Laika

Seven innings. One walk. One strikeout. Hendo is definitely back, baby!!!

Tough-sign high school pitcher.... duh.

I guess it's time for this? Sigh... Not including today: 1 Houston Astros 33-63 2 Miami Marlins 35-60 3 Chicago White Sox 38-56 4 Milwaukee Brewers 40-56 5 Minnesota Twins 41-53 6 San Diego Padres 43-55 7 New York Mets 42-51 8 Chicago Cubs 43-52 9 Seattle Mariners 45-52 10 Toronto Blue Jays 45-51 11 San Francisco Giants 45-51 12 Kansas City Royals 45-49 13 Colorado Rockies 47-51 14 Los Angeles Angels 46-49 15 Washington Nationals 48-49 Two top 11 picks would be kewl. Seattle is up 10-0 on Houston right now. Mets won 5-0.

I thought he did pretty well to get Wheeler + a 1st + an ok prospect. But yeah, that trade would've really sunk your team this year. You and him would probably be flip flopped in the standings.

Sure, but any rational person has thought this all along. His s***** year so far doesn't even really move the needle. Still, he could be one hell of a part time player. Imagine if Rajai Davis walked twice as much and could play a mint CF, while making 500k... you'd have a most ideal 4th OF / platoon player.

I'm gonna go out on a flimsy limb and say that Anthony Gose just has a case of the "AAA's". Sometimes young players get bored and disinterested when they feel like they should have been in the big leagues a while ago. Gose has never repeated a level. He probably had 2013 penciled in as his first full MLB season.

So f***ing stupid.

Probably neither. Sorry. I'll take "decent middle reliever with power stuff and inconsistent results". And that of course is IF he stays healthy.

Sure he was

I'd like to say that there is a 0% chance of this happening, but AA's trade history won't let me. - Traded young assets for 1/2 a year of Brandon Lyon, when the team had virtually no chance of making the playoffs. - In the Dickey trade, dealt a heck of a lot for 1 year of control, showing that he'll include extensions (contingent or possible) into his trade calculus. Assuming the Cubs can't get a type A prospect for Garza, in a Wheeler-for-Beltran type of rental raping, then I could see AA sending B pieces for him and trying hard to get an extension done. Because, you know, Garza had a decent ERA for a few years in the AL East back when he was on the other side of his physical prime. Ugh #LOLThisTeam!

Simmer down. Even s***** players can have a hot month or two. Looking at their YTD slashlines, I don't see what's so positive. Smoak has a freaking .146 ISO. The kids problem has always seemed, to me at least, to be that he just doesn't have plus power, despite the massive frame. He has a power hitter's approach, and maybe 55 grade pop on a good day. Hence the 3.5 year BABIP of .266 Now a Hosmer "breakout", I could buy. Having seen him play a bit this year, it does kind of look like he's figured something out. Still nothing special though, at least not right now. He's maybe gone from sad bust to massively overrated young league average type 1B (Freddie Freeman's former office).

Didn't watch the game (hardly watch at all anymore. It's amazing how terrible the product is, with what happened in the offseason). How did Lawrie look at 2nd? I want meaningless one game scouting reports on the 20-80 scale, by respected posters only.

Ok, I'll bite. a) It's pretty hard for someone to strike out 31% of the time and keep producing like he's been producing, for the long term. His HR/FB seems perhaps a bit unsustainably high, judging from his own career mean (17.6% right now vs. 12.1% career, and 13.2% last year in Toronto). Now, if Colby has indeed figured a little something out, this HR/FB% figure could totally be true talent legit.... it's just a little early to say so. c) His BABIP seems a little bit lucky right now, judging from his batted ball profile and his career mean BABIP. Insert nearly identical second sentence as in here. d) He's done this before in Blue (good looking partial season). 2012 Colby had a 120 wRC+ in the first half, and a 38! wRC+ in the second half. That's .259/.328 with 17 HR vs. .176/.238 with a measly 6 round trippers. Right now he's .261/.324 with 16 HR, remarkably similar to his first half last year. Disclaimer: I really like Colby, as a player and as a person. I think he's a good CF and I think he's an aesthetically pleasing entity in this particular spectator sport. But people are completely justified in withholding their praise. Let's wait and see what Gump brings in the 2nd half

*critically think It's a big assumption and you're giving them a lot of credit that they don't really deserve. Offering Bickford slot money and getting spurned isn't really "punting the pick". Ask AA/Parker if they punted the pick, and they would tell you no. They would say that they had every intention of signing Bickford. You're not even entertaining the most likely case. On another note, a prospect right now objectively carries more value than an equal prospect a year from now. You can't just say that "11 in a deeper draft is better than 10 in this draft". That's a shallow analysis. Even if the kid in 2014 is better than Bickford, that doesn't necessarily mean that waiting a year to get him was the right move. He would need to be better by some uncertain amount that is hard to quantify. And looking beyond Bickford, rumours are right now that Toronto might not get Brentz and/or Tellez. It's entirely possible that the Jays right now end up spending like, 2 million total on this years draft, bagging Clinton Hollon at #47 as their best drafted prospect. That would be a disaster and a half.

I'm just soooooooooooo happy for Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve. From high school teacher to MLB ALL STAR!!!! What a story! Yay steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevie

All things considered, Kovie is probably doing NJ a massive favour though.

How does one even rise to the upper ranks of an MLB front office without being a critical thinker? The Blue Jays FO is fundamentally flawed. They didn't pass the first checkpoint - hire smart people.

You know the All Star game is kind of broken when a team that's under .500 and in 5th place is getting represented by not one, but TWO pop-up, non-closing relief pitchers. Josh Donaldson has been a stud all year. Evan Longoria isn't going. You need a relief pitcher? Why not Greg f***ing Holland, who has been destroying worlds all year. Sigh.

- Would prefer the 11th round pick in next year's class - Take a guy who wants a ton of money - Offer him near slot but make him feel unwanted - Doesn't look like you punted the pick - Get a better prospect next year - It's not completely transparent The team that's been gaming the draft (or at least trying to) for several years now would definitely do it, if they thought they were on to something.

77 million on the table.... I wonder how much the KHL / the Russian mob is offering him

It's entirely possible that they just looked at the two draft classes and decided that they'd prefer the 11th pick next year. I wouldn't really give them that much credit though. Who knows. 11 + 20ish + supplemental for JJ = neato! Although at this point, JJ might just accept a qualifying offer. And the Jays would probably just overdraft 3 high school arms with those picks anyway.

You can still keep him. Probably not the best route for his development chances though, unfortunately.

Jamie f***ing Campbell could do a better job.

Don't look now, but the Adam Lind dead cat bounce is very probably over. The guy has TWO walks since June 9th. I wish that was a joke. So much for seeing the ball well. The Cibia has 7 walks in that span. At this point, he's basically just Adam Lind from the last 3 years + some BABIP luck (.349). As for Cecil, he was a s*** starter so they moved him to the pen, as they should have. Any sane person expected him to carry value as a reliever.

The draft was bad for Toronto no matter what happens with Bickford.... they hardly drafted any plus baseball names.