Jays Notes: Bell, Valbuena, Front Office, Glenn, Lugnuts, Halladay

With Heath Bell reportedly signing a three-year, $27 million contract with the Miami Marlins, one more name is crossed off the “proven” closer list of players “linked” to the Jays, and many fans are breathing a sigh of relief. Big League Stew’s Kevin Kaduk even took note of the negative reaction online to the Bell-to-Toronto rumors too.

Here are some links to a few other Jays-related nuggets for today, with regular, original content returning tomorrow morning and over the rest of the weekend.

• Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star held a live chat today and discussed trades and free agency, among other things.
• Our friends over at Wahoo’s on First held a roundtable discussion of sorts with a few Indians writers to discuss whether or not giving up new Blue Jay Luis Valbuena was the right call.
• After the Jays lost professional crosschecker Gary Rajisch to the Orioles on Monday, director of Latin American operations Marco Paddy jumped over to the White Sox on Wednesday. Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi has a nice article about Paddy, and Baseball America revealed that the Jays replaced Paddy with Ismael Cruz, former Latin American operations director of the Mets, to be their new special assistant to the GM in charge of Latin American operations.
• The Jays’ personnel departures don’t stop there, though, as the Mets hired one of Toronto’s professional scouts, Tom Clark.
• Our friends over at Seedlings to Stars profiled Dunedin Blue Jays outfielder Brad Glenn, check it out.
• Over at Grantland, Jonah Keri quickly previews the Winter Meetings for all the AL teams and offers a realistic view on the Jays:  “The offense probably looks a little better on paper than it is in reality, with Eric Thames a questionable option as an everyday player despite a playable debut season, and Adam Lind’s on-base woes overshadowing his significant power … You get the feeling the Jays could be really scary sometime soon, but that time might not be until 2013.”
• Lansing Lugnuts assistant general manager Nick Grueser talked to MLive.com about how the talent being fed to his club is different now since the Jays acquired the Vancouver Canadians.
• An interesting fan post over at Bluebird Banter: would you trade Travis d’Arnaud, Kyle Drabek, and Anthony Gose for Roy Halladay?

-JM

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