My email chimed at 6:15 on Wednesday night and I looked to see the following subject line -- Blue Jays Sign John McDonald.
My immediate reaction was one of surprised excitement both for a prince of a man, his family and, selfishly, for myself. I know that his return guarantees I'll see at least another five to 10 jaw-dropping oh-my-goodness-he-didn't-just-do-that web-gems in 2010 and 2011. His fielding makes me inordinately happy. His bat? Not so much.
My email chimed again at 11:06 on Thursday morning and I looked to see the following subject line -- Blue Jays Sign SS Alex Gonzalez.
My immediate reaction involved a whole string of four-letter words, not one of which was John, Alex, J-Mac or even A-Gon. I think I might have also broken my wireless mouse.
Judging from the posts and tweets I read online in the hours that followed, I wasn't the only one entirely under whelmed and initially overheated by this startling chain of events.
How, I yelped, could the Jays possibly think two players in their 30s fit in with a rebuilding -- I'm sorry, check that -- "building" effort? And how could two players that can't hit worth a lick offer anything remotely close to the efforts made this past season by one of the more quietly productive players in all of baseball?
Do you know how many shortstops recorded more walks than Marco Scutaro did in 2009 with 90? None.
Do you know how many shortstops scored more runs than his 100? Three -- Derek Jeter (107), Hanley Ramirez (101) and Troy Tulowitzki (101). That's good company to be keeping.
Do you know how many shortstops had a better on base percentage than Scutaro (at .379)? Three -- Ramirez (.410) and Jeter (.406) again, along with AL All-Star Jason Bartlett (.389).
Only two shortstops had more hits than Scutaro. Do you know where you find Gonzalez and McDonald in those positional offensive rankings? Umm, you don't. Actually, that's not entirely true. Gonzalez ranked 26th among MLB shortstops in hits, just three shy of Cabrera.
Hey, Orlando Cabrera - he's pretty good, right? No, not that Cabrera.
Asdrubal Cabrera? Guess again, it's not him either.
Yes, it's Everth Cabrera.
Most of you probably had no clue there were three Cabreras that played shortstop in the big leagues this year and if you said you did you're likely either a) lying. b) a roto baseball addict with Everth on your roster or c) a San Diego fan, where the Padre rookie plied his trade. When your stats don't really measure up with any of the top 20 players -- or, for that matter, the top three Cabreras -- at your position, that's not a good thing...especially in the AL East where offence usually is everything.
But a funny thing happened. After I calmed down, got the wireless mouse working again and took the time to listen to Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos explain the moves, I started to turn on the matter. "We felt at this time bringing Alex Gonzalez on board with a one-year deal and a club option made a lot of sense for us", he said launching into his explanation and strangely I found myself nodding after a while. Speaking of his two shortstops he said, "There were very few guys in free agency that fit the mould of plus gloves. Especially playing in our division with a young staff and on turf we can't afford to give outs away".
And that's when it hit me. This isn't about Marco Scutaro, Alex Gonzalez or John McDonald at all. It's about Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil and Marc Rzepczynski. You see, chances are if and when this Blue Jays building project comes to some kind of successful fruition those three shortstops probably won't be around baseball at all, but those three young pitchers likely still will be and very likely will be at the centre of whatever success the Jays ultimately come to enjoy.
In 2010, or as I like to call it TBJ Year One A.D. (for After Doc), the focus of attention has to be on the honing the skills and ramping up the confidence of those young pitchers. In that sense, having a pair of defensive wizards at short helps limit those 25-pitch or three and four-run innings that can be damaging physically and mentally to a pitcher. Those young hurlers won't need to worry about having to record four outs in an inning, with the marvelous near error-proof defence that Gonzalez and McDonald can offer at a premium defensive position behind them. They can look over to their shortstop, be it Gonzalez or McDonald, and feel confident he'll field that ground ball cleanly (God help them, though, if they look further to the left and see Encarnacion standing by third -- I kid, but not much).
If you're still not buying in to the value of the Gonzalez and McDonald signings as I have come to, let me put this another way. Ignoring the reality that you can't actually trade draft picks in baseball (and really, isn't that one of the stupider rules in all of sport?), would you as Fantasy Jays GM For A Day make the following deal?
Blue Jays trade 34-year-old shortstop Marco Scutaro.
Blue Jays receive 32-year-old shortstop Alex Gonzalez and two draft picks in the first three rounds of the 2010 MLB Draft
Of course, you'd make that deal. There's no real-life GM that would ever turn down that kind of fantasy trade proposal, regardless of Gonzalez' offensives shortcomings. And that's essentially what has happened here. The Blue Jays can now readily offer salary arbitration to their one-time starting shortstop, Scutaro, and receive two highly placed compensatory draft picks if and when he rejects it. They come away from the exchange not only with two high draft picks for their so-called building effort, but have placed their young pitchers safely in the meantime in the golden hands of the recently acquired Gonzalez and the returning McDonald.
Now consider this -- it was two years ago this month the Blue Jays landed Scutaro in a trade for Graham Godfrey and Kristian Bell. What, those names aren't familiar to you? Well, good they really shouldn't be. Bell was an 11th round pick in the 2004 draft (327th choice overall) and Godfrey was a 34th round selection in 2006 (the 1020th choice overall). They each spent this last year at the Double A level. For those two fringe prospects, the Jays got two standout seasons from Scutaro and will now likely get two picks among the top 100 choices in next year's draft if and when he declines an offer of arbitration. Say what you will about J.P. Ricciardi (and many of you have said quite a bit about him in the comment sections on this site), but give him this much -- this is one trade that just keeps on giving.
But wait! In his conference call with reporters Anthopoulos mentioned one more scenario that actually bears repeating. He was asked something to the effect of, "What happens if Scutaro accepts your offer of arbitration?" With rumours of multi-year deals readily available to Scutaro, I hadn't even considered this as a possibility and was caught off guard by the question. Anthopoulos wasn't. He immediately reminded reporters Scutaro had spent time in the Oakland outfield. It would be relatively easy to shift him from his traditional infield spot out to one of the outfield corners to keep his bat in the lineup in the same way the Jays did in the recent past with Frank Catalanotto.
So if Scutaro accepts salary arbitration and stays on a one-year deal, the Jays benefit from his continued production out of the leadoff spot. An unlikely scenario, but good nonetheless.
But if he goes, the Jays benefit from two additional picks in the top three rounds in the draft as compensation for his loss. Decidedly more probable and better.
Under either scenario, a young pitching staff gets the benefit of top-flight defence at the most important infield position (albeit with lesser offensive output), at a combined cost of just $4 million (US). Premium defence at a bargain!
Tell me again why I nearly broke my mouse?