Blue Jays Morning Brew: Good Bye & Good Luck

Good Morning. Wipe the sleep from your eyes because we’ve brewed up a fresh pot of Blue Jays goodness to start your day. Here’s your Blue Jays Morning Brew.

With the season ending, Richard Griffin provides his “report card” for the 2014 Blue Jays. Take a look to see if you agree. As a teacher, I’m not sure how much training Griffin has had in sound assessment practices, but his marks are somewhat suspect. He gave Mark Buehrle an A, while J.A. Happ gets an A-. And, Dioner Navarro gets an A?! Anyway, you can decide for yourself.

More from Toronto Blue Jays News

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• Blue Jays: The goalposts are moving in the right direction
• Single-A Dunedin Blue Jays advance to the Championship Series
• Blue Jays: Comparisons for Alek Manoah’s Second Season
• Blue Jays: Adam Cimber, the unlikely decision King

At the National Post, John Lott shares Colby Rasmus‘ final words as a Blue Jay. Colby laments on his lack of success, particularly this season. When the season started, we were all trying to figure out how many tens of millions Colby was going to haul in this off season. Now, it looks like he’ll be settling for a ‘one year re-establish your value’ contract.

The debut piece from Sahadev Sharma at BaseballProspectus.com  is a very interesting one that argues that it is OK to be average in the major leagues. He cites examples like Dave Stewart, Doug Drabek (too bad his son hasn’t even been average), and Kyle Lohse as players who have had long careers of being ‘average’. This got me thinking about the value of Mark Buehrle. He has been the definition of consistently average. He’s had moments of brilliance over his career, but over all is a career average pitcher. Yet, considering injuries and whatnot that can happen over a season, let alone a career, the consistency is nothing to sneeze at.

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At The Globe and Mail, Cathal Kelly gives his take on the conference held by Alex Anthopoulos this past Sunday. Aside from adding some humor to point out the often contradictory approach by the Blue Jays GM, Cathal offers a very bleak look ahead. He attacks the spending of the club; more precisely, their 5yr policy and lack of spending. He points out that while really long deals of 7-10 years don’t appear to work out in the long run, who cares? In the short run (?) they are a dream come true. He points out that the Blue Jays wouldn’t have extended Evan Longoria or Clayton Kershaw thanks to this (limiting) policy. He then goes on to say that with this policy firmly in place, as AA says it is, they  will NEVER sign anyone of impact. Ever. Instead, they will be banking their future on good luck.

So, um…have a good day.