Baseball Historians

You know what really used to agitate me? Back before the internets, computers used to rely heavily upon the CD-ROM. One of the most popular CD’s was Encyclopedia Britannica. I think it came free with every computer from 1990-95 sorta how those ha…

Well, another season is almost in the books, and once again, the post season has eluded the Blue Jays.  While there were some bright points, Vernon Wells unfortunately wasn’t one of them.  A .706 OPS doesn’t even come close to warranting that huge contract extension he got last year so you hope that he begins [...]

Normally, a split with the Red Sox in a four games series at Fenway park wouldn’t be all that bad but being ten games down, the Jays needed at least one more win to make up some ground.  Now they’re a game below the Yankees rather then tied with them like they were at the [...]

Frank Thomas did it.  You know, when the White Sox gave up on him, it never looked he’d get to 500.  The he resurrected his career in Oakland last year and then the Jays picked him this year.  He’s still only .242 but he belted his 13th homeruns to give him 500 in his career.  [...]

The Jays lost for the third time in four games and with a twelve game deficit and all of the injuries, you wonder how much longer the Jays can stay where they’re at before throwing in the towel.  The Red Sox had that small blip where the looked vulnerable and Curt Schilling being out hurts [...]

Will Carroll chimed in on Roy Halladay’s progress and while he doesn’t come out and say it, things appear to be progressing nicely.  He says a return late next week is even a possibility and if he can do it without needing a rehab start, all the better.
In the meantime, the weekend series the Jays [...]

Looks like I didn’t miss much while I was gone.  Our network suffered some internet malfunctions that made it so I couldn’t post hence the abscence.  Then again, a nine game losing streak and a Roy Halladay injury isn’t all that much to talk about so i got back just in time when the Jays are [...]

It’s hard to call this one a sweep because Wednesday’s game was cancelled but the Jays took the only game that was played against the Yankees yesterday and in the process, they won their third straight game.  A.J. Burnett was fantastic on the mound and he gave up just four hits and four walks with [...]

The Blue Jays have hit the skids and with three losses to the Orioles in the most recent sweep, the Jays have now lost five in a run.  At the beginning of the skid, the Jays were in first and now they’ve dropped all the way to fourth place just a game ahead of the [...]

The Blue Jays hitters just couldn’t it get it going against the Red Sox.  They pushed just six runners across the plate in the three games and it took a great start by Gustavo Chacin just to take one of the three games.
In that first game, Chacin and the pen were pretty formidable.  Chacin gave [...]

This one could have been worse but it also could have been better as the Jays split a four game series with the Tigers.  The Jays blew a nice lead on Saturday but they pulled off a couple of tight win to get their two.  Just to put it in perspective, the Jays scored four [...]

With the Yankees getting hot, the Jays had to throw together some wins to keep up with the joneses and that’s what they did in their three game series with the Royals.  The end result was a series win and a 5-3 record, meaning that no matter what the Yankees do tonight, the Jays will [...]

The Blue Jays won their first series of the season in a three game set against the Devil Rays.  Things didn’t get off to a good start though as they dropped the opener on Friday.  Up 5-3, B.J. Ryan gave up a three run homerun in the bottom of the ninth as the Jays lost [...]

Talk about a wild game.  A.J. Burnett was pulled in the third inning in which the Tigers would end up scoring eight runs.  The Tigers then added another to make it 9-0 and later had a 10-2 lead.  Then out of nowhere, the Jays scored seven in the eighth to make it a one run [...]

This was kind of a weird game.  The Jays jumped all over Jeremy Bonderman in the first inning and tagged him for three runs.  With Roy Halladay on the mound, I figured this one was done but the Jays bats disappeared and the Tigers actually made Halladay look mortal and they eventually tied the game.  [...]

This may come as somewhat of a surprise, the Blue Jays top a list of talent production.  Since the 1995 season, they’ve had more baseball player seasons then any other team in baseball with close to 90.  It did bring up a painful memory though and that is that Michael Young is a Blue Jays farm [...]

Gustavo Chacin was knocked around for five runs in the first three innings as the Blue Jays faced a pretty big deficit.  Fortunately, the Jays put together a come back that saw them score four unanswered runs, with the final run coming in the final frame, to pull out the win.  Jason Smith had a [...]

John Brattain worked his magic today at the Hardball Times in his preview of the Blue Jays.  He touches on everything from the back end of the rotation to which players are going to end up on the disabled list.  Nice read.

You don’t normally think of an organization having a log jam in the minors at a particular spot but that’s just the problem presented in the Jays spring training preview at MiLB.com.  The Jays have as many as 20 pitchers vying for spots on the Triple A team, which means a handful of players will [...]

In the latest team preview over at Baseball Prospectus, William Burke takes a look at what the Blue Jays can do to win the World Series.  He talks about how the Blue Jays need some career years as well as keeping injuries under control.  He also talks about the importance of the Jays bullpen putting [...]

The up and coming setup man for the Blue Jays, Brandon League, was shut down after an unusual bullpen session in which League’s mechanics were off.  Pitching Brad Arnsberg was also concerned that League was trying to cover up some kind of injury and said it almost looked like League had never thrown professionally, his [...]

Beyond the Boxscores recently took a sabermetric look at the Blue Jays and their chances in 2007.  He says a 90 win season isn’t out of the question and he breaks down every position in a well written piece.  The final conclusion is that the Jays have a lot of “high variance” players and that while if [...]

Jayson Stark recently penned a great article about how the Blue Jays, by not signing Gil Meche and Ted Lilly and instead went with lower end starters like Tomo Okha and John Thomson, will saved more then $90 million over the life of the various players contract.  And in the end, the production from Okha [...]

This isn’t good.  I’m not sure if we can equate this to Frank Thomas showing up to camp out of shape but Frank Thomas will miss the first week of spring games because “his legs aren’t in shape.”  I know he’s had ankle problems and watching him run last year actually hurt but hopefully this [...]

Hopefully Vernon Wells carefree days will equate to MVP caliber production on the field.  There’s no doubt Wells is a talent.  PECOTA has him at .286/.348/.498 with 27 homeruns and average defense and it’s more in line with what he did in 2004 and 2005.  You have to get all the way up to his [...]

Here’s a really solid story on Brandon League and his move into the setup role in the bullpen.  Good history on the former top prospect here.

This isn’t a major surprise.  The Jays gave John Gibbons a one year contract extension through 2008 today after leading the team to its first second place finish since 1993.  On the one hand, Gibbons has done a decent enough job in a very tough division but on the other hand, you have the whole Shea [...]

Buster Olney recently had a Q&A with Blue Jays first baseman Lyle Overbay.  They touch on everything from batting practice pitchers to how the Jays will do in the AL East to the effect that Frank Thomas will have on the lineup.  Good stuff and it’s worth checking out.

A lot is riding on Roy Halladay’s arm.  While Halladay probably isn’t the favorite to win the AL Cy Young, he’s definitely in the top five and if the Jays are going to succeed, a healthy Roy Halladay is paramount.
That’s why it was good to read this story about how Roy Halladay plans on slower [...]

It seems like it’s Alexis Rios day.  First, this Hardball Times column confirms what we all know, and that is that Rios has a cannon for an arm.  According to the metrics introduced, he has the best hold ratio (129) so people are hesitant to run on him.  And even when the do decide to [...]