Laika

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.

Yeah, the whole point of popping Bickford so early should be to open up a pool of money to sign a couple of guys like Brentz and Tellez. As if something like ~2 million isn't enough for Phil f***ing Bickford, who really wasn't even on the radar at #10. He was a kid that most thought would fall to the supplemental round.

Linear weights exist. Approximate values: 1B: 0.90 BB: 0.70 HR: 2.00 Something like that... Yes, a base hit is better than a walk. Yes, 0-1 with 3 BB is (most often) a better night than 1-4 with a HR. There is a big difference between the "AVG" skill and the "OBP" skill though. It's not as simple as "a hit is better, therefore OBP is overrated". In the modern game, it is fully possible to OBP well over .400, that is to say, not get out over 40% of the time. It is virtually impossible to do this via base hits alone, over any sizable sample. Players that want to maximize their offensive impact NEED to walk as much as possible. And players that want to be more consistent producers also need to walk as much as possible. Putting the ball in play makes your production subject to a lot of luck - batting average can be volatile, and swing up and down violently based on BABIP. If you walk 14% of the time, like Votto or Bautista, then you can still be a stud even when your average sinks to the mid .200's (usually). Walk 4% of the time like Adam Jones or Erick Aybar, and even when you hit .280+, you're barely an above average player (usually). When it comes to Bonifacio and Kawasaki, walk rate is the difference between being a useful bench player (Kawasaki: .212 with no pop and 11.7 walk rate = .280 wOBA, positive WAR) and a piece of s*** (Bonifacio: .206 with 3.9% walk rate and no pop = .239 wOBA, negative WAR). Now you have been enlightened. Go forth and preach the gospel of OBP.

Yeah. With lots of guys that aren't big names, they don't add them until after they've played a game.

I wonder if you could get a full one run ERA swing, for both guys, by transplanting these two pitchers onto the other guy's team: Guy we've been talking about Other guy edit - nvm it doesn't even look like a HR/FB thing between the 2. Does SafeCo even help pitchers that much anymore? What are the new park factors like there?

It's not so much that trading Lawrie was a mistake, I just think you probably could've got a more solid pitcher. Better or at least more reliable. You paid a lot for a sizable portion of ERA and BABIP.