Laika

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

Toronto is 29th in baseball at Pull% The wOBA on pulled flyballs is much better than centre or oppo flyballs. I am not sure but I don't think xwOBA necessarily adjusts for horizontal angle. Isn't it just based on velocity and vertical angle?

Yeah Baseball has become a long-term tactical sport. You need to plan on a multi-year basis to be good in very specific ways. Are you seeing pitching trends like high spin four seamers, sweeping sliders, seam shifted wake changeups, etc. emerging? Well, you need to start training your offensive pipeline so that your hitters can handle those emergent pitching tactics at an above average rate. Are you seeing vulnerabilities in the league wide approach of hitters that you think you can train your pipeline of pitchers to expose? Well, you need a comprehensive three year plan to develop that pitching approach effectively. And you need to hope you are early enough for it to work. You also need a cut-throat, search-and-destroy executive that combines advanced analytics and high operational acumen. You cannot just have a decent analytics department advising Ross Atkins and then have him mulling over the depth chart for months while trying to fine tune his MLB roster. Is there a reliever DFA'd with a repertoire that your nerd wing thinks could be tweaked into a backend reliever? Then he should be yours, immediately. Do you have a young 1B player with amazing tools but a problematic body and sub-optimal approach at the plate? Then you need to publicly shaming the fatty and forcing him to spend every waking hour committed to your diet and exercise plan and your neuro-developmental batting simulation laboratory.

I'd give him a chance but it looks like a reliever to me

That's only a half troll. There are MLB organizations that call out their own players for things like being out of shape. Toronto would never dare, now here we are.

Vlad, Kirk, and Manoah are all fat shits. Toronto was infected by woke culture. Beautiful at any size! No fat shaming in the clubhouse!

they were doing okay on trades then they went and traded gabriel f***ing moreno plus a kicker for a platoon player

tbh it just sounds like the Jays were letting people renew for far below market value, for a long time if Toronto thinks they can sell premium season tickets in an upgraded lower bowl to rich people and businesses at these high prices, with three year commitments, then all the power to them. Go Shapiro Go!

Toronto is just mediocre at everything. It's incredibly frustrating. Mediocre coaching. Mediocre analytics. Mediocre managing. Mediocre drafting. Mediocre development. Mediocre trading. The franchise is mid. The only do a couple of things well. Those are probably spending money and executing the business side of things (Shapiro is godly). This is starting to feel like the Ricciardi era. Except instead of winning 87 games and missing the playoffs they win 91 games and sneak into the playoffs only to get bounces in the minimum number of games.

First pitch breaking ball not in the zone... gotta swing!

Behold, Alek Manoah.

He is starting to remind me of Mat Latos, who was washed up and throwing low 90s by age 28. He was also a 6'6" fatty with a s***** personality.

Stick a Dominican in Buffalo and this probably happens half the time

agree with most of this i'd also consider bringing up Juenger... maybe piggy back him with Pearson for a more effective 5 innings than whatever the f*** Manoah has been doing.