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Allsports

Allsports here for a brief post on Baseball and in particular, the Toronto Blue Jays for the sports news and sports on the web. So as I mentioned in my previous post, the injury situation for the Blue Jays just keeps getting worse. The trainers on the Blue Jays staff are earning every cent of their salary this year. Another bullpen arm was just lost for a couple of weeks when the Jays put Jason Frasor on the 15 day disabled list due to forearm tightness. Frasor had been a work horse out of the Jays bullpen all season appearing in 42 of their 93 games. He had been very dependable for John Farrell until recently when the tank started to go empty. It’ s a wise decision to rest him now before the tightness in his arm moves up and becomes a problem in his elbow, then major problems could arise. If the Jays have any notion of playing meaningful games in late August and September, they will need a healthy Jason Frasor to come out of the bullpen and stop the bleeding on occasion.

Jason Frasor

With this latest set back, it makes the trade a couple of days ago with the Houston Astros even more important. The Jays gave up two players off of the 40 man roster but they were by no means integral parts of the day to day operations. It was a rather large 10 player trade but other than the Jays getting some much needed arms, it was by no means a block buster. In essence the Jays traded some young pitching that may or may not ever get to the major league level for some arms that could help the cause right now.

Francisco Cordero

Here is the nuts and bolts of the trade. The Jays sent   reliever Francisco Cordero and backup outfielder Ben Francisco plus four minor-leaguers — catcher Carlos Perez, right-handers Asher Wojciechowski and Joe Musgrove, and left-hander David Rollins to the Astros and in return got  lefty starter J.A. Happ, who is the main player in the deal, right-handed reliever Brandon Lyon, a former Blue Jay, and right-hander David Carpenter, who was sent to triple-A Las Vegas. The 10th player in the deal is the old “player to be named later” which the Jays will send to the Astros. The trade helps both teams because the Jays get the much needed pitching, while the Astros get some young prospects to help with their rebuilding.

The Jays did not give up much to get the much needed arms in return. Francisco Cordero, at 38 was becoming a bit of a liability out of the bullpen and  Ben Francisco was doing ok off the bench but his numbers could easily be replaced by a younger player from the farm system that deserves a shot. Will the three pitchers the Jays got in return help their decimated pitching staff? Well it could not hurt but as far as Allsports is concerned there are just too many teams battling for the two spots and most of them are much healthier than the Jays are right now. You can’t ignore their desire though as they have taken the first two games in Boston after being swept by the Yankees. Will they stay in the hunt? likely not because there are   just too many quality teams in the race and some of them don’t have to play in the American League East, to coin a phrase from world cup soccer, the division of death in Major League Baseball.

“No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

Filed under: Baseball