Existenz

Please forgive me my five-day absence; I've been pondering great questions of existence and major league's baseball's amateur draft, which is after all when non-existent players come into being (well, at least that's the way it works in my sim league).

In truth, though, I'm not one of those people (scouts) who actually has a clue when it comes to the ammy. The Jays took a HS pitcher? Cool. To me hearing that informs me exactly that they didn't take a college player and they didn't take a bat. No more, no less. In my mind, the difference between a Beede and a Bundy has far more to do with serial killers and Ed O'Neill than baseball.

From the so-called "experts," however (and I use the term loosely), I can pick up a couple of things from the draft. First of all, it sounds like they took someone with a strong commitment to college, which means one of two things: either they really are serious about going for the best talent, and are convinced that they can blow this Beede kid out of the water with ridiculous money...or AA is still trying to game the system.

The Jays also took the first Canadian of the draft - way down at 139, or about a hundred picks before that Gretzky kid. In an interview on Jays Connected last week, Robson, who's a skinny little pike, compared himself to Roy Halladay, and it for all the world sounded like a ten year old kid saying he wanted to be a fireman. Still, if he could conceivably model himself with any success after Halladay's style (as opposed to simply his regimen), it wouldn't be a terrible place to start.

Of course, the fact that they even took Robson at all should probably underscore that Anthopolous is playing, at least a little, to Joe Nationalist. Now that's not to say that Lawrie is a bad player or even that this kid is necessarily a reach that far down - but it's no coincidence that we're seeing guys like Loewen sign here, or that a 32-year-old Scott Richmond is still on the 40-man roster despite stinking up the joint in Vegas while a 29-year-old Josh Roenicke has packed his bags.

Of course, the most memorable instance of a team favouring the local boy in the past decade worked out pretty damn fine back in 2001 (wonky knees notwithstanding)...so I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom. I'm sure Anthopoulos will grin and cheerfully suggest in that devious CEO way of his that he absolutely thought that Robson was the best eligible player at that point in the draft. But don't be fooled. Joe Canadian sells, and AA is no less a used-car salesman than JP Ricciardi. He's just one with far more (Canadian) tact.

Anyway...back to my existential woes. This song, by itself, makes life worth living: