Blue Jays Morning Brew: Travis Trade, A Possible Hitting Coach & More

It seems that the rumor mill has started churning a tad slower over the last couple days. But, for the Toronto Blue Jays, there is still some chatter out there. Today’s morning Brew takes a look at some of it.

For starters, let’s go back to what seems like forever ago and look at what some people had to say in the wake of the Anthony Gose/ Devon Travis trade.

MLBPipeline.com’s Bernie Pleskoff gives us his thoughts on the trade. Of note is his opinion that the Blue Jays are getting solid young player in Travis. Pleskoff says that Travis is “very smooth” at second base and really came on offensively last season. Something that stood out to me was the sports hernia that Travis suffered last season. Hopefully, that is in the past.

John Lott walks us through Travis’ perspective of the night he received the news. Alex Anthopoulos phoned him right away. Then, he got a text from his pal, Marcus Stroman. Stroman was quick to plug the city of Toronto.

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Hopefully, that word of mouth will spread more and more across the big leagues. Anyway, the thread running through Lott’s piece is that Travis is not necessarily great any one thing. Rather, he plays hard and is a good all around baseball player. Sounds like the definition of solid. I hope he can live up to it since he was told he will be given a shot at cracking the opening day roster.

Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com has the transcript of Devon Travis’ conference call after the trade. My take away from the discussion is that Travis is a good kid (can a 24 yr old be a kid?) that is excited at the opportunity the Blue Jays can potentially offer him. He certainly wasn’t going to get that with Ian Kinsler and his contract blocking 2nd base in Detroit.

Writing for the Canadian Baseball Network, Jay Blue breaks down the amount of money the Jays have to possibly play with this winter (~$32M). The reason for this, as Jay argues is the young guns that have stepped up recently. Thanks to Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, as well as Kendall Graveman and Sean Nolin, the Blue Jays have pitching depth for a minimal cost. When was the last time they had such a pool of young stud-like pitchers for such a low cost?

Jay also gave us his take on players who spent time with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (and are now free agents) and their chances of re-signing with the Blue Jays organization. Of note is Justin Jackson, who Jay figured had a 70% chance of coming back to the Jays organization. Showing just how unpredictable baseball can be, Jackson just signed with the Atlanta Braves organization. Jay also discusses Sergio Santos as having a 15% chance of returning. I’d be surprised if it is that high. 

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At Sportsnet.ca, Shi Davidi explores a very important topic. He opens with a description of how negativity and losing can settle into a club. Then he goes on to discuss how to break that cycle. His argument is that roster turnover may be a good thing for the Toronto Blue Jays. If Anthopoulos is right and there indeed will be lots of turnover this winter, perhaps that will go a long way to dealing with decades of mediocrity. Time will tell if he will be able to turn over this roster, but is it that simple?

Bob Elliott discusses how Alex Anthopoulos has been enamoured with Dalton Pompey, even before the trade of Anthony Gose. He goes back to when AA said that CF would most likely be filled internally. But that isn’t really the most interesting part of that piece by Elliott. Nope. In it, he mentions a possible candidate to take over as Blue Jays’ hitting coach. According to Elliott, they are talking to Brook Jacoby who worked with the Texas Rangers and spent 7 years with the Cincinnati Reds. As Elliott points out, under Jacoby, “The Reds offense had the second-highest on-base percentage and the third-highest run total in the National League in 2013.” Interesting.