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I know everyone wants to talk about it, so I'm going to try and keep it our of the series thread.

Should J.P. Arencibia be catching for Dickey or is it a better option to give him every 5th day off?

LittleOzzy wrote:I know everyone wants to talk about it, so I'm going to try and keep it our of the series thread.

Should J.P. Arencibia be catching for Dickey or is it a better option to give him every 5th day off?

Arencibia shouldn't be catching any of our pitchers, we should have upgraded this spot in the off season instead of keeping this guy to try to lead us to the next step.

In the meantime, yeah he shouldn't catch Dickey anymore.

They are carrying Blanco specifically because he can catch Dickey, so no, JPA should not be catching when Dickey starts. Last night was probably due to it being Opening Day and wanting to get JPA's bat in the lineup, but still not a good move. Let Blanco catch Dickey and deal with the crappy offense accordingly.

This thread probably needs a poll. Based off last night's performance, I would say it's a huge NO. The pass balls were pretty much the difference in the game.

Would it be a bad idea to bench Lind and bat JPA as DH on the Dickey days?

shows gibbons incompetence as a manager. i for one, wanted blanco with dickey most of the time, but also gradually have jp catch games. if we were to make the playoffs we wouldn't need to lean on blanco to start the opener (assuming dickey is the initial starter).

the jays have the same problems as raptors, always hiring new or inexperienced managers.

also felt that AA had a tough time trading JP this offseason with "fans" wanting to keep him for the wrong reasons. ya he likes hockey and loves canada, does that warrant him to stay? also him on twitter telling the world that AA told him that he wasn't gonna get traded basically tore down and leverage he had in any deals.

jack morris said it best a catcher is the most important player on the team, he directs the team and the staff. jp is too busy worrying about hitting homeruns. rather have jose molina start 162 games than this bum.

MoMoneyMoProbs wrote:Would it be a bad idea to bench Lind and bat JPA as DH on the Dickey days?

Yes

Lind should simply follow a platoon with Rajai depending on if we are facing RHP or LHP. JPA's not good enough to factor into that.

And JPA should probably not be catching Dicky for a while.

Hendrix wrote:

MoMoneyMoProbs wrote:Would it be a bad idea to bench Lind and bat JPA as DH on the Dickey days?

Yes

Lind should simply follow a platoon with Rajai depending on if we are facing RHP or LHP. JPA's not good enough to factor into that.

And JPA should probably not be catching Dicky for a while.

we have to see first if lind can even hit righties.

Varitek couldn't catch Wakefield either but Varitek was actually a good catcher and productive hitter in his prime years, he just couldn't catch the damn thing.

And then no matter how productive of a hitter he was, he would still sit on the bench instead of catching Wakefield. That should tell people what we should do with the Arencibia/Dickey combination right there.

i would of done the same thing starting him this game,,would go with blanco the next couple of dickey starts than try JP again n start 5 or 6. I was actually surprised that the sky isnt falling as bad as i thought it would be on this fourm today

Hendrix wrote:

MoMoneyMoProbs wrote:Would it be a bad idea to bench Lind and bat JPA as DH on the Dickey days?

Yes

Lind should simply follow a platoon with Rajai depending on if we are facing RHP or LHP. JPA's not good enough to factor into that.

And JPA should probably not be catching Dicky for a while.

JPA really put Gibbons in a bit of a tough spot by publicly campaigning to catch Dickey on opening day. He should have kept his mouth shut about it around reporters. He was probably confident he could do a good job, but it was selfish to put his desire to play opening night ahead of making sure Dickey had a competent catcher.

SCF99 wrote:i would of done the same thing starting him this game,,would go with blanco the next couple of dickey starts than try JP again n start 5 or 6. I was actually surprised that the sky isnt falling as bad as i thought it would be on this fourm today

problem is that dickey is starting sunday and that would mean blanco would have to start another game or else jp would have to start a day game after a night. but we'll see what happens.

One game.

I understand starting JPA yesterday and giving him a chance, obviously it didn't work out and it essentially cost us the game. I'd probably give him and RA one more game together and see if they can work together in practice all week before his next start to catch knuckles, but obviously if it doesn't work out you bring in Blanco or Thole on his starting days. We don't need to overreact though, I'm sure Gibby will figure it out.

One game.

Redeemer wrote:

Hendrix wrote:

MoMoneyMoProbs wrote:Would it be a bad idea to bench Lind and bat JPA as DH on the Dickey days?

Yes

Lind should simply follow a platoon with Rajai depending on if we are facing RHP or LHP. JPA's not good enough to factor into that.

And JPA should probably not be catching Dicky for a while.

we have to see first if lind can even hit righties.

What is there to see? He has a career .834 ops against righties over a couple thousand PA's.

Hendrix wrote:What is there to see? He has a career .834 ops against righties over a couple thousand PA's.

If you remove 2009, his OPS against righties drops to .793 (OBP sits at .319) in 1532 at bats.

He is most productive in a strict platoon batting lower in the lineup, but that doesn't mean he is good at RHP, especially for a DH. I would have preferred dumping Lind and signing Thome if they wanted a platoon at that spot.

I'm sort of glad this is the issue instead. I was curious to see how Dickey's knuckleball would work, was worried about it going into the season, but I'm happy with what I saw and I wasn't disappointed. It looked good and nasty.

JP is horrible at framing pitches as well.

Michael Bradley wrote:

Hendrix wrote:What is there to see? He has a career .834 ops against righties over a couple thousand PA's.

If you remove 2009, his OPS against righties drops to .793 (OBP sits at .319) in 1532 at bats.

He is most productive in a strict platoon batting lower in the lineup, but that doesn't mean he is good at RHP, especially for a DH. I would have preferred dumping Lind and signing Thome if they wanted a platoon at that spot.

I'm not sure why you would just take out 2009. I mean, if you wanted to focus on just recent success that would atleast make sense to me. But, to take out his good year, makes just about sense as taking out his bad year, and seems like you are just trying to shine him in as bad of light as possible.

In all honesty that is not even a bad OPS. No, it's not particularly great for a DH, but that is not the conversation that was being had. The conversation was if he could hit rhp, and if he is better at it than Arencibia, which he can, and is.

I'm not sure why you would want a ~.800 ops batter any lower in the lineup. He's fine where he is. It's not like Arencibia, Bonafacio, or Rasmus project to do better than that where you would want them hitting before him.


I'm not really sure why Thome is relevant here to tell you the truth.

I think JPA catching Dickey was a 1 time thing so I'm not that worried. I think it was just so he could play opening day.

It's unfair for anybody to expect him to do better than he did with the knuckler, including Dickey and Gibbons. 2 months with Dickey doesn't compare to the massive amounts of time by Thole and Blanco.

I like Lind at DH this year, I think DM wasn't a good hitting coach for him. I think he deserves at least a month. I believe he is far superior to Arencibia offensively. Only reason I'd bench him in favor of Arencibia would be vs a LHP, which still is ballsy cause if Blanco needs out, we don't really have a 3rd catcher on the 25 do we?

Also, taking out 2009 stats for Lind is just as bad as only using them. Both are cherry picking.