Jays beat Sox. Lawrie bats leadoff
It was a night that ultimately belonged to Colby Rasmus.
The struggling Blue Jays centre fielder, batting second in the order behind Brett Lawrie, banged out a career-high five hits — homer, double and three singles — with three RBIs and four runs scored in a 9-5 thumping of the White Sox on Tuesday night at U.S. Cellular Field.
He is hitting .565 with four homers out of the two-hole.
“I just went out there and tried to play the game like I’ve been playing it,” Rasmus said. “Try to play hard and just relax and see the ball. I didn’t try to do a whole lot different.
Baseball parity means more team have a shot at post-season
“I think it’s that you see good teams every time you walk on the field,” Blue Jays manager John Farrell said. “We’re going to see another team in the American League Central we haven’t seen. They’re playing extremely well. Within our division, I don’t think there’s one team that looks at another and says we can just throw our hats on the field and walk away with a win.”
It’s amazing that heading into Tuesday’s action, the combined home record of all 14 AL teams was nine games below .500 while on the road the league stood 15 games above. That difference is explained by interleague play. The White Sox were 14-14 at home, while the Jays’ record at the Rogers Centre stood at 16-12. The NL was 35 games above .500 as a league at home.
“Maybe the guy in centre field in a white shirt isn’t in every ballpark,” Farrell joked when asked to analyze. “As for parity being consistent throughout the league, the numbers bear that out, and for a wide range of reasons, whether it’s been individual performance, or lack of in some cases, where teams have been hit harder with injuries in some cases than others.
Blue Jays roll dice on Day 2
The Blue Jays took bold gambles with their second- and third-round picks on Day 2 of MLB’s amateur draft, selecting highly regarded high schoolers already committed to top-flight college programs.
With their third pick, the Jays chose Anthony Alford, a Mississippi-bred centre fielder Baseball America ranked as the 36th-best prospect heading into the draft.
But Alford, his state’s 2012 Gatorade player of the year for football and baseball, has said he intends to honour a scholarship to play both sports at the University of Southern Mississippi.
“I was up front with the (baseball) scouts and stuff,” the quarterback told the Hattiesburg American in late May. “I told them I wasn’t ready to give up football.”
Blue Jays get creative on Day 2
The Blue Jays began Day 2 of the draft by picking two players supposedly “committed” to college, including a high-school quarterback who insisted last week that he will go to college as a two-sport athlete this fall.
They followed up by selecting a string of college seniors who have no choice but to sign if they want to turn pro. That spawned speculation that the Jays would pay the college players below Major League Baseball’s “recommended” bonus amounts – known as slot money — and use the leftover cash to sweeten the pot for tougher-to-sign players drafted earlier.
Other teams were doing the same thing. By the end of Day 2 of the three-day draft, critics began to clamour that teams were using college seniors as sacrificial lambs to foil MLB’s new spending controls.
“The new system was supposed to line up talent with draft slot. With all the senior sign crap from rounds 4-10, it’s a complete failure,” tweeted Kevin Goldstein, a respected draft analyst for Baseball Prospectus.
Wasilewski chooses Blue Jays over Gamecocks
It took about as long as it takes to spell his last name for Zak Wasilewski to decide on his future.
According to Karen Wasilewski, Zak’s mother, her son is going to pass on playing college baseball and head to Florida next week as part of the Toronto Blue Jays organization.
Wasilewski, the standout Tazewell left-handed pitcher, was drafted by the Blue Jays in the 14th round of the Major League Amateur Draft on Tuesday. He was the 445th overall selection in a process that goes for 50 rounds**.
**Note: The draft is actually only 40 rounds this year.
D.J. Davis picked in 1st
"One of the goals is to get more athletic or continue to add athletes to the system, athletes with upside," Blue Jays director of amateur scouting Andrew Tinnish said on a conference call Monday night. "He's got a chance to hit at the top of the lineup and play in the middle of the field and those are the things that attracted us to him."
Tinnish says the six-foot-one, 180-pound Davis also has excellent range in the outfield and is stronger than his frame would suggest.
"He has more strength than you'd think. The first time I really noticed that was actually when I shook his hand," Tinnish said. "His hands are very big and very strong and I think that's a very good indicator for raw bat speed and power.
"I think you'd be surprised when you see him take some swings how far he can hit the ball at this stage."
Jays take risks, then go conservative
With seniors having little leverage in negotiations, it's very likely Toronto could sign those players to deals below the recommended slot value and any money saved could then be used to increase offers to Alford and DeJong.
The Blue Jays' third-round selection, Alford, reportedly warned teams he will not sign, but second-rounder DeJong is eager to ink a deal with Toronto and believes he will be paid above-slot value.
"I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a Blue Jay, 95 percent sure," said DeJong, who has a commitment to USC. "They will pay over slot for me. ... [I'll] be treated as a first-round compensation pick financially."
DeJong, a two-way player from Wilson Woodrow High School in Long Beach, Calif., had a 1.08 ERA and batted .400 for his high-school team this season. He represented the United States at the COPABE Pan Am 18U Junior Championship in Cartagena, Colombia, last fall and pitched the last inning in the United States' championship win over Canada.
Jays make a mockery of new draft rules
After that, things started getting crazy. In the third round, the Jays selected Anthony Alford, a very tough to sign two-way player with a football and baseball scholarship in his pocket (probably not literally in his pocket). Whether the Jays can sign the speedy outfielder remains to be seen, as he reportedly declined to be the Jays' very first pick of the draft. This indicates that the Jays really like him, and they'll throw some money at him, but it's unlikely to get done.
Then, in rounds four through ten, the Jays started picking up nobodies, college seniors who will probably sign for a minimal amount, allowing the Jays to spend some of their bonus pool money elsewhere. You see, the picks from round one to three are protected, which means the Jays get them back next year, allowing them to take a risk. Rounds four through ten are not protected, so the Jays want to make sure they sign those picks, or they'll lose the money from the bonus pool as well as the pick. Rounds eleven through forty are different yet again, as the first 100k of the player's bonus in that round doesn't count towards the bonus pool.
Alford "surprised" by draft spot; plans on talking with family
"I wasn't expecting to go in the top three rounds," said Alford, selected 113th overall, "I got a call earlier that they wanted me to be their number one pick, but I turned it down.
"I'm going to sit down with my family and talk about it," said Alford, "We're going to discuss the pros and cons, but we're not really going to make a decision.
"I mean, I'm still going to school regardless."
Alford also said many times he's simply not ready to stop playing football, and that to keep playing while he still can is what will make him happiest.
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