Laika

It's just too much to ignore the .374 xwOBA. 5th highest among qualified 1B. Yeah he sucked in 2023 and the defense and baserunning drag his value down but he is still likely to project as a 3+ WAR player in 2024. Yandy Diaz this year was .381 wOBA, -12 def runs, -7 BsR, and it came out to 4.7 fWAR. I'm not sure what kind of challenge trade would be out there that would actually increase the projected production for 2024. This year was noisy and of course there are lots of external or unique factors that might make one think that Vladdy is just a mental midget in a sumo body who will always underperform but.... I am not going to just ignore a .374 xwOBA.

There are definitely a few GMs looking at Vladimir Guerrero Jr. right now and thinking "I can save her."

Sick of the Atkins supporters being tarred and feathered

Ross Atkins just needs more support. Does he have a cousin Glenn that they can hire as Assistant GM? Glenn Atkins? Maybe a Scott Atkins?

Fire Ross Atkins, sure, but fire all the people over 50 years old with him. Promote some kid with pimples straight from analytics junior researcher to GM.

fun game! Michael King got the win Nate Pearson was electric in 2 relief innings Julian Merryweather gave up a HR Chad Green got a Hold

Rogers probably only cares a teeny tiny bit about playoff success. Yeah they want attendance to be maxed out but that also isn't a massive deal to them. As long as the team isn't a complete afterthought people will continue to watch on Sportsnet and watch Sid Siexiero ramble about them and watch other baseball games on Sportsnet. That's all the corporate overlord cares about. Well, it's 95% of what they care about.

Okay well 2023 Max Scherzer doesn't even start a wild card game for Toronto so

Yeah with the caveat that someone like Hunter Mense might be worth keeping and we have no way of knowing. But like, why would any player listen to a 39 year old Hunter Mense when Don Mattingly, Guillermo Martinez, and Dave Hudgens are all there?

Okay, change made. 3 SP, 3 RP, 4 P slots. New minimums: 35 IP 3 GS-Pitching 120 PA-Hitting The new IP/GS minimums are just to prevent RP shenanigan strategies. The new PA minimum is just to increase it to something borderline relevant. 9 hitters * 4 PA * 3.5 days = 126 PA so any normal/full lineup is going to eclipse 200 every week Even in a light week the 35 IP mark would be reached by 7 RP (say 14 IP there) and a handful of SP.

ooof this example bites

Bit of a talent gap there though

If you are Jose Berrios right now... ... aren't you kind of tempted to say "trade me to an organization that will never do that to me"?

Maybe the thing to do is what Abom said and have 3 SP 3 RP 4 P slots.... but raise the IP minimum. Another fear I have with going to 7 possible RP is that people can lean too hard into the strategy of running out mostly RP. Having the league work in a way where people need to roster a list of SP just seems more pure to me hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

That is possible too.

Again, while the leaguewide batting average rose by 5 points.

At the end of the day the bullpen/pitching management decisions are minutiae; almost irrelevant. It just doesn't matter if Berrios throws 50, 75, or 120 pitches if all of your hitters look like a deer in headlights 80% of the time and are following the same hitting philosophies that ruined Brett Lawrie's career. Ugh.

MLB AVERAGES 2022 HR/game = 1.07 2023 HR/game = 1.21 ~13% leaguewide increase in home runs and the Blue Jays experienced a 6% decline in HR from 2022 to 2023 f***ing ROUGH, in context. And none of it is due to roster moves. Yeah they traded Teoscar but Varsho/Belt projected HR made up for that. It was just all the incumbents forgetting how to hit homers, within a leaguewide context of increasing long balls.

This is exactly the proper point. Many people want JS fired and Atkins fired so the organization can install a more traditional manager and perhaps a more traditional GM? In my head the organization is just a fence sitter. It's not really doing anything in an advanced or progressive way. They have their cool compound and an analytics department and a guy on the MLB staff to try to implement analytics but.... half the league or more has all of that. You need to TAKE RISKS and actually FIND A f***ING EDGE. Toronto needs to commit more to modern baseball. Dump Mattingly, dump everyone who seems like an old baseball mind. Go hire a new MLB hitting coach with a biomechanics/physics degree, straight out of one of those hitting labs. Get him working with some of these hitters all offseason on just hitting f***ing bombs, and recognizing the new pitches like sweepers. Some of these hitters, all season long, looked like they'd never seen a sweeper before. Egregious. Laymen with podcasts knew two years ago that sweepers were the next big pitching development.

Any strong final opinions on which pitching scoring/roster change we implement? Going to decide soon. Option A. Turn one SP slot into a P slot. And add one P slot. Total roster size would not increase. This just allows people to get more RP into their daily lineup if they choose. You could get 7 RP in there instead of 5. Option B. Combine SV and HLD. No other roster slot changes. This just allows people to not have to "punt" HLDs to chase SVs, or vice versa. I guess the downside of B is pitchers would have one less scoring category. And s***** closers sort of lose value. I guess the downside of A is those unicorn SP eligible relievers lose most of their unique value. Personally I lean towards doing Option A but want to hear some final arguments.

I don't agree with the decision but the logic is pretty sound. The problem with stuff like this is you never know what would have happened if you did not make the decision. Berrios could have given up two homers and the 2-0 loss would have been 4-0. Look, anyone with at least five brain cells knows the notion that a SP "looks great" through 3 innings is often ******** and no reason to just leave them in. In a tight playoff game if you leave a guy in until he starts to get hit it is often too late to win the game! Offensive players adjust. Stuff diminishes. Pitchers get tired. The idea behind the move was to eliminate all of Minnesota's LHB early in the game so all of Toronto's RHRP could mow their lineup down. That actually did work. Kikuchi giving up the runs was somewhat unfortunate; those were not hard hit balls. Now, the main reasons to not make the move and why I would lean towards not doing it would be these: 1. the humans playing the game will have a weird reaction to the jarring and controversial move 2. Kikuchi may not perform as expected since he is entering the game in an unusual spot I think a better permutation would have been bringing in Tim Mayza at that moment to finish the inning, then letting Kikuchi start the next inning clean and stay in the game until all of their LHB have been pinch hit for. But yeah, Berrios did look SO GOOD that calling an audible and giving him another full turn through their lineup was arguably warranted. They could have also outlined this strategy and had it in their back pocket in case either of Berrios or Bassitt did NOT look crisp. I dunno. Who f***ing knows. It doesn't even matter because they scored zero runs, hahaha.

Kinda ******** for the teams that got a bye, haha. All the teams making it through the Wild Card round can start there Ace in Game 2 on regular rest.

It's definitely not a "new school" approach at all. I kind of want to blame Don Mattingly. But it might be a case where there were almost too many cooks in the hitting kitchen and some of these players did this kind of on their own. Don Mattingly 23 Bench Coach Guillermo Martinez 18 Hitting Coach Hunter Mense 59 Assistant Hitting Coach Dave Hudgens 19 Major League Hitting Strategist The decision to bring in Don Mattingly, presumably to add some seniority/maturity/respect behind John Schneider, may have been catastrophic. But, Vlad, Bo, and Kirk have always been this way offensively. They have always tried to punch fastballs the other way, all day long. The two players mostly affected by the limp dick approach this year were probably Springer and Chapman. I guess Varsho is in there. Kirk may be in there as he may have just gone too far with his natural strengths. Vlad is just a fat useless stupid piece of s***.

Guerrero made like a dozen bone headed mistakes on the bases this year and I don't think he was benched once.

This is why these decisions are probably bad IMO and it's what the nerds aren't putting in their models If you make a jarring and unexpected decision it might f*** up the psyche of your own players Also, the more obvious one is why assume Kikuchi would be great in an unfamiliar role...