Getting excited for Baseball

This morning the Toronto Blue Jay’s capped off an eventful week of changes with a morning news conference. After a disappointing season where the teams pitching staff was decimated by injuries, the fans were watching Alex Anthopoulos to see if he could address the need for starting pitchers and some new bats. The off season had a ominous start for the Blue Jays and there fans, when the news of that second year Manager John Farrell was leaving the Jays to Manage the Boston Redsox.  So now Anthopoulos had to address the whole behind the bench as well as on the field.

After a few minor moves the Toronto GM shocked the baseball world by doing a 12 play trade with the Marlins. The Jays sent a bunch of young players to the Marlins and in return addressed most of there needs in the field with All-star shortstop Jose Reyes, right-hander Josh Johnson, left-hander Mark Buehrle, catcher John Buck, infielder/outfielder Emilio Bonifacio and cash. What’s amazing he did it without stripping the cupboard clean of the teams best young talent.  He wasn’t done there, before the trade was even approved by the commiseration office he signed free agent, left fielder Melky Cabrera to a 2 year deal, a bit of a gamble considering that Cabrera served a 50 games suspension last year for testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.

I expected this mornings news conference at the Rogers Centre to be the Jays officially announcing the trades and signing, but instead it was the announcement that they were bringing back John Gibbons to manage the club. It was a bit of a shock. His name wasn’t on any of the lists appeared in the media as possible candidates for the job. But there he was sitting next to Anthopoulos talking about how he had his Dream Job last year coaching a AA team in his home town and that he’d left it to come here to coach.

So what does all this mean for the average Jay’s fan? Well it means that the powers that be in the Blue Jay’s organization have decided that this is the year to take the next step in the pursuit of the playoffs and to finally getting back to the world series.  If the team stay’s healthy they should be able to compete in the competitive American League East, and even if they have some injuries their increased depth should  help the team stay competitive. Going into last season there was a lot of hope surrounding the Blue Jays, they were a young team with a lot of potential that didn’t hold up for the entire season. Looking at the team now, they have added proven players that should take them to the promise land. Of course the Marlins thought that these same players would take them to the post season this year only to finish the year 69-93 last in their division. So the question we have to ask ourselves is the young core of the Blue Jays good enough to benefit from this influx of talent.  Or will next October come around with the Jay’s on the sidelines. That’s not something that can be answered today. That can only be answered on the field. What I do know is that It should be an exciting season. The only problem I have is that it’s still November  we have 3 months before spring training and 5 before the season starts and we can find out just how good a team Toronto will have.