Wednesday Web Works: May 1st 2013

Well that game sucked,huh? Sorry for the late post. Would have done it earlier, but had to rush out in the middle to head down to the dome. Late night links it is!

JaysJournal thinks the Blue Jays should fire Gibby...JaysJournal is wrong. They also write about Casey Janssen, and how underrated he is. They are right, Casey's the best.

At DJF, Archi Zuber does the WPA wrap up from last night game. Beware Edwin Encarnacion's awesomeness.

Also at DJF, Scott Johnson teams up with the guy from Buck Blunders and brings us the Buck Martinez soundboard. It's the greatest thing to ever be made in this world, so go check it out and listen to some great Buck-isms. En-car-nash-ee-yone.

BlueBirdBanter previews tonight's Red Sox pitcher, Clay Buchholz.

At the Star, Mark Zwolinski writes that rowdy fans and security are a big story so far in 2013.

Over at sportsnet.ca, former MLBTR writer Ben Nicholson-Smith takes a look at possible middle infield help for the Jays to acquire. He forgot Chase Utley!

The Baseball Prospectus daily podcast (Effectively Wild talks about, amongst other things, John Farrell and the Jays. Give it a listen.

That's it for today's links. It's hard to put together a post like this after witnessing a 10-1 beatdown.

Wednesday Web Works: April 24th 2013

I'm(Ewan) filling in for Gideon this week. Hope you enjoy.

Fangraphs - JeffSullivan – Colby Rasmus

The great Jeff Sullivan over at Fangraphs looks at both sides of Colby Rasmus' start to the season, specifically looking at the incredible decrease in the amount of fastballs Rasmus has been seeing at the plate this year.

Charlie Wilmoth - MLBTradeRumors– Is Anthopolous forcing a change in the waiver rules

Over at MLBTradeRumors, Charlie Wilmoth looks at the whether Alex Anthopolous' zealous use of the waiver market is going to require a change in the rules.  The waiver system is to ensure MLB caliber players have the best chance to stay in the major leagues, but AA's constant adds and drops are leaving players in limbo for as long as 20 days.  Is this fair to these players?  Do the rules need to be changed?

EffectivelyWild Podcast – Sam Miller & Ben Lindbergh – Anthopolous & Waivers

In the same vein, over at Baseball Prospectus, Sam Miller & Ben Lindbergh covered the aforementioned article in one of their topics on Monday's episode of effectively wild.

Curtis Rush - Toronto Star– Do the Jays have the drunkest fans in the league?

Curtis Rush of the Toronto Star looks into recent claims from both Yahoo!'s Big League Stew blog, as well as studio analyst Gregg Zaun that Toronto has the most boorish and drunkest fans in the league.

Blue JayHunter – 28 Years ago today (George Bell Karate Kicks)

As a part of his Flashback Friday series, the Blue Jay Hunter takes us way back to 1985, and George Bell's epic flying cross kick to Red Sox starter Bruce Kison.  Bell v. Kison is one of the most iconic charging the mound incidents in MLB history.    

Sportsnet - BenNicholson-Smith – Spike in MLB strikeout rate

Sportsnet's newest columnist, the fantastic Ben Nicholson-Smith (Formerly of MLBTradeRumors) looks at the continuing spike in MLB strikeout rate.  This has been an ongoing league wide trend, as BN-S notes the Jays are doing their part by employing Colby Rasmus & J.P. Arencibia. #Whiff

SI - CliffCorcoran – 10 most disappointing performances

Corcoran sites BABIP as one of the
reasons the Jays pitchers are struggling.

Over at Sports Illustrated, Clif Corcoran runs though 10 disappointments of the early season.  Rather unsurprisingly the revamped Blue Jays rotation is atop his list.

Globe &Mail – Tom Maloney – Grading the Blue Jays at the 20 game mark

Even as though Tom Maloney, of the Globe, mentions that it usually takes 40 games before its appropriate to take a look at how the team is doing, he jumps the gun slightly, and evaluates the team 20 games in.  Hint: Its not pretty.

Toronto Star– Brenden Kennedy – Bautista has a legit gripe about strike zone

Brenden Kennedy looks at Jose Bautista's consistent complaining about his treatment by the umpires, and finds that he may actually have a case.

MLB.com –Matthew Leach – Jays defense is awful

MLB.com's Matthew Leach takes a look at what has been painfully apparent to all Blue Jays fans, but he exposes their poor defense to the baseball world at large. Gideon predicted this back in December. It seems as if Brett Lawrie will turn out to be the Blue Jays' only plus defender.

Mop Up Duty –Matthias Koster – JP Arencibia’s changed approach

Over at Mop Up Duty, Matthias Koster analyses JP Arencibia's prodigious home run spike to start the year, and reveals that not only is the ball leaving the yard much more, but he's also doing it by changing his entire approach.  He's not pulling the ball nearly as much, and its certainly a positive.

Wednesday Web Works: April 17th 2013

The lineup remains Jose-less today with Bautista taking another day off due to his bad back and Reyes sitting for the next three months due to his ankle. Anyways, here are today's links.

At Sportsnet, Shi Davidi confirms via sources what Andrew Stoeten(of DJF) speculated back in February could have been the mega-deal that fell through before the Miami trade in November. The proposed deal would include often injured pitcher Jake Peavy coming to Toronto, with the other parts not known. Read the article, it's great stuff.

Also at Sportsnet, Arden Zwelling writes about Brett Lawrie...I could swear I read this in Sportsnet Magazine's preview, so I guess they're just making it available online now. It's a funny piece, definitely worth a read.

MLBTR compiles all the waiver claims made over the past year, and lists how many each team has claimed...Not surprisingly, the Jays are first, claiming a whopping 22 players. Combine that with 13 players being claimed off of Toronto, and the Blue Jays have been involved in over 26% of the waiver claims. Look, eventually it has to work, right?

BlueBirdBanter previews tonight's pitcher for the White Sox. It's Jose Quintana. Sorry to ruin the surprise.

Kyle Franzoni of JaysJournal questions whether or not we should be concerned that Jose Bautista is out  again, for the third straight day. Not going to lie, I'm a bit concerned.

The BlueJayHunter writes about Munenori Kawasaki. #MuniTheBest

Matt Gwin has some excellent GIFs of the Jays(and other baseball things) over at GIF of the BlueBird. I recommend you check out out all of them, and keep checking for constant updates.

That's basically it. If you want to subscribe to our Podcast via RSS, this is the link to do so.

You can follow me on twitter, @gideonturk. To connect with the site, Follow us on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook.

Wednesday Web Works: April 10th 2013

Another Wednesday, another edition of WWW. Hopefully when I write this next week, the Jays will have won 7 straight. On the links! As always, if you wan't me to start linking to your blog, let me know on twitter(username below). We'll start with the newspapers, then move on to the good stuff on the blogs.

Leading off, John Lott of the National Post writes that it's going to be a slow process for Ricky Romero to make it back to the majors, as he is still pitching in bullpen sessions right now, and "will have to throw batting practice and rebuild his arm strength before he joins the rotation of the Jays Class A farm club."

Over at the Star,Richard Griffin gives his game recap from Tuesday's loss to the Tigers and suggests that the key to the Jays turnaround will be Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion...You think?

Also at the Star, Brendan Kennedy tells us about the Jays minor league signing of Miguel Batista. Not much info aside from the basic stuff(source, where he'll report, career numbers)

Robert MacLeod of the Globe informs his readers that the Rogers Centre is becoming a new launchpad for home runs...Maybe the man in white think's the Jays are batting all the time, or maybe it's just an extremely small sample of 6 games.

Jon Paul Morosi of FoxSports.com writes about the Jays slow start, with quotes from Jose Reyes who says he isn't concerned. He shouldn't be. Enough with the Marlins of 2012 comparisons, national media.

At DJF, Archi Zuber does his day after WPA recap...Wasn't a good one for the Jays.

Staying with DJF, Stoeten highlights some Jays info from the latest BP chat with Jason Parks. Among the questions and answers, is this awesome piece about Aaron Sanchez, the Jays number 1 prospect!

canada (canada):What does Sanchez have to accomplish this season to get to your #5 top prospect crystal ball projection? Cut down on the BBs? Think it would be wise to get him up to AA by August if he dominates early?Jason Parks:If the command takes a step forward, he’s a monster.

Amazing.

At Fansided, Ty O'Keefe also jumps on the Jays slow start, but instead of writing an article that is factually correct, he decides to go the route of making things up and twisting the truth. Examples:

 After the initial interest surrounding all the expensive new faces subsided, attendance numbers for the first two series of the season [versus Cleveland and Boston] were significantly lower than expected.

False. Of the MLB teams who have played 6 games at home (like the Jays have), they rank 2nd in attendance, behind only the Dodgers.

After having a career year in 2012, Edwin Encarnacion has gotten off to a slow start and adding to the frustration, perennial powerhouse Jose Bautista has already been sidelined in order to rest his wrist which has been causing him discomfort. 

It's actually Bautista's ankle that caused him to miss time, not his wrist. Some decent fact checking can go a long way for this "writer".

 Jose Reyes has been one of the early bright spots hitting around the .435 mark and providing a solid defensive presence in the middle of the infield.

Jose Reyes' defense has been atrocious, like it always is.

But wait, there's more. He constantly refers to the Blue Jays as the Jay's. Last time I checked, it was Jays. They are not the Toronto Blue Jay, there's an s without an apostrophe. But whatever, we're Canadian, so obviously we only care about the Leafs...Right Ty?

For now, sports fans in Toronto are for the most part, focusing on the NHL’s Maple Leafs making the playoffs.

Horrible article.

That's it for today's edition of WWW. More next week!
You can follow me on twitter, @gideonturk. To connect with the site, Follow us on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook.

Wednesday Web Works: Day After Edition(April 3rd 2013)

Game 2 goes for the Jays tonight at the dome after a loss last night to Justin Masterson and the Indians. Brandon Morrow gets the start going up against Ubaldo Jimenez. On to some articles in the Jays blogosphere and newspapers and whatnot.

Over at SI, they give their game recap of the loss last night, including quotes from Gibby, Dickey, and more!

At the National Post, John Lott gives his game recap, including some quotes from J.P. Arencibia. Take it away JP(and Lott)...

Meh, he could have been more of a jerk. He didn't perform well, that's all there is to it.

At DJF, Archi Zuber writes up his game recap, full of wonderful WPA-ness!
Also at DJF, they put together a post with nine ten awesome GIFs of JP's horrendous catching.
You thought DJF was done? No. They also had a GIF thread going last night. It's hilarious, so check it out.

At BBB, Tom lists the Dunedin Jays roster for this year, featuring, both Aaron Sanchez and Ricky Romero...Never thought I'd say that.

At GameReax, the Toman brothers put up a ton of content last night, from GIFs of the Jays, to GIFs of Darvish, to a game recap of the Jays opener.

At MopUpDuty, Matthias writes about JPA's troubles with the knuckleball, and framing it especially.

That's it for this week's edition of Wednesday Web Works. Until next time... You can follow me on twitter, @gideonturk. To connect with the site, Follow us on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook.

Wednesday Web Works: February 13th

Week number 2 of doing this... I think I'm going to dedicate this more to blogs than newspapers. Onward!

This morning, Andrew Stoeten wrote about these tweets he received at DrunkJaysFans.

Interesting, although I think I trust Gavin Floyd's cousin's neighbour more than this guy. 

Also at DJF, Stoeten writes about Roy Halladay saying he wants to retire in Philly, Archi Zuber releases round two of his magnificent Jays valentines day cards(Part 1 if you click here), and they released a podcast.

At BlueBirdBanter, Jared McDonald(formerly of JaysJournal and I believe currently also with JaysProspects) writes that Melky Cabrera is a good player, something we haven't seen in left field for the Jays in what feels like forever.

Kyle Franzoni of JaysJournal throws out the possibility of Moises Sierra being a good alternative to Adam Lind.Ya, I think I'll say no to that one. Seems like first impressions really do last along time.

Sticking with Adam Lind, the BlueJaysHunter wonders if Lind can regain his 2009 form, or close to it. If used correctly, I think Lind might not be so bad. Now Gibby just has to use him correctly.

The BaseballProspectus staff writes about 9 players they think could have breakout years in 2013, one of which, is former Blue Jay Travis Snider....Whatever, we have Dickey! A BP subscription is not required to view this article.

The MLBFanCave released their top 30 today, and one of them is Jays prospect blogger April Whitzman. About time a Jays fan got in!

Shi Davidi writes a Jays notebook of all the things that went on at Jays camp today, including Dustin McGowan's latest injury...You know it's spring, when Dustin McGowan gets shutdown! That page also has Shi's twitter feed, which features great pictures that I'm sure will get you excited for baseball.

Hope you enjoyed the links!

You can follow me on twitter, @gideonturk. To connect with the site, Follow us on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook.

Wednesday Web Works: February 6th

So, apparently being a PR2 site isn't a good thing(I just found out what that meant a few days ago). In order to increase BJP's PR(Page Ranking), we need to have links in our articles, as well as be back linked to(which we do get). So, every Wednesday, I'm going to put out a link post like the "Various Time of Day Snacks" at DJF, or the "Media Mashups" at BBB. Maybe I'll start doing them more than once a week, but for now, I'll write these every Wednesday(plus the name has an alliteration that took me way too long to come up with). On to the links I guess?

Last night was the annual "State of the Franchise" event for season ticket holders(over the age of 19 of course...) at Rogers Centre, and so, there are a ton of recaps.

• John Lott wrote about AA's response to a Melky Cabrera question in the National Post.
• Brendan Kennedy gave a summary of all the points that were discussed for the Toronto Star.
• Andrew Stoeten recapped the event in a very DJF way(lots of words about beer) on DrunkJaysFans
• Ian Hunter also put some words together as a recap at the BlueJayHunter.
• Lastly, JaysJournal recapped the event as well.

And on to other Jays stuff...

Kyle Matte continued the JaysJournal Top prospect series with an article about Mitch Nay, who is their number 14 prospect.

Keith Law released his Top 10 Jays prospects for 2013, ranking Aaron Sanchez at #1 of course, with Roberto Osuna at #2.

Yesterday, Jonathan Mayo of mlb.com released his Top 20 prospects for each of the AL Easts clubs(including the Jays). Take these with a grain of salt though because, well, they always look different than the other rankings.

Earlier today, Stoeten shared his thoughts on the Law rankings, and the Mayo rankings at DJF.

Over at BP, Sam Miller writes about how the overall lack of speed on the Detroit Tigers roster will hurt them on the base paths, something we as Jays fans don't need to worry about thanks to Jeffrey Loria.

Kyle Franzoni of JaysJournal takes a look at the right handed pitchers that are scheduled to be non-roster invitees to the Jays camp this season, highlighted(?) by Chad Beck.

At Fangraphs, Jeff Sullivan writes about Micah Owings, the former pitcher who signed a contract with the Nationals as a first basemen, but intends to both hit and pitch. I always say that if everything fails for Anthony Gose, he could be a very good pitcher/pinch runner because of his ridiculous arm and crazy speed. Hopefully Gose won't have to ever think about that.

Finally, Sportsnet has all the info on Jack Morris joining the Fan590 as a colour commentator and the broadcast schedule for Blue Jays ST!

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