Laika

Gut/rebuild wouldn't make very much sense given how, uh, in deep the team is already. Doesn't make sense to get in up to your neck and then decide the water's too cold. There are smart and efficient way to trade key pieces for what is needed, trade minor league assets for what's needed, and sign free agents to fill some holes. It won't be easy and I have almost no confidence in the FO's ability to put it all together, but it's not impossible.

Money is a thing

DRGAF what Steamer says, I think Goins is a meh bench piece at the very most but I'd still take him over Thole or Cibs, and I don't think it's even that close. I'd take Jimenez over Goins though. I agree with the earlier poster who said that 2B and C are both gaping buttholes that need to plugged. f***ing ugly positions. It's silly as hell to even argue about which one could be left alone. At the absolute very least, sign a couple of cheap buttplugs like Kelly Johnson or John Buck (or one of their peers).

A coach's hitting tendencies as a player seem to have very little to do with how they coach. At a glance it seems like a non-factor, basically. The Red Sox are a famously patient ball team and their hitting coach for the last 2 years, Greg Colbrunn, had a 5.6% career walk rate. The Blue Jays were free swinging HR chasers under Dwayne Murphy, he of the 14.3% career walk rate. And of course, there are numerous hitting coaches who could never even hit in the show at all. Busts, career minor leaguers, etc. Coaching hitting and actually hitting major league pitching are two completely different things. People get way too concerned about how specific/potential coaches hit during their careers. But if I'm hiring a hitting coach, I'd probably prefer to hire a guy who never really had any substantial major league success. If you get a guy who could actually hit big league pitching, then you run the risk of having a coach that thinks they have the answers, a coach that thinks they know too much about what is essentially a non-science. I would want a humble and open minded hitting coach, not somebody who could potentially be blinded by their own experiences and inadvertently arrogant.

Then they have.... issues.

The fact of the matter is that the Blue Jays absolutely are not, and absolutely will not be, deep enough to afford a Pete Kozma type of experiment. They'll probably do it anyway though because they're dumb like you guys. And it'll probably work out too, because AA is due for another blind squirrel event.

Brett Lawrie is easily worth more than David Price. I don't even think it's a debatable topic. Ok, I mean "worth" more. Real baseball isn't exactly a rational market.

Promoting DeRosa into pseudo-retirement would probably be a greater net benefit to the 2014 Blue Jays than hiring any single specific free agent hitting coach out there.

No. Just..... no.

I think Mark DeRosa would make a great hitting coach!!!

probably not but let's pretend that's true

Best bet here is that Mottola just didn't fit in with the old boys clique. Maybe he started critically thinking a bit too much about hitting. Maybe he started describing hitting success in terms of weighted on base average instead of arbitrary 20-80 scale numbers. He made the mistake of trying to explain BABIP to Anthopoulos. He started telling guys like Lawrie and Rasmus to maybe be less aggressive at the plate, if they felt comfortable reeling it back a bit. But the last straw was when they found a copy of The Book and a tablet PC in his locker. That was just too much.

We'll talk next offseason after his Profarian leap to top 10 prospect status. And then again the year after that, when he's numero uno.

Judging from the Shields trade, if they move Price they'll be looking for a big fish. I doubt that they'd even consider Sanchez to be such a prize. The Jays don't have a d'Arnaud burning a hole in their pocket like last offseason, and I can't really see the division rivals getting exceptionally creative, so I think it's out of the question. Although, I'm sure that Tampa has taken note of the obvious value that one Ryan Goins brings to the table with his elite defense. Hmmm....

Clearly this isn't a dig at me, because Raul Jr. played full season ball this year (at 17 years old, wow!).

Scouting scouting scouting Anecdotal *proof* that you can't nerd scout from your computer chair. Doesn't work. You need eyes on the talent and 20-80 grades on the tools! Only then will you be good enough to draft a Sonny Gray and lose in the Darrell Dynasty quarterfinals.

I think you could make a decent argument that David Price is done as an "Ace". That FB is down by a considerable margin, and I'm not sure if the new rock bottom BB rate is true talent / sustainable. I think you could also make a weak argument that David Price never really was a legitimate Ace! His fWAR pitcher ranks by year since 2010 are: 28th, 20th, 8th, 15th. His yearly peers are often guys like Kuroda, Shields, and Lester, all of which I would consider strong #2s and not Aces. I generally consider the "Aces" to be top 10 pitchers, and Price hasn't been that in 3 of his 4 full years. But then you look at 2010-2013 in totality and there he is, 8th in total pitching fWAR. If he's been a true Ace, then he's done it with consistency and not big upside. I guess you could say that he's a second tier #1. I mean, he's clearly been a rung below Felix-Kershaw-Lee-Verlander. And on top of that, there are several guys who might have leaped him this year in the arbitrary pitcher rank ladder, such as Fernandez, Scherzer, Sale, Darvish, Harvey , and Anibal.

And at this point last year, he looked like a Deck McGuire-ish bust

I said almost as much. I think Phillips would be worth a bit more. I'd almost prefer to have a guy like Morrow with big upside who hasn't demonstrated the ability to stay healthy, rather than a guy like Phillips who has recently demonstrated that he is mediocre and on the decline. "Consistent 3 win 2B", except for, you know, his most reason season. Fully healthy and only 2.6 wins. Mehhhh.

It's pretty bad. Like the guy said, it would be Dickey trade bad. Morrow himself, IMO, should be worth nearly as much as Phillips. Phillips is owed 49 mill for his age 33-36 seasons, and he just had a very mediocre year. Barely better than an average 2B. He doesn't exactly have old man skills. An Orlando Hudson-esque precipitous fall off to suckitude isn't out of the question. Morrow + a B prospect would be a fair swap in my books, but I wouldn't even do that because I hate Phillips. You don't send off an affordable young upside arm like Morrow + a good, cheap, controllable young arm like Hutch + a blue chip talent with massive upside like Sanch for one old, expensive, whiny, and mediocre player like Brandon Phillips.

I think you should make this quote your signature! It's perfect!

I'm renowned? As in, widely acclaimed and honuored; celebrated; famous? I had no idea you thought so highly of me!!! As an aside, I don't really appreciate being lumped in with that goober BTS.

I never thought baseball players were smart, but man, twitter makes you realize just how stupid most of them really are. It's remarkable how dumb these multimillionaires can be. You've got guys who went to college for three years that aren't smart enough to resist spelling mistake ridden and awkward hashtag laden tirades against e-haters... and then guys like Lawrie who are still trying to learn how to properly use punctuation. I don't even like following players on twitter anymore because I'd rather just ignorantly respect them the small little bit that I tend to by default. I always thought Price was a somewhat heady guy, for some reason.

LOL @ trading that stuff for Brandon Phillips' age 33-36 seasons. Although, it's so silly that I could actually see AA doing it. I could totally see AA selling low on Morrow, for one thing.

For a saber website run by nerds, Fangraphs can be a pretty stupid place. I especially like when they post full length articles that essentially boil down to, "This guy is playing poorly but he has a really bad BABIP and/or HR/FB or whatever so he'll probably improve".