Blue Jays (Lauer) vs Angels (Soriano): 4/22/26, 3:07pm

[jaysblue]

Take away Lauer's starts against the Twins and White Sox, don't know what there is to complain about. As a swingman/8th SP on your depth charts, what do you expect Spanky? 

[Spanky__99]

10 minutes ago, jaysblue said:

Take away Lauer's starts against the Twins and White Sox, don't know what there is to complain about. As a swingman/8th SP on your depth charts, what do you expect Spanky? 

It's like talking to a f*cking brick wall seriously with you, bud, lol.

You literally called him a 5/6 and said a 5.60 ERA is acceptable. Get in line, lmfao

Take away Hoff's blowups he's a f***ing icon!

 

[Eat My Shatkins]

53 minutes ago, RA Whiffleball said:

If Atkins knew how to build a BP, we would have won the WS, and we wouldn't have missed the postseason in 2021.. 

He is not a moron btw, but he does have a tin ear when it comes to the BP. 

The bullpen is not perfect, but it is absolutely fine as evidenced by being top 10 in many important categories in all of MLB. You were trying to dunk on Atkins over it, which is hilarious.

 

You have to look at the bullpen as a whole, you can't say it's imploding because a couple of the individual relievers are, that's what relievers do dude. They are volatile. Overall the bullpen is basically top ten in MLB despite those individual implosions and despite being over worked due to a phuck load of starter injuries.

[Laika]

58 minutes ago, jaysblue said:

Take away Lauer's starts against the Twins and White Sox, don't know what there is to complain about. As a swingman/8th SP on your depth charts, what do you expect Spanky? 

Him to STFU and just pitch?

[jaysblue]

1 hour ago, Spanky__99 said:

It's like talking to a f*cking brick wall seriously with you, bud, lol.

You literally called him a 5/6 and said a 5.60 ERA is acceptable. Get in line, lmfao

Take away Hoff's blowups he's a f***ing icon!

 

Again, you’re twisting words and trying to force an argument where there doesn’t need to be one, just so you can sound superior.

At the end of the day, Lauer is probably near the end of the line anyway once Yesavage and Berrios get back. So if he ends up making five or six starts for us, then yes, the results have been mediocre - but that’s exactly why he’s a career 5th or 6th starter. He can go through stretches where he looks solid, like we saw in the early part of last season, and he can also go through stretches where the inconsistency shows up.

For a guy who was 7th or 8th on your SP depth chart, if he gets called on because of injuries and gives you around five innings while allowing roughly three earned runs per start over a handful of outings, the Jays have definitely gotten worse before.

 

[Stangstag]

4 hours ago, jaysblue said:

Take away Lauer's starts against the Twins and White Sox, don't know what there is to complain about. As a swingman/8th SP on your depth charts, what do you expect Spanky? 

You can’t be serious with this… take away the 2 bad starts and look at just the 3 good starts and his numbers look good? Like yeah no sht?

Take away Scherzer’s bad starts against LA and MIN and he looks like an ace!!

[Omar]

13 hours ago, Laika said:

There are two types of people in this world. 

1. People who ride Eric Lauer's dick
2. People who don't

Choose wisely 

Lauer has been bitter since coming out on the short end of his arbitration case.  The Jays need to jettison this malcontent post haste.  

[Spanky__99]

10 hours ago, jaysblue said:

Again, you’re twisting words and trying to force an argument where there doesn’t need to be one, just so you can sound superior.

At the end of the day, Lauer is probably near the end of the line anyway once Yesavage and Berrios get back. So if he ends up making five or six starts for us, then yes, the results have been mediocre - but that’s exactly why he’s a career 5th or 6th starter. He can go through stretches where he looks solid, like we saw in the early part of last season, and he can also go through stretches where the inconsistency shows up.

For a guy who was 7th or 8th on your SP depth chart, if he gets called on because of injuries and gives you around five innings while allowing roughly three earned runs per start over a handful of outings, the Jays have definitely gotten worse before.

 

[jaysblue]

8 hours ago, Stangstag said:

You can’t be serious with this… take away the 2 bad starts and look at just the 3 good starts and his numbers look good? Like yeah no sht?

Take away Scherzer’s bad starts against LA and MIN and he looks like an ace!!

Well people love to cherry pick on here sometimes to suit their narrative, so why not join in on the fun haha. 

[mphenhef]

8 hours ago, Stangstag said:

You can’t be serious with this… take away the 2 bad starts and look at just the 3 good starts and his numbers look good? Like yeah no sht?

Take away Scherzer’s bad starts against LA and MIN and he looks like an ace!!

Normally I would agree with this 100% but when the two bad starts were very clearly impacted by an illness there is some merit here although 2-3 starts is nothing.

[Brownie19]

2 hours ago, jaysblue said:

Well people love to cherry pick on here sometimes to suit their narrative, so why not join in on the fun haha. 

Typically it's your brother.  I hope you and your brother are having fun 😘

[Laika]

2 hours ago, mphenhef said:

Normally I would agree with this 100% but when the two bad starts were very clearly impacted by an illness there is some merit here although 2-3 starts is nothing.

Were they though? 

His Stuff+ by game is 90, 79, 85, 87, 78 

He only had four games all of last season with Stuff+ in the 80s, and zero below 87

So these last four games are his worst Stuff+ games over his entire Blue Jays tenure (and perhaps his whole career) 

Unless he has mono, I am not sure what the narrative is. I can buy the flu for a start but the tape is weird. What is going on? 

[RA Whiffleball]

17 hours ago, Eat My Shatkins said:

The bullpen is not perfect, but it is absolutely fine as evidenced by being top 10 in many important categories in all of MLB. You were trying to dunk on Atkins over it, which is hilarious.

 

You have to look at the bullpen as a whole, you can't say it's imploding because a couple of the individual relievers are, that's what relievers do dude. They are volatile. Overall the bullpen is basically top ten in MLB despite those individual implosions and despite being over worked due to a phuck load of starter injuries.

You are easily triggered when someone dares be critical of Atkins. I like the job he has done overall, but based on 11 years of experience, he has had a blind spot when it comes to the BP and that is undeniable.

If we had a better BP, we go 6-3 on the road trip instead of 4-5. Hoffman, Little, Nance (twice) have already cost us 4 games this season. These are the little details that add up over 162 games. You can spew all the fancy stats you want, and claim that all the opposition hits are lucky bloops (and I guess all the walks were unlucky as well), but everyone in the ballpark knew as soon as Nance showed his face, the game was effectively over. 

[Laika]

1 minute ago, RA Whiffleball said:

You are easily triggered when someone dares be critical of Atkins. I like the job he has done overall, but based on 11 years of experience, he has had a blind spot when it comes to the BP and that is undeniable.

If we had a better BP, we go 6-3 on the road trip instead of 4-5. Hoffman, Little, Nance (twice) have already cost us 4 games this season. These are the little details that add up over 162 games. You can spew all the fancy stats you want, and claim that all the opposition hits are lucky bloops (and I guess all the walks were unlucky as well), but everyone in the ballpark knew as soon as Nance showed his face, the game was effectively over. 

It's not some kind of genius insight to say that if they had better players they would have a better record. If they had better hitters they would have more wins, too.

I don't know what some of you even want the guy to do differently, in terms of process. He: 

• Acquired Varland, who is elite
• Signed Rogers, who is elite
• Developed or found Fluharty and Fisher 
• Found Little who was elite for half a season
• Spent capital on rentals like Seranthony when needed
• Cut ties with guys like Green or demoted Y Rod when it made sense
• Has successfully cycled through helpful backend guys like Mantiply

It's like your entire critique is that they signed Jeff Hoffman and he sucks and therefore Atkins is terrible at bullpens. I guess he should have swung again and signed Edwin Diaz or Devin Williams this past offseason? 

[Brownie19]

Limiting the amount of resources spent on the bullpen is pretty common around baseball.  Bullpens are super volatile and unpredictable.  You see it all the time where teams think their pen is a strength going into the season, only to find out it's a weakness - and vice versa.  The pen is also the most likely place you discover an uncovered gem by throwing stuff against the wall.  Annually, there are more surprise breakout players in the pen than any other position in baseball.

When teams invest more into the pen, than that almost always comes with less investment in other areas.  You can't just say "if he knew how to build a pen, we'd have won the WS" because maybe assigning more assets to the pen means we don't have Barger, or we didn't extend Kirk, or we don't land Bassitt or Bieber.  You can't just look at it in a vacuum like that.

Positional players and/or starters are often more consistent performers.  Personally - if I have to choose, the pen is one of the last places I want a lot of assets and resources spent. 

That said - Atkins has shown a willingness to add to the pen when it makes sense (as was noted above).

[Stangstag]

6 hours ago, jaysblue said:

Well people love to cherry pick on here sometimes to suit their narrative, so why not join in on the fun haha. 

That’s another level though lol removing 40% of the stats

[Stangstag]

6 hours ago, mphenhef said:

Normally I would agree with this 100% but when the two bad starts were very clearly impacted by an illness there is some merit here although 2-3 starts is nothing.

Yes, that is/could be a factor that doesn’t get factored into the raw numbers. I suppose we will see if the suck is behind him now or not

[RA Whiffleball]

1 hour ago, Laika said:

It's not some kind of genius insight to say that if they had better players they would have a better record. If they had better hitters they would have more wins, too.

I don't know what some of you even want the guy to do differently, in terms of process. He: 

• Acquired Varland, who is elite
• Signed Rogers, who is elite
• Developed or found Fluharty and Fisher 
• Found Little who was elite for half a season
• Spent capital on rentals like Seranthony when needed
• Cut ties with guys like Green or demoted Y Rod when it made sense
• Has successfully cycled through helpful backend guys like Mantiply

It's like your entire critique is that they signed Jeff Hoffman and he sucks and therefore Atkins is terrible at bullpens. I guess he should have swung again and signed Edwin Diaz or Devin Williams this past offseason? 

Wow, it is amazing how easily you get triggered over this. Amusing even.

Look, when you are paying the GM the kind of money Rogers is, and you have the resources this club has, and you are massively hiking season ticket prices for a club that hasn't stood for much besides the national anthem in the past 32 years, yes I expect the BP to be better and I don't want to see s*** like Tommy Nance and Brendan Little appearing when the game is on the line.

If you sit there and say this BP as it is constituted is fine, I want some of whatever you're smoking.    

[RA Whiffleball]

1 hour ago, Brownie19 said:

Limiting the amount of resources spent on the bullpen is pretty common around baseball.  Bullpens are super volatile and unpredictable.  You see it all the time where teams think their pen is a strength going into the season, only to find out it's a weakness - and vice versa.  The pen is also the most likely place you discover an uncovered gem by throwing stuff against the wall.  Annually, there are more surprise breakout players in the pen than any other position in baseball.

When teams invest more into the pen, than that almost always comes with less investment in other areas.  You can't just say "if he knew how to build a pen, we'd have won the WS" because maybe assigning more assets to the pen means we don't have Barger, or we didn't extend Kirk, or we don't land Bassitt or Bieber.  You can't just look at it in a vacuum like that.

Positional players and/or starters are often more consistent performers.  Personally - if I have to choose, the pen is one of the last places I want a lot of assets and resources spent. 

That said - Atkins has shown a willingness to add to the pen when it makes sense (as was noted above).

I'm sorry, but this so much apologetic waffle. 

This club has the resources to build a better BP AND develop players. We are not a small-market club with poor owners, but you wouldn't know that listening to some of our apologist fans.

It's been 11 years this front office has been here, and our minor league system is still middle of the road at best. Yet every series we play, I see the opposition roll out guys from their BP who throw 97-102, while we roll out guys who throw sliders, sweepers, and curve balls, with a 92-94 mph fastball. 

Once again, I will repeat that our BP cost us the WS. These are the facts, and they are indisputable.

I will let the apologists waffle on about Babip, and other such nonsense. 

[max silver]

5 minutes ago, RA Whiffleball said:

Wow, it is amazing how easily you get triggered over this. Amusing even.

Look, when you are paying the GM the kind of money Rogers is, and you have the resources this club has, and you are massively hiking season ticket prices for a club that hasn't stood for much besides the national anthem in the past 32 years, yes I expect the BP to be better and I don't want to see s*** like Tommy Nance and Brendan Little appearing when the game is on the line.

If you sit there and say this BP as it is constituted is fine, I want some of whatever you're smoking.    

Good grief try to look even an inch beneath the surface. Your criticism is essentially boiling down to you thinking that every club in MLB is supposed to have 8 leverage relievers available to them at all times and anything less is inexcusable because it's easy to build a perfect bullpen in MLB as injuries and underperformance apparently don't exist in your view. Through a cascade brought about by a ton of rotation injuries, shorter starts from the rotation and heavy leverage group usage in the prior few games it was necessary to bump some mid leverage arms up the chain a bit. Nance didn't pitch that badly in the final game of the Angels series, and Fisher unfortunately had a little bi of a tough outing that was aided by an unfortunate well placed softly hit fly ball that fell in due to the alignment of the outfield. If/when the rotation rounds back into form and a lot of key starters begin to return the rotation innings should stabilize a bit, and with Garcia potentially nearing his return this can add another key leverage arm back into the mix. 

[max silver]

1 minute ago, RA Whiffleball said:

I'm sorry, but this so much apologetic waffle. 

This club has the resources to build a better BP AND develop players. We are not a small-market club with poor owners, but you wouldn't know that listening to some of our apologist fans.

It's been 11 years this front office has been here, and our minor league system is still middle of the road at best. Yet every series we play, I see the opposition roll out guys from their BP who throw 97-102, while we roll out guys who throw sliders, sweepers, and curve balls, with a 92-94 mph fastball. 

Once again, I will repeat that our BP cost us the WS. These are the facts, and they are indisputable.

I will let the apologists waffle on about Babip, and other such nonsense. 

You are conflating opinion with facts. I disagree in your assessment that the bullpen deserves 100% of the blame for the Blue Jays losing game 7 as I believe the fact that the offense completely dried up in the later innings in game 7 was the primary reason the team lost the game and series. They left a ton of runners on base and failed to execute on a massive number of chances to tack on extra runs early, and failed at some nearly gift wrapped opportunities to tie or take the lead/win in the late innings. 

[mphenhef]

4 minutes ago, RA Whiffleball said:

Wow, it is amazing how easily you get triggered over this. Amusing even.

Look, when you are paying the GM the kind of money Rogers is, and you have the resources this club has, and you are massively hiking season ticket prices for a club that hasn't stood for much besides the national anthem in the past 32 years, yes I expect the BP to be better and I don't want to see s*** like Tommy Nance and Brendan Little appearing when the game is on the line.

If you sit there and say this BP as it is constituted is fine, I want some of whatever you're smoking.    

Bullpen is fine (insomuch as they   They have covered way more innings than anticipated due to starter ineffectiveness and injuries.  They have covered way more leverage innings than ideal due to the bats keeping nearly every game close.  Relievers are volatile and numbers are very volatile in the early season.  

[Laika]

24 minutes ago, RA Whiffleball said:

Wow, it is amazing how easily you get triggered over this. Amusing even.

Look, when you are paying the GM the kind of money Rogers is, and you have the resources this club has, and you are massively hiking season ticket prices for a club that hasn't stood for much besides the national anthem in the past 32 years, yes I expect the BP to be better and I don't want to see s*** like Tommy Nance and Brendan Little appearing when the game is on the line.

If you sit there and say this BP as it is constituted is fine, I want some of whatever you're smoking.    

What kind of mental illness is it that makes people think that anyone who replies to them and disagrees with their opinion is "triggered"?

Some sort of personality disorder, most likely 

Tommy Nance has like, +1 fWAR in 63 innings as a Blue Jay. Complaining about his mere existence in the bullpen is a good way to label yourself as someone who doesn't know a lot about modern baseball. 

[Eat My Shatkins]

Hahaha. Yeah, like I said...the bullpen is just fine and will likely be even better once some starters return and they hopefully don't need to be relied on quite as much.

[mphenhef]

15 minutes ago, RA Whiffleball said:

 

Once again, I will repeat that our BP cost us the WS. These are the facts, and they are indisputable.

 

You mean the bullpen that had a 2.75 ERA in the World Series?  You mean the bullpen that held a lineup with multiple MVP bats scoreless between innings 7 and 18 in game 3?  

 

I could easily argue the bats lost the world series.  I could even more easily argue that Yamamoto won the world series for the Dodgers.

[RA Whiffleball]

10 minutes ago, mphenhef said:

You mean the bullpen that had a 2.75 ERA in the World Series?  You mean the bullpen that held a lineup with multiple MVP bats scoreless between innings 7 and 18 in game 3?  

 

I could easily argue the bats lost the world series.  I could even more easily argue that Yamamoto won the world series for the Dodgers.

I mean the BP that gave up the tying and winning runs via the HR in games 3 and 7. 

Their BP gave up 1 HR in a blowout game 1, and did not give up a HR in 22 innings in games 3 and 7, where if they give up even one HR over that span, the Jays win the series.

The truth hurts.

 

[RA Whiffleball]

26 minutes ago, Laika said:

What kind of mental illness is it that makes people think that anyone who replies to them and disagrees with their opinion is "triggered"?

Some sort of personality disorder, most likely 

Tommy Nance has like, +1 fWAR in 63 innings as a Blue Jay. Complaining about his mere existence in the bullpen is a good way to label yourself as someone who doesn't know a lot about modern baseball. 

It's funny, you make my point with every reply. 

Are you referring to the same Tommy Nance who got shelled Wednesday, or is it the Tommy Nance who came into the Colorado game with the lead and proceeded to walk the leadoff man on 4 pitches?

[max silver]

2 minutes ago, RA Whiffleball said:

I mean the BP that gave up the tying and winning runs via the HR in games 3 and 7. 

Their BP gave up 1 HR in a blowout game 1, and did not give up a HR in 22 innings in games 3 and 7, where if they give up even one HR over that span, the Jays win the series.

The truth hurts.

 

Get over yourself. If not for Yamamoto and his heroics the Blue Jays almost certainly would have been world series champions. The team put their best arms into the game in the late innings in game 7 and an elite team did just enough to steal away a victory with some late inning heroics. Stop acting like your opinion is some sort of undeniable truth as that's not the case.

[max silver]

1 minute ago, RA Whiffleball said:

It's funny, you make my point with every reply. 

Are you referring to the same Tommy Nance who got shelled Wednesday, or is it the Tommy Nance who came into the Colorado game with the lead and proceeded to walk the leadoff man on 4 pitches?

Are you this obtuse intentionally or it more of an accident? Nance gave up a single walk and a single hit in 1.1 innings of work and this is him getting "shelled" in your view? You should take the opportunity to read a little more and post less as you are lacking in the basic baseball acumen that's required to keep up with the discussion here. 

[RA Whiffleball]

Just now, max silver said:

Get over yourself. If not for Yamamoto and his heroics the Blue Jays almost certainly would have been world series champions. The team put their best arms into the game in the late innings in game 7 and an elite team did just enough to steal away a victory with some late inning heroics. Stop acting like your opinion is some sort of undeniable truth as that's not the case.

What I wrote is fact.

If our BP doesn't give up HRs in those situations, we win the series, and Yamamoto becomes a footnote.

I don't know why our fans go mental when you dare say anything critical of the BP. It cost us the WS, and it is costing us games this season. It needs to be improved.