Laika

Jays should claim Nick Robertson Make him throw 70% sliders

Good stuff but bad command He'd be #2 in stuff in the current pen, behind Green

It won't work forever We saw Kikuchi make a bunch of different tweaks with Toronto. He always ends up losing his command for stretches and gets hammered. Last year the CH was his worst pitch.

Burger isn't a third baseman -23.7 UZR/150 Might as well just put Vlad there and sign a cheap 1B

Only cheaper in absolute dollars Much more to expensive in present value dollars and in AAV (payroll)

It's more about the lost offense

Yes and then he walked two and got pulled The Full Kikuchi

Kikuchi dominating wow

Also, Vlad is not a superstar. That's exactly the point of confusion. Vlad camp thinks he is a superstar. Casuals think he is a superstar. Nobody "inside baseball" is going to want to pay him as a superstar.

There is a kid with Pittsburgh, Axiel Plaz, who is 18 and has a very similar line this year in the FSL. Other than that over the last few years the most similar line is probably Orelvis Martinez. He had more hits, higher AVG, but he was also a full year older.

.375 ISO since he got promoted back to A ball

Very rare? I don't know if I would use those words. I would guess that the incumbent team is actually the most likely landing spot, historically. We saw some of the bigger FA do it last offseason, Bellinger and Nola. Along with multiple second tier guys. Year prior, Nimmo, Judge, Edwin Diaz, Correa. But yeah if you want to say that his chances of returning to Toronto once he has hit FA are drastically lower, that's certainly true. He would go from like 33% chance to extend to 8% chance to come back. Or whatever.

They might end up letting him explore free agency and then retain him. It will be painful at times for some Jays fans and many words and tears will be spilled, but free agency could be a sobering experience for the Vlad camp. He might go there and not get offered more than $160M from any other team. I mean if he is a beast for the rest of 2024 and all of 2025 he will get more money, but if he is up and down at all between now and then there is a distinct chance that no desperate team will exist that is willing to pay him anything close to $200M, in the post Eric Hosmer contract era. The post Chris Davis era. But even is he does go beast mode why would any team give a player of his profile $30M or ten years? Wild stuff. I think it would be more like $27M AAV for eight years.

they don't actually move players around during the season

Yes it would A pure DH is -17.5 over a full season for the positional adjustment but zero in the fielding runs column since they don't play defense. A full time 1B is -12.5 in the positional adjustment column over a full season but then plus or minus their fielding runs Once a 1B is worse than -5 on defensive talent, they should just be a DH However, I don't think it will have a significant impact on how people think of Vlad as a player and how much he is worth, because I don't see him becoming a primary DH in the near term. It would have some effect on the public perception of the latter half of his career though, of course.

imagine if rostering Dan Vogelbach is what puts them over the line

And Horwitz has more than doubled his ZiPS projection. Varsho is 1 win higher, somehow. Springer's rebound has him somehow higher now. It probably all evens out. More or less.

probably not a big diff what DS is saying I think is that it doesn't make sense for DH to be -17.5 and 1B to be -12.5, because those adjustments were decided upon before the DH performance penalty was known. I bet he thinks it would make more sense to just have them both be -12.5. We should correct for the now known DH performance penalty that players evidently suffer. In that case, Vlad has played 155 games at DH in his career so you can essentially just add 5 runs to his career value. Or, 0.5 WAR.

More to my point. Even after the big selloff, just look at the Fangraphs DC rest of season WAR projections. Jays are 20th with 12 WAR but that is only 2 WAR shy of 10th. And 3 WAR shy of the Braves/Orioles who are 6th and 7th. This includes getting literally 0 WAR from their post trade deadline bullpen. The current roster projects as well as some present playoff teams, or playoff hopefuls. Higher ROS WAR projection than the Royals. 1 WAR behind the Red Sox. 1.6 WAR behind the Guardians. 1.3 behind the Mariners. Basically tied with the Rays (who also sold). The foundation of this team is not the dumpster fire BTS wants you to think it is. With some responsible FA acquisitions or trades, and a bounce back from Bo Bichette, the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays could very easily be a wild card contender that once again wins no playoff games. They don't even need to sign any marquee players to do this. Just make a few so-so additions.

That doesn't mean much All of the prospects traded at the deadline kind of suck

plate discipline is not good enough to be the best ever he is going to have some more seasons where he hits like .260 due to bad luck etc.

ZiPS 2025 (from ZiPS 3 year projections) RF - Springer 1.8 1B - Vlad 2.9 (super light if he has actually figured it out) 2B - Horwitz 1.4 (502 PA) C - Kirk 2.9 (457 PA) CF - Varsho 2.1 SS - Bo 3.8 LF - Schneider 3.2 (521 PA) a bit high for sure 3B - Barger 1.2 (491 PA) DH - Orelvis 1.2 (566 PA) UTIL - Clement 1.1 (364 PA) UTIL - Jimenez 1.1 (403 PA) UTIL - Loperfido 0.9 (507 PA) UTIL - Clase 2.1 (598 PA) Gausman - 3.2 Berrios - 2.2 Bassitt - 1.9 Francis - 0.8 (84 IP) Y Rod - 0.3 (52 IP) Manoah - 1.3 (116 IP) so cut this in half I guess Bloss - no projection in 3 year ZiPS but all of the ROS projections say 0.2 WAR in 5 GS so just call it 1 WAR Macko - 0.9 (93 IP) Romano - 0.4 Green - 0.5 Cabrera - 0.3 Little - 0.1 Swanson - 0.5 So there is a bull case on the 2025 Jays and it goes something like this: - the position player core is deep and young now. that means that the starting point is solid since they can seemingly piece together league average production at every position even with the current depth chart. yes, that requires a bit of a leap of faith for some of the young players but as you can see the group is at least a solid starting point. they absolutely need two quality hitters, yes, but they could do this at various positions given the flexibility of the roster (LF,3B,1B,DH,2B). - similarly but for different reasons to rotation is at least solid ground to build upon. yes, an Ace seems necessary but Goose+Berrios+Bassitt should eat a lot of innings and be decent as a trio. and the depth options after them should be able to cobble together competent SP5 innings. - the pen needs talent but it's a bullpen and that's the easiest place to fix in one offseason. some of the incumbents will regress in the right direction.

It wasn't all luck. IKF was very probably better than his most recent work and the foundational skills of defense and contact never left him.

The IKF signing was a stroke of genius! All the haters need to apologize to Ross

90th percentile EVs with game power... seems like more than a 50 I dunno