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That was expected, but there were two surprises in Chone Figgins and Vlady Guerrero; Tigers Thoughts had them pegged as Type-B and Type-A, respectively, and the opposite ended up being true.

Could be interesting to see how the markets for both shake out. I think this probably makes the Angels the favourites to retain Figgins' services, and it might make Vlady more attractive to a team looking for some pop at DH (say, Detroit or the White Sox).

Also worth noting in passing: MLB Trade Rumours makes a prediction of the most-likely destination for each of their top-50 free agents. They've guessed Scutaro will land with the Red Sox...not a bad guess, as you can be fairly confident that the Sox are going to come out swinging after a Yankees World Series win. Shortstop is the biggest hole in their lineup, and Scutaro is the best on the market.

I always thought Scutaro would be a good fit for Boston. Figgins would be a really nice pickup for the Jays, but all starting to sound like that probably won't happen.

this is good news if Scutaro signs elsewhere..

evilRyu wrote:this is good news if Scutaro signs elsewhere..

i dunno, Scutaro is a good player and we should look to resign him as long as the money is reasonable. There is a ridiculous shortage of quality short stops and people wanna let one go for the fear that he may have only had a lucky contract year? I'm not all that excited about the possible picks we'll probably just select some no upside college kid who won't be looking for overslot money.

Avenger wrote:

evilRyu wrote:this is good news if Scutaro signs elsewhere..

i dunno, Scutaro is a good player and we should look to resign him as long as the money is reasonable. There is a ridiculous shortage of quality short stops and people wanna let one go for the fear that he may have only had a lucky contract year? I'm not all that excited about the possible picks we'll probably just select some no upside college kid who won't be looking for overslot money.

He's probably going to get somewhere between $15-18m over three years, possibly more if he has multiple suitors. And there is good reason to think that he won't repeat this season's numbers; here are his OPS+ totals over his career (counting only the years where he had more than 100 PAs):

79
85
96
88
88
111

It's pretty rare that a player comes into his own at age 33, and Scooter's numbers did start to fade as the season progressed. We need organizational depth...potentially adding another two top-50 picks at the cost of a 35 year old coming off a career season is a no-brainer.

Avenger wrote:

evilRyu wrote:this is good news if Scutaro signs elsewhere..

i dunno, Scutaro is a good player and we should look to resign him as long as the money is reasonable. There is a ridiculous shortage of quality short stops and people wanna let one go for the fear that he may have only had a lucky contract year? I'm not all that excited about the possible picks we'll probably just select some no upside college kid who won't be looking for overslot money.

I like Scuturo but he just finished a season that was far better than anything he's put up before. So at age 33 there's a strong probability that we just witnessed his career year or a fluke season. Remember, he's been a 'quality shortstop' as you say for exactly 1 season and was only considered either a stop gap or a utility player prior to that.

Add in the fact that the Jays want to get younger and they get 2 high draft picks if they let him go (just because you have already concluded that they will blow the picks, doesn't make it so) and re-signing Marco doesn't make a ton of sense. I'm hoping that AA will spend his effort and money on building a top farm system rather than signing aging vets as stop gaps to plug holes. That was the JP approach.

This is basically a make-or-break year, which is why we need all of the draft picks we can get; we could potentially end up with 2 first rounders, 3 sandwich picks, 2 second rounders and 2 third rounders, plus the return on Halladay. That's a massive infusion of talent even if we have to go cheap on a couple of the picks, as at/under slot guys turn into useful players, too.

Scutaro was often part of the few joys of watching blue jays baseball this year, but management has to let him walk. the return is simply too good.