Blue Jays (Berrios) vs Marlins (Junk): 8/23/25, 4:10pm

[hanton]

39 minutes ago, gruber9292 said:

A pitcher like Varland needs to use his upper 90's fastball early in order to set up his off speed, not come in and throw four straight off speed pitches to scrubs who don't even really know him well. Bottom of the order hitters won't respect your fastball until they see it. You're just speeding up their bats by going off speed right out of the pen. 

and because of this^ I checked....percentages have flipped to more breaking balls since the trade - so the Jays are "messing" with him

[Brownie19]

2 hours ago, Jonn said:

So many bad things came out of Covid. And this was one of them.

I like it personally. I like that it creates scoring opportunities. It does it's job quite well in the regular season.

[Jonn]

1 hour ago, Brownie19 said:

I like it personally. I like that it creates scoring opportunities. It does it's job quite well in the regular season.

As long as it remains in the Regular Season mostly fine with it. 

[jmomcc]

3 hours ago, hanton said:

and because of this^ I checked....percentages have flipped to more breaking balls since the trade - so the Jays are "messing" with him

This is very common. Boston do it as well. Teams are cutting 4 seam fastball usage everywhere pretty much as much as possible. 

When we signed him his breaking stuff was supposed to be good. 

After looking into it more, you can't really take fisher back up that soon so there is no real point sending him down to work on things. He is an absolute gas can though right now. Runs FOUR outings in a row is pretty unusually bad for any reliever. Probably unluckily bad. 

They need to essentially put him in the Nance spot. Give him lowest possible leverage and let him figure it out. I also figure that preserving the option is probably a good idea. 
 

 

[hanton]

1 hour ago, jmomcc said:

This is very common. Boston do it as well. Teams are cutting 4 seam fastball usage everywhere pretty much as much as possible. 

When we signed him his breaking stuff was supposed to be good. 

After looking into it more, you can't really take fisher back up that soon so there is no real point sending him down to work on things. He is an absolute gas can though right now. Runs FOUR outings in a row is pretty unusually bad for any reliever. Probably unluckily bad. 

They need to essentially put him in the Nance spot. Give him lowest possible leverage and let him figure it out. I also figure that preserving the option is probably a good idea. 
 

 

Yes on Boston but it's part of the pitching philosophy, 

I was just responding to gruber, IMO could be just a small sample size or some noise in the numbers - we might need to wait a bit

[Spanky__99]

4 games up on the bye and we're bickering, seriously? Celebrate, FFS's!!!

[Spanky__99]

10 games clear of any contention, 7 games clear of WC3, 4 games up on WC1, and a game and a half back of the AL pennant while in a spot for a bye, yet people keep looking for the shitburger? Baffling, honestly. It's August 24th man, not April... we have a forum full of Jim Lahey's! (RIP)

[Perfect Game]

 

[Masterbather]

1 hour ago, Spanky__99 said:

10 games clear of any contention, 7 games clear of WC3, 4 games up on WC1, and a game and a half back of the AL pennant while in a spot for a bye, yet people keep looking for the shitburger? Baffling, honestly. It's August 24th man, not April... we have a forum full of Jim Lahey's! (RIP)

Discussing the makeup of this team, the strengths, the weaknesses, what our options are, how we compare to the competition, that's all part of fandom. That's what a message board is for. And yes, some of it might be negative because there are concerns when it comes to competing in the postseason. No team is perfect.

Remember in 2022, when we complained of lack of offense and stupid baserunning, (especially by Vladdy) all season long? Remember what happened against Minny? No offense and stupid baserunning cost us the season. Sometimes you can see the areas that may kill you long before the postseason comes.

Why can't you understand that we can do these things while still enjoying the success of this team to this point. 

Not everybody has to be a fan the way you choose to be a fan. 

If we win the world series, I promise there will be nothing but celebration on this board, okay?

[Spanky__99]

Thanks tips... 👍🖕

[Laika]

Louis Varland has a 3.02 xFIP as a Jay, he's fine. Most of it has been random variation or bad luck.

[max silver]

5 minutes ago, Laika said:

Louis Varland has a 3.02 xFIP as a Jay, he's fine. Most of it has been random variation or bad luck.

He's also allowed a 96.1 MPH average exit velocity and a corresponding .388 xwOBA. Call it bad luck but the fact of the matter is that he's surrendering a ton of hard contact against at the moment no matter what xFIP suggests.

[Laika]

24 minutes ago, max silver said:

He's also allowed a 96.1 MPH average exit velocity and a corresponding .388 xwOBA. Call it bad luck but the fact of the matter is that he's surrendering a ton of hard contact against at the moment no matter what xFIP suggests.

Yes that happens when you throw good pitches and they get hit hard 

[max silver]

6 minutes ago, Laika said:

Yes that happens when you throw good pitches and they get hit hard 

That also happens when you throw bad pitches as well you know. 

[Laika]

Yes, good pitchers sometimes throw bad pitches or miss their spot 

What is your point? 

Are you panicking over a few earned runs and already demoting Varland in your bullpen hierarchy? If so, silly and too reactionary. Which is basically my point 

[Governator]

2 hours ago, Perfect Game said:

 

 

As funny as that sounds it's not a modern Era stat it's directly a ghost runner stat and it won't be the last time.

[jmomcc]

3 hours ago, max silver said:

That also happens when you throw bad pitches as well you know. 

He's hanging breaking balls. One of the recent hits has been a knuckle curve below the zone but almost everything else has been a meat ball. Knuckle curves mainly, and one slider. 

There is probably some element of luck that they keep getting hit. Guys miss and foul off meat balls. 

I don't see why you wouldn't stick him in lower leverage so he can figure it out. 

[John_Havok]

1 hour ago, jmomcc said:

He's hanging breaking balls. One of the recent hits has been a knuckle curve below the zone but almost everything else has been a meat ball. Knuckle curves mainly, and one slider. 

There is probably some element of luck that they keep getting hit. Guys miss and foul off meat balls. 

I don't see why you wouldn't stick him in lower leverage so he can figure it out. 

to my untrained and largely small sample size limited eye.... i just don't see why they want a guy who throws 99mp to spam knuckle curves and sliders that are all within a few MPH of each other. 

A lot of pitching is disrupting timing, offspeed and breaking balls play up not just because of their shape, but because of the velo difference from the fastball the hitter has to protect against. 

[jmomcc]

33 minutes ago, John_Havok said:

to my untrained and largely small sample size limited eye.... i just don't see why they want a guy who throws 99mp to spam knuckle curves and sliders that are all within a few MPH of each other. 

A lot of pitching is disrupting timing, offspeed and breaking balls play up not just because of their shape, but because of the velo difference from the fastball the hitter has to protect against. 

I think teams don't just believe in establishing the fastball any more. 

I wouldn't mind mixing in more fastball and sinker though. The sinker graded out as a pretty good pitch.

He can't hang the breaking ball as much though. 

[june.june]

7 hours ago, Masterbather said:

Discussing the makeup of this team, the strengths, the weaknesses, what our options are, how we compare to the competition, that's all part of fandom. That's what a message board is for. And yes, some of it might be negative because there are concerns when it comes to competing in the postseason. No team is perfect.

Remember in 2022, when we complained of lack of offense and stupid baserunning, (especially by Vladdy) all season long? Remember what happened against Minny? No offense and stupid baserunning cost us the season. Sometimes you can see the areas that may kill you long before the postseason comes.

Why can't you understand that we can do these things while still enjoying the success of this team to this point. 

Not everybody has to be a fan the way you choose to be a fan. 

If we win the world series, I promise there will be nothing but celebration on this board, okay?

Commendable effort MB for going above and beyond by making someone who reached senility understand, but at the end of the day it’s a waste of time.   Attention seeking and craving for affirmation from a public forum is a disease for certain people.  Imagine creating burner accounts just to like your own posts, sickening, who does that?

 

[max silver]

8 hours ago, Laika said:

Yes, good pitchers sometimes throw bad pitches or miss their spot 

What is your point? 

Are you panicking over a few earned runs and already demoting Varland in your bullpen hierarchy? If so, silly and too reactionary. Which is basically my point 

I'm not panicking in the slightest. Varland is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment and I'm not going to pretend like it doesn't count solely because of an obscure statistic like xFIP which can't account for quality of contact. Further to that it wouldn't be the end of the world if Varland is slotted a little lower in the pen hierarchy until he proves to be able to reliably retire hitters again. 

[John_Havok]

2 hours ago, max silver said:

I'm not panicking in the slightest. Varland is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment and I'm not going to pretend like it doesn't count solely because of an obscure statistic like xFIP which can't account for quality of contact. Further to that it wouldn't be the end of the world if Varland is slotted a little lower in the pen hierarchy until he proves to be able to reliably retire hitters again. 

I hear ya, but... who in the pen is reliably getting hitters out right now?

Based on recent past they should all be 7th on the pen depth chart

[max silver]

6 hours ago, John_Havok said:

I hear ya, but... who in the pen is reliably getting hitters out right now?

Based on recent past they should all be 7th on the pen depth chart

That's easy, you just have Nance pitch all of the leverage innings from the 6th-9th inning. 

[Spanky__99]

15 hours ago, june.june said:

Commendable effort MB for going above and beyond by making someone who reached senility understand, but at the end of the day it’s a waste of time.   Attention seeking and craving for affirmation from a public forum is a disease for certain people.  Imagine creating burner accounts just to like your own posts, sickening, who does that?

 

Holy f*ck, you got me, I've been doing it on here since '03. 

[june.june]

On 8/25/2025 at 1:46 AM, Spanky__99 said:

Holy f*ck, you got me, I've been doing it on here since '03. 

Retire already