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Randle McMurphy wrote:Dotel is fine, as long as he isn't used against lefties in high leverage situations. Then he becomes a complete disaster.

The problem, though, is that John Farrell has insanely been using him against lefties in high leverage situations.

So David Cooper is going to come up to DH with the suddenly red-hot Juan Rivera moving to left field for the time being. Rivera’s poor defense may be mitigated by the return of Rajai Davis, who will be back in the line-up tonight, but it also may not.

Cooper put himself back on the Blue Jays’ radar last July by sitting down with former Jays Scouting Director Jon Lalonde and watching some video of the swing he had in college then trying to get back to it. It worked, and he had a strong final two months of 2010, then came to Spring Training and opened a ton of eyes, hitting .378/.400/.511 in 45 at-bats. His strong spring carried into the start of the season at Las Vegas, where he hit .395/.438/.617 over the first 20 games, with more walks (7) than strikeouts (6), which is one of the things that stood out to Anthopoulos.

Asked about the decision to choose Cooper over Brett Lawrie and Eric Thames, Alex cited Cooper’s strong approach. He said that Lawrie and, to a lesser extent, Thames, are getting by on their talent rather than their approaches right now, and they have to get those things right before getting the call to the bigs. Lawrie has struck out 21 times and only walked four (despite his 1.090 OPS), while Thames with his 1.069 OPS has 10 walks and 19 strikeouts.

Cooper is the latest first-round “bust” to make it to the majors with the Blue Jays, and he beat Ricky Romero by a year. That bust has worked out pretty well, as it turns out.