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?

DOOT DOOT DOOT BREAKING NEWS: Napoli to Rangers for Francisco

If by breaking, I mean shit that happened like two hours ago, yeah, but it hasn't been posted here yet.

Mike Napoli and his mom's titties are no longer property of the greater Toronto area (sorry KS) as they have been dealt to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Frank Francisco and his lucky steel chair.

Frank Frank La Parkaing some bitch.

Fare thee well, rad ass Frankie. May you own the AL East and get into some wild drunken shenanigans, so long as you throw up some meat balls when you face the Rangers.

Meet Mike Napoli . . . or should I say Mike NIPPLE!!!!!!(i)

 On the right, in the grey dress, Mike Napoli's mom. On the right, out of the grey dress, Mike Napoli's mom's nipple.

The estimable folks over at Drunk Jays Fans have quite sensibly assembled a collection of Mike Napoli party shots.  And they're all pretty awesome, and you should totally go see them, but what I've included for you here is really the money shot, so to speak.  In it, we see Mike Napoli, looking pretty hammy, next to two unidentified young ladies, a guy with a stripey shirt, and then Mike Napoli's mom with her boob out.

Make no mistake, I am totally ready for Mike Napoli: slugging, indifferently-fielding catchers are cool by me.  And I have nothing against people's moms having boobs out (breast is best, as they rightly say).  But I will say this: you'd never see Vernon Wells' mom with her boobs out.  You'd never see Vernon's stepmom with her boobs out, and she's like twenty.  That's because Vernon Wells is classy.  His whole operation is classy.  When Paul DePodesta or whoever figures out that there's a staggering market inefficiency for classy, the Vernon Wells trade is going to have to be revisited, reassessed, and rued.

KS

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

Alex Anthopolous is a fucking ninja, but honest to god, I will sincerely miss Vernon Wells

2003 Toronto Blue Jays forever man

First off, how the hell did this happen?  You would have laughed at anyone who suggested to you even earlier today that there was any chance the Blue Jays could ever hope to trade Vernon Wells and his famously awful contract (on that contract, quickly: yeah it's obviously really, really bad, but let's not get all worst contract ever over it.  Hampton.  Zito.  Come on now.).  Pretty much everything Alex Anthopolous has done since taking over for the rightly reviled J. P. Ricciardi (it wasn't the results, it was the smugness that would really grind you down) has been both pretty solid and completely under the radar.  I kind of don't know what the Angels are thinking, except that I kind of do: they need to score more runs, and see Vernon helping them do that.  But man, at what cost?  If, as the Canadian Press' Shi Davidi is saying on his twitter is true -- "Just heard Angels may not be getting any money from Jays in Wells deal. Not cast in stone, but pointing that way" -- then this gets upgraded from lol omg to lololololol zomg wtf in an instant.  Mike Napoli, cool, absolutely. J. P. Arencibia isn't going to play everyday, so yeah.  A catcher with some power.  Alright, good.  And I'm sure we can find something for Juan Rivera to do, at least sometimes.  


I'm not a person who cares a whole hell of a lot about how Rogers spends their money, and I actually believe Anthopolous and Paul Beeston that there's no actual firm payroll budget, that the money is there and will be spent when it's appropriate, and that Vernon's contract has not (I guess we can say "did not" now, holy cow) kept them from doing anything they've wanted to do.   I actually believe all that, which may totally be an outcome of my naive and childlike faith in The Beest.  But I have never been one to bemoan the Vernon contract even though it was something that pretty much united the Blue Jays fan base because fundamentally, what do I care?  AA and Beeston never said anything bad about the contract even though it was a product of the awful JP and Paul Godfrey (that guy was the worst) era and they could have easily not-in-so-many-words bemoaned it in the papers or on the radio but they never did.  And Vernon was obviously cashing fat cheques and I like Vernon (more on that in a minute), so good for him.  But what I am getting to here is that although I never complained about it, I totally acknowledge the awfulness of the deal, and so I am seriously astounded that Anthoplous was able to pull this off.  For it is some astounding shit.   


All of that said, I am 100% certain that I will enjoy the 2011 baseball season less because Vernon Wells will not be playing centre field for the Toronto Blue Jays.  This is very possibly dumb but it is nonetheless true.  Vernon Wells was my favourite guy on my favourite team and you can go to hell, basically.  It's not just that he had such a solid 2010 after a truly, epically miserable 2009, even though that was pretty cool.  I got pretty into his hot start, as you can tell by this image saved on my computer as VWTRIPLECROWN2010: 



Vernon Wells has fully and completely been my guy.  We both really arrived in Toronto in 2001 (unlike me Vernon had a couple of PAs in 99 and 00), but became fixtures during the fairly poor 2002 season.   Eric Hinske (oh man that guy) may have won the AL ROY that season, but there was no question it was Vernon was the young player who, alongside Doc, had you most excited about the future.  It was like, man, Carlos is still a monster and Doc and Vernon look like the real deal so with little luck we are pretty much in business here.  Except as it turned out we totally were not in business here.  But that wasn't at all apparent until after the 2003 season, actually my favourite non-92/93 season in Blue Jays history, with Doc's Cy Young, Delgado's MVP-calibre year (eat shit, A-Rod), and Vernon Wells' absolutely raking.


2006 and 2010 were both totally solid years, really very good seasons for Vernon (in the intervening years, we, like Ron Washington in his days as the A's infield instructor, "seen some shit") but man, 2003 was the bee's knees.  Thirty-three home runs.  Scored 118 runs and knocked in 117 (yeah yeah we don't care about RBI as predictive of anything and rightly so but they measure what happened which is all I'm talking about).  And not only were his 214 hits that year more than Ichiro's, they also broke Tony Fernandez's club record.  This seemed like a really, really big deal at the time if you were a Blue Jays guy.
  
It's strange to have gotten this far without talking about his defense, which is now sub-par if you measure it either by the modern metrics or by the eye.  He's always been heavy for a CF, and now he looks like he's running in mud.  At his best, though, he was right there with Mike Cameron and Torii Hunter (are the Angels really going to keep Vernon in centre and Torii in right?  has Hunter fallen off that badly?  I should probably know but don't).  I clearly remember the game in September 2003 (here's the boxscore) when Halladay took a no-hitter into the eighth against the Tigers, and Kevin Witt, of all people, came in as a pinch hitter and doubled deep to left-centre to break it up.  Halladay, being Halladay, went ten innings and got the 1-0 win like it was no big deal, but I mention it because when the ball dropped, I remember that in my section in the right field bleachers it was like UGGGGHHHHH, of course, but also like, well, if Vernon couldn't get to it, it couldn't be gotten to, so it goes.  


I saw that game in 2003 because I saw every Blue Jays home game in 2003 in what was both an impressive streak and also kind of the product of mental illness, but whatever.  I was in on a pretty amazing Season Pass deal where for $81, you could present this pass at the box office on game day and get an upper deck seat.  A good deal for anybody, a great deal if you were willing to amortize it to the extreeeeeeme.  They also had a rewards program for frequent attendance where you'd swipe this card at a kiosk and if you went to five games you'd get a key chain, twenty games and you get a hat or something, I don't remember.  But if you went to all eighty-one games, you were awarded a Vernon Wells autographed baseball, presented to you in an on-field ceremony, which are magical words.  I still have that ball, obviously, along with the vivid memory of just how huge Carlos Delgado is when you're standing about ten feet away from him while he's warming up, and just how shiny his head is, like, way shinier than most batting helmets, even before the current trend of wearing batting helmets that are really, really dirty (note: this is actually a pretty cool trend). 


Anyway. The 2003 Blue Jays.  Vernon Wells.  So many feelings.  This is going to take a while.  


KS

New Blue Jays reliever Jon Rauch is right about two things

The first thing is gay marriage.

The second thing is being really tall.

GUESS WHICH ONE OF THESE WASHINGTON NATIONALS IS JON RAUCH 


KS

I don't care if you wouldn't; I would.

MLB Trade Rumors -- arguably the best non-Baseball Feelings site on the entire internet -- reports that the Toronto Blue Jays are interested in both Manny Ramirez and Eric Chavez.  And I am way, way into that idea.  Those ideas.  I know that not just fading veterans but superduperfading veterans don't make any sense for a team in the Blue Jays' position (note also that I have no idea what that position is) but fuck it I love watching washed up guys who used to be legitimately awesome but who will probably turn to dust and blow away by the second weekend in May.  I'm in.  All the way in.  Apologize to me, Alex Anthopolous, for trading away Shawn Marcum for a guy who could totally turn out to be way better (but I don't care right now) by signing 2011 Eric Chavez, only two years removed from his monster .262 OPS season.  That's really all it will take.  I am actually being serious right now.  I know how awesome Eric Chavez is.  I read Moneyball two times. 

And Manny owns.  My brother-in-law who doesn't watch baseball but who is up for fun and so came out to the Skydome in 2003 on a beautiful day to watch a glorious debacle of a Blue Jays/Red Sox game couldn't believe how fat and awful Manny Ramirez was, butchering nearly everything hit anywhere near him.  I was like, you don't know, dude, Ramirez is like a Hall-of-Fame calibre player, he's amazing.  And my brother-in-law was like, well why doesn't he just lose the fucking weight?  Exactly. 


KS