Jay's add Big Hurt and extend Wells' contract

[rylan]

i dont know if you guys know, but the jays have made 2 major offseason moves.

They signed frank thomas

and they also resigned Vernon Wells for 126 Million dollars for 7 years

[Classicblast]

Vernon had 100 or more RBIs, 32 homeruns, and batted around .300. Those numbers will usually land you a few bucks in the big leagues. I think they had to keep him.

Frank Thomas is just super I would call that a great aquisition. It looks as if the Blue Jays are doing their homework this offseason.

[rylan]

we still need more pitching, we only have 2 proven starters and one proven rookie.

[Phil]

Who would you like to see come to Toronto? Pitcherswise that is.

[rylan]

Well all of the top fre agent pitchers have been nabbed up. we still have the best pitcher in the AL east(our division) with Roy Halladay.

Mark Mulder is a great pitcher, but he had surgery and wont be ready to pitch untill midway through the season. he still wont come cheap, pitching is very short this year. about 25 of the 30 teams still want pitching

[Classicblast]

rylan said:

Well all of the top fre agent pitchers have been nabbed up. we still have the best pitcher in the AL east(our division) with Roy Halladay.

Mark Mulder is a great pitcher, but he had surgery and wont be ready to pitch untill midway through the season. he still wont come cheap, pitching is very short this year. about 25 of the 30 teams still want pitching

Yep. that's why old guys like Randy Johnson and Roger Clemmons are looking at big dollar contracts they're both forty-three years old.

I guess I should have been a pitcher.

Oh well. That's what makes them great is not everybody does what they can do.

Andy Pettit might be on the trading block though. A really good lefthander.

[Hatson]

This could be our year Rylan.

[rylan]

For sure it will be next year. We dont lose anyone this offseason except for our utility infielders and our pitching will be more mature. if its not next years its 08 we win

[Classicblast]

You are almost sure to lose a few guys. But like you said if it's not guys that are core membres you should be ok.

Middle inning pitchers are plentyfull, so are middle infielders.

[rylan]

yeah, I think the only guys we lose next year are:

John Mcdonald - utility IF
Royce Clayton - SS/utility IF(might get 100 games)
Jason Smith - utility IF (rule 5 draft)
ray Omeda - untility IF(got him off waivers)
John Thmpson - SP we just picked up for 500K, no big loss, only like 50/50 chance he'll be good this year anyway
Then we might lose one middle inning pitcher, I forget who though.

the point is, we can resign 1 utility IF. you really only need 1 main utility IF, and then one on the side, like a rookie. right now we have 10 infielders on our roster. we dont need that many, 6 on the active roster and 1 or 2 more on the 40 man is much more ideal. we picked up a lot of cheap middle infielder bench guys and we are basically hoping 1 emerges and becomes good and can be a good SS(probably royce clayton)

as for pitching we have 3 young kids (Dustin McGowan, Shawn Marcum, Casey Janssen) who are almost ready to start in the bigs. Thompson was just a bandaid.

Next year the crop of Middle infielders and Pitching is plentiful, and we'll only need 1 of each to become serious contenders if everyone has a normal year in 08.

[Classicblast]

Utility players have a value down the long haul but they're generally expendable. They become utility players because they can't really land an everyday starting job over any other teammates.

However I'd take being a utility major leaguer over being a starting minor leaguer. Without the option of that I'll do what I'm doing for as long as I possibly can.

Middle inning relievers tend to be in the same boat as utility players. They're valuable and expendable all at the same time.