John Shea has a special report up over on ESPN's Hot Stove League that takes an advance look at 2007's most formidable batting orders. Shea ranks the lineups in this way:

• Mets
• Cubs 
• Yankees
• Indians
• Twins
• Rangers

He singles out the following players as impact batters:

• Beltran, Delgado, Alou, Wright, Green, Lo Duca, Valentine and Reyes
• Soriano, A. Ramirez, D. Lee
• Jeter, A. Rodriguez, Matsui, Giambi, Abreu
• Barfield, Dellucci, T. Nixon, Hafner, Sizemore
• Morneau, Mauer, Cuddyer, Hunter, Punto
• M. Young, Teixeira, Blalock, Sosa

It still feels weird to type Abreu's name in a Yankees list, and no one is certain if Sammy Sosa will even make the Rangers roster, but neither of these points cause me any surprise. The big ommission from this list? The Toronto Blue Jays!

The Jays had one of the most potent batting orders in all of baseball last season, and there's no reason to think that effort can't be duplicated in 2007.

Wells, Glaus, Overbay, Rios and Zaun make up the nucleus. Reed Johnson could also turn out a strong season at the plate. And let's not forget Frank Thomas! The team's weakness is up the middle: Royce Clayton and Aaron Hill. Even so, they don't take anything away from the strength of the rest of the order and they both have the capability to manage some clutch hits.

Seriously, how did Shea manage to overlook the Jays in this assessment?

This post was added on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Blue Jays . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.