Laika

nah, Berrios is years younger and has better stuff + similar results this year against much tougher competition Berrios has returned

Stroman is killing it this year. He's just so consistently good.

I don't think it's a recency thing. Since they entered the league, Bo has a 130 wRC+ and Vlad has a 133 wRC+. So they are equal offensive talents according to the 2300 and 2000 PA of data we have since they debuted. Bo is a year older but Vlad quite obviously bleeds value at every aspect of baseball that is not hitting, so I don't even think the discussion is particularly close. And then if you want to focus on the "shape" of their careers... 2019 = BO for hitting and value 2020 = BO for hitting and value 2021 = VLAD for hitting and value 2022 = VLAD for hitting (by a hair) but BO for value by a significant amount 2023 = BO for hitting and value So Bo the better player consistently... with Vlad's 2021 the only exception

Vlad doesn't even hit tanks anymore. He has less dingers than certain platoon players, catchers, and 44 year old Andy McCutcheen. It's kind of embarrassing. Keep hitting the ball directly at the biggest part of the ballpark you f***ing idiot. Then get thrown out at 2nd as often as you can!

Saber nerds need to put their money where their words are. Buy Orelvis heavily in every dynasty league.

I suggest simply choosing to be happy try it and see

where were you when Anthony Recker ruined Manoah's entire career?

Indeed he has. It is 2mph slower and is has almost 5 more inches of vertical break compared to 2022 and 2021.

His Stuff grades are pretty solid now actually 110 sinker and 147!!!! on the slider With a Location+ that is above average That makes his Pitching+ 105 which is almost at Romano level (107) In 2022 his slider was bad and his command was only a 99. So he must have changed his slider!!!

If Kevin Kiermaier did have a season ending injury right now he'd have been worth his contract and then some. Haha.

Mayza is a stud? Nice to have Pearson contributing. Difference maker, potentially. Nice to have Richards pitching well again. #CountYourBlessings

I kind of still like Waldichuk. Muller and Langeliers I think will be okay long term. But yeah this is f***ing disgusting.

It's okay to not focus on pen investment if you develop relievers or have a knack for finding them Toronto is in an awkward place where they have to buy relievers from time to time but they try to be cute doing it. So they end up with the kinds of guys they have. Mostly okay relievers.

Sounds like the typical Canadian baseball player

Varsho's swing is busted

Jansen to the IL. Left testicle is strained and/or missing. Taylor Heineken called up

And what not to do: Trade for or sign on FA contracts and therefore put too much faith into extremely mediocre late/mid career bullpen arms like Cimber, Bass, Swanson, Richards, Garcia, and Pop. That's how you end up with a disappointing pen while feeling like you can't really do anything with it. Because most of the guys don't have options or project "fine" or you traded for them recently and they "have good stuff" so you feel beholden to the asset.

Look, if you give every 26 year old AAA reliever who has a 10.5 K/9 and 3.5 K/9 in AAA a legitimate shot in the big leagues, you are going to have the worst bullpen in baseball. Almost none of them will be good relievers. That is just not an MLB profile, statistically. Baker's velocity has declined this year but his 2022 velo was up significantly. He's also worse this year, arguably. His xFIP is not good and his walk rate is poor. He struggled with walks in the minors before 2021. Maybe he's turning into a pumpkin already, who knows.

I don't understand the point about velocity and only pitching one inning. He doesn't need to be on the MLB team to do velocity training. In fact, it's something players do in the offseason. You can do it with any pitcher in your organization. Bryan Baker's K/BB was 77th in the IL in 2021, for pitchers who had at least 40 IP. His stats were not interesting for an old reliever, whatsoever. He got outperformed by tons of s***** pitchers like Sean Nolin. A 26 year old reliever with those K/BB numbers is only interesting if you know they have good stuff and think they could do better with some changes or improvements. I am not saying that letting Bryan Baker leave was not an organizational failure, but it just was not one where they let someone who was good get away. Like, he would not have projected as a good reliever with those minor league numbers and his age vs. level. On the baseball card he looked like a replacement level arm. The failure with Baker was somewhere on the biomechanical side of things. Smart organizations have models that use biomechanical info to figure out who might be able to throw harder.

He had a nice ERA that year but his K/BB was extremely pedestrian for a 26 year old AAA reliever. By all accounts he had a velocity jump after leaving Toronto. So Bryan Baker is just a story of the development system not trying to maximize velocity out of certain players.

Well yeah, but like everything there is a good and bad way to do it. Good pull hitters don't swing at pitches they can't pull in the air There are similar follies for hitters who always try to go up the middle. Like, they will hit a meek grounder to 2B trying to inside out everything when they were swinging at a cookie middle in. See Brett Lawrie's entire career

I don't know WTF Springer is trying to do but his Pull% has gone from 48% over the last few seasons to like 35%. Not surprising that his ISO sucks. Toronto as a team has gone from 19th to 29th in Pull% from 2022 to 2023. Their three big incumbent Pull% guys were Jansen, Springer, and Chapman. The latter two have decided to not be pull hitters anymore. It destroyed Springer and resulted in one good month for Chapman but he has sucked in May. I really don't like those guys trying to be all field hitters. The downside of being a big pull hitter is a depressed batting average, because you end up wasting a lot of "good" swings on foul balls. But the tradeoff for power tends to worth it for most players. I think... On the team level it's nice to have both kinds. Toronto has guys like Bo, who I would not change at all, and Merrifield and Kirk to spray it around. They don't need Vladdy and Chapman and Springer to also try to be spray hitters. I'm not sure about Varsho. He has extremely high Pull% this year and in his career.

It definitely has an impact It's not just about cheap homers for guys like Espinal. Think about how many nukes Vladdy has to CF that are hard/far enough to be home runs if he pulls them

I, too, am extremely frustrated. Mostly at: - Vlad's lack of development - Varsho underperforming expectations - Jansen and Kirk's mediocre starts, following the big "vote of confidence" that was trading Moreno - Manoah pumpkin - Reliever mediocrity - The depressing state of the farm system

But at the team level Toronto's wOBA vs xwOBA is pretty neutral. .329 wOBA .336 xwOBA middle of the pack for luck There is a league wide differential of -0.005