General Blue Jays Discussion Thread (2022)

[Stangstag]

This didn't age well.

 

Did not

[Laika]

Do you think swinging strike percentage is more important than K/9? Are pitchers who get strikeouts via swinging strikes better than pitchers who get more called strikeouts? Isn't the theory that you simply want strikeouts from your relivers because that means there's less balls in play? Why do we care if that strikeout is produced by swinging strikes instead of called strikes?

 

re: bold - can you show me this evidence? We took acquired Beniot, Grilli and Liriano in 2016 and they were lights out (after being s*** for their previous teams that year). 2017 had Dom Leone come out of nowhere to be dominant and we pulled Joe Smith back from the dead. 2018 we turned around Seunghwan Oh and acquired Ken Giles and turned him back into a stud (until we broke him). 2019 we got great innings out of Wilmer Font and we helped Daniel Hudson turn it around. 2020 was Dolis and Anthony Bass ( we didn't fix Bass, but he was solid for us). 2021 was the emergence of Romano and Mayza and we turned Cimber around.

 

What do the best teams do that we don't do? They turn failed starters into shut down bullpen arms? Is that what you're getting at? That's Pearson and Merryweather (and Romano) for us - I don't know how you blame anyone for what's happened to Pearson - essentially none of his injuries are arm/pitching related. I guess you can say we ought to have turned Anthony Kay isn't Andrew Miller by now?

 

devil's advocate here

 

Toronto might not be chugging on all cylinders when it comes to retaining the right arms or getting the most out of them

 

IIRC Tepera and Loup both saw performance or peripheral improvements after leaving

 

They sold Dominic Leone and he is good I think

 

Jason Adam always had great stuff, they let him get away

 

Bryan Baker was a Toronto farm hand who only got a cup of coffee here now he has more fWAR for Baltimore than any Jays reliever has right now

 

Joel Payamps would look better on this roster right now than half of the current relievers

 

what the f*** is going on with Pearson and Merryweather

 

what the f*** is going on with Romano's command

 

why could they never make Borucki an even remotely useful RP?

 

why are the depth long men / SP / RP options in AAAA like Hatch and Kay and Francis just crumbling into a nothing soup of uselessness?

 

 

 

I am fully aware that you could do a list like this for most organizations, even the good ones

[Dagagad]

Do you think swinging strike percentage is more important than K/9? Are pitchers who get strikeouts via swinging strikes better than pitchers who get more called strikeouts? Isn't the theory that you simply want strikeouts from your relivers because that means there's less balls in play? Why do we care if that strikeout is produced by swinging strikes instead of called strikes?

 

re: bold - can you show me this evidence? We took acquired Beniot, Grilli and Liriano in 2016 and they were lights out (after being s*** for their previous teams that year). 2017 had Dom Leone come out of nowhere to be dominant and we pulled Joe Smith back from the dead. 2018 we turned around Seunghwan Oh and acquired Ken Giles and turned him back into a stud (until we broke him). 2019 we got great innings out of Wilmer Font and we helped Daniel Hudson turn it around. 2020 was Dolis and Anthony Bass ( we didn't fix Bass, but he was solid for us). 2021 was the emergence of Romano and Mayza and we turned Cimber around.

 

What do the best teams do that we don't do? They turn failed starters into shut down bullpen arms? Is that what you're getting at? That's Pearson and Merryweather (and Romano) for us - I don't know how you blame anyone for what's happened to Pearson - essentially none of his injuries are arm/pitching related. I guess you can say we ought to have turned Anthony Kay isn't Andrew Miller by now?

 

We are 20th in K/9 in the bullpen. We aren’t exactly lighting it up there either. I always think swinging strike rate is a better indicator of stuff than called strikes. That’s a small quibble I guess.

 

Failed starters into shutdown arms is kind of exactly what I’m talking about. I think we have a pretty good track record at old, used to be good, put him in a new environment and tweak his pitch mix. That’s not revolutionary though. That can’t be all that you do.

 

I play a lot of fantasy, dynasty, and I consume alot of content from guys who are as close to experts as possible on the public facing side on pitch design and pitching dev. They never mention us. They don’t say bad things about almost anyone (except Kansas City) but they will say good things and the teams that are mentioned as being cutting edge or doing something interesting are not us. I think that matters personally, especially as it usually backed up by real life results. You can call that anecdotal but relief pitching is already such a small sample, volataile mess that is hard to separate signal from noise unless you actually talk to people in front offices.

 

The problem could be lots of different things too which is impossible to figure out from outside.

 

- we could be misevaluating, bad scouting or analysis

- we could be good at scouting or analysis but picking the wrong players for our dev group style

- we could have a mediocre dev group at the majors or in the minors or both

- we could be super unlucky … maybe possible

- we could have none of those problems right now and actually our pitch dev is much improved at all levels but there just hasn’t been enough time to make the trades to bring in the talent in the last few years

- we could be too reluctant to spend assets to acquire pure stuff in the bullpen and dev has nothing to work with

- we could be behind the curve on identifying underrated attributes in pitchers or projecting changes on to pitchers based on their arm slot, movement or whatever

 

 

You could probably add 10 more things to that list but all actually know is that there is something off there right now.

 

As an example of something you hear, I heard that that SF pumps out pitchers that throw 85mph+ sliders. You hear that Cleveland has fantastic synergy between scouting and dev so they pick players that dev have shown they can improve. You hear that seattle has some of the most cutting edge pitching dev in the majors. You hear that the dodgers teach everyone a sweeping slider. There are more of these. My ears will perk up when someone I respect says that about us.

 

Anecdotes yes but also identifiable signs of a philosophy. I struggle to see that with us.

 

I didn’t throw the unlucky one in there for balance. I absolutely believe you can have an off year and just be unlucky. Two in a row though is less likely.

[Sorrow]

I wonder how much performance degradation in arms like Romano, Kay, Francis etc. is the banning of Spidertack.

[Ray]

At the very least, there's some very intriguing arms in the minors this regime has drafted/signed that have seen significant upticks in velocity and stuff. Ricky Tiedemann, Hayden Juenger, Yosver Zulueta, Trent Palmer etc. It's possible it's taken this long to overhaul pitching development and we're just now starting to see the effects percolate in the minors. I know that the pitching lab in the Player Development Complex didn't get going until the middle of last year.

 

What hurts is that none of Anthony Kay, Trent Thornton, Thomas Hatch, Julian Merryweather, Nate Pearson, Ryan Borucki, even TJ Zeuch considering he was a 1st round pick have contributed this season in any meaningful way. Some of those guys seemingly have ability and fell apart due to injury (Merryweather and Pearson), but most just outright don't look like major league pitchers due to a skills deficiency. Some were acquisitions from other teams (Hatch, Kay, Thornton), so maybe it's just a matter of scouting and analytics vastly overestimating their ability and misevaluating them? Then again, Hatch and Thornton weren't traded for superstars. Did we end up putting too much faith in fringey pitchers that the Jays hoped would break out and just haven't? Is this just us getting unlucky to some extent since pitching development is kind of a crapshoot?

 

So many questions, and the truth is probably a little bit of everything combined.

[Laika]

At the very least, there's some very intriguing arms in the minors this regime has drafted/signed that have seen significant upticks in velocity and stuff. Ricky Tiedemann, Hayden Juenger, Yosver Zulueta, Trent Palmer etc. It's possible it's taken this long to overhaul pitching development and we're just now starting to see the effects percolate in the minors. I know that the pitching lab in the Player Development Complex didn't get going until the middle of last year.

 

What hurts is that none of Anthony Kay, Trent Thornton, Thomas Hatch, Julian Merryweather, Nate Pearson, Ryan Borucki, even TJ Zeuch considering he was a 1st round pick have contributed this season in any meaningful way. Some of those guys seemingly have ability and fell apart due to injury (Merryweather and Pearson), but most just outright don't look like major league pitchers due to a skills deficiency. Some were acquisitions from other teams (Hatch, Kay, Thornton), so maybe it's just a matter of scouting and analytics vastly overestimating their ability and misevaluating them? Then again, Hatch and Thornton weren't traded for superstars. Did we end up putting too much faith in fringey pitchers that the Jays hoped would break out and just haven't? Is this just us getting unlucky to some extent since pitching development is kind of a crapshoot?

 

So many questions, and the truth is probably a little bit of everything combined.

 

Hatch, Kay, and Thornton are all arms that other teams probably thought of as rather fungible when trading them to Toronto.

Obviously Toronto liked certain elements of all of them and thought they could develop into productive MLB arms and it hasn't really worked out but yeah.... go back a few years and project any of them and you probably would not project or expect any of the three to be much more than they are right now, which is replacement level depth.

[Stangstag]

I wonder how much performance degradation in arms like Romano, Kay, Francis etc. is the banning of Spidertack.

 

Any possibility teams like the Yankees and Astros are still cheating using some kind of new tack?? Seems suspicious their pitching (especially the Yankees) randomly became top in the league.

[Dagagad]

Any possibility teams like the Yankees and Astros are still cheating using some kind of new tack?? Seems suspicious their pitching (especially the Yankees) randomly became top in the league.

 

The Yankees and astros are two of the poster children for being good at literally everything.

 

The Houston farm system doesn’t look amazing right now but I’d bet quite a bit of money that they somehow uncover a couple more viable starters from there in the next couple of years. Houston are excellent at everything.

 

Only one of their current homegrown starters was considered anywhere near an elite prospect.

 

It’s totally possible they are cheating as well. We should be too.

[Laika]

Any possibility teams like the Yankees and Astros are still cheating using some kind of new tack?? Seems suspicious their pitching (especially the Yankees) randomly became top in the league.

 

Of course.

[wilko]

Anyone know how to watch the game tonight? It's not on SportsNet.

[Solaxys]

 

It is pretty much your postseason lineup; lets roll.

 

Anyone know how to watch the game tonight? It's not on SportsNet.

 

apple.tv (don't have to subscribe but you need an ID I think:

) or piracy (mlb66.ir; to avoid ads, you need to 'predict' which is just 4/4-ing w.e team for fun right below the chatbox; its an on-site points thing)

[G-Snarls]

Anyone know how to watch the game tonight? It's not on SportsNet.

 

Apple TV

 

Booo

[wilko]

Apple TV

 

Booo

 

Who the hell has Apple TV lol.. If I find a stream i'll post it.

 

Whoops didn't see the post before yours. Thanks!

[Solaxys]

Vladdy/Kirk confirmed starters.

[Solaxys]

[RustyTrombone]

 

Hope we never see Lawrence again

[Krylian]

Hope we never see Lawrence again

 

I made this request years ago. They didn't listen.

[Omar]

No Tapia and Zimmer....someone grew a brain.

 

[Stangstag]

Vladdy/Kirk confirmed starters.

 

Niceee

[JFD]

If you're ever in Langley BC, stop by dead frog brewery to pick up some Pineapple/jalapeno beer. This s*** is fire!

[5ToolPhenom]

Apple TV

 

Booo

 

You've gotta be kidding me. No chance in hell I'm subscribing to that. So much for enjoying a Friday night game

[Powers]

You don’t need to subscribe to Apple TV+you just need the app and maybe make an account. It is free to watch

[WryNGinger]

Can you not stop/pause on Apple TV?

[Spanky99]

I suspect Ross is completely oblivious. I hear he takes advice from Buck and Tabby.

 

lol...

[gruber92]

Anybody confident that we'll win a WS or at least go deep in the playoffs with Ross and Chuckles leading the charge?

 

LOL

[Laika]

Happy I didn't watch

 

Borucki shutting us down before Romo loses it sounds like max pain

[Spanky99]

Do you think swinging strike percentage is more important than K/9? Are pitchers who get strikeouts via swinging strikes better than pitchers who get more called strikeouts? Isn't the theory that you simply want strikeouts from your relivers because that means there's less balls in play? Why do we care if that strikeout is produced by swinging strikes instead of called strikes?

 

re: bold - can you show me this evidence? We took acquired Beniot, Grilli and Liriano in 2016 and they were lights out (after being s*** for their previous teams that year). 2017 had Dom Leone come out of nowhere to be dominant and we pulled Joe Smith back from the dead. 2018 we turned around Seunghwan Oh and acquired Ken Giles and turned him back into a stud (until we broke him). 2019 we got great innings out of Wilmer Font and we helped Daniel Hudson turn it around. 2020 was Dolis and Anthony Bass ( we didn't fix Bass, but he was solid for us). 2021 was the emergence of Romano and Mayza and we turned Cimber around.

 

What do the best teams do that we don't do? They turn failed starters into shut down bullpen arms? Is that what you're getting at? That's Pearson and Merryweather (and Romano) for us - I don't know how you blame anyone for what's happened to Pearson - essentially none of his injuries are arm/pitching related. I guess you can say we ought to have turned Anthony Kay isn't Andrew Miller by now?

 

*golf claps*

[gruber92]

Shapiro is a good president on how he handles the team's relationship with Rogers but holy f*** he needs to step in and hire competent people to manage the team. He better start to consider his own employment here and get s*** done this off season but Chuckles could be an in season sacrificial lamb.

[gruber92]

I think it may be time to consider batting Gurriel second while he's hot. Bo's sub .300 obp and overall approach doesn't belong there.

 

Springer

Gurriel

Vladdy

Kirk

Bo

Teo

Espinal

Chapman

Moreno

[Dagagad]

Reddit is going mental wanting to fire charlie lol for keeping biggio in left on left.

 

I cannot understand how someone could watch that game against a team who aren’t really even in their contention window yet who rolled out arm after arm from their bullpen with f***ing nasty stuff and then watch the bottom of the inning and our little underdog pitch to contact f***ing ********, and be like…. yea… Charlie that’s the problem.

 

Mass f***ing delusion. Although, I’m on the west coast so I might have been one of the only people who saw it. Fire him.. who cares.. it might be entertaining watching someone less chill try to murder gurriel in the dugout.