NorthOf49

Why does Hurl think he owns Keury Mella? smh

I drafted Britton in the initial MLB draft! Don't regret cutting him though lol

All hail TwistedLogic, the draft oracle!

Sorry, I've been pretty busy. Soon I'll sit down and fill in all the recent trades. Yay I was finally able to play Mitch Moreland!

That's a bunch of Japanese propaganda. Ichiro does not have prodigious power. Many players just try to hit the crap out of the ball during BP. Jose is 4th among AL outfielders in WAR and he has a much better track record than Lorenzo Cain. He deserves to be there.

What? Josh Donaldson participating would be a lot of fun. Better than Bautista doing it again.

"Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back Back GONE!!!" Love the new Home Run Derby format. Hope our boys are involved.

Dinger said Archie Bradley would have the biggest 2014 impact of any prospect in baseball "by a mile."

No, because I'm heading into my bye week while NJH gets you. Next week should shake up the Turkey Bacon Club division.

Thank you for not giving him Bolsy.

You have shown a consistent inability to use the word 'consistent' properly.

The Blue Jays outfield defense is fine and the park won't have a major impact on his value. If Matt Boyd can continue to strike batters out an an above average clip while limiting free passes, he'll be very valuable to any club, including the Blue Jays.

Big fan of Rob Rasmussen. Let's see what he can do.

Why are we still using Hendriks in low leverage? I don't understand it at all. He's soooo good.

Prince!

Both of mine were injured in the same game... blergh

Maybe see if his BBDL owner is looking to sell low? Thx.

Same with Mitch Moreland. Open to offers on him, folks.

Do the Blue Jays play every game at home? No. Estrada's relevant rate is ~109 since we expect him to pitch half his games at home and half on the road. The lower BABIP isn't an "argument." It's an effect that suppresses the number of batted balls (and in turn, fly balls) he gives up per inning. Same with strikeouts. There are a few incremental effects that lead to the Rogers Centre not really being a big deal for fly ball pitchers, and it's best to keep them in mind instead of discarding each because they're small individually.

Not just nothing; they actually gave up a prospect and cash with Lackey for the opportunity to pay Allen Craig a lot of money and have Joe Kelly continue to prove he isn't a starter. Pretty amazing trade by the Cardinals. Lackey is going to pile up 3 WAR this year making the minimum.

I'm sure his agent has a good idea of what he'd get. If the Blue Jays exceed that significantly in an offer, he'd be stupid not to take it. That wouldn't make sense for the Blue Jays. There will be so many pitchers available this winter that overpaying for one ahead of time isn't necessary.

Cueto isn't giving us any hometown discount though, so I don't know why the contract extension part is relevant to his value. Would you give up extra prospects for the opportunity to pay Johnny Cueto $140MM over 7 years?

You see him profiling as a #4/5 pitcher yet you don't see him as below-average? That's a contradiction. Major league average pitchers are very valuable and there's nothing wrong with Estrada if he's not one. Eating innings as a #4 is valuable.

Estrada is 31 years old now and many of those innings from 2011-2015 came as a reliever. He is no longer the pitcher that he was in 2012-13. Projections have him down for an ERA above 4.00 and that includes some relief innings. Fly ball pitchers give up additional home runs in home run parks, yes. But Estrada limits balls in play to some degree because fly balls have a slightly lower BABIP and he carries a good strikeout rate. For his career, Estrada has given up 26 balls in play per 9 innings. An average pitcher (35% FB%) would let 9.1 of those go for fly balls. Estrada at 45% would allow 11.7 fly balls. The Blue Jays have a ~110 home run factor and Estrada is perhaps slightly homer-prone. So we'll say with the Blue Jays he's a 12.5% HR/FB guy and with the average team he'd be at 11%. With the Blue Jays, those 2.6 (11.7 - 9.1) extra fly balls will lead to .325 extra home runs per nine, and home runs are worth ~1.7 runs on average, giving us 0.55 extra runs. On the average team, the 2.6 fly balls would give us .286 more home runs, and .49 extra runs. The penalty is about 0.06 runs per nine. A real difference, but not to the point where you'd explicity decide "we can't have this guy pitch in our ballpark." Jeff Sullivan wrote a good article about batted balls and ballparks here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-significance-of-pitching-to-the-park/

Because they can't start him Thursday and then also on Saturday? Starters don't usually pitch on one day's rest. It's probably not a coincidence that the Jays need a starter on Saturday and that's the point Lott made in his second sentence.