Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Ohka, Ohka, Ohka, OHKA, Ohhka!

It looks like the Jays will add Tomo Ohka to their candidates for the starter's job. Ohka, a 29 year old Japanese pitcher, is ocming off an injury riddled season. Allegedly, his agent states that Tomo took less money to play for Toronto, win and prove he was healthy. His contract is for $1.5 million and another $1.5 million in incentives. Interestingly, even if the Jays have 11 startets for five spots...

Ricciardi might not be done his tinkering, saying that another move or two to further deepen the pitching staff remained possible.


''If there's one thing this game teaches you it's that you can never have enough pitching, enough depth,'' said Ricciardi. ''We know we're going to need more than five starters.''

Ohka will have to battle back from his worse MLB season and get accustomed to the National League to fight off the likes of Thompson, Marcum, Janssen, Towers, Taubenheim, McGowan, Banks for the last two spots in the rotation. The Jays weren't able to find a great starting SS nor a great #3 pitcher this off-season so instead, Ricciardi is accumulating as much talent as possible at the positions to create a competition that may find a diamond in the rough. Think of it as the MLB version of American Idol...At the very least, injuries won't affect the Jays AS much and there's gonna be a good flock of players in AAA this season.

More updates coming with PECOTA and those GM rankings we saw...




2 comments:

Nick Burton said...

You may want to edit the post big guy... not too sure how used to the NATIONAL league Ohka will have to become, seeing as he's leaving it to flip leagues... just a thought though...
Oh, also, there was a story in the USA Today not too long ago about the Jays' spending that I'm surprised you didn't make mention of. Just a thought.
Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Hey man don't slag the guy...I check his blog like 5 times a day!