[MUSIC] >> Fan, morning show, sports at 5.9 in the van, Ben and that's Brent Gunning, Blue Jays, Pirates starting a three game series of Rogers Center over the weekend tonight. Let's get a little update from fan graph, shall we? As to the Blue Jays playoff percentages. They aren't everything. Some might argue they're nothing. I was going to say, how do we feel about those on the money puck scale of like the Leafs being a nine percent favorite? >> No, this one is a little more correlated to reality. I feel like this one plays out a little closer to the reality than the like, yeah, Leafs being the Stanley Cup favorite. >> Yeah, that's why I asked the question. >> Despite being, a wild card team and playing in the toughest division in all hockey. All right, here are the playoff odds. According to fan graphs, 20.8% Blue Jays making a playoff spot. Which is actually not fifth in the American League East. Despite being behind both the Rays and the Red Sox in the standings. The Red Sox only have a 10.6% chance of getting into the postseason. The Rays just slightly above the Blue Jays at 26.1% win the World Series 1.1% for the Blue Jays. That would be quite a thing. >> So this Blue Jays. >> If this Blue Jays team won a World Series, that would be quite something. All right, time now for our insider brought to you by Don Valley, North Lexus. Where you can expect excellence online and in the showroom, visit DonvalleyNorthlexus.com. Today's insider, Shai Davidi of SportsNet and SportsNet.ca. How's it going, Shai? >> All right. What's going on? >> Now then, maybe you can tell me what a Ryan Burr is. Tell me what, what's a Ryan Burr? >> He's a right-handed reliever who could be coming to the big leagues. I wasn't able to nail down too many details last night, but I believe he had a opt-out in this contract June 1st and the Blue Jays, as we know, are in a position where it looks like they're going to need some pitching. And this is adding a minimum of depth fees, but someone who could be on the horizon as well. >> Yeah, so he's, you tweeted out that the Blue Jays have acquired him from the Phillies. He's been in Lehigh Valley for the Phillies. He's 30 years old, he's not a prospect, and he's had a cup of coffee in the major leagues where he's been like, okay, you're right, just over four in 75 innings, over 66 games. But his numbers in AAA are like, they're kind of eye-popping. The 29 strikeouts in 16 and 2/3 innings, like, yeah, what's the deal with that? It feels like a guy that you would want to see if that could translate to the major league level. >> Yeah, certainly, especially because there's been discussion about how the pitching hasn't been great at AAA this year, certainly not on the quality of the past, and that maybe the hitters have jumped forward a little bit, and maybe some of the depth of AAA has been eroded by the number of big league pitching injuries bringing up a lot of guys to the majors. And so, it's interesting, right? I don't want to turn this into more than it is. This could be just a depth add, but, look, everyone in the big leagues right now is desperately hunting for pitching. Pictures with options have a tremendous amount of value. Right now, anyone who can move up and down, and teams are just hunting for depth in any way possible, because the number of injuries that have occurred around the game. So, I think that's the prism through which to look at this through, and it becomes anything more than that, and I think the bluegies would probably do some cartwheels. >> Yeah, I mean, obviously, you get anything out of a player that is likely dealt for cash consideration jets, house money, or literally money, you've spent, you're happy to get something from it. I'll be honest where my head goes on this, and I think sometimes fans maybe read more into this than there is, is that there's probably discussions being had. I highly doubt they pick up the phone and say, "Oh, God, we got to get Ryan Burr. We got to go find a way to get him." I imagine this comes about when having discussions about other things, and I'm not trying to link the Phillies to some big bluegies trade here. But do you think there is some indication, again, not to read too much into this from just a Blue Jays perspective, but then maybe conversations league wide are starting to pick up a bit. I mean, I'm sure you saw all of the kind of scuttlebutt coming out of MLB network this week. Then maybe the Blue Jays have been more active. Do you think, if anything, maybe there is some element that it's just there is more conversation around the league starting to kick up in that regard? I think you might be reaching a little bit, and this is the period there are every month there are opt-out periods for players on minor league contracts, and so there's some movement from players who have that option and who may be considering to take it. So teams know whose contracts are coming up, and if there's interest, if there's opportunity, and agents are working on this, too, to try and find opportunities for their players. So I don't think that this was, "Hey, we have an offshoot of a bigger discussion. Can we have Ryan Burr, or do you want Ryan Burr?" I don't think that's what's happening here. I think it's more that there's a natural opportunity for discussion because of the opt-outs. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's how negotiations work. It's like, "Hey, how about Bryce Harper?" And they're like, "Nah, all right, okay, fine. We'll take Ryan Burr." You never know. So we don't yet know the extent to which Alec Manoa was injured. I mean, you hope for the best, but you can't help but think about the worst when you're talking about an elbow injury. I imagine, at the very least, he's going to end up on the I.L. And it feels like, shy, that the obvious way they would go about replacing his rotation spot is with Bowdoin Francis and Trevor Richards kind of piggybacking each other. Trevor Richards has been a starter in his career like, "I am kind of intrigued at how much they could stretch him out. What do you see happening with that rotation spot?" I mean, if I'm guessing right now, I'm thinking that it's some combination of those two, right? But, and again, I don't want to read too much into this because everything had just happened, but John Schneider on Wednesday night asked that specific question and he was also asked about sort of options and he just kept saying, "We've got some options and didn't want to be tied down to anything," which is understandable because it's like five minutes after they got the Minoan is so, or at least the, you know, understood that Minoan was going on for that MRI and going to wait to see what happened. So, you know, the Bluetooth do have to figure this out because even if they do run that again and, you know, certainly won't possibly, it means you're essentially tying yourself to a seven-man bullpen. And that puts a lot of other pressure on the rest of your team and the rest of your pitching staff and, you know, right now there's, you know, Chris Bassett is dealing with that neck tightness. He's had it for a couple of starts and it, he seemed, last time I saw him seemed better and, but I don't know where he's at in terms of his neck's outing. That's something that you've got to guard against. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you're too thin and if something goes wrong for one of your starters, now all of a sudden you're really in a bind. So that's the one challenge that the bludges don't have anyone else you'd obviously want for that spot. I mean, are you going to give that the ball to Paul Ospino in an ideal world? Maybe it's Yariel Rodriguez, but he's doing another rehab start today. And so his return isn't on the horizon. Ricki Tiedemann still hasn't gotten into games yet, so he's down the road. They don't really have a lot of other possibilities. So that's why I think it's the likeliest, some combination of Francis and Richards, but we'll see if they try to do something creative or find some other avenue or opportunity. Yeah, the Manoa injury or obviously leaving the game has impacted the roster decisions from a pitching perspective. It's also kind of shifted the conversation because when we were talking about call ups earlier this week, it certainly wasn't about a pitcher. You know, Ben and I have been wondering aloud, be it a Horowitz, be it a Martinez, you know, obviously the lineup takes care of business to a certain degree against the White Sox and maybe it allows everybody to exhale. But do we think there are any closer to calling up one of those guys from Buffalo? I suppose you could throw Barger in the mix, but he feels like the least likely of the bunch to me anyways. Yeah, again, I think right now the Blue Jays seem to want to be, we seem to want to ride this out with the group that they have. And you know, there's an element of it's tough to have a player come up and say, hey, rescue our offense. Right? Like that's not, you saw that earlier this year with Barger, it's not a great spot to put a young player in just as their acclimated big leagues. And I was actually talking to someone who'd been the game a long time recently about this. And they just said, you know, most of the time when you call up players in that sort of situation, it doesn't end up working out. So you've got to be what happened last year with Davis Schneider is really a unicorn situation, right? Where you got a guy who has just been hot and you're like, hey, let's see what you can do. And the dude goes off, you know, and full credit to Davis Schneider for that. But again, that's, that's the unicorn. That's not the norm. And so the Blue Jays, I think are wary about that. They want to, they have the players performing a AAA Buffalo. The guys have certainly held up that end of it. And then ideally you bring them up into a more stable environment where, you know, the pressure isn't on them that they have to produce immediately or else the team's going to be in a bind because that just makes the acclimation process all the more difficult. Sure. I don't know if that's going to happen with the way this offense is constructed. And especially if the DH has continued to perform perform that way, the Blue Jays out of the DH spot are 25th and baseball in OBS at 623, which is a Bismol. That's a designated hitter. That's the one job of that position is like hit and they can't find anyone that can do it. Like, yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody from outside of the organization. You know, the way most baseball teams operate the DH thing. It's like, Hey, we got a lot of position players and enough guys that are, you know, offensively inclined, we can get them off their feet and they can take up that slot, except the blue Jays are made up of like a million DHs for some reason. Like, where are we on like just mixing it up with that position? Because I'm of the belief that, yeah, this is very a reasonable expectation in the range of outcomes when it comes to Daniel Vogelbach. It should have also been in the range of outcomes, like reasonable to anticipate the 39 year old who had a declining second half of the season also might not be capable. Like, where are we with not even a call up, but just like somebody else, like even Cav and Bezio, God forbid, I guess the DH. Well, I'd like to put a little bit of context around that, right? So through April, are you having this concern about Justin Turner? No, but that's OK, but it's April's over. Just hear me out here. So just hear me out here for a second, OK, before you jump out of your heels. OK, so then May, dude gets hit by that flu bug that has been circulating through the entire clubhouse. It hits him perhaps a bit harder than some others. He's still fighting it a bit. And maybe that is a factor in why he's performed the way he has into May. And then the last week or so, it's been a little bit better. And there have been a few hits, which have been obviously important and some RBIs against some production, which is what you need out of the spot. And so maybe this is related to a certain degree to the illness and not to the fact that dude can't hit again. And I think that's part of the thinking right now for the Blue Jays and that you trust in Justin Turner and you trust that that April wasn't a fluke and there's at least a plausible explanation for why there were the struggles in May. And you know, I had a long child with him on Wednesday in Chicago and, you know, he refuses to use that as a reason. He's been pretty frustrated with himself for not having better quality of bats. So he doesn't want to say to point the finger at that, but I definitely think you can look at it and say, all right, this is a factor, you know, he's still fighting a little bit of congestion from that from that flu that, you know, has really tore through, tore through Blue Jays clubhouse. And so I'm inclined to say, yeah, let's, this guy deserves a bit more runway before we're making any definitive judgments. Sure. Yeah. And he's going to get more runway just because of the contract he signed. I mean, Daniel Vogelbach shouldn't like, I don't know, what's Daniel Vogelbach's role here? Like, Daniel Vogelbach is Daniel Vogelbach. Why is he on this team? Well, he's like, I think that the role that you envision for Daniel Vogelbach is that somebody who comes off the bench, you know, once or twice a week gives you a pinch hit in a key spot for when you're facing the power lady, you know that there's going to be discipline and on base there, you know, that he's not going to chase, you know, he's not going to get himself out, beat himself. And that is a role that you feel comfortable with Daniel Vogelbach in. But if you wanted to say, do that to Spencer Horwitz, if he equipped to, you know, get five plate appearances a week, if that, and then be in a position to be productive. And does that stall his progress and his development? And is he going to be effective in that limited usage? And so I think that is the, the push and pull right now for the Blue Jays, if it gets to a point that you don't feel that there's any, or that if you want to expand the role and that you need to give somebody, you know, split it more evenly, then I think it's a different conversation. But as of right now, the Blue Jays don't seem to want to move off that, off the way that those two positions were envisioned right now, or those two roster spots were envisioned right now. And so that's, that's at least the thinking. Yeah. And you know what? It's good. They just swept the white sock. So yeah, come on. Sweep the pirates. They'll be back to 500. So yeah, things are not as dire as they seem to the conclusion of the Tiger series, but they're done with the white socks. That's, they went five and one. They did their job. But yeah, no more white socks. Pirates are no Paul Skeensell. So yeah, thumbs up for that. Shy, always a pleasure buddy. Yeah, have a good one guys. Enjoy the weekend. Yeah, you too. Shy DeViti, our insider brought to you by Don Valley, North Lexus, where you can expect excellence online and in the showroom, visit Don Valley, North Lexus.com. When we come back, coming into our fair city, or environs, GTA Jim Nance of CBS, getting ready to call the weekend action that the Canadian opened. He joins us next. The fan morning show continues. Ben Anis, Brent Gunning, Sportsnet 5.9 in the fan. Hey, it's Aylish Forafar. And I'm Justin Cuddford. Join us as we discuss the most important sports stories of the day and tee up the biggest games of the night. It's the fan pregame, 6 p.m. weekdays on Sportsnet, Sportsnet 5.9 in the fan, and wherever you get your podcasts. Fan morning show, Sportsnet 5.9 in the fan, Ben Anis, Brent Gunning. Hey, listen, we mentioned this earlier in the show, but Jane's addiction, along with love and rockets will be performing at Budweiser stage on September 18th or giving away tickets to enter for a chance to win text in today's code word. Nothing's shocking to 5.9, 5.9 again. That's nothing's shocking to 5.9, 5.9, give it away another pair of tickets on Monday. But if you don't win with us, make sure you secure your tickets today, 10 o'clock on ticketmaster.ca. You know what would be shocking? Hmm. And maybe this is fair because it's like only a month since this was true, but like the Justin Turner turned into like one of the best hitters on this team again. I would be capital F for Lord, but it is good context from shy to V.D. who who tells us that he's still dealing with the illness that rocked the Blue Jays clubhouse. You know why? Why? Yeah, because he's old and he's actually like longer to recover. At first, you were saying that shy to V.D. is old. No, no, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that old bag of bone shy don't bring him back. No, I was, I was talking about Justin Turner, not shy to be. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's impacting. Right, on Chey's age, maybe that is seriously impacting the performance of the player. And maybe it's like a combination of the two, like maybe when you're just trying to hang on and you have one of the slowest bat speeds, yeah, and all the major league baseball and you're 39 years old and you're sick. Yeah. That's like the final Jenga block. It gets pulled out of the bottom of the Jenga and the whole tower comes toppling down. Yeah. You can't play Jenga after that though, right? That's the problem. Yeah. You can put the pieces back together. But yeah, I tend to think it's more likely that it's like the 39 year old full time DH is probably being a 39 year old. Anyways, Blue Jays and Pirates, first of three tonight over the weekend. Could we have two consecutive Canadians win the Canadian open? Hard to top last year's performance, the moment and the call made by our next guest, Jim Nance, PBS sports and member of the sports broadcasting Hall of Fame. Kind enough to join us right now. How's it going, Jim? Thanks for doing this. Good morning, Ben. Good morning, Fred. Hello, Fred. I'm so excited about getting back that tournament last year was really the best event. Well, if what it meant to the nation was one thing, but as far as just going through a year after year of covering the PGA tour, I'm not sure there's anything that ever beat that moment last year with Nick Taylor holding that pod. It was just an amazing celebration. I love doing this event, the RBC Canadian, and I'm actually on my way to the airport right now to make my way there so I can't wait. Can't wait. Hopefully we get something close to the type of finish we had last Sunday or last year on Sunday at Oakdale. Have you seen Nick Taylor's head cover? He's got the glorious and free call on there. I'm so honored. Yes, I've seen glorious and free. But by the way, I just want to say this because I don't get a chance to do it very often. To speak to this great audience you have, but the outpouring I've gotten from everyone up there and the letters in the last year about how meaningful that moment was and what I said. I can't begin to tell you how out touched I was by that, how attached I feel to everyone there, all the Canadians who loved golf and who reached out to me to let me know that that meant a lot. I feel connected forever because of that moment and then Nick goes and puts it on his head covers, glorious and free. It was just something that kind of poured out of me. Obviously I didn't have anything planned. The guy was putting from 72 feet away and I was hoping he wouldn't three plots. So it went in the hole and you know what ensued was just pure pandemonium and it was great to be able to have a front row seat for that. Yeah, I it's not often actually I dare say I'll never get to say this to you again. But I would I had just as good a seat. I was right there. Green side inside. I was right behind some of the folks from Gulf Canada and yeah, that moment is something that's going to be etched in, you know, going back, hearing your call afterwards. It's just it's another piece of the puzzle that makes it this great thing and I'll just give this to you for a little piece of serendipity. It wasn't 72 feet. But on his second hole of the tournament this year, he chipped in from 73. So I don't know. Maybe there's a little more Nick Taylor magic in there. I know it's hard to ever top that. I mean, like to go at the same tournament and get back to back years like that. But I'm excited about going back with it being at Hamilton because we had a riveting final day there the last time it was there when Corey shot 61 and there he is on the leaderboard and you know, David Hearn was hot yesterday early and it's going to be a great event. I know the weather is going to be super and I'm excited for everybody that we're going to have a glorious weekend of of golf. Yeah, glorious and free. It'll be it'll be great to great great to watch. You know, you've you've had a front row seat for this event. The kind of changes over the past couple of years. I mean, you know, there are a lot of stops on the PGA tour and each one of them is unique in their own way. But the Canadian Open is, I mean, lucked out in a massive way and you know, I won't say luck. I mean, thank you, Rory McElroy, thank you, Dick Taylor and thank you, Dustin Johnson. But when you have a run of winners like that from DJ or Rory going back to back over three years and then the moment of all moments with Taylor, how have you kind of seen the tournament and maybe the way it's perceived outside of Canada change over the past couple of years? Well, it definitely feels like it's stature has been raised to a place where it should be. I mean, it is a it is and it is a national open. And I've always thought it was a little bit underrated for whatever reason the field is stronger than it used to be. I'm glad for that and I think our BC deserves a lot of credit for that. And you know, I've I've been able to see it in all these different courses. So you mentioned Oakdale last year Hamilton in the past. The Royal Montreal was a was a wonderful year and you know, Vijay would went up there. Tiger won there. Jim Fureka had a great run there. I mean, the list of champions is besitting of something that's a national open. So I will say this last week is in Fort Worth next week will be in in Columbus, Ohio at Jack's tournament that the support and the excitement that's on you know, on site at these tournaments, it's there's nothing to tops it. Now you could say, okay, what about Phoenix Phoenix has a lot of people there. There's no question. It's an awesome site. But they're not all there to watch a golf tournament and and there's a lot of other things going on. But at this event, it is everybody's in on it. It is a it is a happening. Yeah. And I'm energized by it. I can't wait. Yeah. And the the rank hole that they've they've instituted and it being a 13 at Hamilton this week. It's cool. Everybody slam it on the boards. You were obviously also on the call of the other most significant golf moment in recent Canadian golf history calling Mike Weir's masters win in 2003 talking about the green jacket going north of the border. There are six Canadians inside the world golf ranking top 100 now Jim like can you compare where where Canadian golf is now in 2024 to where it was when Mike Weir and Steven Ames was in and around the tops of leaderboards in in that era as well. But where it was in 2003 you didn't have the density. You just said it. I mean, it's it's a credit to golf Canada people like Lawrence Apple bomb and what they've done to promote to to promote the game Gary Bernard a lot of people in Canada have made sure that there's a program there and there's an outreach and yeah, just take a look at the President's Cup, but I just really hope there's going to be two, three who knows maybe even four Canadians, you know, make the international squad and I'm just very happy to see it. It's it's definitely different than it used to be because when you had we're see, yeah, you know, David Hearn's been around a long time, but you didn't have the depth that you have now of top flight players and we know Corey Connors can play McKinsey Hughes Adam poor Adam. I mean, I had talk about a front row seat is I'm watching this thing last year unfold and I see him run out of the green. Then I saw him get tackled. I mean, just get pummeled. I mean, it was one of the great tackles I've seen all year. I called the Super Bowl and I still haven't seen a tackle as good as that one. And I thought to my eyes just to see me, I mean, it's happening right in front of me. I turned to Tommy Spencer, who's been I've been his wing guy instead of me saying he's my wing guy. He's my editorial consultant. He sits next to me and I took the headset off for a second. I said, that was Adam Hadland, right? Thank God he wasn't like suffering a career ending injury off without one. That could have been really bad. Yeah, again, just going back through all these guys we have, Graham Dalette. By the way, I know it's doing commentary this week. Yeah. It's a great list. And then you got the women's side of it, too, you know, but I broke and it's amazing what's going on. I'm very energized. But I want to say this too, because he's probably listening. I played golf years ago in college at the University of Houston. I was using that term liberally because I could not crack the top five. I could not crack the top 10. But we had a guy from up your way named Warren Sy, who's had a Jack Raisin, a Canadian golf hall of fame. And we were teammates together at U of H at University of Houston. And I love this event for many things, but one of them is just to catch up with Warren again, who has represented your area great in the West and the club, and made it all the way to the finals, the U.S. Medam one time almost got it to the Masters would have if he won that thing. But when I think of Canadian golf, I think I'm my friend Lawrence. So yeah, I'm into it. We love that you're such a part of Canadian golf history. And hey, Jim McKenzie Hughes just hold out for Eagle on his third hole of the day. So he's got it to three under on the day through three holes for under for the tournament. He's he's like more local than right there. I got to tell you, McKenzie Hughes has just found a whole new legion of fans with his just great sensibilities and scope on the world of golf. And I had a chance to see him. I'm trying to think of which tournament it might have been. Maybe it was Pebble Beach. It was earlier in the year. And I just made sure that I I went over to him to tell him how much I appreciate the way that he views the game of golf and what it means to him and what the fans are feeling with the disruption that's out there. Impressive guy. If he was our champion of the week, that would be a fabulous thing for golf everywhere and especially in Canada, but everywhere. Yeah, he deserves the two. He's a Leafs fan. So he needs like like a little joy in his life. So we'll break him up. I've just got to come up with a new version of glorious free. I have that with three plans. So I've got to feel the moment that you got any ideas, text them to me. All right. We'll get in the lab. Thanks for doing this and enjoy the golf this weekend and enjoy Canada yet again. I can't wait to, as I've said, several times. Thank you everybody for embracing me and all of our CPS teammates. We are proud to present your tournament. We really are. Thanks guys. Thanks, Jim. The great Jim Nance CBS member of the sports broadcasting Hall of Fame three time Emmy award winner, our friend. Hello friend. He said it. He said it. Our friend, we got to text him. Sorry. I was going to give up the digits. So we got to do that. And I did just quickly look up that guy. Warren Sy. He mentioned Weston just from down the road where I grew up in the city. So shout out to Warren Sy for the second time this morning. Jim Nance is going to do it. Then I'm going to to. Yeah, sure. Warren Sy. Why not? Warren Sy just was just listening to the sports talk radio in the morning didn't realize he was going to be. Whoa. Okay. Oh, me. Yeah. All right. This weekend is Blue Jays just another sweep away from getting back to 500 before the reality sets in of the Orioles being the next team they have to play after the White Sox and now the pirates for this weekend set. But whatever, you can only play the teams in front of you. Let's talk to Jim Duquette, former major league general manager, analyst for MLB network radio on Sirius XM who joins us online right now. Jim, thanks for doing this. How's it going? Hey, what's going on guys? This is a tough sledding here following Nance now. Come on. I love that guy. That guy is amazing. I love him. He just sounds like golf too. Right? Yeah, it's good. All right. Hello friends to you, Jim. Okay. So should the Jay's pivot here, right? Like, okay, I don't know if they're ever going to bottom out and be one of the worst teams in baseball though, you know, for a long stretch there, they look close to that. It's hard to imagine them also looking like a World Series contender. What do you imagine the decision making is like headed towards July and the end of it where the trade deadline resides? Well, yeah, and by the way, you're right. There was so much going wrong with that for a while that I mean, I was stunned at it. I know you guys probably were too, but I think there are some signs that they're trending up in May. We'll get to that in a second. I think as you get into account and turns into June tomorrow, you know, it's more of head. We've got to start playing better and building on what you did in May when May was definitely a little better than a lot better than April, but still not great. So I think that's what you're looking for in the front office side is can we get the offense some kind of level of consistency with the offense that perked up a little bit in May? Can we find some power, you know, with guys that, you know, normally hit for power like gladi and bow and those guys or is this what we are usually I picked Memorial Day when I was in a front office as about the 50 game mark where you're like, okay, this is what we are. This is our evaluation because you count spring training too. Like, all right, here's spring here's start. It looks like, you know, they're offensively still going to be challenged. We think power is going to be down. All right. Now that becomes your blueprint to go out and try to pursue that on the trade market in July. I think that's, that's what the hope is in, I think he kind of touched on it just before I came in. Like you start to try to play serious. The white Sox have been a slump buster for a lot of teams this year. You know, you go and you sweep them and that kind of catapult you in Minnesota to do it. I think St. Louis did it. So, you know, hopefully that'll be the same for Toronto. Yeah, that's what that's really the best hope they've got quite frankly. They needed this stretch to turn things around. It is, it is done that a little bit. You know, in terms of difficult decisions that front offices have to make, you know, I think the Blue Jays, they don't have anyone in the farm system that's coming in to save the season if they call up a bat or two, but they do have some, some guys there that could potentially, you know, be, I won't even go as far as difference makers, but just competent offensive options. How hard is it when a team is in, you know, this can be about hitting, but I suppose the team's not pitching. You don't want to call a guy up to be the savior. How much does that kind of weigh into the equation? Because, I mean, they've got a Relvis Martinez who can't stop hitting homers, and that seems to be the biggest problem with the offense is the lack of pop. How much or how difficult of a decision is it to decide to kind of pull the trigger on something like that? Well, there's a couple of factors there, you know, that, that are, you know, tough to make. Right. First off is, you know, when you're judging them against AAA talent right now, AAA pitching, like all, there's so many injuries in the major leagues that anything, usually anything of, of decent quality is already in the big league. So he's not not, he's not facing off against the best talent in AAA, the normal talent in AAA that we've seen over the years. And it's also a big, the huge separation already between the major leagues and AAA. So, so that is, I've seen it with a lot of teams, they brought up their top prospects down in Baltimore. In fact, they brought up two of their top prospects in the sport, they came up and struggled, Jackson Holiday is, is the big name there. So, so just because he's doing well, I mean, he's doing well on AAA doesn't necessarily mean you're going to see that impact. That's number one. Number two, you know, I think you're still hoping that the guys that you have on the, on the major league team are going to be the, are going to be the saviors. And if you do bring up a guy like that, he's going to be hitting down in the bottom of your lineup, not in the middle of the lineup. So I think there's a, there's definitely a lot to that when you're bringing up prospects there. So a, I've always been a fan of a bring up a guy if you're doing well because he gives you a burst of energy sometimes, but you do have to kind of, you know, couch it by understanding that what you're seeing with the numbers right now in AAA across the league, not just, you know, not just there across the league, it's, it's a tougher judgment or evaluation than it used to be. Yeah. One of the big reasons why if you were going to be optimistic about this Blue Jays season, what you would be is that they're not that far away from the final wild card spot in the American League. Cause, you know, there's six playoff teams in each league here now, Jim. But I wonder if, well, it's twofold here, whether teams do value just getting into the playoffs, chip in a chair. And once you get there, it's, it's a, it's a crapshoot. Although it's like not necessarily quite that simple or whether they should, like whether, you know, giving up longer term assets for shorter term fixes just to get into a wild card spot is, is worth it for the potential return. So, you know, we've had a little, little change, you know, and then just in the sense, okay, yet, like you said, added the second wild, or the third wild card, I guess. But so it's a little bit easier getting in, right? The bars a little lower. If you look at the last two years since under this format, now this is national league. So it's a little, little different, little bars a little lower there in terms of wind total. But Phillies, I think it was 85, 86 wins. That was the last wild card they get went all the way to the World Series. That was two years ago. Last year, Arizona, 84 wins, you know, ran it through, got to the World Series. So I don't feel that argument holds water anymore, you know, executives can try to make that excuse. They used to make the excuse, well, I'm not going to go all in for one game playing with the wild card. Well, we changed that format too. That was a sport, which is a two out of three series, right? So, so you're running out of excuses if you're from an office guy to, oh, I've got to, you know, make a, you know, a significant trade to get in as a wild card winner. Having said all that, I mean, you know, there is still, you don't want to give up, you know, that long term value for, you know, a short term fix. If you don't have to, I think for me, offensively, you know, that's the area they're going to need. I don't think you're going to have to give up a top prospect to get an offensive player. But having a set all that, there's going to be a number of teams that are looking for upgrades in that area. So that's where the competition comes in. Yeah. And that leads to an interesting question of when you make your move, right? Because if you jump the market too much, like you saw with a rise, like you're going to have to pay if you're to force a team into action earlier than they want to be. But also, there's the other side of things where you'll wait and all of a sudden there's maybe only one or two players that kind of fit the profile and then you end up in a bidding war for a player that, you know, might be serviceable, but not exactly what you need. Is that one of the most challenging things for a front office and is to kind of gauge the market in terms of when to really get aggressive and obviously, you know, depending on the team and the need, you can do that if there's one thing that's going to change it. But that's always the most interesting thing to me at this time of year is there are teams with obvious clear needs, but it's when do you kind of jump and get the market started? Right, I think it really is because, you know, the other thing, you have limited resources that you are going to throw at upgrading your team, right? So that is every single year, you're not going to, you know, empty your firm system to fill multiple needs. You're going to usually fill one, maybe two needs. And sometimes, and I've seen this and I talked to Dave Dombrowski, who's going to be a future all-of-fame general manager, he's now with affiliates and he even said this recently. Sometimes what your weakness looks like right now, you can fill internally, you know, as you get closer to the deadline, that hitter or that pitcher performs better than it looked like. And you don't want to waste a chip filling that role if you can do it internally. So you really, it's also beneficial with the point to wait a little bit closer to the deadline. And if you're another team that you have, you know, a capital that you're going to sell, nobody really gives their best offer until the end of July, unless it's a gross overpay like you saw with Louisa Wright. So there's a lot of complicated, you know, factors that weigh into this and, you know, that's why you don't see a ton of moving until we get into, you know, the middle of July or so. No matter how bad it gets, I just find it hard to imagine the Blue Jays in season here trading either Boba Shutter, Vladimir, or Jr., that one's a hard one for me to envision. Now, the off-season different deal is you head into the final years of their team control. Can the Blue Jays afford to go into next season? If this year, almost like no matter what happens, I mean, save for like winning a world series, I guess you just sign everybody to lifetime extensions. But like, can you afford to go into next season with those guys unsigned? Is this the off-season of decision-making for those guys either sign them to extensions if they're amenable to that or you've got to seriously consider trading them? Yeah, I mean, I do think you have to, you know, when you're going into that last year of free agency, you do have to seriously consider it. You know, I think that any team, any executive would kind of say that. But I think with the larger market team, so like Toronto, you know, to New York team, some of them, you know, they, I think should and do view it a little differently. Like, I'll just take the Mets as an example. They went into two winters ago, Edwin Diaz and Brandon Nimmo into their last year of free agency. They were trying to win that year and they ended up winning 100 games and they went, they resigned Diaz and Nimmo both. That is definitely still an option and, you know, maybe they're reluctant, the Blue Jays as a front office to sign or go to the asking price for a vlady and bow at the moment. And you know what? To some degree, that's understandable. They haven't performed the way they should have. But if they have a good year next year, that that mindset might change. And yeah, I think you give them a, you know, give a chance to run that signing one of those guys, probably not both and see if you can keep them in the chase uniform. So I think it's, you know, if you get what you want and when a time back becomes an obvious choice. It is, if they have it down here this year, you're not going to get the value and you end up probably keeping them. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree there. Last one from me, what do you make of the whole Jorge Lopez situation? I mean, not even so much the comments and the reaction to them, but the quick DFA-ing of a player who, you know, we're not going to sit here and talk about him as the reliever of the year, but he certainly has some value. I mean, God, the Blue Jays just traded for someone named Ryan Burr. So obviously you could trade for, trade a reliever to somebody. What did you make of the way that whole situation played itself out? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, it's a complicated one, unfortunately. But you know, I'll say this, I've been in those spots, you know, in front office before it. They weren't releasing him for toss in the glove in the stands, right? He tosses the glove in the stands, you're like, that wasn't the issue. They went and they talked to him. If they, if they were going to do that, then you would have never seen him talk to the media afterwards in full uniform. If they had designated him for assignment. So it was what he said after that got him released, you know, and whether it was misunderstood or whatever, there definitely was an interpretation issue. I don't know where the Mets interpreter was at the time. And I don't know why, honestly, that somebody, PR manager, somebody said, hey, listen, cool off because he's had some anger issues in the past and he's had some mental health issues, quite honestly. Hey, you don't need to talk to the media tonight. Go off here to the room, you know, as much as I hate, and I'm in the media now, and I'm always for telling guys, yeah, you go face the music, go, you know, you go say your piece and talk to them. In this particular situation, I don't think they should have put them out there. They should have let them calm down and maybe address the media the next day for exactly what happened. You know, it ends up saying something stupid or dumb and in the organization looks at it and says, nope, we're not going to have this guy around, you know, you can still be compassionate for a person who's dealing with some of the issues he is off the field. But in this particular case from the front office side with a bit of an easier decision because of what he said. Yeah, I will say that even like when you have moments like that that feel like, oh, you were like, I has to be DFI'd, usually there's like a little more time taken before the decision is made. I don't know, Jim, like, frankly, that felt like a Steve Cohen calling down and saying, get this guy off my team situation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, you know, of course, the time if they weren't in this big struggle, there are 11 games under 500, you know, they get swept by the Dodgers like all these things were stacking up. They didn't play well. They laid an egg. Um, you know, there was a lot of extenuating circumstances in that particular inning that gave up six runs. He got, uh, López got tossed. I mean, there's how many things going on that I think that it was just, you know, all these things were stacked up against them. And so that's what made them look even easier. Personally, I think you could have put them on the, the injured list. Yeah. Last year, he was on the mental health side of things, you know, he was out for a bit. Could have done that and been a little more compassionate and allowed that to happen. But unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. Yeah. And we'll see that they've got a decision to make, whether they trade or release him. Jim, uh, you held up your end of the bargain in the Jim hour. Well done. Good job by you. How you doing this? Big shoes, big shoes right there, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Jim. Uh, Jim Duquette, MLB network radio analyst, former major league exec. Yeah. This hour it was not the X's and O's. It was not even Joe's either. Just Jim. Just Jim's. And no Jimmy's. Yeah. We should have called him Jimmy Nance. Jimmy Nance. Hey, Jimmy. Click. Click. Then he would have just wrote a letter to the country. He would have just all those nice things he said about our wonderful nation. That would have just been the essay that begins. It's like, well, you were away. I shouted out Warren's side. Uh, well, yeah. That's good job. Yeah. Good job by Jeff Asparto, producer behind the glass. And that show lined up. But, um, yeah, good. Good job also by Mackenzie Hughes, making himself a relevant figure, at least through three holes today. A little birdie to start in an angle. Yeah. Holding out from like, no joke. No joke. Like, yeah. He wasn't on the fairway. Nope. Well, it turned a potential bogey into an eagle. I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, go to behind the seat in the curtains here with the theater of the mind, but, you know, I am watching it while I'm doing this. And he, I was watching and went, did that go in? Yeah. And it just looked like there was no way it could have from where he was. And then clearly he hears the roars and then he puts the big club up in the air and high fives Academy. Oh, it did go in. I, I was like, Oh, well, that couldn't have happened to the Canadian in Hamilton. That must have been from. And now I was on down his own. Yeah. No. So the dawn of Dundas, wonder if they call them that they should, yeah, I don't know if they should do that. Yeah, maybe not. Anyway. So he's a relevant figure. David Skins. He's teeing off. Mr. Skin. He's out there. He's out there right now. He's Mr. Skin is even through one hole today. Man, Corey Connors, every hole, he's got like a makeable birdie putt. Seemingly. What is. Okay. I'm just trying to see this now. Okay. Mackenzie Hughes just completed the rank hole. Yeah. He's wearing a chair. Yeah. He was not a leaf jersey though. No, I got to be honest. I feel like it was a sponsor jersey. Yeah. I feel like somebody paid him some money to wear it. It looked like it was like a company name on the front, which is like that stuff. I have my favorite Mackenzie Hughes one was he did he at the, the loud hole 16 in Arizona. Yes. Where you don jerseys. He threw on a leaf jersey there. But the best part about it is he was clearly a guy in Arizona during the Leafs because it was a James Rimer era 34 with Matthews on the back on the name plate. Like you could tell it was not like an Austin Matthews era leaf jersey was like he had a Rimer that he had requested to Matthews or somebody in his circle did. I have the picture. I'll show you the video of it or the photo evidence. I love it. It's my favorite. Mackenzie Hughes really fan. Okay. Did James Rimer wear 34? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That seems like a very weird move. Yeah. For the millionaire golf. Well, it's like, can you, can you like buy just another jersey? What are you talking about? Oh, you mean like in the moment, it's like, oh, no, no, I don't think you scrap. I don't think someone like requested it for him on the 16th tee, but I think it was like day week of the tournament. Oh, yeah. They wear the jerseys here. Oh crap. What a. Yeah. That's what I think. I love it. These guys are all really feds. And a couple of weeks ago, would you do Saturday night? Oh, not much. Just watch the leaf lose and go to bed. Normal night. Yeah. It's normal. All right. So we talked to Jim Nancey had the glorious and free comment, which like he said, just organic. Yeah. Think those things up. Are you crazy? You think he's got a notepad? Stop that. You. What are you talking about? Anyways, that is just organic. Yeah. I mean, he asked us to come up with something new for him this year. Like a Canadian. Like, were you thinking on that? So if it's Mackenzie Hughes, it's like what now you. This is like very local Hamilton geography, but it's like it's up on the mountain. It's like Mackenzie climbs the mountain. He's your, your RBC Canadian open champ. No, I need something. I don't know. You put me on the spot. What do you got? No. You're here. You're healing. Oh, I have literally nothing to bring to this. That bad. No, you're the worst guy in a meeting. No, not that. Ew. Anything you have. Do you have an idea? Do you have an idea to bring to the table? No, I can tell you how bad that one is though. Yeah. Great. You're the worst. Big Mack with his biggest win. Oh, no. That's so much better. I mean, it's more than like the mountain. Why? Like the Hamilton mountain. Yeah. Oh, hammer time. Hammer time for Big Mack. It's hammer time. I have a hard time picturing Jim Nance get the words. Hammer time. Hammer time. I want. Now I want it more than anything in the world. Yeah. Okay. Nerves of steel in steel town. Oh, that's not bad. That's not bad. Yeah, that's okay. That's better. Better than like lives of mountains. Yeah, again, it's also an idea. So it's better than anything you came up with. I said hammer time. Yeah. That's not happening. Hammer time for Big Mack. It's not happening. It's not happening. All right. As I'll text those to Nancy, you're pretty nice. All right. I'm off Monday, but you'll be here on Monday. Yeah, obviously we're galing you with Tales from the RBC Canadian Open. Yeah. All right. Have a great weekend, everybody. This has been the fan morning show band, NSBren Gunning Sports said five night in the fan. Good morning. (upbeat music) (air whooshing)
