[Lefty Noob]

The Toronto Blue Jays are almost contenders. So what do they need to do to improve? Larry Millson of the Globe and Mail addresses this very issue in his Friday column. So what does he have to say?

globeandmail.com : For Blue Jays, pitching is the answer
LARRY MILLSON
From Friday's Globe and Mail

As [Toronto GM J.P.] Ricciardi looks toward the off-season with a yet undetermined but increased payroll, he must find ways to spend wisely to build depth, particularly in pitching. He's just not sure how he'll be able to do it.

But this season, there wasn't the depth in pitching to overcome injuries in the starting rotation to Gustavo Chacin and A.J. Burnett and the lacking performance of Josh Towers.

...

The problem is finding good pitching these days, and so it might involve signing a bunch of minor-league free agents and finding one who will earn a job at spring training or making a trade. It will be a sparse free-agent market this coming winter and the most attractive pitchers available, such as Barry Zito, are most likely beyond the Blue Jays' means.

Do you agree that they should stock up on minor league arms? Or is there something else the Blue Jays need to do in order to take it to the next level? Play Toronto GM for a bit and tell me how you'd fix up the club.

[MVB]

I think the Jays should start gathering young, yet major-league ready arms... Guys like Perez ( of the Mets), Sanchez and Olsen ( of the Marlins), Baker ( of the Twins), etc... should be signed by Toronto. Add those young arms, to Burnett and Halliday at the top, and you have a first rate pitching staff. Yeah it's a risk, but it'd be pretty cheap.

[mervinout]

ya but your seeing the model with the tigers might not hold up over the course of the year. I think if they want to compete with the red sox and the yankees year in and year out, they have to be smarter, they have to look at a certing part of the game to exploit, the oakland a's pitch well and attack the opp pitch count. I think some small market teams need to get a better undersanding of money ball, because alot of people teams said moneyball was screwed without mulder and hudson espically with harden on the dl most of the year but yet there winning the divison yet again.

[MJHMarc]

The Blue Jays have the players to be a championship team someday. They basically center their line-up around Vernon Wells, who is a pretty solid CF. In past years, Carlos Delgado has been their centered player who is actually the better player of the two. But now with the Mets, they focus their franchise on David Wright I think a bit more than shortstop, Jose Reyes. I think if the Blue Jays somehow acquire one more slugger, I hear a light call of "Playoffs" in my ear.