Drunk Jays Media Watch

It doesn't at all make sense to me, considering this should be a relatively dormant time of year for baseball news, but there has been a whole lot of easily-overlooked Jays content in the media this week. So here's what I've come across in the past few days.

Ashby on MLB.com
I said it several times over the course of the season, but shit, why not say it again? The best addition the Jays made last year was bringing in Alan Ashby to team with Howarth and Wilner in the radio broadcast booth. And yes, I'm aware it was not the Jays but the Fan590's Nelson Millman who made the decision, but who cares?

Not to shit on his predecessor, Warren Sawkiw, any more than is necessary (it's kind of a little bit necessary), but Ashby took the depth and quality of the broadcasts up about thirteen notches. All three guys in the crew are as good as it gets, and it's criminal that the bigger TV audience has to suffer the likes of Jamie Campbell, Rod Black and friends.

This week Ashby spoke with the guys from the Baseball Channel's Leading Off on a variety of Jays topics. I'd provide a link to the interview, but apparently that's not as simple a task as it might sound. MLB.com uses a special video player or something, so you'll just have to go BlueJays.com and find the link yourself-- it's in the middle column, under "Sights and Sounds". FYI, there's a nifty conversation with Gibbers right below it.

Ashby, it turns out, is not exactly a fan of the Eckstein signing, saying that it "kind of baffles me right now. John McDonald-- you guys got to see a lot of highlights but I assure you it wasn't enough. He was the most amazing defensive show I've ever witnessed over the course of a season. I got a chance to see a lot of Ozzie Smith in the National League for a long time. Omar Vizquel has certainly done it for a long time, but I have never seen anything that quite rivaled what John McDonald did last year. He was a phenomenon defensively."

Holy fuck! I mean, we've been talking about the PMoD for as long as this site has been around, but it's different when someone who has been around the game for so long and observed so much baseball says something like that. It is pretty god damned impressive is what it is. Ashby went on to say:

"I became quite a John McDonald fan last year and I'd like to see a lot of him this year, but if he doesn't play at shortstop I don't see him playing a whole lot unless you have an injured Troy Glaus at third base. Because at second base, Aaron Hill, a guy who a lot of major league fans may not have heard a whole lot about-- this guy is amazing at second base and with the bat. He's really in my mind a true team leader on this ball club."

The interview lasted for over 10 minutes, so I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but there was one other exchange that I found particularly interesting. The hosts acknowledged that much of what is known nationally about John Gibbons has to do with his well-publicized blowups with Ted Lilly and Shea Hillenbrand, so they asked Ashby how he thinks the players feel about the manager.

"Honest impression," Ashby said, "the players love him. John Gibbons is a laid back Texas type. You won't see any of that fire unless somebody throws it in his face-- puts that match in his face. Because he's just a guy who's on the side of the players, he provides a golden opportunity for the guys to play. I don't think you'd find a single guy in the Toronto Blue Jay clubhouse who would give you any kind of controversy whatsoever. So when you see an example like that with Ted Lilly or [Shea Hillenbrand], I don't think it adds up."

Roger Clemens on 60 Minutes
If you're the kind of person who gets off on being jerked around (verbally, perv) tonight was your lucky night. That's because disgraced, 'roided up douche bag Roger Clemens was turning your TV into a house of lies. Er... a box of lies. A, uh... cathode ray tube of lies. Whatever, something that lies to you, OK?

The former Jay gave the truth a good, old fashioned boot-fucking on the long-running CBS program 60 Minutes, and I for one couldn't give a shit. But I still figured I'd mention it because it gives me another chance to mention how hilariously awesome it is that he had someone shoot him in the ass with steroids in the SkyDome hotel.

Here's a transcript of the interview if you want to read it, but you'd probably have more fun shooting yourself in the face. With steroids. In the SkyDome hotel.

Keith Law on ESPN
Keith Law had a chat on ESPN.com this week, and even though it was one of their precious "Insider" chats that only paid subscribers can access, for some reason the link to it worked for a while without a password and I managed to catch a few nuggets.

UPDATE: Apparently the chats are accessible by anyone while they're actually taking place. It's only after that they're exclusive to insiders. Thanks Ari!

You'll notice that I didn't lead with this stuff. That's because the lately our Law references have been maybe verging a little too close to man crush territory and I didn't want anybody to get the wrong idea. Plus, it's only been a few days since our breakup with Towers became official. We're on the rebound and I just don't think we're ready for that sort of thing yet (besides, I heard he thinks we're out of our minds).

Anyway, as always there was some great stuff there. Even though he seems perfectly comfortable with in-depth discussion of any team, his experience as a Jays insider makes any comment on the Jays seem particularly worthy of attention. So, here you have it:

"I think there's one more step forward for [Aaron Hill] offensively. He's a very, very good player."

"Janssen's the guy I'd move [rather than Accardo]. Least likely to carry his 2007 stats forward."

"I'm not sure [the Jays] have any flexibility right now. Keep the young kids who are on the 25-man roster and go for it with them. I wouldn't have added Eckstein at ss; if I was going to try to upgrade there, I'd go for a better bat and sub McDonald in behind Halladay and maybe Burnett."

Jack (Toronto): Dave Stieb + publicity + 1 awesome WS game = Jack Morris.
Keith Law: Pretty much.

Quickly...
Why has Richard Griffin been writing about basketball lately? I don't want to read to much into this, because I'm sure it's entirely about an off-season change of pace, but also because if I jump to conclusions I might get so giddy that I'll pass out. And am I the only one who's noticed the Star's printed a couple of baseball opinion pieces lately that were from the AP and the Washington Post instead of their own "venerable" baseball man? Strange.

UPDATE: Now I can't even find a link to Griffin's mail bag on the Star's site. I wouldn't make much of that, though. At least not until Wednesday.

Jordan Bastian had a particularly great edition of his mailbag this week, touching on the likelihood of Aaron Hill hitting second, the backup catching situation, Adam Lind, AJ Burnett and David Purcey. Good stuff.

According to the Boston Globe, this week JP Ricciardi "answered questions before a packed room at the State Street Pavilion at Fenway Park" along with Theo Epstein, Brian Cashman, Scott Boras and Peter Gammons. I'm not sure how this is possible, but even with all those guys in the same room answering questions nobody has managed to quote a single remotely interesting thing said during the event. Sounds like a blast.

Wilner's got a blog up that's by now several days old. He mostly discusses the Reed Johnson signing, the Jays recent history with arbitration-eligible players, and the trio of shitballers the Jays just picked up. Regarding the arb-eligibles, he mentions that "Rios will probably get a multi-year deal, if the Jays don’t trade him for a good, young starting pitcher." We hadn't heard much on that front since the winter meetings, so I guess I kind of thought it was no longer an option. Wilner, it seems, thinks otherwise. Maybe nobody wants to do anything major with pitching until it's a little clearer what the going rate is-- but for that to happen the Twins would have to stop fucking around like they're going to deal with the Yankees and finally agree to trade Santana to the Mets.

Lastly...
Growing up in my house there was always a copy of the Toronto Star lying around somewhere. I'm not sure why my parents preferred it to the other papers-- communists?-- but in those days long before the internet and before we realized that Michael Landsberg was a douche, it was from the Star and TSN's SportsDesk that I mostly quenched my thirst for baseball. By that point in his career calling Milt Dunnell the Star's "veteran" sportswriter was as gross an understatement as only calling Landsberg a "douche". Dunnell had been with the paper since 1942, but as his column on the clinching game of the Blue Jays' first World Series victory attests, he could still convey the story of the game with the kind of elegance that sports writing has lost since the internet and all-sports TV rendered basic game summaries virtually obsolete.

Dunnell passed away Thursday night at the age of 102. It's hard to mourn a life that lasted longer than any of us could reasonably hope for, but even if you only remember a brief fraction of his career you can certainly appreciate the work he left behind. The Star provided several more examples on Friday (linked in the sidebar of the obituary), all of which are worth checking out .