Laika

The first step in having proper discussions here is for us all to admit that we are ALL massive losers. There is no douche and non-douche; no cool kids and uncool kids. There are just smart douchebags and stupid douches. That's it. Govern yourself accordingly. Try to at least avoid being a stupid Blue Jays douche.

The Blue Jays would be checking in on Marte for two reasons: The obvious one that everyone has said. You turn over every stone. For leverage specifically in negotiations with Bo. You don't want Bo Bichette's camp to think you do not have other options. You actually want them to think you can turn to other players - there are other signings and trades available. "Bo's agent is dicking around. Can we leak that we checked in on Ketel Marte? Maybe that will get negotiations moving again."

The cumulative negative value might be similar but the "other stuff" would massively swing it to Rendon IIRC Chris Davis was a good dude who tried and most people legit felt bad for him at some point

Juan "Soto" Sanchez I guess?

LMFAO

it's an interesting career choice you'd think he would just turn into a lefty reliever at this point, there would be an MLB track for that somewhere and he has enough Stuff+ on his FB and secondaries to make it work I suppose the team he is signing with is probably offering him enough over the MLB minimum to make it worthwhile. Hard to say no to guaranteed money when your signing bonus was $75k

I don't think he's going to be that athletic Maybe more on the Willy Adames (good) Paul DeJong (better than nothing) spectrum

Yeah it's nice to see. I'm losing faith in his hitting ability but hopefully he can become a SS with defense and pop.

Will Jake Cook be the first low power, pure CFer in, well, forever to work out for the Blue Jays? Seems like an archetype they draft or acquire every few years but never develop.

Nobody is talking about Bieber because he's not the topic of conversation, that's all. The question is whether it makes sense to bring Scherzer back or do another Scherzer type deal with someone like Verlander. Even if you want to compare their postseasons for some random goal-post moving reason, their playoff stats are not that comparable. Scherzer got incredibly lucky, Bieber had very normal luck and generally deserved his results. Maybe Bieber was helped out a bit by the good defense, on some hard hit balls, but that's about it. Look at the DIPS collectively along with the K-BB rates, then the LOB% and BABIP. SCHERZER BIEBER ERA 3.77 3.86 xERA 4.65 4.49 FIP 5.58 4.26 xFIP 5.44 3.99 SIERA 5.05 3.77 BABIP 0.237 0.321 LOB% 87% 78.90% K-BB% 8.60% 14.50%

Good system.

You can spin any narrative you want around three games He had a 5.58 FIP and 5.44 xFIP in the playoffs. This isn't rocket science.

Have you considered making better posts?

Springer - DH Marte - 2B Vlad - 1B Bo - 3B Barger - RF Kirk - C Varsho - CF Santander - LF Gimenez/Clement - SS BN - Lukes, Heiny, Straw, Clement/Gimenez Why not?

Dick Fitts = Jake Bloss sans TJS

Sonny Gray now gets $41M guaranteed for 2026. That's wild. Good trade for both teams, I guess. Gray has surplus value projected above the $21M Boston will pay him.

Bloss's stuff has not always been as good as it seems or as the scouting reports seem to indicate. During his Astros MLB sample the grades on ALL of his pitches were a bit below average by Stuff+. I think some other Stuff measurements did have the FB as a bit above average. His velo seemed to be up noticeably with Toronto in spring but he then got nuked in AAA and hurt. I think you can tell from his lack of minor league Ks at the upper levels, and getting hit around in MLB and AAA, that the Stuff needed lots of work. I think if he comes back from TJS and his pitches are more like his 2024 Astros versions, he's just a boring SP5, almost like Mitch White before he collapsed as a player. Low upside depth guy who might be able to finesse his way into bulk value. Never a playoff starter. If he comes back from TJS and the arsenal is a bit better (like it looked in spring) then there might be a more interesting pitcher there, maybe an SP4.

They projected as a fringe playoff team and he gave them 0.4 WAR, I think they were hoping to get 2 WAR and he might be a standings difference maker. That he ended up providing two good playoff starts is random dumb luck but yes it had value so in a sense it kind of worked out. And every other SP in the bucket last offseason other than JV was a total flop. Morton, Cobb, Buehler... Sugano... just looking at the 1 year geezers who got around $15M.

I don't think the Blue Jays front office is looking to re-roll on the Max Scherzer experience I mean the signing was an unmitigated disaster and complete waste of $15M until he made two extremely lucky miracle playoff starts, lol

I really like Imai but can a team have too many splitters? If you face Gausman, Yesavage, Imai in a row do you get used to the pitch? Maybe the completely different arm action would help. He throws from such a low slot, like 20 degrees. And his slider does the SAME weird s*** as Yesavage's where it doesn't move glove side. But from the opposite end of the release point spectrum. I would love to see them in the same rotation just for Weird Baseball reasons.

Recalculated after a trade apparently. I have never heard this before but it was in the Nimmo/Semien MLBTR article. " Since luxury tax figures are re-calculated to account for just remaining money owed in the wake of trades, Semien’s tax number is $24MM, and Nimmo has a $19.25MM figure (when factoring in the $5MM Texas is getting from New York)."

The Nimmo for Semien swap makes me think a Berrios trade could be possible 3/$68.1 is gross for Berrios Benintendi? Tyler O'Neill? Yoshida? Javy Baez (2/$48M)? Rendon? Kikuchi? Soler? Sean Manaea? Bryan Reynolds? Yu Darvish? Jake Cronenworth? Arenado? Most of these make no sense. Just rattling off some bad contracts. If some other team values Berrios' innings and thinks he's a 1.5 WAR pitcher there might be some fit. But the Blue Jays may have floored any possibility of a deal with the phantom IL stint.

I am thinking about this Nimmo deal and I don't get it for Texas very much at all Nimmo is 33 and has gone 2.8 and 3.0 WAR last two years and projects for 2.5 Semien is 35 and has gone 4.3 and 2.1 WAR last two years and projects for 3.0 Semien being owed 26, 26, 20 vs Nimmo being owed 20.5 for 5 years --> I think I'd rather just keep the guy with only three years left committed. I actually have Semien being worth a bit of surplus vs Nimmo being a negative if you use FGDC projections (see chart). Of course, if you think the projections are wrong and start Nimmo at 3.0 and Semien at 2.5 this flips around and Nimmo becomes a +12M surplus and Semien becomes a -4M. Both seem like the kind of guys you just go year to year with on expectations, they could be replacement level talents tomorrow if something falls apart. Semien was a +7 2B last year while Nimmo was a neutral corner outfielder. Player A Player B YEAR AGE PROJ WAR $/WAR PROJ VALUE SALARY SURPLUS VALUE YEAR AGE PROJ WAR $/WAR PROJ VALUE SALARY SURPLUS VALUE 2026 32 2.5 11 27.5 20.5 7 2026 35 3 11 33 26 7 2027 33 2 11.33 22.66 20.5 2.16 2027 36 2.5 11.33 28.325 26 2.325 2028 34 1.5 11.6699 17.50485 20.5 -2.99515 2028 37 2 11.6699 23.3398 20 3.3398 2029 35 1 12.02 12.019997 20.5 -8.480003 2030 36 0.5 12.3806 6.190298455 20.5 -14.30970155 SUMS -16.62485455 12.6648

Fun baseball trade. I like both players quite a bit, just solid f***ing baseball players

Set sights higher Verlander is a last resort guy for me. End of the off-season and missed out on others... fine.