General 2020 Blue Jays Discussion Thread

[Spanky99]

lulz it's just our man, Angelo! Luv this kid, he always gives us the scoop , from the DR folks, lol. keep being you Ang. D.R news is welcome. Edited March 13, 2020 by Spanky99

[Beans]

lulz it's just our man, Angelo! Luv this kid, he always gives us the scoop , from the DL folks, lol. keep being you Ang. D.R news is welcome.

 

I love it when you drunk post... <3

[Spanky99]

I love it when you drunk post... <3

 

I love when you're an *******.

[Beans]

“It’s a unique situation,” reliever Jordan Romano said. “I never thought we’d be in this situation. First and foremost, it’s [about] keeping people safe. It wouldn’t affect guys like me that much. If I get it, it’s not that big of a deal, but just thinking my grandparents were down here a week ago and they’re still in Florida. It’s just thinking of the older population and stuff like that. It’s definitely the right thing to do. Going forward, I really don’t know what’s going to happen, I don’t know how long we’re going to be delayed for, it’s just an unfortunate situation all around.”

 

https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/news/blue-jays-coronavirus-faq

[Spanky99]

“It’s a unique situation,” reliever Jordan Romano said. “I never thought we’d be in this situation. First and foremost, it’s [about] keeping people safe. It wouldn’t affect guys like me that much. If I get it, it’s not that big of a deal, but just thinking my grandparents were down here a week ago and they’re still in Florida. It’s just thinking of the older population and stuff like that. It’s definitely the right thing to do. Going forward, I really don’t know what’s going to happen, I don’t know how long we’re going to be delayed for, it’s just an unfortunate situation all around.”

 

https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/news/blue-jays-coronavirus-faq

 

Good smart kid... yall nuts.

[Brownie19]

Apparently we took a close look at Matt Harvey...

 

Jon Heyman reported on this week’s Big Time Baseball podcast that Matt Harvey worked out for the Blue Jays "several weeks" back.

Heyman says that the Jays "seriously" considered signing Harvey but ultimately decided against it. This is the first we've heard of any interest in Harvey this offseason. He posted a 7.09 ERA for the Angels last season before being released midseason.

[wilko]

Apparently we took a close look at Matt Harvey...

 

Jon Heyman reported on this week’s Big Time Baseball podcast that Matt Harvey worked out for the Blue Jays "several weeks" back.

Heyman says that the Jays "seriously" considered signing Harvey but ultimately decided against it. This is the first we've heard of any interest in Harvey this offseason. He posted a 7.09 ERA for the Angels last season before being released midseason.

 

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/03/matt-harvey-tried-out-for-blue-jays.html

[TheHurl]

Nice little article in the Athletic. All part of the Jays movement towards focusing on the holistic approach to player development...specifically on ingraining the mental side of performance as an integral part of coaching!

 

By John Lott Mar 11, 2020

 

In spring training 1986, Phil Cundari was rehabbing from elbow surgery following his first pro season in the Oakland A’s system. The tall righthander had just turned 22. A year earlier, on his way to a 1.74 ERA for his college team, he’d been full of hope. Since the surgery, unease had set in.

 

Shortly after he reported to camp in Mesa, Arizona, Cundari met Harvey Dorfman, a former high-school teacher, basketball coach and baseball writer who was gaining notice in a new career: sports psychologist.

 

The A’s had hired him. Dorfman called himself a mental skills coach.

 

What struck Cundari first was that Dorfman did not discriminate. Big-league star or obscure minor-leaguer, they were all the same to him.

 

“Harvey worked with everybody,” Cundari recalled. “He’d be in spring training and he’d be available to all players and coaches. He just had a special way about him in working with players and gaining their trust relatively quickly, and helping them, as he always said, ‘to get out of their own way.’ But he also did much deeper work than that.”

 

Dorfman and Cundari hit it off. “Harvey and I had a relationship that turned into a mentorship.”

 

Dorfman would go on to make a name for himself over a long career as a sports psychologist. And the mentorship that started in 1986 led Cundari to write three new chapters in his own career.

 

First, he became a psychotherapist. That was deliberate. Next, a decorated college coach. That was by accident.

 

And now, a minor-league pitching coach for the Toronto Blue Jays.

 

That, of course, was perfectly logical.

 

Cundari, 56, is the new pitching coach for the Class A Lansing Lugnuts, a full-season team playing out of Michigan’s state capital. He is a rarity, a pro coach who practised psychotherapy in a clinical setting before making his mark as a college coach.

 

The Blue Jays did not make a fuss about his hiring. His was one name among many in a press release announcing the Jays’ new and returning minor-league staff for the coming season. But in one sense, his hiring nudges the Jays further toward their goal of making mental-skills coaches and uniformed coaches equal in each other’s eyes.

 

Despite widespread acceptance of mental-performance coaching in baseball, many traditionalists consider it subordinate to the work of a uniformed coach. A few old-school types still liken it to a fire alarm, to be broken only in an emergency.

 

Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro addressed that issue when he spoke at the 2018 conference of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology in Toronto. The Jays view the practice of mental-performance skills in the same way they regard batting practice – as part of a player’s daily routine, Shapiro said at the keynote session.

 

Their goal is “true integration,” where mental skills are “just as important as swing mechanics, just as important as pitching mechanics” in the process of improving a player’s performance, Shapiro said.

 

Nobody is asking Cundari to wave that flag. But in a low-key way, he did just that in the college game, and as players pass through Lansing on their way up the ladder, they’ll deal with a coach who routinely brings a holistic approach to his work.

 

Mental coaching is not new. “We’ve been doing it for quite some time,” Cundari said, “but I think the level and the focus of the way it’s going to be done in the future will create another performance edge with our players.”

 

Cundari was born in Italy, but his New Jersey roots run deep. He grew up in New Jersey after his parents brought the family to the United States when he was 10. Eventually, he coached at two New Jersey colleges: 17 years at his alma mater, Seton Hall, then two at Rutgers.

 

Over the years, he forged a robust reputation – he was collegiate pitching coach of the year in 2011 – but was unwilling to leave home for the pro game until his son and daughter finished high school. “Family has always been at the forefront,” he said.

 

This year the timing was right. He put out the word that he was available and heard from several clubs. He picked the Blue Jays.

 

They liked him for his unusual skill set. Not only had he played and coached, but he also had 10 years’ experience as a licensed psychotherapist, counselling both amateur and pro athletes.

 

“Phil has a strong mental performance background, and he’s got a ton of experience as a pitcher and as a pitching coach. All of those things will help make us better,” said Gil Kim, the Blue Jays’ player development director. “It’s not always just about the data and technology. We’ve put a lot of focus into a development process that’s holistic and player-centric, where we can utilize every resource and angle towards improvement.”

 

Cundari was ripe for a move.

 

“The college game is a beautiful game, a great game,” he said. And he was proud of his record with undrafted high school pitchers who came to Seton Hall and Rutgers. (Twenty-eight of his pitchers advanced to pro ball.) But in recent years, recruiting and NCAA red tape consumed 70 percent of his time, he said. He yearned to spend more time coaching, in an environment rich in human and technical resources.

 

“The pro player can spend as much time with a strength coach as he wishes, and speak to the nutritionist regularly, and sit down with a pitching analyst for as much time as needs, and he can spend time with the pitching coach going over video and in-game performance,” he said. “That’s all available at (the pro) level. At the college level, it’s become a lot more challenging for the coach and a program to do those things. That’s one of the upsides of coaching a pro player, the amount of time you can spend with the player to help him in all areas. And that’s the way a player right now would rather work.”

 

There was a time when Harvey Dorfman’s name turned up often in baseball stories. An engaging character who once donned a uniform and dispensed advice in the Marlins’ dugout during games, he was the most prominent of the early baseball psychologists.

 

Roy Halladay carried a dog-eared copy of one of Dorfman’s books throughout his Hall of Fame career. Quoted in a 2015 Baseball Research Journal article about Dorfman, Dustin Pedroia said, “He’s the kind of guy who can figure out your personality in five seconds.” And in a recent story I wrote, former Blue Jays’ pitcher Todd Stottlemyre credited Dorfman with helping him turn his life around after the 1993 World Series.

 

Dorfman was just getting started in his new career in 1983 when he was introduced to legendary scout Karl Kuehl, who was running Oakland’s farm system. Kuehl had long been intrigued by sports psychology and had developed his own theories. He and Dorfman hit it off. Dorfman became a consultant to the club, later a full-time staffer.

 

Three years later, Cundari arrived in the A’s spring camp.

 

“Harvey was available, straightforward and realistic,” he recalled. “He was quick to help you focus and redirect you to a more positive and optimistic outlook. He guided you to act with more ownership in your goals and development. One of his favorite questions (was), ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

 

Just as it had interrupted the start of Cundari’s career, an arm injury ended it after four seasons in 1988. He had topped out in Double-A.

 

As he pondered the next steps, Dorfman’s muse remained close. He had always wanted to work in a “helping field,” he said, and learned that a degree in social work could lead to a clinical practice. He returned to Seton Hall, finished his undergraduate degree and earned a master’s in psychiatric social work.

 

But before he started his clinical practice, he received his first offer to coach – in Milan, Italy. Communication with pitchers there would not be an issue. Cundari speaks fluent Italian, and he had gone back to play in Florence for two summers while in college. This also would be a summer job. He was eager to accept.

 

“I figured it would be my last hurrah in baseball before I worked in the real world,” he told an interviewer for a story published in 2012.

 

Not only did Milan give him his first chance to coach pitchers, but he also spent time with the Mediolanum sports psychology team, noted for its work with soccer players.

 

Then he came home and hung out his shingle. Dorfman remained close.

 

“We would speak frequently,” Cundari said. “And he was instrumental in me beginning my practice and how to go about doing that as well.”

 

During his post-grad internships, he had worked with recreational and competitive athletes who struggled with mental health issues and substance abuse. After launching his practice, he focused on building mental performance skills in professional and amateur athletes, including many who attended Seton Hall.

 

That connection proved valuable in 2001 when the school’s pitching coach job became vacant. The head coach asked him to fill in until they could find a permanent replacement.

 

“It was supposed to be a one-year thing,” he said.

 

It turned into 17.

 

Pitching and psychotherapy dovetailed in his new job. He could relate to everything his pitchers were experiencing because he’d been there, and he understood how to help fix a mindset as well as an arm angle.

 

“It was just very organic to work with the players on the mental game as well as all the other developmental areas,” he said. “It all happened very naturally.”

 

Eventually, so did his job with the Blue Jays.

 

Dorfman, who died in 2011, was a pioneer in sports psychology and its most famous practitioner. He never claimed to work miracles. But his results spoke for themselves. He worked for three major-league baseball teams, two of which – the A’s and Marlins – awarded him World Series rings. Near the end of his career, he consulted exclusively for the Scott Boras Corporation.

 

In a Collegiate Baseball story about his coaching award, Cundari listed some of the techniques he took from Dorfman and used in his mental-performance coaching:

 

Accept no excuses.

Stress the importance of concentration, courage, and goal-setting.

Urge players to write every day in a training log to develop a routine of self-examination.

Encourage pitchers to follow the same mental routine before each pitch. Breathe. Relax. Concentrate. In moments of stress, fall back on your routine.

Coach players not only to visualize success but to go back and visualize their failures too. “Mentally, I feel you recover much quicker if you can visualize your failure and then visualize fixing it,” Cundari said.

Quoted in his Baseball Research Journal profile, Dorfman listed three qualifications for a good mental-skills coach.

 

“Obviously you have to know psychology, what’s inside people’s heads,” he said. “Two, you have to be a communicator. You have to be able to talk to players in their language. The third thing is, you have to know the game.”

 

The Blue Jays believe Cundari checks those boxes. As a result, the pitchers in Lansing will likely hear some Harvey Dorfman stories this summer. Cundari will make sure those lessons aren’t lost.

[Deadpool]

Nice little article in the Athletic. All part of the Jays movement towards focusing on the holistic approach to player development...specifically on ingraining the mental side of performance as an integral part of coaching!

 

By John Lott Mar 11, 2020

 

In spring training 1986, Phil Cundari was rehabbing from elbow surgery following his first pro season in the Oakland A’s system. The tall righthander had just turned 22. A year earlier, on his way to a 1.74 ERA for his college team, he’d been full of hope. Since the surgery, unease had set in.

 

Shortly after he reported to camp in Mesa, Arizona, Cundari met Harvey Dorfman, a former high-school teacher, basketball coach and baseball writer who was gaining notice in a new career: sports psychologist.

 

The A’s had hired him. Dorfman called himself a mental skills coach.

 

What struck Cundari first was that Dorfman did not discriminate. Big-league star or obscure minor-leaguer, they were all the same to him.

 

“Harvey worked with everybody,” Cundari recalled. “He’d be in spring training and he’d be available to all players and coaches. He just had a special way about him in working with players and gaining their trust relatively quickly, and helping them, as he always said, ‘to get out of their own way.’ But he also did much deeper work than that.”

 

Dorfman and Cundari hit it off. “Harvey and I had a relationship that turned into a mentorship.”

 

Dorfman would go on to make a name for himself over a long career as a sports psychologist. And the mentorship that started in 1986 led Cundari to write three new chapters in his own career.

 

First, he became a psychotherapist. That was deliberate. Next, a decorated college coach. That was by accident.

 

And now, a minor-league pitching coach for the Toronto Blue Jays.

 

That, of course, was perfectly logical.

 

Cundari, 56, is the new pitching coach for the Class A Lansing Lugnuts, a full-season team playing out of Michigan’s state capital. He is a rarity, a pro coach who practised psychotherapy in a clinical setting before making his mark as a college coach.

 

The Blue Jays did not make a fuss about his hiring. His was one name among many in a press release announcing the Jays’ new and returning minor-league staff for the coming season. But in one sense, his hiring nudges the Jays further toward their goal of making mental-skills coaches and uniformed coaches equal in each other’s eyes.

 

Despite widespread acceptance of mental-performance coaching in baseball, many traditionalists consider it subordinate to the work of a uniformed coach. A few old-school types still liken it to a fire alarm, to be broken only in an emergency.

 

Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro addressed that issue when he spoke at the 2018 conference of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology in Toronto. The Jays view the practice of mental-performance skills in the same way they regard batting practice – as part of a player’s daily routine, Shapiro said at the keynote session.

 

Their goal is “true integration,” where mental skills are “just as important as swing mechanics, just as important as pitching mechanics” in the process of improving a player’s performance, Shapiro said.

 

Nobody is asking Cundari to wave that flag. But in a low-key way, he did just that in the college game, and as players pass through Lansing on their way up the ladder, they’ll deal with a coach who routinely brings a holistic approach to his work.

 

Mental coaching is not new. “We’ve been doing it for quite some time,” Cundari said, “but I think the level and the focus of the way it’s going to be done in the future will create another performance edge with our players.”

 

Cundari was born in Italy, but his New Jersey roots run deep. He grew up in New Jersey after his parents brought the family to the United States when he was 10. Eventually, he coached at two New Jersey colleges: 17 years at his alma mater, Seton Hall, then two at Rutgers.

 

Over the years, he forged a robust reputation – he was collegiate pitching coach of the year in 2011 – but was unwilling to leave home for the pro game until his son and daughter finished high school. “Family has always been at the forefront,” he said.

 

This year the timing was right. He put out the word that he was available and heard from several clubs. He picked the Blue Jays.

 

They liked him for his unusual skill set. Not only had he played and coached, but he also had 10 years’ experience as a licensed psychotherapist, counselling both amateur and pro athletes.

 

“Phil has a strong mental performance background, and he’s got a ton of experience as a pitcher and as a pitching coach. All of those things will help make us better,” said Gil Kim, the Blue Jays’ player development director. “It’s not always just about the data and technology. We’ve put a lot of focus into a development process that’s holistic and player-centric, where we can utilize every resource and angle towards improvement.”

 

Cundari was ripe for a move.

 

“The college game is a beautiful game, a great game,” he said. And he was proud of his record with undrafted high school pitchers who came to Seton Hall and Rutgers. (Twenty-eight of his pitchers advanced to pro ball.) But in recent years, recruiting and NCAA red tape consumed 70 percent of his time, he said. He yearned to spend more time coaching, in an environment rich in human and technical resources.

 

“The pro player can spend as much time with a strength coach as he wishes, and speak to the nutritionist regularly, and sit down with a pitching analyst for as much time as needs, and he can spend time with the pitching coach going over video and in-game performance,” he said. “That’s all available at (the pro) level. At the college level, it’s become a lot more challenging for the coach and a program to do those things. That’s one of the upsides of coaching a pro player, the amount of time you can spend with the player to help him in all areas. And that’s the way a player right now would rather work.”

 

There was a time when Harvey Dorfman’s name turned up often in baseball stories. An engaging character who once donned a uniform and dispensed advice in the Marlins’ dugout during games, he was the most prominent of the early baseball psychologists.

 

Roy Halladay carried a dog-eared copy of one of Dorfman’s books throughout his Hall of Fame career. Quoted in a 2015 Baseball Research Journal article about Dorfman, Dustin Pedroia said, “He’s the kind of guy who can figure out your personality in five seconds.” And in a recent story I wrote, former Blue Jays’ pitcher Todd Stottlemyre credited Dorfman with helping him turn his life around after the 1993 World Series.

 

Dorfman was just getting started in his new career in 1983 when he was introduced to legendary scout Karl Kuehl, who was running Oakland’s farm system. Kuehl had long been intrigued by sports psychology and had developed his own theories. He and Dorfman hit it off. Dorfman became a consultant to the club, later a full-time staffer.

 

Three years later, Cundari arrived in the A’s spring camp.

 

“Harvey was available, straightforward and realistic,” he recalled. “He was quick to help you focus and redirect you to a more positive and optimistic outlook. He guided you to act with more ownership in your goals and development. One of his favorite questions (was), ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

 

Just as it had interrupted the start of Cundari’s career, an arm injury ended it after four seasons in 1988. He had topped out in Double-A.

 

As he pondered the next steps, Dorfman’s muse remained close. He had always wanted to work in a “helping field,” he said, and learned that a degree in social work could lead to a clinical practice. He returned to Seton Hall, finished his undergraduate degree and earned a master’s in psychiatric social work.

 

But before he started his clinical practice, he received his first offer to coach – in Milan, Italy. Communication with pitchers there would not be an issue. Cundari speaks fluent Italian, and he had gone back to play in Florence for two summers while in college. This also would be a summer job. He was eager to accept.

 

“I figured it would be my last hurrah in baseball before I worked in the real world,” he told an interviewer for a story published in 2012.

 

Not only did Milan give him his first chance to coach pitchers, but he also spent time with the Mediolanum sports psychology team, noted for its work with soccer players.

 

Then he came home and hung out his shingle. Dorfman remained close.

 

“We would speak frequently,” Cundari said. “And he was instrumental in me beginning my practice and how to go about doing that as well.”

 

During his post-grad internships, he had worked with recreational and competitive athletes who struggled with mental health issues and substance abuse. After launching his practice, he focused on building mental performance skills in professional and amateur athletes, including many who attended Seton Hall.

 

That connection proved valuable in 2001 when the school’s pitching coach job became vacant. The head coach asked him to fill in until they could find a permanent replacement.

 

“It was supposed to be a one-year thing,” he said.

 

It turned into 17.

 

Pitching and psychotherapy dovetailed in his new job. He could relate to everything his pitchers were experiencing because he’d been there, and he understood how to help fix a mindset as well as an arm angle.

 

“It was just very organic to work with the players on the mental game as well as all the other developmental areas,” he said. “It all happened very naturally.”

 

Eventually, so did his job with the Blue Jays.

 

Dorfman, who died in 2011, was a pioneer in sports psychology and its most famous practitioner. He never claimed to work miracles. But his results spoke for themselves. He worked for three major-league baseball teams, two of which – the A’s and Marlins – awarded him World Series rings. Near the end of his career, he consulted exclusively for the Scott Boras Corporation.

 

In a Collegiate Baseball story about his coaching award, Cundari listed some of the techniques he took from Dorfman and used in his mental-performance coaching:

 

Accept no excuses.

Stress the importance of concentration, courage, and goal-setting.

Urge players to write every day in a training log to develop a routine of self-examination.

Encourage pitchers to follow the same mental routine before each pitch. Breathe. Relax. Concentrate. In moments of stress, fall back on your routine.

Coach players not only to visualize success but to go back and visualize their failures too. “Mentally, I feel you recover much quicker if you can visualize your failure and then visualize fixing it,” Cundari said.

Quoted in his Baseball Research Journal profile, Dorfman listed three qualifications for a good mental-skills coach.

 

“Obviously you have to know psychology, what’s inside people’s heads,” he said. “Two, you have to be a communicator. You have to be able to talk to players in their language. The third thing is, you have to know the game.”

 

The Blue Jays believe Cundari checks those boxes. As a result, the pitchers in Lansing will likely hear some Harvey Dorfman stories this summer. Cundari will make sure those lessons aren’t lost.

 

From the interviews I've read with him, Kloffenstein and this dude are going to be a REALLY good match. Hopefully he ends up in Lansing sooner rather than later.

[AintNoThang]

Will Pearson make an appearance this year?

[Krylian]

Will Pearson make an appearance this year?

 

Probably at a hospital to get tested for Covid-19.

[Deadpool]

Will Pearson make an appearance this year?

 

Will anyone?

[dauv]

Does anyone know what would happen if the MLB season gets canceled. Would they do a 30 team lottery where all teams have equal odds (since no one played) or would the blue jays get better odds being that they finished 5th to last in their last season played?

[BlueRocky]

Does anyone know what would happen if the MLB season gets canceled. Would they do a 30 team lottery where all teams have equal odds (since no one played) or would the blue jays get better odds being that they finished 5th to last in their last season played?

 

There’s discussions now about the whole draft process. Everything has turned upside down with the college season cancelled and amateur baseball suspended. They’re suspecting most of the seniors would just graduate and not return for next year.

 

There’s a wack of eligibility and service time issues attached to having just a 4 week season. Players are wondering what will happen to their scholarships during a cancelled season.

 

It’s literally a logistical nightmare if the draft gets cancelled this year. Would guys have to wait till next year to get drafted? Will it be a shortened draft with only 20 rounds? Will it be postponed till fall? Generally there’s amateur scouting that happens over the summer for 2021 draft, will that even still happen? We have no idea at this point.

 

The path of least damage seems to be if they just go through with the draft, despite a lot of names have barely played this season and teams not having as much data on guys.

 

I still don’t think this entire MLB season will be cancelled, things might get rolling in May/June and we have an 80-game season to salvage. But that’s probably best case scenario.

[Krylian]

They did a hybrid of that if I recall, in the NHL when the season was cancelled, in the Crosby draft. I think they looked at the previous 3 seasons for each club, and based on points, put them in 3 groups...bottom 10, middle 10, top 10...then did a lottery to sort out the positioning in each group. I could be wrong, but I think it was something along those lines.

[dauv]

Here is how the NHL did their 2005 lottery (according to Wikipedia) Teams were weighted based on playoff appearances in the last three completed seasons (2001-02, 02-03 and 03-04), and first overall picks in the last four drafts (2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004). Three lottery balls each were assigned to teams which had not qualified for any of those playoffs and received no first overall picks in that period. Teams which had one playoff appearance or first overall pick in those years were given two lottery balls. All other teams received one lottery ball.

 

I still expect the MLB draft to happen regardless of a cancel season or not, just wondering if a canceled season what a 2021 MLB draft would look like. I generated a list based on wins by teams in each of the 5 seasons

 

if they use the last 3 years, Jays would have the 9th pick or 9th best odds if lottery

 

If they use the last 4 years, Jays would have the 11th pick or 11th best odds if lottery

 

If they use the last 5 years, Jays would have the 11th pick or 11th best odds if lottery

 

here is the lists

 

Seasons '19 '18 '17 '16 '15

Detroit 47 64 64 86 74

Baltimore 54 47 75 89 81

Miami 57 63 77 79 71

KC 59 58 80 81 95

CWS 72 62 67 78 76

SD 70 66 71 68 74

Cinci 75 67 68 68 64

SF 77 73 64 87 84

Toronto 67 73 76 89 93

Texas 78 67 78 95 88

Pittsburgh 69 82 75 78 98

Philly 81 80 66 71 63

LAA 72 80 80 74 85

NYM 86 77 70 87 90

Seattle 68 89 78 86 76

Colorado 71 91 87 75 68

Atlanta 97 90 72 68 67

Arizona 85 82 93 69 79

STL 91 88 83 86 100

Minnesota 101 78 85 59 83

TB 96 90 80 68 80

Oakland 97 97 75 69 68

Milwaukee 89 96 86 73 68

Chi Cubs 84 95 92 103 97

Washing 93 82 97 95 83

NYY 103 100 71 84 87

Boston 84 108 93 93 78

Cleveland 93 91 102 94 81

LAD 106 92 104 91 92

Houston 107 103 101 84 86

[Spanky99]

Huh... Panik made the team, Panik was added to the 40 man, and Diaz to the 60 day earlier this week. Was unaware...

 

[Spanky99]

[Beans]

Huh... Panik made the team, Panik was added to the 40 man, and Diaz to the 60 day earlier this week. Was unaware...

 

 

Joe Panik sucks... what a strange move. A soft groundball hitter is a waste of roster space.

[Orgfiller]

Joe Panik sucks... what a strange move. A soft groundball hitter is a waste of roster space.

 

He's just a bench player and doesn't even project that badly. This isn't that weird of a move, if he sucks he'll be gone in a month, and he's not blocking anyone that's more deserving of PT.

[Abomination]

Joe Panik sucks... what a strange move. A soft groundball hitter is a waste of roster space.

 

Panik is basically Sogard with a slightly better bat. He likely won't break out to what Sogard did last year, but he's probably worth the roster space.

[Beans]

He's just a bench player and doesn't even project that badly. This isn't that weird of a move, if he sucks he'll be gone in a month, and he's not blocking anyone that's more deserving of PT.

 

Panik is basically Sogard with a slightly better bat. He likely won't break out to what Sogard did last year, but he's probably worth the roster space.

 

Let's see... out of all regulars last season, he was bottom 13% in exit-velo, bottom 12% in xSLG, bottom 7% in WOBA, bottom 7% in hard-hit rate, bottom 2% in barrel percentage, and bottom 1% in xWOBAcon.

 

Oh, and he can't run.

 

He f***ing sucks.

[Abomination]

Let's see... out of all regulars last season, he was bottom 13% in exit-velo, bottom 12% in xSLG, bottom 7% in WOBA, bottom 7% in hard-hit rate, bottom 2% in barrel percentage, and bottom 1% in xWOBAcon.

 

Oh, and he can't run.

 

He f***ing sucks.

 

Steamer has him projected at 94 wRC+, plus defense, and 0.7 WAR in 1/3 of a season. Nothing wrong with that for a bench player. He's not here to hit home runs.

[jerb]

 

Jamie Campbell

@SNETCampbell

 

Here comes #BlueJays baseball on @Sportsnet:

 

Sunday at 3:30et/12:30pac Oakland-Toronto April 26, 2019: Guerrero's debut.

 

Monday at 8:00et/5:00pac. 1992 ALCS Game 4 Toronto-Oakland: the Alomar home run.

[Spanky99]

 

Jamie Campbell

@SNETCampbell

 

Here comes #BlueJays baseball on @Sportsnet:

 

Sunday at 3:30et/12:30pac Oakland-Toronto April 26, 2019: Guerrero's debut.

 

Monday at 8:00et/5:00pac. 1992 ALCS Game 4 Toronto-Oakland: the Alomar home run.

 

It's about time.

[Spanky99]

Steamer has him projected at 94 wRC+, plus defense, and 0.7 WAR in 1/3 of a season. Nothing wrong with that for a bench player. He's not here to hit home runs.

 

Yeah, he's certainly no one to worry over, might get good results.

[Virgil_Hiltz]

Panik is basically Sogard with a slightly better bat. He likely won't break out to what Sogard did last year, but he's probably worth the roster space.

 

Panik IMHO isn't here to help the Jays win, with any sort of a decent season the jays probably could recoup some prospects (or "suspects") in mid-season (typical season...who knows with this one if we have one).

I look at signing some low end vets for a rebuilding team as a cheap and easy way to collect assets....nothing more...nothing less.

[Grant77]

Panik IMHO isn't here to help the Jays win, with any sort of a decent season the jays probably could recoup some prospects (or "suspects") in mid-season (typical season...who knows with this one if we have one).

I look at signing some low end vets for a rebuilding team as a cheap and easy way to collect assets....nothing more...nothing less.

 

That might be a nice bonus if we can get some assets, but we really needed a backup infielder on the bench. He's here to fill that role and was the best player available at our price point.

[glory]

Panik actually resembled a big league player in his career, which is more than Drury has done in the past few years. As long as Montoyo doesn't overplay him, he's fine as a bench player.

[The Iceman]

Let's see... out of all regulars last season, he was bottom 13% in exit-velo, bottom 12% in xSLG, bottom 7% in WOBA, bottom 7% in hard-hit rate, bottom 2% in barrel percentage, and bottom 1% in xWOBAcon.

 

Oh, and he can't run.

 

He f***ing sucks.

 

HMMM, what has he accomplished?

Gold glove player

All star

geez what a terrible choice to be a bench/depth player. I would much rather have career negative WAR player Drury...NOT.