Monday, June 26, 2006

monday morning musings

Reports this past weekend suggest that Chris Pronger wants out of Edmonton; it only makes sense that he goes to Florida for Jay Bouwmeester. Bouwmeester is an Edmonton native; Pronger's wife wants an American city. Mike Keenan has traded for Pronger before as made famous by his famous motivational speech one night in St. Louis. Keenan had traded Brendan Shanahan for Pronger, and at one time was, lets say, less than impressed with Pronger's performance on the ice and proceeded to shout "do you know who I traded you for!?!" at Pronger during a game.

Here's another matchmaking idea. The Toronto Blue Jays should trade for Jeremy Affeldt of the Kansas City Royals. The Jays are in need of bullpen help, and although Affeldt is listed as a starter, the best performances in his career have come from the pen. My friends will recognize Affeldt as the underperforming bench star of my baseball pool team for the past few years, but be assured; I have learned a lot about this guy while he sat on my pool team bench. Not as much as Kevin from Kevin's Royal Blog has, but a fair amount. Affeldt has a one year contract at the moment, and it is conceivable that the Royals new management could flip him for a B grade prospect.

Affeldt is a southpaw with a blazing fastball and above average curve. He has a change and slider, but rarely uses them. His fastball can top in the upper 90s when he pushes it, which he does more often with short stints out of the pen than he does when he starts. Because his fastball and curve are so good, there was a perception that he could start, but his limited pitch variety leaves him best suited for work out of the pen.

Adding Affeldt to the Toronto bullpen would allow Affeldt and Justin Speier to work as co-setup men. It could move Scott Schoeneweiss (who hasn't pitched that well this year) into lefty specialist (OPBAA .196 from the left side and .311 from the right side this year) and it could allow Scott Downs to come into the starting rotation. The starting rotation is seriously hurting right now, and even though Downs has pitched pretty badly as a starter this year, last year he filled in quite admirably for the injured Roy Halladay.

Those are my thoughts; JP would be wise to take a listen to them, but what else would you have me say?

At the very least, Affeldt would be the pimpest reliever in the Blue Jays pen.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

mrs. pronger doesn't hate edmonton. she hates sluts. and unfortunately for her, her husband loves the sluts... do your homework... you'll see.

it's a lot easier for mrs. pronger to leave the sluts in edmonton behind than leave her husband... he makes too much money. what would you rather have? a faithful husband or money???

Anonymous said...

Edmonton isn't the only place where these rumored sluts exist. My grandfather travelled the globe, he told me there are two universal certainties with any village or town or city you may come accross on this planet 1) there will be a source of water and 2) there will be sluts.

Mrs Pronger, something tells me you'll have a much harder time competing with the L.A. sluts than with the Edmonton variety.