Daily Duce: Tuesday, October 17th

Something every sour-ass Jays fan needs to see, by way of Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe. Cafardo talks to Yankees GM Brian Cashman, whose team he suggests is following (and bettering) the “Red Sox blueprint” for team building. “I tried to take what successful franchises like the Red Sox and Indians did and what Theo and Ben and [Cleveland president of baseball operations] Chris Antonetti were doing and how they handled their young players with their amateur scouting and drafting and building a farm system. I looked at everything.” So… the GM of one of the four best teams in the American League is following the pattern of two of the others — one of which is being run by the guys now running the Jays, and the other which was run by a GM who now runs player development for the Jays. And there are Jays fans that don’t like the way things are going here? Hooookay.

Speaking of, we can glean some interesting insight into how the Blue Jays front office operates over at FanGraphs, as they pass along some job postings from the club: one for a baseball operations intern for each of the club’s minor league affiliates, one for a scouting intern, and one for an analytics intern. If you’re qualified, go apply! But even if not, have a read. Some interesting stuff in there.

Jays Journal scoops up some words from Devon Travis, who recently appeared on a playoff pregame show with Mike Wilner on the Fan 590, giving all sorts of praise to John Gibbons. “I get why that it’s easy to point fingers at Gibby but I think if anybody sat down and had a conversation with Gibby or sat with him in the locker room and watched how he went about his business or watch how he handles the players throughout the locker room, I don’t think there is a better personality to handle all the personalities in a big league locker room,” he said. #GibbyTheBest

Nathan Graham and Emmett Rosenbaum of Baseball Prospectus look at some of the best prospects to grace the Midwest League this season, which means a whole lot of glowing words about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. Vlad, most impressively, gets the nod for having the best hit tool of any MWL prospect this year, just narrowly beating Bichette. The thing about the hit tool is, of course, that for hitters it’s kinda the most important one.

Blue Jays From Away gives out some position-by-position organizational awards for the Jays’ minor leaguers in 2017.

More awards stuff, as Nick Dika of BP Toronto hands out some unconventional hardware for some unconventional accomplishments among members of the 2017 Jays.

Over at Clutchlings, it’s genuine — albeit mild — optimism regarding the Jays and Shohei Otani. No, really! Read it!

Bluebird Banter gives us a brief history of Marcus Stroman and J.P. Arencibia roasting Gregg Zaun on Twitter — something they continued doing on Monday (and that I wrote about after their last bout, earlier in the month).

Elsewhere at BBB, some great uplift from Kate Stanwick, who takes through the best moments of the Jays 2017 season… which actually existed. Seriously!

“A Toronto-area police force says it has recovered a pair of Blue Jays rings that were stolen more than two decades ago,” says a report from the Globe and Mail. ?”Peel regional police say a personalized 1992 Blue Jays World Series Championship ring and an Anniversary Blue Jays ring, along with jewelry and other items, were taken from a home in Mississauga, Ont., on April 13, 1994.” The “former Blue Jays executive” whose ring was lost declined to be named. Interesting!

Over at BlueJays.com, Gregor Chisholm has a fresh edition of his Inbox up, which… maybe I should hijack that this week, because — housekeeping alert! — I think we’re going to hold off on the ol’ VICE mailbag until after the playoffs end and some real Jays news actually begins, rather than continuing to beat the dead horse that is The Donaldson Question and the other typical off-season stuff that we have lots and lots of time to deal with in November and beyond.

Elsewhere from MLB.com, Mike Rosenbaum takes a look at the Jays’ contingent in the Arizona Fall League.

Graham Milne of Graham’s Crackers shares his memories of José Bautista and his thoughts on the end of an era.

Sad news from over the weekend, as former Jays farmhand Daniel Webb, who was dealt to the White Sox when the club reacquired Jason Frasor in 2011, was killed in an ATV accident in Tennessee. The Toronto Star passes along the AP report. RIP.

Over at the Blue Jay Hunter, Ian’s got a clip of Josh Donaldson talking fantasy football with Liberty Village’s own FNTSY Sports Network. JD is a competitive dude, so him being into fantasy sports is hardly surprising.

Not Jays related, but the Macon Telegraph tells us that the Atlanta Braves’ front office mess is… well… uh… a mess.

Lastly, Roy Halladay bought a plane… or something.

There’s some kind of accompanying video, too! But the only thing that really needs to go along with the story is this tweet from your boy GROF: