Tuesday Grab Bag

The Walt Disney World Series is upon us, and the stakes have never been higher for a series between the Jays and the Rays. Who will be forced to stop calling Upton the Beej? Who will continue on using the nickname for BJ Ryan even if the Jays lose? Over the course of the next three days we'll find out!

In honour of the Walt Disney World Series, I'm participating in an exchange of five questions with the awesome dudes over at Rays Bay. My answers are already up on their site, but because my stupid work blocks Gmail, I won't be able to access and post RJ's answers to my questions until later tonight. Oooh! And he sets the hook!

Update: Here we go with my questions and RJ's answers:

1. This weekend the Jays gave up on Frank Thomas, releasing him. He should be available on the cheap, and one of the few places he potentially fits is with the Rays. Is this a move they need to make?

I doubt it. We just got Dan Johnson, and Eric Hinske would seemingly be on the block, so while there may be an opening I just don't see The Big Hurt landing here.

2. Jays fans have a noticeable hate-on for Carl Crawford when the Rays are in town, mostly because he always kills us and is the one name that people recognize. Does this work both ways-- is there a hated Jays player?-- or are we just a bunch of dicks up here?

John McDonald, Alexis Rios, and Aaron Hill. Particularly the middle infield that almost always kills our rallies. McDonald pissed me off so much that I wanted him to sign here and become our staritng shortstop just for his range. He got rich(er), we got Bartlett (and Cannizaro), but I'd like to think the love we shared for that brief time is something that will last me a lifetime.

2. The Jays have recently called Shawn Camp back up to the majors where he has joined their bullpen. Does this suggest that the 2008 Jays are, in fact, doomed?

No, again, with that middle infield I wouldn't be shocked to see Camp become a useful double play machine.

4. This winter the Jays offered tickets to April series' against the Red Sox and Tigers to fans in Boston and Detroit before the box office began selling single game tickets to fans in Toronto. Was that move more offensive or less offensive than the Rays playing at Disney World?

Less, at least it's largely our fans in Orlando.

5. Does anybody down there care that the Lightning have the first overall pick and are going to get to draft Steve Stamkos?

Absolutely, Stamkos along with Vinny, Martin, and Dan should be something worth watching assuming Jay Feaster doesn't screw this off-season up.

(Aside: Since when did the Beej start looking like he just stepped out of a Shelby Lee Adams picture when he's in his windup?)

Rosenthal Has Some Stuff To Say
Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports got into the Jays' bidness this morning, quoting some scouts on what they thought of Frank Thomas.

"He looked like he was on rollerblades, sliding all over the box," says a scout who saw him recently. "His balance was poor. His bat speed was poor. His approach was poor. He was only hitting changeups — that was the only ball he could get to."

Still, scouts were saying much the same thing about Thomas, who turns 40 on May 27, in the early parts of each of the past two seasons. One GM says he finds it difficult to believe that Thomas no longer could contribute coming off a 26-homer, 95-RBI season.

He then goes on to suggest that Ricciardi doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to putting together contracts, shitting on the Jays for not envisioning the wedge that the vesting option would create between the player and the team, or how the Burnett opt-out clause means that the Jays assumed all the risk in that deal, and cut themselves out of a lot of the reward. However, he then brings up Vernon's opt-out clause, which, if you ask me, is not exactly the best way to criticize Ricciardi on that contract.

Shit. If, when the time comes, Vernon thinks he can get more money by opting out of that contract, I'll run a GFI off another GFI. Zing! No I won't! Guess why? Because you can't run a GFI off another GFI!

Evidently by this point in his piece Kenny doesn't figure he's quite done shitting on the Jays, so he mentions how Alex Rios doesn't hustle down the line like David Eckstein does. Stop the fucking presses!

I found all this out, of course, through our friends at MLB Trade Rumors, because until that Fox piece of shit, whatever his name is-- Kevin Hench!-- apologizes for the shit he wrote about Rocco Baldelli, I refuse to visit Fox Sports. Er... well, obviously sometimes I do visit it, but only when I find out something pertinent about the Jays has been mentioned there, and never without later taking a shot Kevin Hench, the piece of shit.

Junk Bonds
Was it really Griffin-- as Wilner suggests in the comments section of his latest post might be the case-- who first offered the explanation I've been aping about why there's no chance in hell the Jays sign Bonds? If so credit where credit is due, because it makes a whole lot of sense that the Jays won't cross Bud Selig on this-- or that Keith Law figures they'd be one of the last teams to go over-slot in the draft-- because they're indebted to the commissioner's office. Literally. From the equalization payments they Jays were getting when the Canadian dollar was worth 70 cents.

Get over it, people. Not happening. (This means you, MacLeod.)

Idiot Writes About Jays Again
We had a brief discussion of this in one of our comments sections this morning, but I'll mention again here that Fire Joe Morgan ripped the shit out of what Gerry Fraley of the Sporting News had to say about the Frank Thomas circus. You may recall Fraley from this past January, when he claimed that the Jays rotation would be helped by the addition of David Eckstein, who "improves a mediocre infield defense." Or you may recall immediately after that, when I called him a fucking dipshit hack who was talking completely out his ass.

Well, ol' Ger took another crack at the Jays, and Fire Joe Morgan gave it to him right proper-- even if they seem a little puzzled by the fact that the Jays were this quick to give up on Frankie T.

Fucking Typical...
Joe Sports Fan found an asshole Jays fan that we somehow missed. Good pick-up.