I’m going to skip a few, because I doubt anyone would consider them Hall of Famers. Matt Kemp had a nice 15-year career. He hit .284/.337/.484 with 287 home runs, 184 stolen bases and a 21.6 bWAR. He had one great season, an 8.0 bWAR. He hit .324/.399/.586 with 39 home runs and 126 RBI […]
about 6 hours ago | 1 read
There were little bits of Jays news yesterday:
about 8 hours ago | 0 reads
This is part three of a series I started the week before last. Part 1 surveyed the current Jays roster, while Part 2 looked at the team’s financial situation and prospect capital. Since I wrote, they’ve signed Cody Ponce to add depth to the rotation and outrighted Yariel Rodriguez off the 40-man roster. I’d hoped […]
about 14 hours ago | 0 reads
The Jays picked up Myles Straw in trade from the Guardians, along with some international bonus pool money. At the time, we thought we were getting Roki Sasaki, and the bonus money would go to him. It didn’t happen. We were to send Cleveland a ‘player to be named’. I don’t know if that player […]
1 day ago | 0 reads
We have four former Blue Jays having birthdays today. Josh Donaldson turns 40 today. We picked up Josh in trade from the A’s for what turned out to be a handful of magic beans. In his four seasons with the Jays, he hit .281/.383/.548 with 116 home runs in 462 games. He won an AL […]
1 day ago | 0 reads
The only player on the Contemporary Baseball Era Player Ballot to be elected to the Hall was Jeff Kent. He’s the second-to-last guy I would have picked. I would rank him above Clements on my list. Well, likely Mattingly too. But any of the other five would have seemed better picks to me. The Committee […]
1 day ago | 0 reads
Bluebird Banter is 20 years old today. I remember when the site was an awkward teenager. Or maybe I was an awkward teenager? It started just a few days after the Blue Jays traded for Lyle Overbay (for David Bush, Gabe Gross and Zach Jackson). The trade got a very favourable review. The first post […]
2 days ago | 0 reads
Occasionally, the Jays make a move that I don’t understand They placed Yariel Rodriguez on waivers. He wasn’t claimed, but he’s no longer on the 40-man.. They still owe him $5 million this coming year. $6 million in 2027 and has a $6 million player option for 2028, which would become a $10 million team […]
3 days ago | 0 reads
The Winter Meetings start today. Which means we should get some rumours and news to talk about. Right now? Well, we know Dylan Cease’s jersey number will be 84, the first 84 in Jays history. And we know that Kyle Tucker visited the Jays’ spring training facilities. Yes, so did Ohtani. Hopefully, the Jays didn’t […]
3 days ago | 0 reads
If you are my age, I don’t need to tell you much about Fernando Valenzuela. He was bigger than life, bigger than baseball for a few years there. They called it Fernandomania. He came up in 1980 at 19 and pitched 17.2 scoreless innings over 10 games, earning two wins and a save. In the […]
3 days ago | 0 reads
Next up on the contemporary Baseball Era ballot is Gary Sheffield. Sheffield spent 10 years on the Writers’ ballot. He got 11.7% of the vote in his first try and made it to 63.9% on his last try. Looking at his stats, Sheffield was a better player than I thought he was back in the […]
4 days ago | 0 reads
Dale Murphy is another who looked like a sure Hall of Fame choice, in the middle of his career, but his numbers fell off a cliff soon after he turned 30. He played 18 seasons, most of them with the Braves, then three with the Phillies and one with the Rockies. He came up as […]
5 days ago | 0 reads
Donny Baseball is an interesting case: his career lasted only 14 seasons. At his peak, he was great, one of the very best players in baseball for a few seasons, but back problems brought his stats down, so he doesn’t have the counting starts that get you into the Hall. I’m guessing that his time […]
5 days ago | 0 reads
Not a surprise, but the Blue Jays are putting José Berríos on the trading block. They would have to pick up some of his contract. He is to receive $18,714,286 next year, and $24,714,285 in each of the two years after, with the possibility of performance bonuses on top. But then, if the Jays thought […]
6 days ago | 0 reads
I’m going to go through the players on the Contemporary Baseball Era Player ballot over the next couple of days, because they are voting on the weekend. Jeff Kent had his 10 tries on the regular ballot, his last one in 2023. He was on 46.5% of the Writers’ ballots, that time, the high point […]
6 days ago | 0 reads
11 years ago today. The Blue Jays traded J.A. Happ to the Mariners for Michael Saunders. Happ had been with the Blue Jays for 2.5 seasons since he came over in a big trade with the Astros. We sent Francisco Cordero, Ben Francisco, Joe Musgrove, Carlos Perez, David Rollins, Asher Wojciechowski, and Kevin Comer to […]
6 days ago | 1 read
The Blue Jays have signed Cody Ponce who pitched in the KBO last year. Cody went 17-1 with a 1.89 ERA and was the KBO’s MVP. He’s a RHP, 31 years old. He adds to a deep starting rotation, unless they see him as a reliever. He played for the Pirates in 2020 and 2021. […]
7 days ago | 0 reads
The Jays signed Max Scherzer to a one-year contract in February of this year. For one-year and $15.5 million. At 40, it wasn’t bad money, even for a future Hall of Famer. In 2024, he started nine games for the Rangers, and, since the Jays had a number of starting pitchers, they could afford to […]
7 days ago | 0 reads
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. Munetaka Murakami is number 12 on the FanGraphs free agent list […]
8 days ago | 0 reads
It’s Andruw Jones’ ninth time on the ballot. In his first six times, he received 7.3%, 7.5, 19.4, 33.9, 41.4, 58.1, 61.5% and 66.2 last year. He’s closing in on the 75% needed, but he’s on his second last chance. Jones came up with the Braves at the same time Vladimir Guerrero, Sr. did for […]
8 days ago | 1 read
The Jays traded for Andrés Giménez (along with Nick Sandlin) on December 10th, 2024, sending Spencer Horwitz and Nick Mitchell to the Guardians. Mitchell played A-ball for the Guardians, hitting .273/.386/.370 with 30 steals. The Guardians flipped Horwitz to the Pirates. He hit .272/.353/.434 for them, with a 1.6 bWAR. It wasn’t universally loved. Giménez […]
9 days ago | 1 read
Torii Hunter had a much better career than my memory told me he had. He played 19 seasons in the MLB (though he played just seven games in the first two, so they shouldn’t count). He played in 2372 games, had 2452 hits, 353 home runs and a .277/.331/.461 batting line, good for a 50.7 […]
10 days ago | 1 read
Félix Hernández was a right-handed pitcher who played 15 seasons in the MLB, all with the Mariners. This is his second time on the ballot. Last year, 20.6% of Writers voted for him.His career numbers are 169-136, with a 3.42 ERA in 419 games and 418 starts. In 2729.2 innings, he had 2524 strikeouts and […]
10 days ago | 1 read
Former Blue Jays player Otto Velez turns 75 today. The Jays picked Otto up from the Yankees in the Major League expansion draft in 1976. The Jays were awful that first year, finishing with a 54-107 record. They didn’t get much better in the years Otto was with the team. But he was pretty good […]
10 days ago | 1 read
I’m going to skip a couple players who are on the ballot for the first time: Gio Gonzalez pitched 13 seasons in the majors, with the A’s, Nationals, Brewers and White Sox. He had a 131-101 record, a 3.70 ERA in 344 games, 328 starts and a 29.8 bWAR. He had a stretch where he […]
11 days ago | 1 read