Lind still sucks, he had one great year a while ago and since then he’s been the same guy, even last year, he sucked for a 1B/DH.

Gose never hit much in the minors (not even in LV). True, he was always a little young for his league and is still young…but wouldn’t you like to see at least some track record of…you know, production?

Same with Hechavaria. He was a horrible hitter at ever stop except for LV, and those numbers simply don’t translate into MLB production. I guess you can be optimistic, but there isn’t much basis to expect either of those youngsters to be league average hitters.

Jose Bautista makes $14 million a year, through 2016.

In terms of Win Probability Added or most any other value metric you might care to use, Bautista is one of the top five most valuable position players in baseball the last three years.

He gets paid about the same as Jared Weaver.

And, I wouldn’t even begin to try and put a price on the butts in seats or franchise player aspect that cur mentions.

So yeah, you COULD probably get a team to over pay for Bautista. But the real question is – what return is worth it?

I don’t mean that facetiously – any player is dealable, and certainly Jose is 32 and the Jays may well not contend while he’s still a live asset. But seriously – give me a package that has any realistic chance of ever being offered that you think the Jays would or should take for Joey Bats. Because, for my part, I literally cannot think of a trade I would take.

On the wrong half, he’s undervaluing a catcher who is an even money bet for putting up 20+ homeruns a year. Those don’t grow on trees, and truth be told there is a pretty big dearth of catchers with any kind of offensive upside in the bigs – and an equally big dearth of teams with any kind of long term solution at the position. A guy with replacement level or better defense who strikes out a ton but has a lot of pop is not below average in terms of the market. Look at John Buck, who is making 6 million a year – JPA is making 500k.

Where paperlions is right, of course, is that JPA still kind of sucks, and most Jays fans tend to wildly overestimate the trade value of their guys. I say that as a true blue Jays fans, btw. But be it Travis Snider, JP Arencibia, or whoever, I think Toronto folks tend to put a sticker on players based on their internal hype rather than actual performance. No, Adam Lind is not going to get you a starter. He just kind of sucks.

This is a 27 yr old with 895 mlb plate appearances and a .275 OBP. He is a horrible offensive player (only 2 catchers with 300+ PAs last year had a worse OBP than him)….and his defense is nothing special. There isn’t anything in his MiLB record to indicate that he’s anything other than what we’ve seen so far. We may disagree, but I bet nearly every MLB GM would agree with my assessment of his value…he’s a far below average MLB catcher.

Who are these position players at C, CF, or 1B Toronto has the represent an upgrade for TB and that are worth an excellent young pitcher that would qualify as a “big trade”? If TB does trade from their excess pitching (probably from the about to be expensive bin)….it seems like there are plenty of organizations that have position players ready to contribute right now, which I just don’t see in Toronto…unless you think they are going to part with d’Arnaud.

If Tracy gets the job in Toronto, at least he’ll have his best buddy Rogers with him.

Aviles was traded to the Red Sox by the Royals in 2011. The 2011 Royals won 71 games, but won 65 and 67 games the previous two season with Aviles there the whole season.

The Red Sox had Aviles on the roster during their 2011 collapse and then in 2012 won 69 games.

Aviles was then traded to Toronto, who won 73 games and then to Cleveland who won 68 games.

So it seems Mike Aviles’ presence on a team signifies that the team in question is terrible at baseball.

Which may be why those teams do things like….trading for Mike Aviles.

His fielding is average and will probably decline (especially at SS) going forward considering his age (32).

His career OBP is .308 (which is bad), he does have a little bit of power, but his career wOBA and wRC+ are .312 and 89 respectively…and there is evidence that he is already in decline (not surprising, given his age). He’s a bench player at best and a hole in the lineup and field if he has to play everyday.

But meh – I agree that I think Aviles is being undervalued. But more to the point, hard for me to get worked up about trading packs of pretty decent veteran and prospect position players for who knows middle relievers. If AA isn’t careful he’s going to have a stockpile of C+ to A- middle relief and a shortage of AAA position players for either backup or trade bait for a starter. Just seems to me he’s been basically dicking around the edges for the last year, but that adds up in terms of dipping into the resource pool. And I don’t know that our single A pitchers or Escobar/Arencibia are anywhere near enough to remake a rotation (and certainly leaves us increasingly little flexibility on offense, which AA has made clear he isn’t worried about now, but who knows what that looks like in a couple of years).

Feeling slightly short changed with the night dwelling flightless bird.