BTS

Apparently the O' are in on Flaherty https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/12/mutual-interest-between-orioles-jack-flaherty.html

Newcomer of the Year: Brock Beauchamp Most Valuable Poster: Terminator Humorist of the Year: Terminator Most Insightful Poster: Laika Ross Atkins’ Biggest Fan: Mark Shapiro Best Foreign Poster: Angrioter Thread of the Year: Around Baseball Drama Queen Award: jaysblue lol Ross Atkins’ Biggest Hater: leaffie Infrequent Poster of the Year: P2F Best Moderator: Gsnarls Who do you think is the oldest poster award: easily Jim

Thanks! Is it better than the one on the old forum?

Use the f***ing IL!

(I accidentally deleted the old one)

Wow!

"And everyone on this board said the same thing. Why is it the two supposed geniuses from Cleveland didnt know it, and Rogers allowed it to continue for so long." Well, when did it become clear that it was a problem? At the end of 2022: - Kirk 4.3 fWAR age-23 season - Jansen 2.7 fWAR age-27 season - Espinal plucked from the trash heap and turned into a 2.4 fWAR player at 27 - Moreno knocking on the majors at 2022 and looking like a future star - Manoah one of the best pitchers in baseball at 24 Cracks didn't really show until 2023, and then things fell apart in 2024. I'm sure Shapiro and Atkins see the problem (though they won't admit) it, but don't know what to do about it. Which is why Atkins should have been fired already and Shapiro should now be fired for continuing to stand by him. But Rogers is really only like 3 months late in acting here.

I take issue with a lot of what's written here. - Complaining about an inability to lock up young stars when two of the 3 names mentioned are Bichette and Monoah. Sure, having Vlad at 300M would be nice, but we'd probably also be looking at a 300M boat anchor for Bo and 100+ for Manoah. - Calling the Semien FA signing a bust is completely ridiculous. - If Justin Turner is considered a bust big FA signing, why is Chris Bassitt not considered a win? Or Brandon Belt? Or Isaiah-Kiner Falefa? Yusei Kikuchi? - Current management didn't inherit a "roster full of promise". They inherited an old team with a closed contention window and Vlad. - The last three paragraphs are kind of just nonsense. I feel like a lot of the Toronto media know that things haven't worked out here over the last couple of years, but don't know enough about baseball to actually understand the reasons why. The biggest issue isn't that they "tried and failed to be big" (whatever that means). It's that they completely failed at development. Like, worst in class level ineptitude at producing young MLB players.

I do think you're short-changing them a bit. From 2020 to 2023 their payroll was 19th, 14th, 11th, and 9th. Vlad was 42nd in the league in fWAR over that 4-year stretch. Management did well to assemble a team that finished 6th in the league in wins over that period with 3 playoff appearances. Then the wheels fell off and they're still looking for them in the ditch by the road.

I don't know how much you read the OT forum back in the day, but the vitriol and toxicity on the forum back when politics was allowed was like 10x what we have now on the main forum about baseball issues. Years of the same people arguing about politics led to toxicity and bitterness that spilled over into the main forum almost every time one of the frequent politics arguers posted about baseball. It ****ing sucked.

Imagine the F5 spamming if a Bo trade or Vlad extension breaks in the downtime

Just read in the other thread that we'll eventually be able to say f*ck again, which is fantastic.

Pretty sure the last time I tried to ban him my laptop just started smoking and the power went out.

I don’t think so, because I don’t think Atkins can survive that and Shapiro probably can’t either

Yeah. Flaherty is the guy who looks like he might fall through the cracks. There might be a team or two who don't see much daylight between him and Fried, and if that team is willing to do something like 5/120, they'll probably land him. We're at the point in free agency where there might be more players left than teams willing to spend 20M per year on them. Flaherty needs a team that A) thinks he can repeat his 2024 is motivated to add to the top of the rotation, and C) has money to spend. If Toronto is the only team in that situation, there's no reason why they can't sign him. Maybe Toronto thinks he sucks though.

I'd take the Brewers off that list and add the Angels. I think the Jays, Tigers, and Twins are all together in a similar tier somewhere in the 20-25 range.

I wonder how many players have had their decision impacted by the fact that the GM is Ross Atkins. Imagine trying to work out a deal with this talking Linked-In page. I think we’re at like half a dozen Jays players who have openly shown contempt for him now? Dude is a ****ing loser.

So the remaining rotation options for possible SP2 production are: Flaherty Sign an old **** like Scherzer or Verlander and pray Cease (trade) Castillo (trade) Can probably eliminate the second option because the team blows and the last two options because there’s so little to trade. Brazing myself for a Jose Quintana signing

I think there are a few other teams on that list. Rogers’ willingness to spend to the tax is a huge asset.

I guess it makes sense. Burnes lives in Arizona. The real hilarity is the Orioles. They’re actually wasting another year of their contention window this year.

I see a panic Jurickson Profar overpayment coming. We'll all want him gone by the end of May.

23M was deferred too. So its actually less than a 66M NPV.

So we're down to four actual impact bats left? Bregman, Alonso, Santander, Profar?

I wonder if Ross got to the point where he found a way for this to become a possibility, or if he didn't even get that far.

Wat