General Blue Jays Discussion Thread (2025)

[Spanky__99]

1 hour ago, jaysblue said:

Spanky after reading this:

What does this f*cking even mean? You're rostering him in Fantasy baseball, toerag. lol... even traded for him last year giving up Langeliers... 😂

[John_Havok]

Barger on how he managed his game winning double the other day...

“My bat was not working. It hasn’t been working. Ty France actually picked up one of my old bats in the cage and randomly decided to use it. I hadn’t seen the bat since last year, but he hit a homer with it. I was like, ‘Oh, shoot, I’ll use that.’ It worked.”

[Laika]

Yimi minor elbow surgery to clean up scar tissue 

Honestly decent news. Wasn't expecting him back this year anyway. Maybe he can help next year. It was looking like TJS was coming.

[R.O.]

 

[Masterbather]

2 minutes ago, R.O. said:

 

It's been obvious for a while that Yimi was not progressing and my expectation was pretty much zero that he was going to return this year anyway so hopefully this fixes the issue for him.

Santander is where I was holding out some hope so this is encouraging.

[Stangstag]

5 hours ago, John_Havok said:

Barger on how he managed his game winning double the other day...

“My bat was not working. It hasn’t been working. Ty France actually picked up one of my old bats in the cage and randomly decided to use it. I hadn’t seen the bat since last year, but he hit a homer with it. I was like, ‘Oh, shoot, I’ll use that.’ It worked.”

Baseball players are so weird man lol

[Stangstag]

26 minutes ago, R.O. said:

 

Imagine a hot Santander down the stretch… im salivating. Defense will likely take a hit though. I’d probably roll with a Lukes/Schneider platoon in LF and a Barger/Clement platoon at 3B.

[max silver]

1 hour ago, Laika said:

Yimi minor elbow surgery to clean up scar tissue 

Honestly decent news. Wasn't expecting him back this year anyway. Maybe he can help next year. It was looking like TJS was coming.

I didn't think Tommy John was going to be in the cards as Yimi's issues were nerve related and not ligament related. I think Romano's surgery was also minor in nature and he didn't bounce back particularly well so hopefully Yimi experiences more success. 

[BB17]

5 hours ago, Stangstag said:

Imagine a hot Santander down the stretch… im salivating. Defense will likely take a hit though. I’d probably roll with a Lukes/Schneider platoon in LF and a Barger/Clement platoon at 3B.

The concerning thing with Santander other than health is how soon can he get his timing back because he’s always been a notorious slow starter. He never really had to to begin with earlier in the year so if he comes back struggling how long do you stick with him.

[Spanky__99]

7 hours ago, Laika said:

Yimi minor elbow surgery to clean up scar tissue 

Honestly decent news. Wasn't expecting him back this year anyway. Maybe he can help next year. It was looking like TJS was coming.

Agreed, I was scared of a UCL surgery, myself.

[hanton]

Should have gone after a legit high leverage arm/closer.   Varland was like 3rd on the depth chart behind Duran and Jaxx.

The Nats had a legit closer in Kyle Finnegan, could have had him for nothing, couple of no names; he's been money in Detroit.  But Atkins has to do it his way.. Control. SMH

Finnegan/Bednar would have bin a great get

Hoffman/Finnegan/Bednar

 

[Masterbather]

1 hour ago, hanton said:

Should have gone after a legit high leverage arm/closer.   Varland was like 3rd on the depth chart behind Duran and Jaxx.

The Nats had a legit closer in Kyle Finnegan, could have had him for nothing, couple of no names; he's been money in Detroit.  But Atkins has to do it his way.. Control. SMH

Finnegan/Bednar would have bin a great get

Hoffman/Finnegan/Bednar

 

No point worrying about this now. Maybe Fisher will help, maybe Yesavage can give us a boost. We need three or four guys to be on top of their game. Having one of our starters in the bullpen might help, I personally think Bassitt is probably the best option. 

[Spanky__99]

20 hours ago, Spanky__99 said:

What does this f*cking even mean? You're rostering him in Fantasy baseball, toerag. lol... even traded for him last year giving up Langeliers... 😂

[jaysblue]

Was thinking regarding the Blue Jays BP struggle, maybe the pen arms have been overworked as a whole this season, though they rank 13th in terms of total innings (493). 

BB/9 is the alarming concern: Jays BP ranks 8th worst with a 3.98 BB/9 which is behind teams like the Nationals, Athletics, Reds, Angels, Orioles, Rockies, and White Sox. Not a great group to be bunched in with. 

The Jays bullpen is in the middle of the pack when it comes to HR/9 and FIP. 

Overall, this has been a real tough stretch, but like others have said, let's hope its just a blip on the radar, and that things normalize in September and heading into October. Seems like it's just a rough stretch. 

 

[jmomcc]

10 hours ago, hanton said:

Should have gone after a legit high leverage arm/closer.   Varland was like 3rd on the depth chart behind Duran and Jaxx.

The Nats had a legit closer in Kyle Finnegan, could have had him for nothing, couple of no names; he's been money in Detroit.  But Atkins has to do it his way.. Control. SMH

Finnegan/Bednar would have bin a great get

Hoffman/Finnegan/Bednar

 

Yea get rentals who can k people. That's like the only job. 

Atkins finds a way to over complicate, not get someone who can k people and then bask in all of the control. 

[max silver]

6 minutes ago, jmomcc said:

Yea get rentals who can k people. That's like the only job. 

Atkins finds a way to over complicate, not get someone who can k people and then bask in all of the control. 

Dominguez is a rental and is running a nearly 30% k rate as a Blue Jay.

[jmomcc]

6 minutes ago, max silver said:

Dominguez is a rental and is running a nearly 30% k rate as a Blue Jay.

Yea i love that trade. Two more of those would be nice. Cheap, rental, strikes people out. Do that MULTIPLE times. 

[max silver]

2 minutes ago, jmomcc said:

Yea i love that trade. Two more of those would be nice. Cheap, rental, strikes people out. Do that MULTIPLE times. 

I can only guess that the front office was hoping that Garcia would have been able to make his way back by season's end and this factored in to not bringing in a third relief option. As it was the emergence of Nance made it necessary to send a completely undeserving reliever to AAA and this would have been compounded further if another reliever were brought aboard.

I think far too much is being made of a short term struggle for Varland vs looking at his entire body of work this season, and with appropriate adjustments to allow his command to return to previous levels he can return to being a highly effective reliever for the rest of the season and moving forward. 

[Stangstag]

32 minutes ago, max silver said:

I can only guess that the front office was hoping that Garcia would have been able to make his way back by season's end and this factored in to not bringing in a third relief option. As it was the emergence of Nance made it necessary to send a completely undeserving reliever to AAA and this would have been compounded further if another reliever were brought aboard.

I think far too much is being made of a short term struggle for Varland vs looking at his entire body of work this season, and with appropriate adjustments to allow his command to return to previous levels he can return to being a highly effective reliever for the rest of the season and moving forward. 

Hinging the season on hopes and dreams is not a great strategy. Not a good excuse.

[jmomcc]

34 minutes ago, max silver said:

I can only guess that the front office was hoping that Garcia would have been able to make his way back by season's end and this factored in to not bringing in a third relief option. As it was the emergence of Nance made it necessary to send a completely undeserving reliever to AAA and this would have been compounded further if another reliever were brought aboard.

I think far too much is being made of a short term struggle for Varland vs looking at his entire body of work this season, and with appropriate adjustments to allow his command to return to previous levels he can return to being a highly effective reliever for the rest of the season and moving forward. 

Varland was a good reliever for like half a year. I think its certainly possible he is good again, but i also think its more than possible he is DFAed in 2027 when he doesn't have an option. There is way too much certainty in his stuff out there. He has no track record to justify that .

[max silver]

46 minutes ago, jmomcc said:

Varland was a good reliever for like half a year. I think its certainly possible he is good again, but i also think its more than possible he is DFAed in 2027 when he doesn't have an option. There is way too much certainty in his stuff out there. He has no track record to justify that .

That's cool that you place far more emphasis on the 2 weeks of this season where Varland struggled vs the 4.5 months where he was a really effective pen arm. This is his first season of strictly relieving as he was bounced back and forth from the rotation and pen in prior seasons, and up until the last few weeks he was firmly in the midst of a breakout season. Even with the rough 2 weeks his season numbers are still really good.

That's cool that you would try to make the point where it's more likely that he's going to be DFA'd in 2027 instead of getting himself sorted out because of these 2 bad weeks. I always find it fascinating how some of the fanbase chooses to ignore the more successful portions of a players career before they become Blue Jays and become hyper fixated on the initial portion of struggles in a Blue Jays uniform. This was the case with Varsho, Gimenez, Santander and now apparently Varland as well. 

[max silver]

51 minutes ago, Stangstag said:

Hinging the season on hopes and dreams is not a great strategy. Not a good excuse.

Where did I say any of that? As it stood the Blue Jays only had a handful of open pen spots to add to the pen to the point where it was necessary to move one of Fisher or Fluharty to AAA to avoid losing Nance. This type of criticism is made completely with the benefit of hindsight in which you pretend you knew that all of the leverage arms would simultaneously struggle to produce outs after largely being very effective over the previous 65-70% of the season. 

[jmomcc]

30 minutes ago, max silver said:

That's cool that you place far more emphasis on the 2 weeks of this season where Varland struggled vs the 4.5 months where he was a really effective pen arm. This is his first season of strictly relieving as he was bounced back and forth from the rotation and pen in prior seasons, and up until the last few weeks he was firmly in the midst of a breakout season. Even with the rough 2 weeks his season numbers are still really good.

That's cool that you would try to make the point where it's more likely that he's going to be DFA'd in 2027 instead of getting himself sorted out because of these 2 bad weeks. I always find it fascinating how some of the fanbase chooses to ignore the more successful portions of a players career before they become Blue Jays and become hyper fixated on the initial portion of struggles in a Blue Jays uniform. This was the case with Varsho, Gimenez, Santander and now apparently Varland as well. 

I'm putting zero emphasis on his two weeks of struggle. 

I put 100% emphasis on him only being good for 4.5 months. I didn't say its more likely he will be DFAed in 2027. Its just that he is a reliever and there is always a large chance that they will suck in two years. And if they are out of options they often get DFAed. The only time I step outside that mindset is longer term track record. He doesn't have it. Same applies to Fisher but he has more options. 
 

I just looked at the 2023 roster and there are exactly two relievers who pitched for the blue jays this year. Chad Green and Yimi Garcia. There are tons of position players and starters. 

[max silver]

1 hour ago, jmomcc said:

I'm putting zero emphasis on his two weeks of struggle. 

I put 100% emphasis on him only being good for 4.5 months. I didn't say its more likely he will be DFAed in 2027. Its just that he is a reliever and there is always a large chance that they will suck in two years. And if they are out of options they often get DFAed. The only time I step outside that mindset is longer term track record. He doesn't have it. Same applies to Fisher but he has more options. 
 

I just looked at the 2023 roster and there are exactly two relievers who pitched for the blue jays this year. Chad Green and Yimi Garcia. There are tons of position players and starters. 

Varland's career reliever numbers are pretty solid. He's produced an overall 3.36 FIP as a reliever in his career as he was generally decent in his prior seasons in a small sample of innings. It's really only as a starter that he's struggled to any degree as evidenced by the 5.46 FIP out of the rotation. It's literally a two week sample where his command has faltered that he's experienced struggles out of the pen, and it's incredibly presumptive to declare that he has a legitimate chance to be DFA'd when he runs out of options.

[jmomcc]

25 minutes ago, max silver said:

Varland's career reliever numbers are pretty solid. He's produced an overall 3.36 FIP as a reliever in his career as he was generally decent in his prior seasons in a small sample of innings. It's really only as a starter that he's struggled to any degree as evidenced by the 5.46 FIP out of the rotation. It's literally a two week sample where his command has faltered that he's experienced struggles out of the pen, and it's incredibly presumptive to declare that he has a legitimate chance to be DFA'd when he runs out of options.

He has a legitimate chance to be DFAed because every reliever not on a multi year contract has a real chance of that each and every year. If varland has this exact couple of weeks stretch in 2027 he could be DFAed. 

That's just how baseball works. 

[Perfect Game]

2 hours ago, jmomcc said:

I'm putting zero emphasis on his two weeks of struggle. 

I put 100% emphasis on him only being good for 4.5 months. I didn't say its more likely he will be DFAed in 2027. Its just that he is a reliever and there is always a large chance that they will suck in two years. And if they are out of options they often get DFAed. The only time I step outside that mindset is longer term track record. He doesn't have it. Same applies to Fisher but he has more options. 
 

I just looked at the 2023 roster and there are exactly two relievers who pitched for the blue jays this year. Chad Green and Yimi Garcia. There are tons of position players and starters. 

You literally said " but i also think its more than possible he is DFAed in 2027 when he doesn't have an option." a few posts up.

[jmomcc]

10 minutes ago, Perfect Game said:

You literally said " but i also think its more than possible he is DFAed in 2027 when he doesn't have an option." a few posts up.

Fair. I meant just as likely. Essentially 50/50. 

[John_Havok]

Tomorrow is the last chance to add Yesavage to be post-season eligible.

Odds they bring him up???

[Gen.Disarray]

23 minutes ago, John_Havok said:

Tomorrow is the last chance to add Yesavage to be post-season eligible.

Odds they bring him up???

I think if the team was still rolling and looking great it would be pretty slim odds. But with the way things have been going with the pen, I'll say better than 50%.

There is gonna be a ton of unfair pressure on this kid.

[BB17]

4 hours ago, John_Havok said:

Tomorrow is the last chance to add Yesavage to be post-season eligible.

Odds they bring him up???

He's walking 17% of batters at AAA and its not like he had great command before that. The last thing the Jays need right now is another pitcher who comes in out of the pen and starts walking/hitting batters. Add in the pressure of a pennant race and big crowds down the stretch and I think you got to be really careful. The Jays pen already has a lot of the low command/high strikeout guys so he isn't a great fit either.

That said it is pretty ugly and maybe he can give the whole team a bit of a spark? But in my head there's a bigger change of failure than success and he will have massive unfair expectations.