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Welcome Back, Closer

December 6th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

3:27 PM Central Alex Anthopoulos said last night that he could see the Blue Jays leaving Dallas with a closer, and then he made it happen.  Not one of the deals that was on the five-yard line on Sunday, this one came together very quickly Monday night when White Sox G.M. Kenny Williams finally said [...]

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Mr. E Gets The Call

December 6th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

9:52 AM Central It’s very difficult to put into words just how meaningful and significant it is that the Baseball Writers’ Association of America has chosen to honour Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing”, earning him a spot in the writers’ wing of [...]

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Anthopoulos Speaks! Day One

December 5th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

6:20 PM Central When the team you’re covering doesn’t transact any business on a given day at the Winter Meetings, the highlight of that day is the evening sit-down with the General Manager. Alex Anthopoulos met with the Toronto media for close to 45 minutes after a productive, but ultimately fruitless Day One here in [...]

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A Word Before Lunch

December 5th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

1:03 PM Central The first morning of the Winter Meetings brings with it a lot of in-settling, bearings-getting and lobby-wandering. You reacquaint yourself with a lot of faces that you generally see once or twice a year, there are a lot of waved hellos and a lot of “damnit, I know that guy” thoughts. And [...]

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In Big D, Finally!

December 5th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

11:41 PM Central After a long, arduous day of travelling from south Florida to north Florida to deep in the heart of Texas (simple summary – American Airlines sucks, Southwest Airlines is awesome), I touched down to see that with the Winter Meetings beginning Monday morning, Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated – and noted guy-to-whom-Scott-Boras-tells-things [...]

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Thoughts About Stuff

November 25th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

1:32 PM Eastern Since I’m headed down to the Caribbean tomorrow and will be off the grid until the Winter Meetings in Dallas (Dec. 5-8), I figured that I’d throw down a little something about the events of the week just past – namely the arbitration-offering decisions and the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Blue [...]

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N.L. MVP – Saving The Toughest For Last

November 22nd, 2011 by Mike Wilner

1:00 AM Eastern I’m having a pretty good run here with these post-season awards, as it turns out.  If you look back over the last week-plus of posts, you’ll see that I have correctly predicted the winner of each of the first seven BBWAA post-season awards handed out except for one – and the A.L. [...]

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A.L. MVP – Who Will It Be?

November 21st, 2011 by Mike Wilner

1:35 AM Eastern For the second straight season, Toronto was home to the best player in major-league baseball. Jose Bautista actually improved upon his historic 2010 campaign, posting career highs with a .305 batting average, .447 on-base percentage and 1.056 OPS.  His home run total dropped from 54 to 43, but he still led the [...]

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Back To The Future

November 18th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

4:10 PM Eastern The Blue Jays finally revealed what we’ve all been waiting for for a while now – the new logo and uniforms were unveiled this afternoon in a grand presentation at Rogers Centre. Team President Paul Beeston opened his remarks by proudly declaring that the Blue is now back in Blue Jays, and [...]

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N.L. Cy Young

November 16th, 2011 by Mike Wilner

9:15 PM Eastern There’s no question that Justin Verlander got all the publicity as far as starting pitching went this season, to the extent that the Cy Young race over in that other league was almost completely ignored. And that’s too bad, because it was an awfully good race, but just like the one in [...]

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