Should Romero be traded?

I read a thread recently over at the Sportsnet forums wherein a fan suggested that Romero is overrated and shouldn't be projected as the team's next Ace.  If Ricky-Ro is indeed an overrated player, shouldn't it follow that now would be the best time to trade him?  Living up to the name of the blog (I am even less knowledgeable than my blogging co-hort), let's examine the case for (or against) trading Ricky Romero.



Let's make a deal!



Looking at Romero's stat line, his ERA is slightly less than his career average at the moment with a losing record (though of course, the W-L record isn't everything, right?).  So far this year, he's only earned 45 runs, good for roughly 10% of the runs allowed by the Jays this season.  His K/BB is 2.25:1, which doesn't look fantastic but it's not terrible (either way, it's more strikes than walks); and his WHIP is 1.26.  Overall, from my perspective, Romero's numbers indicate that he is giving the Blue Jays ample chance to win and not costing them any games.



Obviously he is highly-regarded, or else he wouldn't have been named to the All-Star team.  People are indeed looking past his sub-.500 W-L record and see that he has some pretty good numbers in a very tough AL East division.  The point of this blog post, however, is not to ask whether or not Romero is overrated as a player.  The question is: should he be traded now?



I think that's a complicated answer, and one that depends mostly on Romero's place within the organization and the direction of the Blue Jays overall.  Technically, now is the perfect time to trade Romero.  His perceived value is high, and the Jays would receive a nice bounty in return for him from any team willing to take him on.  They would quickly discover that in a few years Romero will slot in the 3 or 4 spot in the rotation, and that the Jays have fleeced them (maybe that's a bit of an overstatement).

However, I believe that Romero is definitely a part of the long-term Jays plans.  I don't think that he will figure in as an Ace pitcher as some may think, instead fitting in as a #3 starter.  I don't know who in the Jays organization would land ahead of Ricky, but I think that's where he'll end up.  While it would be beneficial now to cash in for high-end players/prospects, that would just end up weakening the starting rotation. 

I'm cautiously optimistic that the Blue Jays have some of the pieces to put together a good run for the post-season in the near-future, and they're going to need to hold on to Romero - whether he projects as an Ace starter or falls down to the #3 spot.

The All-Star Ballot

The Jays are off today, so today's a good day to talk about the All-Star game.

As you may or may not have heard, All-Star voting is in full-swing.  The game itself isn't until July 12th, and voting ends before that at 11:59 PM ET on June 30th.  The rules are simple: per e-mail address, you have 25 votes.  So who goes from the Blue Jays?

The obvious first choice is Jose Bautista, so we're going to exclude him from the list.  I think a lot of people will end up voting him in anyway - at the time of writing (which was Friday afternoon, with only 25 games played), J-Bau is on pace for at least 28 homers, 45 RBI, and 90 walks.  Oh and 93 hits.  Is this a little unrealistic by the 76-game mark?  I'm not sure.  But I think Bautista will at the very least have 20 homers by that point, and still be leading the AL.

So who to choose?  Well, I guess it helps to pick only those Blue Jays who are actually on the ballot.  Excluding Bautista, these include: 1B Adam Lind, 2B Aaron Hill, SS Yunel Escobar, 3B Edwin Encarnacion, C JP Arencibia, DH Juan Rivera, OF Rajai Davis, and OF Travis Snider (who of course was just demoted - so I think he's out).  I decided to just look at OPS (I know, it's a sabermetric...but it's the one I vaguely understand) to figure out who has, up til now, given the Jays the best chance at scoring runs.

Arencibia has the highest OPS of all of them, with 0.805.  Escobar and Lind are pretty close, coming in at .757 and .730 respectively.  After that they're all respectable, with the exception of Davis - who is the lowest at .344, but to be fair, he's missed quite a few games due to injury..

Given this information, I think only Lind and Arencibia are the only Jays (again, other than Bautista) who have a shot at making the all-star team.  I'm going to go ahead and predict now that the only Jays player to go to Arizona will be Jose Bautista, with Lind coming very close but just losing out.  I don't think the other members of the Jays have made a big enough splash compared to Jose.  Still, I have at least four e-mail addresses so I am going to put my 100 votes to good use and get our Jays in there.