Blue Jays GM Anthopoulos Touts Freedom To Increase Payroll Heading Into '13 Season

Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos "has significantly more money to work with as he prepares to mine the free-agent market for starting pitchers this winter," according to John Lott of the NATIONAL POST. Anthopoulos said, “It’s not a bottomless pit. It doesn’t mean we can have everyone we want. We’re going to have to be creative and make some things fit, but it’s definitely more to work with than we did last year and that will certainly be exciting.” He added that “'quality' rotation help is his top off-season priority." Anthopoulos also said that manager John Farrell "will be back, and hinted -- for the first time -- that the skipper’s contract could be extended sometime next year." Anthopoulos "hopes to retain prospects he might have otherwise traded in order to make 'major additions' to the rotation." He said, “If there’s a little more flexibility from a payroll standpoint, free agency might make more sense. If you look at the return and you can say we get to save these four players in a trade and spend the dollars on a free agent, that ultimately might make more sense" (NATIONAL POST, 10/4).

KIND OF BLUE: In Toronto, Cathal Kelly wrote Blue Jays employees are "hired to be fired." That is "true everywhere, but nowhere more so than at a ball club without the willingness to overreach." Getting a job with the Blue Jays "must seem like getting hired on at a coal mine, being handed a shovel and told to dig until you hit China." Blue Jays Owner Rogers Communications has "only one role in this process -- to sign cheques." But the company "won't sign the cheques." Rogers has "identified a niche in our market and expertly exploited it." The niche "is not baseball," but "failure." Toronto is "mired in sporting failure, which suits everyone who owns a sports team and no one who roots for one." As long as "no one is succeeding, everyone gets to float along on a profitable raft of mediocrity." Kelly: "If the choice is between rotten vegetables and rancid meat, fans still have to eat" (TORONTOSTAR.com, 10/3).