Jay’s Acquire Canadian Player

We had a chance to catch up with Canadian born Baseball players this past spring in Peoria Arizona at the Mariners training camp along with Delta’s James Paxton.

It was great to have a chance to talk to both players who played their ball close to home and were never without words about speaking proudly about baseball in Canada.

Signing and playing is one thing, then it comes to the business aspect of sport, where players are moved from team to team all in the hopes of making that team or club a contender, which the Jay’s are looking at doing.

It’s also great to have the Jay’s Single A team playing out of Nat Bailey Stadium in Vancouver at 33rd and Main, which is only a short drive away, to which we attend several games and quite enjoy the ball.

Given the season the Jay’s had it was only a matter of time moves would be made and this week they have made a couple, first in moving Brett Lawrie (Canadian) out, now obtaining the rights of Michael Saunders from the Seattle Mariners for left-hander J.A. Happ.

This is a deal that definitely signals the departure of Melky Cabrera’s and gives GM Alex Anthopoulos extra money to work with to better the bullpen as far as depth is needed.

Saunders (28) is from Victoria and is projected by MLBTradeRumors.com to earn a dollar value of $2.9 million in salary arbitration, and becomes just the fourth outfielder on the club’s 40-man roster.

He’ll take over from Cabrera as the starting left-fielder, meaning the club’s attempts at re-signing the free agent are essentially over.

Anthopoulos told the media “Saunders is going to be our everyday left-fielder and we ultimately had to make a decision to go that route and albeit Melky’s a great player and he’s earned the right to do very well on the free agent market, no doubt about that.”

He continued “We would have loved to have had him back, but we have a lot of areas of need on the club and so many dollars to allocate to certain areas, but in making this trade for Saunders and opening an opportunity for (Aaron) Sanchez or maybe (Daniel) Norris or maybe we do something else in free agency, maybe we do something else in trade – it’s still early, it’s still fluid.

It was interesting that the first day of the 2014 season while in Seattle I caught up with Michael and as per general conversation goes I asked him “How he was feeling on opening day, given the fact that the Mariners were going to bring the Super Bowl Trophy to the game”

His reply was quick and to the point stating “It’s not as bad as the one that Mike Gillis is having today.” This as with his opening game, was the same day the Canucks fired Gillis as the Canucks GM.

The rest is history and we wish him all the best with his new club.