I’ve heard a lot of people complain this offseason that the Toronto Blue Jays didn’t do enough to improve their team for 2012. Of course, these people tend to be those who believe the Jays should have thrown $300M at Pujols, $250M at Fielder, and $100M at Buerhle, but do they have a point that, on the whole, the Jays have stagnated to a detrimental degree?
The imrpovements, if any, have surely been of the smaller and more incremental variety. Primarily, the bullpen is almost completely overhauled, and it was done on the cheap. While you may think $4.5M for Francisco Cordero or Darren Oliver was too much, or that giving up prospect Nestor Molina’s potential for Sergio Santos was too hefty a price, the Jays have still revamped their bullpen to be a budget-conscious $14M unit heavy on experience. Baseball betting offers thrilling opportunities for sports enthusiasts to engage with the game on a deeper level. Echtgeld online Casinos 2024 provide numerous betting options, from predicting game outcomes to specific player performances. These platforms enhance the excitement, allowing fans to potentially profit from their knowledge of the sport. It’s also one that runs pretty deep, with some of Luis Perez, Carlos Villaneuva, Jesse Litsch, Joel Carreno, and more likely ticketed for Triple-A. $14M, I’ll remind you, is roughly what Jonathan Papelbon alone will make in the Phillies’ bullpen this year. While I find the “closer role” to be overvalued, the 2011 bullpen as a whole blew 25 saves, an area that appears set to improve with the back-end of Santos, Oliver, Cordero, Casey Jansse, Jason Frasor, and whoever fills it out.
The starting rotation, meanwhile, will look familiar. Ricky Romero and freshly-signed Brandon Morrow will anchor the group, and we’ll hope Morrow finally brings his ERA (4.72) closer in line with his FIP (3.64). Henderson Alvarez looked promising last year (3.53 ERA, 3.97 FIP) and will look to build on that, followed by a hopefully-healthy Dustin McGowan, who is likely to be on strict innings and pitch limits. The fifth and final spot appears to be an open competition between Kyle Drabek (2011′s biggest prospect fall-off), Brett Cecil (still trying to find out which Brett Cecil he wants to be), or long-shot prospect Drew Hutchinson, who has been fellated all winter long by the organization. Will this group improve on 2011′s numbers? It’s debatable, but with room for improvement in results from Morrow and Cecil, skills in Alvarez and Drabek, and opportunity in McGowan and Hutchinson, it’s certainly not a hard argument to make.
In all though, it’s difficult to surmise exactly how improved the Jays’ rotation and bullpen may be. We’ll have a better idea when spring training opens and we can see if the standard offseason tales (Cecil’s weight management, Hutchinson’s magic, Morrow’s cutter, etc) are truth or fiction.
What we can estimate with a slightly better microscope, though, is the improvement to the lineup. Hitting wasn’t exactly an issue in 2011, with the Jays finishing 6th in the MLB in runs and 11th in OPS. An issue, though, is that the Red Sox and Yankees finished ahead of them in both categories, putting the pressure on the Jays to take aim as the top offensive unit in the AL East. Is this too tall a task for a lineup with little-to-no turnover? ZIPS doesn’t think so.
More after the jump!
As is becoming semi-regular of late, Trev Smith and I went back and forth on some NBA items via email, and I’ve tidied it up to pass off as an actual piece of writing! We touch on the Raptors in the face of the Andrea Bargnani injury, how to build the team from here through the draft, the potential future of the D-League, a potential break-up of The Big Three in Boston, and, of course, Kobe and Trev’s Lakers.