Laika

Fun link to play around with the roster. https://www.dealinthecards.com/gm?team=tor I believe they have one more option year on Bloss because of his injuries, so if you do this feel free to leave him off the 40 man. I believe Bloss, Bowden Francis (when he turns) and Spaghetti will and can all be in Buffalo. No idea what they would do with Berrios if he comes back and the rotation is full.

The front office doesn't have the luxury in this context of turning their nose up at players for reasons like this.

Does this thread count as the 2027 season? Let's all like this Terminator post and make his post telling Omar to get bent the most popular post a year from now.

Everyone you listed other than Okamoto was... acquired a long time ago. I don't know. Flipping on a big coin on Jizz Chisholm or committing 3/4 years to someone like Arraez or Lowe is not going to fix the Toronto Blue Jays, though. They need to get significantly more out of the incumbent hitters. I didn't say "don't acquire new bats" I said "play it super safe with bats. One year deals or nothing plus acquisitions around the edges."

No. It's that the org kind of sucks at spending this type of resource on "hitters" and they should instead spend it on "pitchers" which they seem to be relatively good at.

Unpopular Opinion: Don't even sign a top hitter. Toronto's hit rate on acquiring MLB level bats is middling at best. The position player side is already sort of polluted by bad acquisitions, stupid extensions, and poo-collecting results. Santander, Gimenez, Vlad... Their hit rate on signing or acquiring arms is much better. Stick to your strengths. Upgrade SP5 and RP6 in free agency. Play at super safe with bats. One year deals or nothing plus acquisitions around the edges.

It is just basic human fallacies Not sure what this one is called but it's probably something like the Status Quo Bias or Regret Aversion or Loss Aversion e.g. the bias against making an active choice and losing. when you make an active choice and it goes wrong, you feel it more. when your favourite team's manager makes an active choice and it goes wrong, you get more madder.

He hit .256 .387 .492 You must remember this his extremely good minor league 2026 was sandwiched by a less good (but still solid) 2025 and a bad tiny MLB sample.

Why would the source of this be Baseball America top 100 lists? Bad list bro.

Well the core of the line of discussion here is just "Sean Keys isn't worth much in the trade market." I ended up producing a short list of crummy 2B prospects or former prospects and offering them as possible trade targets. All 1B prospects do not literally suck but they suck as a heuristic and the hyperbole displays why Keys has no trade value Your sample helps prove the point Half of those players (or more) just sucked. Some of the good ones had more defensive utility, quite obviously. Delgado sneaks into the sample with his age 22 year and had way better hitting tools. It is completely possible that Keys has a Lucas Duda career. Up and down for a few years and then puts together a good season or two around age 28-30. There is no denying it. I guess it's also theoretically possible for him to become a fringe OF and have something closer to Aubrey Huff career.

btw I looked at some other positions as well Shortstop the median is 7.7 WAR Second base was worse than first base! 0.7 median career WAR, and only 12 players with 10+ career WAR. There is no such thing as a first base or second base prospect. Many of the 2B and 1B in MLB are just guys who fell down the spectrum from SS or 3B or LF or C. Catcher was surprisingly bad, somewhat surprising but I guess it makes sense since it is more of a feast or famine position and it's so hard. The median career WAR was just under 2.

I just asked Claude to pull every "top 10 1B prospect" from mlb.com for 2011 through 2024 77 unique players 14 have 10+ career WAR. But a few of them aren't actually 1B in MLB and got a lot of that value from playing 3B or 2B or OF. Bellinger, Muncy, Yelich, McMahon. Not sure why they were all bucketed as 1B! Scouts are smart. The mean career WAR is only 6.5 but it is inflated by the handful of stars at the top The median career WAR is 1.0 from this cohort. I think the median career "top 10 1B prospect" WAR being 1.0 says everything you need to know And technically Mr. Keys doesn't even belong to this group. He's never been ranked there. But he's probably as deserving as many so I think it's still fair to lump him here. Old Friend Spencer Horwitz is 28th best on this list all time, and counting. Here is THE GRAVEYARD (2 WAR or less, career). Jake Bauers Andrew Vaughn Matt Thaiss Alex Dickerson Daniel Vogelbach Dominic Smith Dustin Harris Darin Ruf Kyle Manzardo Ronald Guzmán Greg Bird Blaze Jordan Rowdy Tellez Pavin Smith Juan Yepez Lewin Díaz Chris Parmelee Brendan McKay Aaron Sabato Bobby Bradley Lars Anderson Abimelec Ortiz Niko Kavadas Evan White Luken Baker Neftali Soto Seth Beer Jordan Diaz Tyler Nevin Sam Travis Jon Singleton Tyler Locklear AJ Reed Michael Toglia Chris Marrero Nick Pratto Kyle Parker Matt Mervis Casey Gillaspie Grant Lavigne Haydn McGeary Hunter Morris Ivan Melendez Keon Barnum Mason Martin Nathan Martorella Xavier Isaac

Sean Keys is literally just another 1B prospect There is nothing SPECIFICALLY WRONG with him. His age vs. level isn't horrible. K and BB rates are decent. The bat speed and EVs are there. He was an excellent hitter in the minors and the only knocks on him offensively aren't even knocks, it's just that he's average at some things (whiffs, etc.) But the tools are not otherworldly, at all. And these guys come up all the time. If you overvalue them you end up giving too many plate appearances to Matt Mervis, half the time. Or more than half the time. Becoming a 2 WAR 1B/DH requires extremely high production with the bat. Keys wouldn't project for that. Ergo, he's close to worthless.

Yeah this is a better solution. Picking your own opponent is a gimmick. There was never a good reason for the "bracket"

Higher seeds picking their own opponents is awesome. Division series being 7 games is very good. I don't mind losing 8 regular season games.

1B/DH prospects need elite tools or age vs level to be worth anything The offensive bar is just so high Most teams probably have a 40 or 45 FV on Keys

Will be hard to do. Keys is not worth much. It would be a AAAA player swap, basically. Toronto would have to identify a low-value dude who ends up being better than expected. Someone like: Juan Brito, Adael Amador, Edwin Arroyo, Alex Freeland, Christian Moore, Charles McAdoo (for example), Ben Williamson, Vaughn Grissom, Jace Jung These guys all suck, of course, even though many will be familiar from former prospect lists.

The Yankees are hilarious.

holy f***

Is it though? We have seen some legendary flops lately on big contracts for POSITION PLAYERS and in my head many of the best contracts for elite old players have been with starting pitchers pitching is horribly risky but there is this rare breed of arm that is just... elite until they are 40. I wonder if taking the ball 32 times at age 36 is in some ways easier than playing 150+ games on your feet and staying healthy through 10,000 swings and running the bases and all that From 2020 to 2026, Age 35+ 4+ fWAR seasons Bats: Springer 2025, Muncy 2026 (4.1) and Turner 2021 (4.0) --> THREE OCCURENCES BUT TWO OF THEM ARE WALL SCRAPERS Arms: Sale 2024, Verlander 2022, Sale 2026, Scherzer 2021, Morton 2021, Scherzer 2022, deGrom 2026, Darvish 2022, Wheeler 2025, Wheeler 2026 --> TEN OCCURENCES EXPAND SEARCH to 2000 to 2026 and you get 47 hitters vs 51 pitchers so it's much closer. But the game has changed. More pressure on all the little details, defense and baserunning and stuff. More platoons.

Another Vlad! Maybe this one won't suck

Shane Bieber is shamelessly obsessed with coming back to Toronto

Of course Barry Bonds remains the craziest modern player ever Imagine if Mike Trout never got hurt or declined and instead was an MVP until 36 and then had an Aaron Judge four year steroid fueled cheater peak and then also added 7 WAR after 40 and retired after a 1.000 OPS season at 42 That's Barry Bonds drugs, man.

I thought about this yesterday I do think the Mets would pay it down slightly to get out of it