Laika

Even without the velo drop the yank is fine. No reason to ride the guy like a mule at this point in the season. He threw like 17-27 extra pitches last time so save him those this time.

We are shitposting the Orioles because it's funny. If you want to remove the humour from the situation, the facts are something like this: - You are very right about Nimmala and Bonnilla. We can basically forget about Bonilla at this point and Nimmala's K rate makes his chances of making it or being great rather puny. Sometimes when someone is "very correct" people on the internet instead of saying "you are correct, but here is a small counterpoint" just go straight to the small counterpoint. There are some small counterpoints about Nimmala of course, age and power and position all help his case a bit and there are some precedents. - People in baseball are underreacting to Jackson Holliday's MLB struggles. Too many are just saying "well, he's young he will figure it out". Mike Trout at 19 was not great but he was better than this and his K rate was normal. Jackson Holliday's MLB struggles take him down the ladder from "sure thing prospect" to "50% chance to be Jarred Kelenic" It is what it is Try to be less autistic and it will make more sense

It's so true 94 mph meatball from Ryan Burr - homer 85 mph hanging slider from Yerry Rodriguez - long homer 90 mph s***** cutter from Bassitt - homer three of his five dingers are off the Jays lmao

Blaun Snoto it is

The case for signing Snell is that the Jays do not have enough pitching depth with upside. There are almost zero such SP prospects in the system who could even possibly contribute in the next couple of years, other than Yesavage. Used to have Tiedemann but realistically he has no chance of being a front line SP anymore. Perhaps more likely to be a 2 WAR RP than a 2 WAR SP! Bloss, Macko are backend SP prospects. Honestly, you are happy if they are 1 WAR SP5 types. Expect SP6 results. Y Rod and Francis aren't much more promising. SP4 production would be amazing. Expect SP5/SP6. Any other SP prospect with upside in the system aside from the hopeless Tiedemann and this Yesavage guy are yearssssssssssss away. On the other side of the ball the Jays may not have a ton of high upside bats either but they do have a bunch of depth from guys who could more realistically be 2 win players. Every guy we have seen this year could do that. Some could be a bit better. Sort of a sneaky underrated group of young bats tbh. If they do not sign a guy like Snell the rotation probably has no viable playoff SP1 or even SP2. None of us would be very excited about rolling with the 2024 version of any of Gausman, Berrios, or Bassitt in game one of a playoff series.

You f***ing idiot. "The Orioles are good" is not a contrarian take. The baseball media conglomerate has been fluffing their nuts non-stop for two years.

Yeah I am not super interested in tiers 2 and 3 I mean I won't be MAD if they sign Burnes or Snell but the money might be weird Plan A - balls out for Soto Pivot - as many tier 4 guys as possible

They might be able to squeeze THREE tier 4 guys into the budget. $15M, $15, $20M

Not intentionally I guess if you rotate it and squint it sort of looks like the eye and mouth crack are the CN Tower

Tier 1 = Soto Tier 2 = Burnes, Bregman Tier 3 = Fried, Snell, Chapman, Adames Tier 4 = Kim, Alonso, Bellinger, Flaherty, Santander, Bieber, Kikuchi, Eovaldi, Teoscar, Walker, O'Neill (and various others) You have $50M to spend after spending a bit on the bullpen and fringes of the roster (backup C). How are you spending it?

Yeah I think they could bring in two of them but one of them is the primary DH. Santander, Profar, O'Neill, and Teoscar are all DH candidates at this point in their careers anyway. I think they all have negative defensive numbers this year in the OF corners but none of them are so bad that you can't put them out there for 50 games if necessary.

Trending to be one of the bigger busts in MLB history. I know he's a baby and it's early but projections are already tanking a bit and this is some Jarred Kelenic s***.

But the chance that he provides say 1.5 WAR is much higher than getting that from, say, Addison Barger I am just not sure the roster needs INSURANCE in that soft spot. The roster needs IMPACT in that hole. There is already enough insurance due to the young-ish position player depth. I think. Like, one of Barger, Schneider, Loperfido, Horwitz, Clase, or even Wagner (or some platoon combo of two of them) is almost certain to be a 1.5 WAR dude In theory the Jays are in a MUCH better position this offseason. Last offseason they probably felt like they had to make a few 1.5 WAR projection FA signings because their MiLB depth did not look this good. Now, almost every position on the roster is covered by the boring but decent collection of twenty-something Buffalo guys and trade acquisitions.

So Jackson Holliday still sucks First 10 games in April: negative 52 wRC+ (2 hits in 10 games) with 50% K rate demoted called back up July 31 to August 7th: 275 wRC+ with four homers but 26% K rate (7 games) August 8 to present: 25 wRC+ with 31.4% K rate

Kepler projects for a 106 to 110 wRC+ and something like 1.5 to 2.5 WAR depending on playing time and the projection system you look at Scaled to 450 PA his WAR over the last FIVE years is also essentially in that range ^ (2023 being the only exception where was slightly above that) He's a s*** signing for $10M and it would be a lot like KK/IKF/Turner this last offseason where money is wasted on a crusty veteran But if he is signing for less than that, then he's a fine piece to have. I am not sure he's even an upgrade on both of Loperfido/Barger -- same xwOBA as Barger this year while Loperfido probably brings more speed/defense to the table -- but if they trade some young players this offseason maybe Kepler fits. His age is concerning and the drop off in barrels and hard hit balls is also concerning, but his maxEV is still there and his defense still looks decent. I dunno. Personally, I would just give the roster spot to Loperfido/Barger and spend money elsewhere.

Gilberto Batista (Jansen trade) has had two good appearances for Dunedin. Seems to have a decent changeup and enough velo for now considering his age. Touching 94/95 sitting 92.9. Would probably need to add a bit more velo to be viable.

Victor Arias Also seems to have nuked A+ after a promotion at the beginning of August. Just turned 21 4 days ago. 141 wRC+ in A ball and has continued that in A+.

Adrian Pinto Had some serious rib injury in spring and did not get activated in Vancouver until August 6th. Since then: .372/.413/.698 10 games 46 PA only 4 Ks Will only be 22 next year in AA

Boogers

Bo + KK + Biggio + Turner = 1028 combined plate appearances and 1.3 combined WAR Bo's unfortunate season/injury and the front office's bad decisions to go with these crusty old veterans + an obviously s***** Craig Biggio's son cost the team a lot of wins. Give them 4 more wins and they are at the top of the WC3 chase pack. On the pitching side, I don't think there are any valid criticisms. The team did not get f***ed over by a lack of SP depth as some feared they would. They had some underperformances, from Gausman and Berrios, but not extreme ones. The bullpen was just a gut punch of randomness --- who the f*** even considered the possibility of getting negative WAR from all of Swanson, Pop, Romano, Mayza, Cabrera, and Pearson? Mayza/Swanson/Romano combined for like 3.2 WAR last year. Insane!

Hey Tigger Do you know if anyone is working on defining "swing repertoires"? When the bat tracking stuff went public this year one thing that I thought of is that it might be possible to show that certain hitters have a bag of different swings. Just like pitchers have different pitches with varying speeds and shapes. I mean we know they do, because they talk about A swings vs B swings publicly, and we can see different swings, but it would still be cool to define and it might help project performance or explain things.

Very excited for the Toronto Blue Jays to almost almost almost land Juan Soto but come up just a hair short The false confirmations will be legendary After the inevitable near miss my projected offseason by the Blue Jays will be: Anthony Rizzo 1/$5M Max Kepler 1/$10M Jorge Polanco 2/$15M Yimi Garcia 1/$6M with club options AJ Minter 1/$5M with vesting option in 2026 Shelby Miller 1/$4M Jake Junis 1/$3M Brandon Drury - MiLB deal Daniel Vogelbach - MiLB deal Zach Plesac - MiLB deal Josh Staumont - MiLB deal

I think this is one too many wishes I wonder if they could do something like this: O'Neill 3/$45 (LF/DH) Santander 4/$80 (DH/LF/RF) Fill in the rest with P

O'Neill is my guy get him

Current starters with FG Depth Charts projected wRC+ / WAR per 600 PA 1B - Vlad - 150 wRC+ and 3.9 WAR 2B - Horwitz - 116 wRC+ and 2.8 WAR SS - Bo - 114 wRC+ and 2.96 WAR C - Kirk - 113 wRC+ and 4.09 WAR (per 450 PA) RF - Springer - 112 wRC+ and 2.61 WAR CF - Varsho - 106 wRC+ and 3.65 WAR LF - Schneider - 104 wRC+ and 1.48 WAR 3B - Clement - 99 wRC+ and 2.36 WAR DH - Wagner - 101 wRC+ and 2.27 WAR (this WAR is maybe wrong because he's not projected as a DH) Red = need someone else Pink = need insurance (or someone else) You can swap in Loperfido or Barger for Schneider but it doesn't move the needle. The Blue Jays' LF situation is abysmal by the projections; in reverse order of current roster projections it goes Marlins, White Sox, Braves, Blue Jays, Royals... Since Springer is old and crusty they should probably add TWO players than can at least camp in an outfield corner. One can be the LF, the other can be the DH and RH backup. I am comfortable with 2B since so many internal options can play there. They don't need a 2B.