Toronto Sports Media Morning Drive Lineups

I have noticed that I like Brady alone more than with Lang. His frantic speaking style is pretty good for monolgues, but with Lang the conversations are often rather awkward and full of inturruptions.

I am not a fan of Greg Brady or Jim Lang. I wish they rehired Don Landry & Gord Stellick as the morning show hosts or resurrected Pat Marsden from the dead and had him on the air. Obviously I am joking about Marsden – but Jim Lang & Greg Brady are horrible; but that’s just my opinion.

The more I hear Brady, the more I like. I don’t always agree with him but I like his style, his humour and his strong knowledge of sports.

This morning he was great. He went after the sheep at 590 and other embers of the media in Toronto for their continual fawning of the ‘one who walks on water’ (Anthopoulos). With yesterday’s trade, 590’s love affair with AA only intensified. Good on Brady for telling it like it is and not continuing the Rogers/Blue Jays infomercial that ran yesterday on 590.

I agree Roger. I am not a Jays fan but I do like baseball. The Blue Jay fans are always crying and do think that AA does walk on water. Granted he has done some great trades thus far but Rasmus & Escobar did have issues in St. Louis & Atlanta respectively. I seem to remember everyone slobbering all over Riccardi with his “money ball” approach. We all know what happens there.

As for Brady’s comments this morning – I agree. People like Mike Wilner & the other Rogers employees at FAN 590 all kiss up to management and the team.

Yes, Brady has an opinion, and that can be great, especially when he is not cutting people off all the time. This morning was ok, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “telling it like it is.” For example, he said that LaRussa is likely a good manager because the Cards have made the playoffs 6 times, while not pointing out that they happen to play in the NL Central, which is a joke of a division, and that the year in which they won the WS their record was 83-78, which was worse than the Jays’ mark in the same year (87-75).

I don’t think it makes people sheep to talk to Anthopolous in a respectful manner.

Anyway, this morning was ok.

I agree with the comments that Greg Brady did a good job of reining in the enthusiasm for the Rasmus trade. Rasmus is a highly-regarded prospect but he is in the early stages of his career and we do not know if he will meet expectations. According to people who closely cover baseball, Rasmus is a prized acquisition; however, time will tell.

With respect to Greg Brady’s solo stint this week, I may be in the minority but I find the morning show to be boring with no co-host. I generally listen between 5:30 and 7:00 when there are few guests and I quickly tire of the monologue. I prefer some interaction between on-air personalities.

Sorry, but it’s not just Rogers employees who like this deal. Go read any of the major sites in the states and they all say the same thing, the Jays won this deal.
And saying Larussa is a good manager because he won some pennants with Pujols in a lousy division? Yeah, that makes me take Brady’s Rasmus opionion very seriously.

I listen to ESPN in the morning so I can’t comment, but it would be a refreshing change if that was the case. AA might be a good GM, his record doesn’t show that, but I know the his hands are tied by ownership. Rogers needs to put 50M more on the field to be relevant after the All Star break.

As for trade, who cares!?!? Now we can miss the wildcard by 6 instead of 9

Congrats on Brady for showing some stones if he stopped automaticly blessing all things Rogers Media. BobCat used to have the guts to ask hard questions, but he’s is towing the company line nicely these days.

Unlike most fans, i don’t demand a championship every year like Stienbrenner did. It would be nice, but its not practical for the vast majority of teams, but what i do want is for my teams’ owners to want to win as much as I do. Looking at this roster and this payroll, I don’t see it, instead I see a team taking the TV money and the profit sharing money, buying a AAA team with it that’s 13 games out and its not even August 1. As for the trade, BLAH BLAH BLAH, they might be good guys and decent ballplayers, but not one of these guys will be a relevant in a play off run that could be another decade away.

Remember – next year there will likely be a second wild-card.

Some of you guys are pretty harsh on AA. A great GM needs to develop a plan, execute on that plan and then ultimately win. It is impossible to tell if AA will be a great GM, you can’t be that in your second full year on the job. Unless you inherit a top team (e.g. inheriting the GM job for the Phillies), no GM will build a playoff winning team right away especially if the organization is not structured to be a winner. When AA took over the jays were not structured to win (development organization and scouting were a mess). You can plunk an extra $50 million into a team but that does not get you anywhere if the organization is not structured to produce your own talent, to properly analyze other team’s talent and is close to taking the next step. The White Sox, Cubs, Mets are all teams with massive payrolls and all are bad to mediocre teams at best. They all to some extent have organizational dysfunction and weaknesses. Throwing 50 million at the Jays payroll before the restructure of the organization is complete will not result in Jays simply winning at the level of the 2 first class organizations that are already in their division.

I, for one, am sick to death of the, “wait til next year” approach. The only person I have ever heard criticize the Jays, has been Greg Zaun. That is exactly what the Jays need. Someone to call it as they see it. Mike Wilner, needs to go! I cannot believe he is still employed by the Fan590. AA is TOO young to be a GM. I don’t care how many years he has in baseball. He is too young. As for the morning show, Lang is a joke. He was a joke on TV, he’s a bigger joke on the radio. Let Brady try it on his own for a bit. Might work, might not.

I don’t understand the point of playing contrarian for no apparent reason and I like Brady.

AA clearly made a great deal even if Rasmus doesn’t hit his ceiling because all he gave up are a couple of easily replaceable relievers from a terrible bullpen and a guy who projects as a mid-rotation starter in Zach Stewart.

There’s nothing wrong if fans want to get excited about it and just enjoying the moment doesn’t make you a sheep although I agree with him about people like Wilner.

Brad.
Any particular reasoning behind your claim that AA is too young to be a GM?
How old should he be? 35? 40? 60?

Greg, your point is quite valid, AA needs time, but lets be totally honest here, the 3 big Toronto sports teams live for years on “plans”. Its also true that $50M spend recklessly will not help, but the Jays are 18 years out of the playoffs, but they have had several “plans” under several GM’s, none of which has made them competitive, much less successful.

When have we waited long enough?? There has not been meaningful baseball played by the Jays past August 15 for 18 years, and I for one have seen enough “plans” come and go to continue to care. I know a “plan” by the Jays and Rogers is another way of saying to the fans that “we can’t win in this division, but we don’t want realignment so here is a glorified AAA team with a bottom 1/3 of the league payroll to watch while we rebuild again…

The GM’s job for the Toronto Blue Jays is to make your team the best it can be talent wise etc… To do that you have to convince your President/Ownership Group to spend some money. The 23rd highest payroll in baseball in the 4th or 5th largest market does not equate.

AA appears to have very good scouting abilities. He seems to also already know how to make complex trades in baseball. I am impressed in these areas at his competency given his age. But there is no way he has the stones, confidence whatever to walk into Beeston’s office and demand this team start spending like the 2 teams ahead of us in the standings in the AL East.

If this team was serious about winning they would show it this summer by going after Prince Fielder.

Of course no one on Rogers Fan Radio will ever criticize the Rogers Owned BlueJays for expenditures. Oh they may gloss it over, but no once holds them accountable. And of course TSN uses Schulman for generic baseball talk and has no one else at that network that even knows what a baseball looks like. (sarcasm should be noted)

RE Brad:
I, for one, am sick to death of the, “wait til next year” approach. The only person I have ever heard criticize the Jays, has been Greg Zaun
That is why Mr. Zaun has no chance of being a part of BJ baseball come 2012….
He actually has an opinion…
Mr. Zaun will land somewhere else and become a star…
And while I am ranting …
Is sportsnet website run by children at summer camp after their lunch break and nap time.. The website is just embarrassing !!!

I can’t believe what I’m reading. That is all.

@ Bryan

Haha, I’m with you.

You can almost tell who’s a Leafs fan and who’s not by their views on the Jays.

So i just got IM’d by a friend who is also on this board and called out for being so anti Jay, so i thought to explain myself.

I don’t hate the Jays and Rogers, I just don’t care anymore. What i do hate is an organization that doesn’t even spend the “free” money (TV and profit sharing) it gets to field a team, not to mention all the ticket money and the concession, yet claims it’s trying to win.

What i hate is ownership at a 12Billion company that makes 3Billion in profit doesn’t care to put a better product on the field, especially when they can share it across all their different media properties, even though a better team would clearly lead to better ratings.

What I hate is this same ownership KNOWING that when they field a payroll in the bottom third of all MLB teams, that they have a less than 10% chance to make the playoffs, forget a World Series, yet still expect me to pony up money come to the games.

What I hate is all the pandering hosts on their stations who lack the range, the courage or the balls to ask real questions about this team.

I hate hearing past GM’s claim that the Jays need realignment to help them be competitive, all the while knowing that the marketing departments would jump out the 15th story window rather then give up Yankees or BoSox (stars!!) and get more Oakland and Baltimore.

I hate that we are the 5th biggest media market in NA, a “have” market for sure, yet Rogers fields a team only 3-4 guys away from a good AAA team.

In general, I just hate the hypocrisy of the whole thing, if its about profit, grow a pair and say that and let us decide to support you. They would rather than shuffle deck chairs on a floundering ship and call it an upgrade than be honest with their ever shrinking fanbase…

@Mike Burl. Couldn’t agree more with Mike. My only question now I guess is to PBI, does this make me a Leaf fan or not a Fan. Just couldn’t quite follow the logic there. A little help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike, one of the best posts I have read here in a long time…imagine if Rogers buys MLSE and the Leafs’ radio rights?

Anthopolous has been GM for less than two seasons, and inherited a terrible situation. The Jays had one of the worst ranked farm systems, a 75 win record, and had to trade Roy Halladay.

A season and a half later the Jays have the #2 system in baseball (according to Keith Law) and have a very promising group of controllable, cheap players in the majors.

THAT’s why people think he’s done an excellent job. The fact that they won 85 games last year (and probably around 81ish this year) is besides the point.

He’s overhauled things quickly, but nobody could have turned the whole organization around like this instantly. Give him time. So far I love his moves, overall.

But the Jays are spending money where they need to. For the last two years they’ve been one of the biggest spenders in the draft, going above slot when they wouldn’t before. They’ve expanded their scouting system. They’ve given out long term contracts to many of the core players. They’ve spent money signing guys coming out of the Carribean. They’ve even taken on Teehan’s $7M salary in this deal to get Rasmus.

So those people who are complaining that the salary this year is around $65M and are mad that Rogers didn’t go blow the budget to overpay someone like Jayson Werth are missing the point.

Remember – next year there will likely be a second wild-card.

Jays have not finished above 4th in the Wild Card race in the last 10 years. How does the added playoff spot help them, other than keeping faint hopes alive for an extra few weeks?

there’s reason for optimism, but they need to be a lot better than they’ve been to make the post-season.

I agree with most of the folks who think of the Toronto Media as overhyping the Jay’s. Even the so called ” Baseball Experts” are out to lunch. The Cards and Jays had different objectives in this trade. The Jay’s are trying to address a weak center field position and the Cards are trying to strengthen a pitching staff that is lacking for a run at playoffs this year. The Cards added a strong #3 guy and changed and improved their whole bull pen not just by adding the Toronto guys but can now drop McClellen from the rotation to the pen.
Mean while the Jay’s get an unproven kid who won’t listen to anyone but his father. the Cards have been trying to fix a very bad swing! basically (he swings around the ball not behind it.) The Card’s have video of him unauthorized in their video room with his father. They have asked him to play winter ball which he refused. He has had run ins with his manager, his pitching coach, Pujols and others. There are more other stories coming out of St. Louis that are not flattering. There aren’t many tears being shed!
Hopefully the Jay’s can turn the kid around but they certainly did not win the trade! Tallet is on the disabled list and the other two guy’s the Cards just wanted to dump. The situational lefty comes in and usually walks the guy. The Jay’s might just as well kept Purcey! I imagine if they want him back the Tigers will dump him very soon.
Many thoughtful insights today. More than you will get from the Toronto Media broadcast or print.

Interesting view of the Jays after this deal in the Miami Herald …http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/28/2335399/blue-jays-on-the-verge-of-contending.html It does not differ much from other US based media reports I have seen or heard over the past few days.

There seems to be a shift in the local media from supporting the long careful build to looking for the Jays to contend next year. McCown has been on that line all year, however I caught a bit of Blair’s show today and he talked about the same thing. It is certainly not critical but at least questions are starting, even on the FAN.

Mike – very true that the Jays wouldn’t have made the playoffs with the extra spot over the last number of years.

However, that does not take away from the fact that it obviously will make the playoffs a more realistic goal…even if it wouldn’t have helped much over the last few years.

Also worth noting – the schedule may become more balanced in the new CBA in addition to the extra playoff spot. Fewer Yanks/Bosox games won’t hurt their chances either.

I totally agree that they will have to be better under AA than they were under JP or Ash. So far, (and I’m not anointing him the saviour) I really do the like the direction and shrewd moves AA has made.

As others have pointed out, it’s not like AA gets praised by Rogers employees and nobody else. Both Jon Heyman of CNNSI and Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports wrote articles today with the sentiment that AA has an incredible reputation around the league right now.

I would like to thank everyone for their civility and insights on this thread today, it was adults able to disagree but not be dicks about it

@Daniel, I agree that AA has made good moves, and specifically the Jays scouting dept. which needed improvements after JP essentially scrapped so much of it. (Begs the question of spending again, was JP told to cut costs? Or was it just a move to centralize all power in his hands).

I don’t think people here are doubting his baseball acumen as much as they are asking, does he really have the clout/stones to spend money. One of the advantages from a skeptical perspective that the Jays Ownership has in hiring a complete rookie, is they probably have more of a Yes Man GM than in hiring a very experienced GM who may demand ownership give him full reins in regard to spending.

We have all heard that when this team is close, they are willing to spend. The question then is, what is the definition of being close. One could argue that by spending more this past off season another starter and closer could have been had. Would that not make this team much closer? Every week now for the past month it seems the Jays are filling in starting pitchers who have no business being in the major leagues. The team has no identifiable closer in sight. We have question marks in center field, left field, 2nd base, 3rd base. This indicates to me this team is currently not close. So will next year be another developmental year, then getting us close, only to spend the following season?

I admire of all of you who enjoy all the roster details that makes baseball such a stat lovers game, it truly helps this discussion. Clearly AA has done more than what my eyes see. True fans might get it, but they are already at the game, I’m the guy you want being interested, and I’ve heard nothing about how close they might be, I only see they are 10 back at the all star break.

As for the Miami Herald story listed above in this thread, you find out the author is a 20-something freelancer from Toronto who just finished an 5 month intership at ESPN New York. Not sure how much weight we should give his story…

I know it’s easy to pick on a large corporation like Rogers but if you’re a fan of the Jays or any other team, you don’t want a company like Rogers owning it.

As noted earlier, the constant cross promotion, the high prices for everything they sell and so on drives us all crazy. Of course, they’re going to charge high prices – that’s how they ensure a profit (can’t blame them really). And of course, just because they made billions in profits last year, don’t expect them to spend another 50 mil on the team. Just because a corp. or a person for that matter has money, doesn’t mean he’s going to spend it.

My point: you don’t want them or Bell owning your team. You want a owner who’s rich, eccentric, has a passion for the team and who’s willing to spend like a madman (see Mark Cuban as an example).

Mike in Burlington,

Preach!

So sick of the Jays and their factory line of “plans”. Enough with the plans! It’s high time that Rogers cleared house and took this team in a new direction.

It’s time for this team to hire someone with no plan – none whatsoever.

It also occurred to me that the last three GMs, all of whom have failed to produce a team capable of competing for October baseball, were apt to wearing pants.

The data is in and the conclusion is clear. No pants, no plan – that’s the criteria. Heck, it could even double as the club’s new marketing plan! Maybe they could hire Greg Brady to provide the voice over?