Orioles: Bedard will be at least a top 10 pitcher in the AL this year. Ditto Cabrera, if he ever finds the strike zone. I might be exaggerating just a little, but they're good those two.
THE TORONTO BLUE JAYS
Pitching: Roy Halladay is very good. B.J. Ryan is very good. A.J. Burnett could be very good (my fantasy team depends on it). The rest is crap. The reason I zoomed through that is because I wanted to spend more time talking about the newest addition to the Blue Jays' family: the inimitable Mr. Victor Zambrano.
Way back in 2004, Mr. Zambrano spent every fifth day of the first half of his season pitching for a team by the name of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Life was simple for Victor. He lived near the beach, drove a brand new Range Rover, and, for the most part, was not asked to win baseball games. In fact, all his organization asked of him was that he pitch well enough to improve his trade value which would enable him to escape baseball purgatory and enable the Devil Rays to reap a bounty for his services. Victor didn't perform at an overwhelming level in Tampa as evidenced by his exactly league average ERA. If you consider his 1.5+ WHIP and 1.2 K/BB ratio he was probably a below average pitcher. But Victor was also a 28-year-old making only $325,000 who threw in the mid-90s and that made him an appealing target for the front office of any team still in the playoff hunt. One such front office was that of the New York Mets.
The General Manager of the Mets at the time, Jim Duquette, was a formidable, but simple, man. Raised on a turnip farm in French Canada, Duquette learned from an early age the value of hard work and discipline when it came to turnip horticulture. As a youth he won several 4-H medals in the study and was a legitimate superstar in his field. Duquette, and the Mets, hoped that success in turnips would translate to success in operating a baseball franchise.
As the trade deadline loomed ever closer, Duquette found himself enamored by Victor Zambrano. But he didn't want to tip his hand. So he sent the Devil Rays a preliminary offer of a little known left-handed pitching prospect by the name of Scott Kazmir. Kazmir was slight of build, he looked more like a golfer than a pitcher, and was widely regarded as one of those high-risk, low-ceiling prospects. Duquette was unsure of his chances of landing Zambrano with such dubious bait, but he proposed it anyway and much to his delight, the Devil Rays accepted.
That was fun, wasn't it? NOW FOR REALITY. In reality, Scott Kazmir was a 20-year-old who was the Mets best pitching prospect since Dwight Gooden nearly two decades earlier. In reality, Kazmir held the Texas state high school single-season record for strikeouts, eclipsing by three the record then held by Josh Beckett (to put that in perspective both Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, one and two in all-time strikeouts, played high school baseball in Texas). In reality, Scott Kazmir was Baseball America's 2002 player of year and he was drafted 13th overall and given a Mets-team record $2.15 million signing bonus. In reality, Scott Kazmir struck out 34 batters in his first 18 innings of professional baseball at the age of 18-years-old. In reality, the Mets lost five straight after the trade and missed the playoffs by 25 games. In reality, Kazmir is now the Devil Rays franchise leader in strikeouts despite being only 22 and having pitched only 364 innings at the major league level. In reality, Jim Duquette is a f**king doofus (maybe it's in the genes???). Take that Mets-fans, you Bill Buckner-chanting, Mookie Wilson-loving a*******.
Hitting: That Kazmir thing took a lot out of me so this might be short. The "big bat" in the lineup presumably belongs to Vernon Wells, the man the Blue Jays overpaid to stay in Toronto. Don't get me wrong, there are more egregiously overpaid outfielders than Vernon Wells but that doesn't mean it's okay to give him $126 million dollars. I guess baseball finances are trending in that direction and I'm behind the times on what exactly $126 million dollars will get you nowadays. As for the rest: 39-year-old Frank Thomas was a nice addition to the lineup provided he can stay healthy and produce at the level he produced last year for Oakland. Troy Glaus and Lyle Overbay are solid corner infield bats at their prime and Alex Rios in the sole quality representative of Toronto's youth movement. The negative: for some reason Royce Clayton is their starting shortstop. And I can't get behind that.
Miscellaneous: The Kazmir rant probably falls under this category. But as a bonus, I think the Blue Jays should take a cue from Tampa Bay and shorten their name to just the Jays. The Toronto Jays. Sure it sounds stupid, but their uniforms and their stadium look stupid. In fact, they should call themselves the Toronto Stupid Jays. Canadian schmucks.
Stupid Jays related Ridiculous Proposition Bet: Over/under on number of Scott Kazmir pitching performances I will try to get roommate and Mets' fan Rob to watch on mlb.tv this season: all of them. I know it's impossible, but I'd take the over.
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