Apr 25, 2013; Bronx, NY, USA; Toronto Blue Jays injured shortstop Jose Reyes smiles in the dugout against the New York Yankees during the second inning at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Debby Wong-USA TODAY Sports

Ultimately, the decision by the Red Sox to not include top prospect Xander Bogaerts likely scuttled the deal deal, according to Bradford. In the end, Reyes, Johnson, Bonifacio, Mark Buehrle, and John Buck were shipped north to the Blue Jays with Toronto parting with Justin Nicolino, Jake Marisnick, Yunel Escobar, Adeiny Hechavarria, Henderson Alvarez, Jeff Mathis, and Anthony Descalfani.

Just imagine for a minute, the different landscape that the American League East could have today had Boston decided to include the game’s number 20 prospect in order to land Reyes and Johnson.

The deal has not quite worked out in Toronto’s favor thus far, as Reyes is currently shelved until July with a severe ankle injury, while the pair of Johnson (0-1, 6.86 ERA) and Bonifacio (.179 avg, 4 errors) have been largely ineffective to start the 2013 season.

Of course, the ability for Anthopoulos to land that trade also lead him to go all in and send Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud to the New York Mets for ace R.A. Dickey, who himself was inconsistent in April.

If that initial trade does not go through for Toronto, adding two of the three arms Toronto needed for their 2013 rotation, Anthopoulos would have had to spend more time chasing free agents or pursuing other options on the trade market. That means that players like Shawn Marcum, Kyle Lohse, or other stop gap arms would have been in the cards. Maybe even an arm like Ryan Dempster, as Boston would not have likely signed him had they acquired Johnson.

Chances are also good that the plundering of the farm system would have been a bit more minimalistic, as the desire to win now may have stayed Anthopoulos’s hand a bit on trading away the key pieces of the system.

What all this would have meant in regards to the results on the field is tough to quantify, especially as we cannot fathom how Anthopoulos would have gone about his winter business under this scenario. We also don’t know if Johnson would have struggled in Boston and Reyes would have gotten hurt, the variables are just too difficult to truly fathom.

We do know this though; the excitement generated within the Blue Jays fan base would not have the same. But then again, neither would the level of disappointment after a rough start to the season. It likely would have been ho-hum as usual.

And if given the opportunity, would we really want to return to a ho-hum effort?

February 24, 2013; Tampa, FL, USA; Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Brett Lawrie (13) hits a double in the fourth inning against the New York Yankees during spring training at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

For the short-term, the team has promoted Munenori Kawasaki from Triple-A Buffalo to take the place of Reyes on the 25-man roster and started right-fielder Jose Bautista at third base Saturday. Emilio Bonifacio got the start in right field and took over for Reyes in the lead-off role.

However, the Blue Jays are likely less than thrilled with the idea of using Bautista at third base. He has played 385 career games at the hot corner during his career, but ultimately Toronto prefers him in right field.

That’s where Brett Lawrie comes in.

The injured Blue Jays third baseman started appearing in extended Spring Training games on Thursday and was to see his first rehab assignment game on Saturday in Dunedin.That appearance was cancelled and some thought that Lawrie was possibly heading north ahead of schedule. However, that theory proved to change, as the Dunedin Blue Jays just announced that Lawrie was pushed back to today’s game.

For clarification purposes, Brett Lawrie will be playing 2B for the D-Jays today. That was not a typo.

— Dunedin Blue Jays (@DunedinBlueJays) April 14, 2013

Curiously, Lawrie will be playing second base, but that’s another question altogether.

Still, Dakers’ post does bring up a solid point. In the team’s current infield situation, one has to wonder if the Blue Jays will exercise the same restraint with Lawrie that they have to this point. With the trio of Emilio Bonifacio, Maicer Izturis, and Mark DeRosa rotating in and out of the line-up, and now the additions of Kawasaki and the worry of playing Jose Bautista daily at third base, it would be easily fathomable for Toronto to hurry Lawrie along.

However, in the end, it does not help anyone to bring Lawrie back up until he gets his timing down. Yes, his defense will save runs while his bat comes up to speed, but knowing Lawrie’s all-or-nothing drive, the pressure of trying to do too much at the plate could represent a set-back for him long-term.

Toronto is better off letting his rehab run its 10-day course and getting Lawrie back into the fold as planned. The current conglomeration can likely hold its own, or at least resemble a replacement level player, until he returns healthy.

Maybe I’m wrong, but do the Blue Jays really save that much by rushing him by a couple of extra days?

Apr 12, 2013; Kansas City, MO, USA; Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Jose Reyes (7) steals second base in the sixth inning against Kansas City Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar (2) in the sixth inning at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports

On one hand, the bats came out and the team stormed to an 8-4 win over the Kansas City Royals, their first victory in a series opener on the season and their fourth overall. The Jays, who normally struggle with runners in scoring position, went 5 for 8 on the night in that situation, hitting five doubles and stealing a pair of bases in the process.

On the other hand, one of those stolen bases could likely cost the Blue Jays significantly.

In the top of the defining sixth inning, after capping the Jays scoring with a two-run single, Jose Reyes broke for second base and safely stole his fifth bag of the season. Unfortunately, an awkward slide by Reyes resulted in the shortstop rolling over his left ankle in the process and he was carted off the field, unable to walk off under his own power.

Reyes himself did not dispel the matter much, sending a cryptic tweet last night about the injury.

Sunny days wouldn’t be special if it wasn’t for rain. Thank you guys For all the love and the prayers.… instagram.com/p/YB81hwTVV_/

— Jose Reyes (@lamelaza_7) April 13, 2013

As the team awaits his MRI results on Saturday, Alex Anthopoulos has admitted that Toronto is already contacting other teams about alternatives. The general manager also made it known that a timetable for Reyes’s return would likely be between 1-3 months, depending on said MRI results.

That is probably a sound decision by the Blue Jays, who are already tested by the infield depth right now. The combination of Maicer Izturis and Emilio Bonifacio has been exposed as having too much playing time already with Brett Lawrie out, so having one of them play shortstop in the interim in underwhelming to say the least. Additionally, the minor league depth at the position is equally depressing, with the likes of Ryan Goins, Munenori Kawasaki, and Eugenio Velez waiting in the wings at Buffalo.

That leaves a lot to be desired. However, Anthopoulos has to weigh the fact that he does not want a long-term alternative, as Reyes is indeed the club’s shortstop through 2017. Nor does he want to pay through the teeth in his time of need.

That leads me to this weekend’s poll. Who should the Blue Jays target to replace Jose Reyes?

April 2, 2012; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Yunel Escobar (11) during opening day against the Baltimore Orioles at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

You surely know the details by now but in case you don’t Alex Anthopoulos said that under a best case scenario, Jose Reyes will be on the DL for a month. Under a worse case scenario, 3 months could easily go by before Reyes returns, pending the results of an MRI.

At the time of the injury, Jose Reyes had a .465 on base percentage, a home run, 2 doubles, and 5 stolen bases, including the play he got injured on! He was on a 9-game hitting streak!

In other words, the Blue Jays are not going to be able to get a player to replace him in his absence. They won’t be able to find a player 1/8th the player that Reyes is.

They just need someone decent in the meantime.

AA said he’s already been on the phones looking to acquire a substitute shortstop or at the very least infield help. Anytime AA comes out of his silence more often than not he’s going to get what he’s looking for.

I can already hear some Blue Jays fans whining about the Jays trading Low A prospects for a Reyes substitute.

One of the funnest things about Alex Anthopoulos’ tenure as GM is that you can’t see his trades coming at all.

So if you want to predict who the Jays are going to acquire to be substitute shortstop say it in the comments section. That way you can prove you saw it coming and AA’s only a ninja if you’re not as smart. Because I know I’m never going to be able to guess who it’s going to be.

But I’ll try.

I hear the Miami Marlins have this young shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria. I hear the Cleveland Indians have a super utility player named Mike Aviles. The Pittsburgh Pirates have some John Mcdonald guy.

The Mariners have Brendan Ryan but if you were the Mariners GM would you really want to work on a trade with AA after Morrow and Delabar?

In a world where money and resources are endless I’d want Alexi Ramirez from the White Sox. But that’s probably aiming to high for a substitute.

As far as I’m concerned, trying to guess what AA is going to do is almost pointless. If I were to guess, those would be my picks. It’s a safe bet you won’t see it coming so don’t be shocked by how surprised you are when you find out who the Jays acquired to fill in for Reyes.

And I just used the picture of Yunel Escobar for my own fun and amusement! In case you were wondering.

Aug. 22, 2012; Phoenix, AZ, USA: Miami Marlins infielder Jose Reyes against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Brandon Morrow and Ricky Romero were the only locks in the starting rotation so R.A. Dickey, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle aren’t replacing anyone. The Blue Jays didn’t have a left fielder or second basemen so Melky Cabrera, Maicer Izturis or Emilio Bonafacio aren’t replacing anyone.

At the end of the 2012 season the Blue Jays had a more than capable yet inconsistent shortstop in Yunel Escobar.

Yunel’s on base percentage in 2012 was .300 but before that he never had an on base percentage below .333 in all his big league seasons and was still good defensively in 2012. Escobar was also a part of the Blue Jays core, under contract, making a tiny $5 million in 2013 with tiny $5 million options in 2014 and 2015.

With the Blue Jays focus this offseason being the starting rotation it didn’t make sense for them to shop for a shortstop when they already had a good affordable one. Even if some fans felt they had to because of Yunel’s eye black incident.

In the Blue Jays efforts to fill the holes in their rotation with the Marlins trade the Blue Jays were also able to upgrade their shortstop from Yunel Escobar to Jose Reyes.

And boy is he an upgrade.

You can’t even compare the two players when it comes to speed. Reyes has 111 career triples and 410 career stolen bases. In the National League he’s been a 3-time stolen base champion and 4 time triples leader. Escobar has 8 career triples and 26 career stolen bases.

According to fangraphs Escobar’s single season career high in WAR is 4.4 in 2009. Reyes has had a higher WAR five times in his career. Reyes is also a year younger coming off a 4.5 WAR season while Escobar is coming off a 1.8 WAR season.

For what it’s worth Reyes is a 4-time All-Star, the 2011 NL batting champion, and won the silver slugger for NL shortstops in 2006. All things that Escobar has never done.

Reyes has also been playing in very pitcher friendly home ballparks his entire career so playing half his games at Rogers Centre should only inflate his numbers.

As mentioned earlier, Escobar had 1 guaranteed year left on his contract with 2 team options on 2014 and 2015. If you count Reyes’s team option on the end of his contract, the Blue Jays could have Reyes through the 2018 season. If Escobar had a repeat of his 2012 season in 2013, chances are the Jays wouldn’t have picked up the option on his contract anyway. Now they’ll have the shortstop position covered for a long time with a star player.

Before all the big offseason moves the Blue Jays made you would have thought whoever the new Blue Jays manager is would be crazy to try to fix what wasn’t broken and move Lawrie and Rasmus out of the 1 and 2 spots. Now you would think he’d be crazy to keep them there.

John Gibbons has been asked by several people in the media what he thinks the Blue Jays lineup will look like. Every time he has said it’ll be Jose Reyes, Melky Cabrera, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and that the Blue Jays will figure out the rest during Spring Training.

That’s an extremely dangerous 1 through 4 to start the lineup. The last 2 NL batting champions followed by two 40 home run sluggers. Most all-star game lineups don’t start off that well.

They say the first inning of a ball game is always the hardest inning for a starting pitcher cause he’s just getting into the flow of the game. When a pitcher knows he’s facing the Blue Jays he better get into the flow of the game quick or he’s going to get hit hard. All the hitters at the top of the Blue Jays lineup are very good at getting on base so it’s a safe guess the Blue Jays aren’t going to have many 1-2-3 1st innings.

Even if the Blue Jays don’t score any runs in the 1st inning all their hitters at the top of the lineup are great hitters and can have good long patient at bats. It’s a safe guess that you won’t see many pitchers leaving the 1st inning against the Blue Jays with their pitch counts in check.

Jose Reyes gives the Blue Jays a legit leadoff hitter who lead the NL in stolen bases from 2005 – 2007 and just stole 40 bases last season. Melky Cabrera has been great the last 2 seasons and at age 28 is just coming into his prime. Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are as good a 3-4 combo as there is in the game.

We may not know what Gibbons wants to do with rest of the lineup until Opening Day but we know 1 through 4 will be a force to be reckoned with.

No player on the Toronto Blue Jays has had a legit chance of being awarded MVP since 1993 because that’s how long there playoff drought has been. Now that the Blue Jays could make the playoffs in 2013 the MVP candidates on the team could also win the MVP award.

Jose Bautista, who is still the leader of the Blue Jays because there isn’t a big enough trade or free agent signing in the world to change that, is an obvious MVP candidate. He was the Major League home run leader 2 years in a row and hit 27 home runs last season despite missing the last 2 and a half months of the season. All his offensive numbers in the last 3 years are among the top players in Major League Baseball. Even if he regressed a little he would be a worthy candidate for 2013 AL MVP.

This offseason the AL MVP candidates were Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Robinson Cano, Adrian Beltre and Josh Hamilton. The Los Angeles Angels didn’t make the playoffs so Trout never had a chance but since the Angels are a big market team and Trout had a historic season he got some recognition. Cano and Beltre weren’t as good as Cabrera, and Josh Hamilton didn’t hit well in the 2nd half of the season. You know who you could argue was as good if not better than these candidates? Edwin Encarnacion. Playoff team or not Edwin should have at least gotten some votes. If the Blue Jays make the playoffs in 2013 and Edwin’s 2012 season wasn’t just a fluke and a reflection of what he’ll perform like in his prime you can definitely assume he’ll be a MVP candidate.

Speaking of being able to repeat 2012 performances, if the Blue Jays new left fielder Melky Cabrera’s 2012 season was a case of a young player being a late bloomer as he enters his prime (kind of like Bautista and Edwin) as opposed to PED’s making him a better hitter, Melky could also be a MVP candidate for the Blue Jays.

Jose Reyes is another of the new Blue Jays who could qualify as a MVP candidate. He’s a very good hitter but the MVP doesn’t usually go to someone who doesn’t hit home runs. At Rogers Centre the triples Reyes is famous for hitting could turn into enough home runs to qualify for MVP, assuming all the other parts of his game are where they were in previous years.

You can be sure when all the Blue Jays moves were being made this offseason none of these guys thought to themselves now I have a chance to be AL MVP. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is winning and making the playoffs. It doesn’t hurt that if the Blue Jays make the playoffs these players can get some real recognition for their season.

If you live in Toronto or anywhere in Canada or are a baseball fan anywhere on planet Earth and were near a computer, radio or television on November 13th (bad luck number in Miami, good luck number in Toronto) this was probably how you took in one of the biggest trades in sports history. If you’re a fan of the Blue Jays you probably also had a mixed bag of emotions to.

Trades this big don’t happen very often that’s why they’re considered big trades. In baseball big trades don’t typically happen in November either because it’s the month after the season ends and teams haven’t figured out the trade and free agent market enough to do anything crazy. Trades this big also don’t happen to the Blue Jays, to the chagrin of Blue Jays fans for years.

It would be hard enough just trying to trade for one of Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle let alone all 3. The perfect combination of the Marlins needing to dump salary and not having no trade clauses along with the Blue Jays having a very deep farm system to make trades from and having a substantial payroll increase because of increased attendance made this trade possible.

The fact that all the players the Blue Jays acquired have no trade clauses made it a lot easier than it normally would be to get star players to Toronto. It also makes it a lot easier for the Blue Jays to trade any of them to if they were inclined to.

This trade is so big that if the Blue Jays chose not to do anything else for the rest of the offseason, no one could say they’re not contenders. It would be a huge boost if they got someone better than Maicer Izturis to play 2nd, someone better than Emilio Bonifacio or Rajai Davis to play left field, someone better than Adam Lind to play DH, someone better than J.A. Happ to be the 5th starter but even if they don’t they would still be a very good team.

There is still a lot offseason left though which means a lot of time for the Blue Jays to make those upgrades and get even better. It also means all the other American League teams have time to get better to but the Blue Jays just got a huge head start.

According to Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated, the Blue Jays have offered a scouting position to former Mets and Expos general manager Omar Minaya.

Image courtesy of twitter

(more…)

Enter the silent assassin, Alex Anthopolous, who just cleared a ton of room off the books. He’s been known to prey on desperate teams, such as the most recent deal with the Angels, and can usually find a way to make things work. Is there a deal to be done between the NY Mets and the Toronto Blue Jays? I’m not sure and it seems that Alex Anthopolous is becoming fairly comfortable with what he’s got on board. But, if I’m Fred Wilpon looking at the finances in place and so many soon-to-be free agents on board, I’m pressuring the GM to find me some outs and some cash ASAP.

Here’s a list of trade candidates for the Mets and how things may work in a deal with the Jays, not that I believe it’s likely to happen, but only because anything can happen and these are intriguing thoughts:

Carlos Beltran – signed for 2011 at $20,070,000 (Courtesy of Cot’s)- Becomes a FA in 2012 (more…)