Spring All Stars?

Not to steal from a potential Nego post but should any of the Jays prospects come north with the team this spring? (ok maybe I'm totally stealing it, sorry Kris, but we needed some content)

How Houston saw Teoscar Hernádez

Since this is day two of no baseball (yay Astros!), let's look to our own future.

Teoscar Hernádez brought a lot of excitement in his September callup. But there were questions about how real he looked and how much he might be able to improve. So I thought it might be worth looking at what Houston fans thought about him. Here's some links:

Astros season rewind - the promising Teoscar Hernádez
Astros - the case for Teoscar Hernádez
Teoscar Hernádez of the Houston Astros
Astros countdown - top five closest prospects

Thoughts?

The Young, The Bad, And The Ugly - A Quick Look at Pitching Prospects

So young. But at 6'6", 245lbs and 100MPH heat, Nate provides some hope for pitching-thirsty Jays fans,

I'll admit it. I'm into porn. PROSPECT porn you pervs! While our Jays toil away in a long, joyless season, I find myself (way too) often perusing the pipeline and trying to catch some kinda glimpse into a hopeful future. Sure, we got VJ and Bo, but taking a look at the 2017 Jays Prospect Rankings , there's not a lot of Stromans and Sanchezs or, please forgive me, Noah Syndergaards to be seen...

Let me save you some time and quickly recap the official TBJ's prospect pitching situation (AKA copy/paste from MLB.com):

Get to Know: Roemon Fields

Speed to burn and hitting a ton in Buffalo. September call-up option? Trade bait? Career AAAA player?

You've probably heard the Roemon Fields story by now. After going undrafted in 2013, he gave up the baseball dream and took a job delivering mail and selling over-priced hats at Lids in a mall near Seattle. A man's gotta earn a paycheque somehow. Respect.

Then an old coach got him a tryout in Vancouver in the Northwest League, and 3 seasons later he's hitting .317 in Buffalo and knocking on the door. Well, perhaps the September call-up door.

The book on Fields prior to this season was he has speed to burn (48 and 46 steals in the past two years!), takes great routes in CF, is an overall incredible athlete, but he needs work at the plate. Well seems he figured something out in Buffalo. Maybe our old friend Devon White, hitting coach and TBJ Legend, has had something to do with the improvement.

So where does Field sit among OF prospects for the Jays? Sexier options abound, like Anthony Alford and Dwight Smith, Jr., for example. And let's not forget poor Dalton Pompey either.  He's healthy again and should see some time in Toronto any day now. Superman (KP) isn't going anywhere, and Pearce and Carrera are serviceable (Pearce may become trade bait soon). Even the 22MM Cuban defector Lourdes Gurriel, while struggling, presents a hefty commitment from the Jays. Talk about crowded! Fields would be more than hard-pressed to see any MLB time this year.

So why write a post of Roemon Fields? I love a good comeback story. I love speed. And if he ever amounts to something I get to say Atodaso. I fuckin' Atodaso.

Prospect Porn

I wanted this to be a series but no one was interested in writing it. So share below the stories of the prospects in the system you are most excited about.

The Search For The 2017 Backup Catcher

Odds are against Dioner returning in 2017...

Remember when the Jays brought back Navarro for the playoff run in 2016? Neither do I. He had a mere 36 AB's and 6 singles, no extra bases, good for a .182/.250/.182/.432 slash line. Thole has a higher OPS at .474... What an entirely forgettable stint!

So who might be playing backup next year for your TBJ's?

Internal Options:

Reese McGuire:  Reese who? A forgotten piece of the "shocking" trade deadline deal that sent Drew Hutchison to Pittsburgh for Franciso Liriano, rising OF prospect Harold Ramirez (currently our 35 prospect!) and this kid (22 in March),  who is the #4 catching prospect in all of baseball, mainly based on his plus D. Probably another year away, but could turn heads in Spring Training. No power but decent hitting average. Keep him on your radar.

Reese Mcguire, the #4 catching prospect in MLB

Max Pentecost: Long story short. He can hit. He was a first rounder (11th overall in 2013). He's recovering from shoulder surgeries. He did not catch at all last season. He's basically a DH at this point. Maybe they can convert him to 1B. Still a couple years away.

Buffalo has Erik Kratz (perfect .200 career Mendoza BA) and A.J. Jimenez, classic 3.5A (AAA1/2A) player, who, in a pinch could possibly fill in for a bridge year until one of the two prospects above are ready. As Stoeten always says, backup catchers don't add up to much in the W column (Thole hit .169 last year)...

External Options:

Bleacher Report just did a piece on the top 10 free agent catchers available. I love to hate that website, they do good work but racking up page views by scrolling through each player/team by page is aggravating. Most of these FA's (and some trade options) are way beyond what I think the Jays would ever want to pay a backup catcher who might play in 30-40 games. Especially since Russell is getting 20MM for the next 3 years...

Fuck Brian McCann. Weiters is a non-option (can he play 1B?). Kurt Suzuki would not be terribly expensive. Carlos Ruiz is only 4MM. Nick Hundley at 3MM?

Carlos Ruiz

My best guess is the Jays invite 5 guys I've barely heard of and keep one, and/or reanimate the corpse of Henry Blanco, who died in 2012 (*played for Jays in 2013).

Good luck sleeping tonight beaches!

Take a shot at being a hero and pick you WHO think might backup next year!

It's ok to be overly excited about Anthony Alford

Embed from Getty Images

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way right off the bat: I’m not a scout. I sometimes read stuff that scouts have written, and I often read stuff that non-scouts have written about what scouts have said, but I’m not a scout. I’ve only ever seen Anthony Alford bat a handful of times, and even if I watched him on a regular basis, I wouldn’t really know what I’m looking for because... and I’m not sure how to make this more clear... I’m not a scout.

Now that we’ve got that caveat and the hilarious baseball pun out of the way, it’s time to talk about Anthony Alford.