General Blue Jays Discussion Thread (2025)

[Terminator]

16 minutes ago, jaysblue said:

Gotta hope you ride the starters for 7 innings. No babying them. If you can squeeze an extra inning out of them, you probably have to. 

It's not that dire. Green-Yimi-Hoffman should be a good 7th, 8th and 9th inning tandem.

[Terminator]

Looking at Barnes and Lovelady's spring Statcast game logs to try and figure out what the Jays are seeing.

Barnes threw a slider more than any other pitch this Spring and he got a ton of whiffs with it. He has barely thrown one throughout his career so this is something new.

Lovelady is throwing a sweeper a lot. He started throwing it last year but not very often. Maybe it could pair well with his sinker which has inverted break?

 

[Laika]

Lovelady:

Two above average pitches by Stuff+, projects above replacement level, nuked the minors last year if you ignore ERA, is left handed, is literally named Dick Lovelady 

Barnes:

No idea. Can't imagine he lasts long. Probably worse than 2 or 3 of the guys that will be in AAA like Nick Robertson and Tate and Walker. Maybe that's the point, just a pump and dump to perhaps pitch in a couple of blowouts in the first few weeks.

 

[Mac]

I'm interested to see Lovelady to start the year. I didn't see him pitch in the spring but he has had some decent stretches and pitched some pretty good outings for Tampa at the end of last season.

[Spanky99]

Good news on Mad Max...
 

 

[Spanky99]

10 hours ago, Laika said:

Lovelady:

Two above average pitches by Stuff+, projects above replacement level, nuked the minors last year if you ignore ERA, is left handed, is literally named Dick Lovelady 

Barnes:

No idea. Can't imagine he lasts long. Probably worse than 2 or 3 of the guys that will be in AAA like Nick Robertson and Tate and Walker. Maybe that's the point, just a pump and dump to perhaps pitch in a couple of blowouts in the first few weeks.

 

Place holders until Burr and Swanson come back. The Jays need to make room for 3 players, I'd assume they put Macko on the 60 Day IL as he's out for a couple months anyway, Nance likely refuses assignment, so one of those guys above will be gone. Selecting Barnes over Nance really doesn't make sense. I scratch my head at that decision. Meh...

[jaysblue]

On 2/17/2025 at 5:24 PM, jaysblue said:

Kirk ain't getting $20-25M per season lol. 

Maybe $10-12M max. 

To Stang and L54

[Orgfiller]

The Rangers put Dane Dunning on outright release waivers. Was terrible in 2024 but league average before and the xFIP didn't think he was quite that bad. Gets some Ks as a primary sinker kitchen sink guy with a somewhat livable amount of walks. Not that he cracks our rotation or anything, but he'd be decent depth and I'd rather him over Ryan Yarbrough to eat up innings in long relief. Does have an arb salary of $2.66M so he's not dirt cheap, however.

[Laika]

6 minutes ago, Orgfiller said:

The Rangers put Dane Dunning on outright release waivers. Was terrible in 2024 but league average before and the xFIP didn't think he was quite that bad. Gets some Ks as a primary sinker kitchen sink guy with a somewhat livable amount of walks. Not that he cracks our rotation or anything, but he'd be decent depth and I'd rather him over Ryan Yarbrough to eat up innings in long relief. Does have an arb salary of $2.66M so he's not dirt cheap, however.

I thought that was interesting too 

Was surprised they feel like they have the depth to just cut him 

I guess when Patrick Corbin types only cost $1M, you do just hope someone else takes your $2.6m Dunning off your hands 

[BB17]

Looking at Vladdy's ST numbers he's back to hitting a lot of balls into the ground.

55% GB rate with a 29% FB rate is pretty gross. ST numbers have been proven to not be an indicator of the season but for a guy who is wanting to be paid like a Superstar, a stumble out of the gates and he might be feeling a ton of pressure.

[Laika]

Vlad had a .678 OPS last year through the first 31 regular season games, with a 56% GB rate. 

So I wouldn't be worried about him even if he has a bad April. But it will be interesting to see the shape of his season. 

[Orgfiller]

4 minutes ago, Laika said:

Vlad had a .678 OPS last year through the first 31 regular season games, with a 56% GB rate. 

So I wouldn't be worried about him even if he has a bad April. But it will be interesting to see the shape of his season. 

Vlad last season was honestly unwatchable until like June. Even in May when he had good numbers he was running a > .400 BABIP with a .112 ISO with only 5 HR at the end of the month. June onwards is when he finally looked like a legitimate offensive force, because up until that point the non-tender/trade him voices were starting to sound pretty reasonable.

[max silver]

19 minutes ago, Orgfiller said:

Vlad last season was honestly unwatchable until like June. Even in May when he had good numbers he was running a > .400 BABIP with a .112 ISO with only 5 HR at the end of the month. June onwards is when he finally looked like a legitimate offensive force, because up until that point the non-tender/trade him voices were starting to sound pretty reasonable.

Vlad mashed the s*** out of the baseball for the month of May last season. Literally the only issue was the low overall launch angle of only 3 degrees.

BA/xBA .366/.352

SLG/xSLG .475/.542

wOBA/xwOBA .409/.426

This came along with an average exit velocity of 95.1 MPH and hard hit rate of 64.7%. The results suggest Vlad was actually a tad unlucky with the batted ball results, there was literally nothing fluky or lucky about the month he produced. The month end result of 168 wRC+ could have been something approaching 175-180 wRC+ with a tad better luck on batted balls, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

[Terminator]

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2025-positional-power-rankings-bullpen-no-16-30/

 

Fangraphs says we have the 19th best bullpen.

[Orgfiller]

16 minutes ago, max silver said:

Vlad mashed the s*** out of the baseball for the month of May last season. Literally the only issue was the low overall launch angle of only 3 degrees.

BA/xBA .366/.352

SLG/xSLG .475/.542

wOBA/xwOBA .409/.426

This came along with an average exit velocity of 95.1 MPH and hard hit rate of 64.7%. The results suggest Vlad was actually a tad unlucky with the batted ball results, there was literally nothing fluky or lucky about the month he produced. The month end result of 168 wRC+ could have been something approaching 175-180 wRC+ with a tad better luck on batted balls, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

Sorry but when you've been dreaming about Vlad's exit velos and "if only he could lift the ball more consistently" every year since his debut with, at the time, only one truly good season followed by decent and downright disappointing seasons, I think it was fair to have soured on Vlad's performance at the time. He's never not not hit the ball hard, but it's been a consistent issue throughout his career in that he doesn't get the most out of his hard hit balls because his launch angle is s***. So I'm sorry if I wasn't buying the 54% GB rate with a .400 BABIP leading to positive results and believing that this would somehow turn into him rediscovering how to hit the ball in the air consistently as the season went along. We saw plenty of times where that wasn't the case for Vlad.

[BB17]

1 hour ago, Laika said:

Vlad had a .678 OPS last year through the first 31 regular season games, with a 56% GB rate. 

So I wouldn't be worried about him even if he has a bad April. But it will be interesting to see the shape of his season. 

I'm not too worried about him, but I do wonder if he gets off to a bad start that he feels that internal pressure and starts to press/chase pitches leading to worse plate appearances. 

[max silver]

22 minutes ago, Orgfiller said:

Sorry but when you've been dreaming about Vlad's exit velos and "if only he could lift the ball more consistently" every year since his debut with, at the time, only one truly good season followed by decent and downright disappointing seasons, I think it was fair to have soured on Vlad's performance at the time. He's never not not hit the ball hard, but it's been a consistent issue throughout his career in that he doesn't get the most out of his hard hit balls because his launch angle is s***. So I'm sorry if I wasn't buying the 54% GB rate with a .400 BABIP leading to positive results and believing that this would somehow turn into him rediscovering how to hit the ball in the air consistently as the season went along. We saw plenty of times where that wasn't the case for Vlad.

I don't know why you keep referencing the BABIP value for the month as if it's useful on it's own. It's nothing more than a surface level statistic. Vlad still ran an overall ground ball rate of 53.2% for the month of June as well, so it's not as if he can't be a very productive hitter despite the ground ball tendencies. Vlad outproduced his expected batting average for the month by a handful of points, but conversely underperformed his expected slugging for the month by a sizable degree. I believe some of this was the fact that he was hitting line drives so hard the ball was bouncing back to the fielders so quickly that it mitigated the chance for a lot of doubles. I was very hopeful as the calendar turned to June that all it was going to require was an incremental improvement to Vlad's launch angle for a lot of the harder hit balls to start clearing the fence.

[Spanky99]

4 hours ago, Terminator said:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2025-positional-power-rankings-bullpen-no-16-30/

 

Fangraphs says we have the 19th best bullpen.

If you ain't First you're Last!

[june.june]

Atkins always thinks he is the brightest bloke in the room. 
 

Dropping Yarbrough was one of the many of his dumbest moves this past decade.  Maybe he thought, Yariel Rodriguez should be enough in case either Scherzer/ Gausman or Bassit goes down.

Yarbrough can eat some innings and is an emergency filler to start when one of his aging trio hits the injury bug. 

 

when would Ed Rogers fire his a$$ already

 

 

[Eat My Shatkins]

Hard to believe people exist who are actually having tantrums over the Jays letting go Ryan f***ing Yarbrough lol

[BB17]

8 minutes ago, Eat My Shatkins said:

Hard to believe people exist who are actually having tantrums over the Jays letting go Ryan f***ing Yarbrough lol

Lol I know, also meltdowns over Kirk signing a good contract. I don't even bother wasting my time with a lot of these posts when its clearly trolling.

[Spanky99]

13 minutes ago, BB17 said:

Lol I know, also meltdowns over Kirk signing a good contract. I don't even bother wasting my time with a lot of these posts when its clearly trolling.

You're correct, both situations are clear trolling. f***in'Birds!!!

[Orgfiller]

1 hour ago, Eat My Shatkins said:

Hard to believe people exist who are actually having tantrums over the Jays letting go Ryan f***ing Yarbrough lol

You'd think we let go of Johan Santana with the way people talk about Ryan Yarbrough.

[Jays24]

There's plenty of reasons to want to fire Shatkins so those folks are just adding 1 more item to the list. 

We'll know soon enough based on how this season goes whether it was a smart or stupid decision to keep them around.  

[max silver]

21 minutes ago, Jays24 said:

There's plenty of reasons to want to fire Shatkins so those folks are just adding 1 more item to the list. 

We'll know soon enough based on how this season goes whether it was a smart or stupid decision to keep them around.  

Come on man, letting a mediocre longman type go at the end of spring training is hardly going to provide ammunition for firing a front office.

[Spanky99]

34 minutes ago, Jays24 said:

There's plenty of reasons to want to fire Shatkins so those folks are just adding 1 more item to the list. 

We'll know soon enough based on how this season goes whether it was a smart or stupid decision to keep them around.  

[Terminator]

It's tough to keep Yarbrough when he's out of options and wants 2 mil guaranteed.

The other back of the bullen candidates are at least one of the following:

• cheaper (all of them)
• younger (all of them but Barnes)
• have options (Tate, Walker, etc.) or
• currently tinkering with their stuff which might give them a true talent change (Lovelady, Barnes).

If we should be upset about anyone it should be Nance who has some of the best Stuff+ in baseball. Though I'm not sure if he's still sticking around? I haven't heard anything.

[Terminator]

Crazy how closely-grouped together everyone in the AL is this year.

You have one garbage team (ChiSox), two below average teams that aren't that bad (A's and Angels) and then everyone could make or miss the playoffs and I wouldn't be surprised either way.

[Spanky99]

9 minutes ago, Terminator said:

It's tough to keep Yarbrough when he's out of options and wants 2 mil guaranteed.

The other back of the bullen candidates are at least one of the following:

• cheaper (all of them)
• younger (all of them but Barnes)
• have options (Tate, Walker, etc.) or
• currently tinkering with their stuff which might give them a true talent change (Lovelady, Barnes).

If we should be upset about anyone it should be Nance who has some of the best Stuff+ in baseball. Though I'm not sure if he's still sticking around? I haven't heard anything.

Said on SN he'll be waived. BNS and Shi. I didn't get Nance either.

 

[G-Snarls]

11 minutes ago, Terminator said:

Crazy how closely-grouped together everyone in the AL is this year.

You have one garbage team (ChiSox), two below average teams that aren't that bad (A's and Angels) and then everyone could make or miss the playoffs and I wouldn't be surprised either way.

AL is very even with no super teams and also few terrible ones 

NL is so unbalanced by the Dodgers it's crazy