Laika

Line Drive rate and BABIP are just so prone to random fluctuations It's almost comical that the Toronto Blue Jays continue to (seemingly) chase hitters who build their offensive profile around AVG, Line Drives, and BABIP. They have Bo in house who they curated as this kind of guy. Kirk who used to be a sweet swinger with an average LD rate. Clement is like this. IKF is like this. Horwitz is like that. Vlad is sort of like that, although not in the LD% category because he hits too many grounders. But definitely parts of his approach are about contact and BABIP (but at least it's more power-dependent which probably makes it more reliable). They traded for Whit Merrifield who build a career on LD rate and BABIP. That sort of worked out for a bit but not overall. Even Justin Turner is very much a LD%, BABIP guy. You always hear about him as a pulled FB dude but his game has also for a long time been about pulling soft liners, that's why his batting AVG has always been good. It really seems like the front office is just too obsessed with f***ing line drives??? They even sort of encouraged Biggio to try to become a line drive dude I think. Maybe? Shouldn't Cavan Biggio have just been pulling more flyballs the whole time? Shouldn't he have just tried to hit .210/.340/.400 or something like that? Seems more in line with his actual tools. Rather than trying to slap every outside pitch the other way or whatever so he can hit .240 5th best LD% in baseball. 24th in runs. But I thought Line Drives were good!!!! Everybody should try to hit line drives, right!? Yeah, not if being 27th in average exit velo is the f***ing tradeoff. Way too one dimensional on offense. And that's DESPITE actually having a few flyball HR boppers like DS, DJ, and DV.

Is that even worse? There is a freedom that comes with having no expectations. There is that persistent glimmer of hope that a once-progressive front office will find a way to return to being progressive and successful. There is the realistic hope that MLB just does an Expos thing and forcibly buys the team. Their jerseys are nice.

Hard to see the Rangers selling even if they are far back Mets are right in it they shouldn't sell Fedde is more like Civale I guess it's Crochet, Flaherty who are better than Kikuchi Ask for Crochet will be huge though

I don't really agree. Since Kikuchi is much better than Civale right now, I think Toronto will get a notably better prospect for him. I guess we will find out. Other than Crochet, what other SP will be on the block?

pretty good i think ross is the kind of loser who learns from his mistakes

sooo what does the top of the 2025 draft look like anyway? are we going to get some bum at #5 again like Austin Martin or will it be more like the next year where players 3-6 were all good? Or the year prior, 2019, where most of the top 9 players were legit.

I also love lining into double plays

kikuchi stuff+ 111 (career 106) civale sutff+ 100 (career 97) one of them has a good fastball and the other does not. it's actually sort of silly to even compare them tbh, it's like a different market. civale is a guy with command and offspeed pitches, he's a more questionable play against top lineups and he also doesn't have an innings eating track record most good teams wouldn't even need a Civale but there are probably some good teams that would love to get Kikuchi as their SP3 or SP4, it would be an upgrade Guardians for example Bibee - 3.47 ERA Allen - 5.75 ERA McKenzie - 5.11 ERA (demoted) Carrasco - 5.21 ERA Lively - 3.03 ERA but c'mon it's Ben Lively Bieber - dead Curry - 5.74 ERA bad Kikuchi is their SP2

it's already 3-0 astros!!!!!!!!!!!!!! single single walk single walk the hound is on the loose!!!!!!!

Wait why does it matter at all what the Jays would do? The Jays are stupid. He has the stuff to give any team 5 strong and shut down a great lineup. It's true! whether or not he actually does that is just a matter of performance and pitch count.

WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE "not too worried"???!!!! - expensive team - every good player is either running out of team control (Vlad, Bo, Jansen, Kikuchi, Garcia, Romano) or just looks worse now (Gausman, Springer, Berrios, Varsho, Kirk, Manoah, Romano) - horrible farm system - no track record of developing anything other than 25 year old platoon hitters who play 2B/LF/1B - everybody on the MLB team is declining early - MLB team is evidently horrible at game prep and strategy - front office clearly has their priorities all wrong when it comes to roster construction, drafting and development, coaching structure - front office is not progressive at all from what we can see - front office is scared to fire people - corporate ownership who will be slow and heartless when it comes to the big and important decisions - this GM whiffed completely on his last attempt at a quick rebuild or trading for MLB ready players (Drury, McKinney, Fisher, Waguespack, Kay, etc.) The only way to "not be too worried" right now is to just embrace death or be completely nihilistic

wtf do you mean you are "not too worried" the only thing the Jays can develop seems to be 25 year old platoon bats

#4 - Votto.... not on the team lol. If he is on the team he should be in a DH platoon with Turner, nothing more.

Kikuchi is a lot better though. Civale probably not a playoff SP. Maybe SP4 in along series. Kikuchi can probably be a SP in the playoffs because he has the stuff the shut down a good lineup for 5 innings. The Rays kind of just dumped Civale because they have better options for their rotation right now.

His Location+ is pretty consistent, 102 to 104 every single year. Basically one full standard deviation above the mean i.e. plus command.

That could be part of the explanation for sure. His movement profiles and velo look mostly the same between 2020 and now. But we know league-wide velo is up in the last 5 years. This chart is MLB avg fastball velo by year and inning. Can see that in 2020 his FB would have been a tick above avg and now it is a tick below.

But this is all level 1 public information Who is going to take on that contract for a guy who is running on stuff fumes and surviving mostly on good command?

Jose Berrios Stuff+ from 2020 through 2024 Fastball 101, 88, 83, 96, 82 Sinker 120, 104, 92, 92, 86 Curveball 155, 130, 115, 116, 107 Overall 121, 108, 95, 100, 92 uhhhhhhhhhh what is going on bros his velo is barely down or not down at all in that span. he is only 30. hello, Pete Walker? TJS incoming or something?

Worst throw attempt I have ever seen from an MLB SS

Should have kept Mayza around to help with the tank tbh "we are very confident that the talent is there for Tim Mayza to turn it around" - Ross Atkins

Tidy piece of work there. Best player hits the IL and we also get a look at arguably the best MLB ready prospect in the org (unless you still like Tiedemann the glass cannon...) Team Tank will be very happy.

But we all choose what numbers to look at Every projection system still says 100 wRC+ or better His BABIP, LD%, HR/FB%, and Bunt Hint success rate are all below his career norms, expectations, and projections at the moment. Some or all of that deviation is probably just noise.

The one thing that has been true about Varsho is that just when everyone and their mom starts to hate him because he looks utterly hopeless with the stick he goes on some kind of homer binge or has like 7 bunt hits and diving catches in a week

Yeah but we can thread the needle and have the best of all worlds if all of those guys figure it out and look awesome but then have season ending oblique strains

fire sale even if they don't sell the Gausman, Berrios, Vlad, Bo group maybe we get a lucky Gausman dead arm IL tiny. Broken toe for Vlad. Sprained hair for Bo.