a totally solid player, and at his best a really good player.  That's pretty much consensus stuff.  Hopefully the other part of the Vernon Wells consensus, that he was ridiculously overpaid, Blue Jays fans will actually kind of shut up about because it didn't ever actually come to pass.  Not because J.P. didn't try: he seemed determined from the outset to write a ludicrous contract.  But that's not the Blue Jays' problem at all.  Because Alex Anthopolous is amazing.  


KS