General Blue Jays Discussion Thread (2025)

[BB17]

8 hours ago, John_Havok said:

Setback for Swanson in rehab. He's flying to meet with Jays medical staff. Was supposed to pitch for Dunedin but had some soreness in his forearm when playing catch 

At this point I’m not sure you can expect anything from him. Even if he somehow gets healthy it’s no given he will be any good given the struggles last season.

Feels similar to Scherzer honestly that there’s set back after set back.

[Spanky99]

2 hours ago, BB17 said:

At this point I’m not sure you can expect anything from him. Even if he somehow gets healthy it’s no given he will be any good given the struggles last season.

Feels similar to Scherzer honestly that there’s set back after set back.

Swanson was very good in the 2nd half of the season, look it up.

 

[Laika]

15-16 with a minus 32 run diff is hilarious 

The expected win-loss is 12-19 

Jeff Hoffman was 3 WAR, basically 

 

Play well and tread water through April? Nah. 

Get lucky and tread water through April? Heck yes. 

[Laika]

Pre-season opinions on the schedule were that it was brutal through April and then softened up. 

I guess that is still probably true, but it doesn't seem like it is to the degree that people though. The rearview has 7 Boston games, 6 Baltimore games, 3 Atlanta games. Are Boston and Baltimore even good? Atlanta was scuffling when they hit town. 

And ahead of Toronto, there are some series that don't look as soft as they would have pre-season. The Tigers might be pretty good. The Athletics might be better than the Jays. etc. 

[BTS]

Jeff Hoffman is 5th in all of baseballl (batters and pitchers) with 1.68 WPA. He's basically earned his 2025 salary already. 

[glory]

37 minutes ago, Laika said:

Pre-season opinions on the schedule were that it was brutal through April and then softened up. 

I guess that is still probably true, but it doesn't seem like it is to the degree that people though. The rearview has 7 Boston games, 6 Baltimore games, 3 Atlanta games. Are Boston and Baltimore even good? Atlanta was scuffling when they hit town. 

And ahead of Toronto, there are some series that don't look as soft as they would have pre-season. The Tigers might be pretty good. The Athletics might be better than the Jays. etc. 

The thing about the AL is that there are no great teams, but also only 2 real bottom feeders (White Sox, Angels). So unless the Jays are facing one of those 2 teams, I don’t think there is a cupcake series for them. Having this run differential even with their schedule is not a good sign. The Cubs have had an objectively tougher schedule and lead the league (tied) in RD. If it wasn’t for Jeff Hoffman this team is likely closer to their RD in win/loss. 

Varsho coming back helps, and they really need a surprise breakout or 2 (or 5).

[BB17]

5 hours ago, Spanky99 said:

Swanson was very good in the 2nd half of the season, look it up.

 

Yeah but you can't throw out how bad he was in the first half either. I think its fair to suggest you can't depend on him coming back and then being effective. He could come back throwing 90-91 given the elbow injury.

[Spanky99]

3 hours ago, BB17 said:

Yeah but you can't throw out how bad he was in the first half either. I think its fair to suggest you can't depend on him coming back and then being effective. He could come back throwing 90-91 given the elbow injury.

They obvious won't be bringing him back if he's scuffling and not throwing at his proper velo IE; Healthy as you said in your post? As for the 1st half last season, he had an injury in ST and his son was run over by a car, dude was shook and he struggled with his mechanics, they sent him down and got him right and came back the Swanson we saw in '23. RP's are volatile of course, but I can essentially say and use the 2nd half numbers in the same light as you're view as him being garb, he was really good last year through the 2nd half man, it shows he has it in him, we all saw '23, like why would he not come back strong and be ready?  I don't get that angle.

[Spanky99]

In fairness to the Jays they were slaughtered in 3 games, the RD doesn't really tell it's true story this early in the season, imo. Hopefully the signs of life and power in particular the last two days shows up on the regular.

[G-Snarls]

4 hours ago, BTS said:

Jeff Hoffman is 5th in all of baseballl (batters and pitchers) with 1.68 WPA. He's basically earned his 2025 salary already. 

 

 

 

[max silver]

6 hours ago, Laika said:

15-16 with a minus 32 run diff is hilarious 

The expected win-loss is 12-19 

Jeff Hoffman was 3 WAR, basically 

 

Play well and tread water through April? Nah. 

Get lucky and tread water through April? Heck yes. 

The awful run differential is entirely due to the lousy 9 game stretch where the pitching and hitting simultaneously slumped and the team puked out a 1-8 record. The run differential during this period was -41 runs, which is really unlikely to be indicative of the overall quality of the team over an entire season of play. 

[Laika]

Just now, max silver said:

The awful run differential is entirely due to the lousy 9 game stretch where the pitching and hitting simultaneously slumped and the team puked out a 1-8 record. The run differential during this period was -41 runs, which is really unlikely to be indicative of the overall quality of the team over an entire season of play. 

max c'mon

this is some "60% of the time it works every time" bs

[max silver]

5 hours ago, glory said:

The thing about the AL is that there are no great teams, but also only 2 real bottom feeders (White Sox, Angels). So unless the Jays are facing one of those 2 teams, I don’t think there is a cupcake series for them. Having this run differential even with their schedule is not a good sign. The Cubs have had an objectively tougher schedule and lead the league (tied) in RD. If it wasn’t for Jeff Hoffman this team is likely closer to their RD in win/loss. 

Varsho coming back helps, and they really need a surprise breakout or 2 (or 5).

I think the biggest thing holding back the offense has been the lack of power from the top 3 of the lineup. Prior to the slide where the team was struggling as a whole the bottom of the lineup was largely doing their part getting on base, but the top of the lineup wasn't doing their job particularly well driving in runs, largely due to lack of extra base hits with runners on base. 

[max silver]

1 minute ago, Laika said:

max c'mon

this is some "60% of the time it works every time" bs

You are doing exactly the same thing pretending like the extended stretch to start the season where the team was playing very well didn't occur. The club started the season with a 14-8 record with a +6 run differential despite receiving no power output from the top of the lineup. But according to you that stretch should be completely ignored and the week and a half where the entire team slumped is the true indicator of the quality of the club. 

[Laika]

7 minutes ago, max silver said:

You are doing exactly the same thing pretending like the extended stretch to start the season where the team was playing very well didn't occur. The club started the season with a 14-8 record with a +6 run differential despite receiving no power output from the top of the lineup. But according to you that stretch should be completely ignored and the week and a half where the entire team slumped is the true indicator of the quality of the club. 

I didn't say that at all lmfao 

I am looking at the run differential right now, which considers all games 

[Laika]

19.4% of the time the Colorado Rockies never lose! 

[max silver]

14 minutes ago, Laika said:

I didn't say that at all lmfao 

I am looking at the run differential right now, which considers all games 

That's your prerogative to look at the negative run differential as some sort of indicator if you prefer. I don't think it's particularly relevant given the easily demarcated segments of games where the team was largely playing well and the awful slump where the team was struggling in every phase of the game. Laugh all you want, I conversely think that it's laughable that you would use a negative run differential that is 100% due to a bad 9 games of play as an indicator of what the team's overall record should be and think that it's somehow relevant. 

[Terminator]

Spencer Turnbull maybe?

[Jonn]

7 minutes ago, Terminator said:

Spencer Turnbull maybe?

Hoping potentially someone like David Robertson as well.

Possibly JD Martinez. But don’t know where would fit.

[Terminator]

If you piece the various tweets together I think he's talking about starting pitching depth.

 

[glory]

1 hour ago, max silver said:

I think the biggest thing holding back the offense has been the lack of power from the top 3 of the lineup. Prior to the slide where the team was struggling as a whole the bottom of the lineup was largely doing their part getting on base, but the top of the lineup wasn't doing their job particularly well driving in runs, largely due to lack of extra base hits with runners on base. 

The biggest issue with the team right now is the rotation, but we will see about the offense. Removing Wagner and soon Roden, and replacing them with Barger (+ great statcast data) and Varsho should help. Lukes isn't a bad 4th OF option from the looks of it. Kirk is starting to hit the ball with more authority as well. Maybe things do start to improve from an offensive standpoint. Enough of an improvement? Remains to be seen. The rotation is still the biggest hurdle. Three geezers + Way Back Francis + pray. Not sure how they will get by with that over the long haul without massive amounts of luck. 

[max silver]

14 minutes ago, glory said:

The biggest issue with the team right now is the rotation, but we will see about the offense. Removing Wagner and soon Roden, and replacing them with Barger (+ great statcast data) and Varsho should help. Lukes isn't a bad 4th OF option from the looks of it. Kirk is starting to hit the ball with more authority as well. Maybe things do start to improve from an offensive standpoint. Enough of an improvement? Remains to be seen. The rotation is still the biggest hurdle. Three geezers + Way Back Francis + pray. Not sure how they will get by with that over the long haul without massive amounts of luck. 

I think the rotation should be decent as a whole, with the overall pitching depth being the largest issue facing the club at present. With the team lacking a proper 5th starter/long man combination at the moment the starters are being forced to pitch deeper into games when they don't have their best stuff/command on a particular day. Recent Francis and Gausman starts are good indicators of this, where each of them were kept in games when they were obviously struggling in that start and ended up allowing a bushel full of runs when they would have benefited from much earlier pulls. The team will likely have to hope that one of Bloss, Lucas or Lauer can hold the fort until Scherzer is sufficiently built up to provide some innings and/or Manoah is able to return later in the season.

[G-Snarls]

FU Tiedemann and Manoah 

 

Not really. It just sucks to get nothing from them right now. 

[John_Havok]

3 hours ago, max silver said:

You are doing exactly the same thing pretending like the extended stretch to start the season where the team was playing very well didn't occur. The club started the season with a 14-8 record with a +6 run differential despite receiving no power output from the top of the lineup. But according to you that stretch should be completely ignored and the week and a half where the entire team slumped is the true indicator of the quality of the club. 

To be fair, a +6 run diff should be about a .500 record, maybe 12-10 at best. They vastly overperformed their run diff during that hot start and that overperformance is still factoring in to their current W/L record despite giving up far more runs than they're scoring. 

That said, the Ws are still already locked up and Pythagorean w/l isn't perfect. However, it's still something ya look at and think... f***...they really need to start scoring runs consistently, which means hitting for power. Without that power component, we all know the record will slip if the pitching isn't near perfect. 

[Terminator]

On 4/23/2025 at 10:38 AM, Terminator said:

I am going to get absolutely tarred and feathered over this take BUT here it goes

Nathan Lukes is looking pretty interesting:

• .342 xwOBA this season, dragged down by a .200 BABIP
• K% of 13.5% and BB% of 10.8%
• Steamer projects a 114 wRC+ to go with his career wRC+ of 110 so far
• His updated Steamer600 is 2.5 WAR but I think it underrates his defense a lot
• Zips (which likes his defense and his bat) projects him for 2 WAR ROS in just 79 games

It's going to be interesting to see what they do when Varsho returns.

Roden, Barger, Wagner and Lukes are all grouped so closely together. But I think you could make the case that Lukes should stick over those guys. 

Well would you look at that

[Masterbather]

Bullpen has been better then expected. We got some really good arms in there.

[Terminator]

2 minutes ago, Masterbather said:

Bullpen has been better then expected. We got some really good arms in there.

Ross Atkins' bullpens apparently alternate each year between the worst bullpen you've ever seen in your entire life to the best, and there is never anything in between

[Masterbather]

16 minutes ago, Terminator said:

Ross Atkins' bullpens apparently alternate each year between the worst bullpen you've ever seen in your entire life to the best, and there is never anything in between

Relief pitching is notoriously erratic year to year around baseball.

[Laika]

Brendon Little having the highest whiff rate in baseball was not expected 

[jaysblue]

15 hours ago, Terminator said:

If you piece the various tweets together I think he's talking about starting pitching depth.

 

Good thing the Orioles already scooped up Kyle Gibson. Let them suffer!