It’s a gorgeous late-summer day (at least it is here in New England) and you, young sir (or miss) should be playing outside. But since you’re not, here’s a fresh roundup of links:

Shaun Marcum has been optioned to Triple-A Syracuse, swapping roster spots with lefty John Parrish. I figured it was a chance for Toronto’s future No. 2 to recover from his recent struggles and get ready for next year. But no: J.P. Ricciardi is positioning the move as a chance to get Marcum right so that the Jays can make their–excuse me–playoff run. Toronto is 12.5 back in the division and 8 back in the wild card.

Red Sox hurler Clay Buchholz was also recently optioned to the minors–but to Double-A. The Eck says we won’t be seeing The Buck any time soon.

In other AL East-playoff-hunt news, Rays fans are pissed that despite holding a 4.5 game lead over the Red Sox going into today’s action, and a dominating 10.5 game lead over the New York Yankees, they are commanding only a Rodney Dangerfield-esque amount of respect from the Worldwide Leader. Today’s game against the White Sox is also the first time in more than five years that a Tampa Bay game has been featured on Fox. (Some teams have all the luck.)

Management guru Warren Bennis has some stern words for Frank McCourt.

Yet another CC-to-NY post. I know money talks, but from everything I’ve seen and heard, Sabathia is not interested in playing in New York. He’s probably not interested in coming to Boston, either, but it’s worth noting that the Red Sox will also have plenty of money to spend this winter with Manny off the books. Since Curt Schilling didn’t throw a meaningful pitch all year, with Buchholz struggling all season, and with Josh Beckett looking like a mere mortal this year, Boston will be almost as motivated as New York to sign the ace. I say “almost” because the Sox still have a shot at making the playoffs.

How do you spell something wrong on a jersey?

UmpBump PSA: One young player at the NYBC is growing his hair long to donate it to Locks of Love. It’s commonly reported that Locks of Love is a charity that uses donated hair to make wigs for kids with cancer, but most of their patients actually suffer from alopecia areata, a genetic condition that results in hair loss. Either way, it sucks to be bald when you’re still only a kid. I’ve donated hair to the group, and their website has a very easy to read FAQ telling you how to do it if you’re interested. If you’re thinking of a post-summer chop and you’ve got 10 inches to spare, why not donate it to someone who can use it?

From the too-good-to-not-share file, Papi on Pedroia:

“He’s the best. He’s the best of the best. He’s the best thing that ever happened to this ballclub,” Ortiz said. “He’s a [expletive] great kid, dude. He’s the best. I love him. It’s great, man. I talk about Pedroia all the time to everybody because of how little he is and the way he plays the game.

“And I’ll be like, ‘Dude, seriously, he’s a bad little kid.’ Pedroia is always going to be like a 16- or 17-year-old because he’s little and he’s got a baby face, but he just rakes. Dude, he comes up with some lines, and you’ll be laughing. He hit a ball off the Green Monster once, and he came back to the dugout and said to me, ‘Hey, Big Punish, you know it’s going to rain, right?’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ He goes, ‘Didn’t you just see the lightning show?’”

Yeah, I said it.

I was hoping to get through our What They Need series with no mention of his Bondsness. After all, practically ever other baseball website out there already has thirty versions of the apparently obligatory “Team X Needs Barry Bonds” article.

Moreover, I don’t think I’ve ever written one even semi-nice word about Barry Bonds. Nope, from me, it’s all been HGH this and asterisk that. And at first, I was glad that all thirty teams were shunning him. But then something strange happened.

Pity scuttled into my heart like a cockroach crawling into a warm, cozy kitchen.

Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte and Eric Gagne and two dozen other old juicers still get to play. And Barry Bonds has said he’ll play for the league minimum. Pro-rated.

That’s about 22 million fewer pro-rated dollars than fellow Mitchell Reportee Roger Clemens commanded last season. And I admit, it made me see things in a new light.

Which brings me back to the Blue Jays. A team with fantastic pitching and no offense. They rank 13th out of the 14 AL teams in runs scored. 12th in slugging. Dead last in home runs.

Their team OBP isn’t actually that bad—they rank 6th in the AL—they just can’t drive anyone in. Part of the problem is that Vernon Wells earlier spent a month on the DL with a cracked wrist bone (and was still the beleaguered team’s RBI leader when he returned). Now he’s going to miss another 4-6 weeks after straining a hamstring in last night’s game.

But their pitching, especially their starting pitching, has been solid–second in K’s, third in ERA, and fourth in opponents’ batting average. Plus, their staff easily leads the league with a 8 complete games—six for ace Roy Halladay, and one apiece for Jessie Litsch and Dustin McGowan. Alas, due to their somnolent offense, only 5 of these CG’s actually became W’s, thanks to a streak of three starts in which Halladay turned in a full game of work, but his team could muster only 4 total runs.

Now the Jays are 10.5 games out of first, tied with Baltimore for the cellar of the AL East, while the top three teams in the league—Boston, New York, and Tampa Bay—duke it out for supremacy. Would adding Barry Bonds catapult the Jays into contention among that group? Probably not. But it would help them win ballgames, and it would give their fans a reason to keep going to the ballpark. They might even escape the wrath of the MLBiverse for signing the black-listed Bonds by virtue of being Canadian.

Sure, I could sit here and recommend that they do something more useful, like sell off some of their studs for prospects. But this is JP Ricciardi we’re talking about, here, not Billy Beane.

Come to think of it, maybe what Toronto really needs is a new GM.

-What They Need Index-

This is one of a series of posts in which we throw cold water on each team’s pathetic offseason twiddlings while spraying champagne all over their ingenious winter machinations.

The Toronto Blue Jays have been stuck in a funk lo these last few years. They compete in a tough-as-nails division, dominated by two big-market teams, and they only crack the top two when something goes horribly wrong with one of those teams (such as when the Red Sox experienced disastrous injuries in 2006, allowing the Jays to beat them for second place by one game). And last year, despite heading into the season with a promising lineup, they themselves suffered injury after injury, apparently cursed by a vengeful swamp hag. Yet despite this, they managed to hang around second place in the AL East through the first half of the 2007 season, as the Yankees were similarly blighted. Unfortunately for Toronto, the Yankees then suddenly remembered, “Holy s—, we’re the New York f—ing Yankees!” and started winning again. And the Blue Jays finished the season 13 games out of first place.

What did the Jays do this offseason to try and break out of their perpetual state of mediocrity? The signed David Eckstein. Now, David Eckstein, though often treated as little more than a punchline by the average blogger, is not actually terrible. However, he’s not actually that good, either.

The other major move made by the Jays this winter was the acquisition of Scott Rolen in a one-for-one trade of third basemen, sending Troy Glaus to the Cardinals. Rolen, pissed off at Tony La Russa, waived his no-trade clause to get out of St. Louis. Glaus, whose tender feet didn’t enjoy playing half their games on turf, was just as happy to leave the Rogers Center. When healthy, the two are remarkably similar in their offensive output, but Rolen has struggled to stay on the field since a collision at first base that left him with nagging shoulder problems. Then there’s the question of how hard Rolen will play—certainly, La Russa got the impression he was dogging it. (But perhaps Eckstein, the intangibly gritty gamer that he is, will inspire similar intestinal fortitude in his fellow infielder. There. There’s your David Eckstein joke. I hope you enjoyed it.) At least Rolen will be an upgrade, defensively. But it’s the contracts carried by each of these men that render the deal a bit of a puzzle. As Paul put it in a recent email, “Glaus had one year at $12.75m left on his deal. So they sent him away and got back Rolen who has three years and $33m left. Why would you paint yourself into a corner like that when you had the ability to lose payroll?” Why indeed? And in a year when third basemen were either commanding lucrative contracts (A-Rod, Mike Lowell) or functioning as the centerpiece in the winter’s biggest trade (Miguel Cabrera), and you, J.P. Ricciardi, wanted to trade Troy Glaus, why would you trade him for a Scott Rolen when you could have gotten a couple of decent prospects with upside?

The Jays win just enough, apparently, to keep the FO from admitting defeat and deciding to rebuild. Yet they lose too much to make the playoffs. So they’re stuck. They’ve got one bonafide ace in Roy Halladay and a good No. 2 in AJ Burnett. The back of their rotation is better than most—and at least their 3, 4, and 5 pitchers are all young. Closer BJ Ryan, who had Tommy John surgery in May, says he’ll be ready to go by Opening Day. But even if Lyle Overbay and Rolen can both bounce back offensively this year, their lineup will still lack sufficient on-base, top-of-the-order types, and they could use another power bat. Their defense? No real complaints (though Eckstein is a downgrade at short). In fact, despite the holes in their roster, the Jays have enough youngish, decent talent—guys like Halladay, Burnett, Alex Rios, Vernon Wells, Aaron Hill—that if their farm system were stocked, they might have a chance to make a good run at the Wild Card in the next couple of years. But will the farm provide?

The Jays have some decent prospects in their system, but none are close enough to the bigs to help out in the near future. In fact, the organization’s most exciting youngsters can’t even drink legally. The best of these is outfielder Travis Snider, who just turned 20 on Groundhog Day. Baseball Prospectus describes him as “one of the top hitting prospects in baseball” who projects for “legitimate MVP-level numbers” in the future. That’s the good news. The bad? His flaws make his plate approach sound a bit like JD Drew to me (”could use more aggressiveness at the plate…currently works himself into poor hitter’s counts while letting not perfect–yet perfectly hittable–pitches go by”) and the hulking 245-pounder is not fast (he got caught stealing nine times in a row last year). In a perfect world, he’d be “a number-three hitter on a championship-level team, and a perennial All-Star.” However, he has yet to play above low-A ball. For better or for worse, he still has a ways to go. And after Snider, what has Toronto got? A talented 18-year old third base prospect (Kevin Ahrens); a solid, middle-of-the-rotation type lefty making the transition from a closer to a starter and aiming for AA ball by the end of the summer (Brett Cecil); a 19-year old with power but no natural defensive position position who has played all of 49 games in the Gulf Coast League (John Tolisano); and a good catching prospect who still strikes out too much (J.P. Arencibia).

All this leads me to believe that the Lansing Lugnuts will be a great team to watch this year. I wish I could say the same for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Acquisitions: Rod Barajas, C; David Eckstein, SS; Marco Scutaro, 3B; Buck Coats, RF; Scott Rolen, 3B

Losses: Josh Towers, SP; Troy Glaus, 3B

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

SS David Eckstein, 33 years old, 3 homers, .309 avg
1B Lyle Overbay, 31 years old, 10 homers, .240 avg
RF Alex Rios, 27 years old, 24 homers, .297 avg
DH Frank Thomas, 39 years old, 26 homers, .277 avg
2B Aaron Hill, 25 years old, 17 homers, .291 avg
CF Vernon Wells, 29 years old, 16 homers, .245 avg
3B Scott Rolen, 32 years old, 8 homers, .265 avg
C, Gregg Zaun, 36 years old, 10 homers, .242 avg
LF Reed Johnson, 31 years old, 2 homers, .236 avg

SP1 Roy Halladay, 30 years old, 225.1 IP, 3.71 ERA
SP2 AJ Burnett, 31 years old, 165.2 IP, 3.75 ERA
SP3 Dustin McGowan, 25 years old, 169.2 IP, 4.05 ERA
SP4 Jesse Litsch, 22 years old, 111.0 IP, 3.81 ERA
SP5a Shaun Marcum, 26 years old, 159.0 IP, 4.13 ERA
SP5b Gustavo Chacin, 27 years old, 27.1 IP, 5.60 ERA

CL BJ Ryan, 32 years old, 38 saves with a 1.37 ERA in 2006; he had 3 saves and 2 losses, with a 12.46 ERA in 2007.

Grade: D

What the Blue Jays have assembled here is not a bad team—if they played in the NL Central. Though the Toronto brass has promised to rebuild many times, they’ve yet to actually do so. I’m not asking for a drastic fire sale; they just need to stop acquiring mediocre hitters in their 30s. If they could face up to reality and unload a couple of their older players this year at the trade deadline, they could conceivably end up with some prospects who could actually help them in 2009 or 2010. But hoping for the two teams ahead of you to suddenly collapse—especially when those two teams have healthy farm systems and way more revenue than you do—is not a strategy.

Looking towards the future of the division, with the Devil Rays ascendant and the Orioles finally starting a rebuilding process of their own, if the Jays keep on their current path, they will soon be recalling their days in third place with fond nostalgia.

-Hot Offseason Action Index-

Toronto Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi and Philadelphia GM Pat Gillick are dirty, stinking liars.

First Gillick lied about the severity of closer Tom Gordon’s shoulder injury, claiming in spring training that there was no injury and after a couple of reporters ran into Gordon on his way to the doctor.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Clearly, the Phillies’ 39-year-old closer was not right during spring training. As it happened, he flew home from Florida for a medical exam on the very same day a couple of reporters, including The Inquirer’s Jim Salisbury, were flying north to attend the memorial service for John Vukovich.

If the reporters hadn’t seen Gordon in the Tampa airport that day, no one would have known about his trip to Philadelphia.

The Phillies clearly planned to pretend it never happened. When they got caught trying to sneak Gordon to their team doctor, they pretended it was not a big deal.

More recently, Ricciardi revealed the Jays were not up front with the media and fans about closer B.J. Ryan’s injury, which he suffered during training camp. Ryan is now on the 60-day DL. When he was first diagnosed, the team claimed he had a back problem. Now, the story has changed.

From the Winnipeg Sun:

“First of all, it wasn’t B.J. Ryan’s back that was bothering him,” Ricciardi said on the radio. “It was his elbow that was bothering him. So we said it was his back so we could have a bit more time.

So what’s up with teams inventing stories to mask their players’ injuries? What’s to be gained?

In the Phillies case, it may be that they felt they needed to honor a promise to Gordon to give him every chance to close.

The Phillies promised Gordon he would be their closer when they signed him to a three-year contract that now appears a tad over-optimistic. If you break promises like that, word gets around. Future free agents might be less willing to come here if they don’t think they can take your word.

In the Neverland of guaranteed baseball contracts, no one seems to factor in harsh realities such as sore shoulders and diminishing returns. The Phillies felt obligated to honor the code until Gordon, following his own code, stopped trying to pitch through his physical problems and admitted he was hurting.

But why not tell the media that, yes, Gordon is hurting, but he’s going to try and pitch through it. Why lie?

Why did Ricciardi lie about the nature of Ryan’s injury?

Moreover, why do fans get upset when general managers lie? Do we feel we have a right to the truth? Why? Because we pay tickets? Because we pay taxes on stadiums?

All I can think of is, fans want teams to be honest about player injuries so that they can know how loud to boo when that player struggles. If a player is pitching through an injury, we’ll boo less heartily than if the player sucking for no good reason. If we boo a guy really loud and it turns out he was playing hurt, we feel bad. And GMs should do their best to spare us that guilt.

Is that too much to ask?