On Rolen, Halladay and why Ricciardi must go
So, Friday's Scott Rolen trade upset me (and many other Jays ' bloggers ) considerably, as you probably already know if you follow me on Twitter . I already broke it down a bit in my Last Call post at The Rookies Friday night, but I figured it was worthy of some further analysis. Without further ado, let's get to it. First off, let's consider what the Jays lost. Rolen was hitting .320/.370/.461 in Toronto this year with an OPS+* of 122. Looking at Baseball Reference 's batting leaderboards for this season, that's the 30th-highest OPS+ in the entire AL and the second-highest on the Jays (behind only Adam Lind ). Even more impressive is when you compare Rolen's OPS+ to that of other third basemen; only Michael Young (137), Alex Rodriguez (135) and Evan Longoria (127) rank ahead of Rolen among third basemen ( Kevin Youkilis is also ahead of Rolen with an OPS+ of 145, but he's only played 29 games at third this year and has played 59 games at fi...