Laika

He's uhhhh not an alpha. Whatever the Greek is that pretends to be an alpha because of insecurities, that's Stroman.

Nah he'd come back if they paid him the most money.

Statcast doesn't factor spin into the equation, for one thing. I could buy the first one off the monster being a ball that would have died on the warning track elsewhere but the second one was gone gone gone gone gone.

Yeah I think it's wrong. Not sure how but that's a homer everywhere

or if the organization even wants him to try

Never heard of Brody Rodning but the rest of those guys are worth watching.

The correct analysis would have been to point out how Cole has been pretty hittable since the sticky stuff ban.

Everyone thought A-Rod was great on the mic when he did his first few games. Tony Romo was just getting into broadcasting and NFL fans loved his player insights, and A-Rod kind of felt the same. He went downhill very fast though, after getting the permanent gig. His useful insights turned out to be few and far between and now he just spews the same cliched stuff that all of the normal colour commentators do. For the most part.

That's a completely different game in any other ballpark because Stanton would have had two homers.

Yeah the websites tend not to update the "free agent year" things until the offseason so they can be off. They should control him through 2027. Free agent before 2028.

he's horrendous. there is no hope. was completely useless for most of the latter part of the season too. like I bet the WAR split was +1 first half and -0.6 second half or something like that.

puke dot gif

hate this

Oneil Cruz ain't nobody

There is also an alternate universe where Dark and Faithless Montoyo buries Jansen and Gurriel in the second half because they were horrendous in the first half and the team is mathematically eliminated before the Baltimore series.

Moreno playing 3rd base is another possibility. This is the JimCanuk wet dream solution.

Yeah I kind of like Kirk @ DH (maybe he catches 20% of the time), Jansen and Moreno start in a time-share with the hope that Moreno takes the starting job and Jansen becomes a backup. That's if there are no trades.

- how close is Groshans? is he an impact player? If he dominated the minors in 2022 he could be up but 2023 would be his more likely timeline to be an MLB starter. - Moreno looks to be slated to AAA unless the MLB logjam at C is broken up Moreno is the future. He could start in AAA but the team could do so many different things with the catcher position. Trades to make room for Moreno are possible. - Martinez is a couple years away, may start next year at AA Yes. Could start in AA but don't expect MLB time in 2022. - do we have any impact arms to give us the Tampa/NYY bullpen model with multiple high velocity guys who can shut down the opposition from 5inning on Probably not any time soon. Kloffenstein, Palmer, Van Eyk, Robberse, Joey Murray, and Hoglund are all 2-4 years away and some of them struggled a bit in 2021, particularly with walks. Toronto needs to be in pitching talent acquisition mode at all levels of the organization. Note that many of Tampa Bay's MLB arms were acquired by trade and not developed in house. - is Pearson ready to pitch in the majors? if he throws with confidence and challenges hitters he is a great pitcher, but appears to be tentative in the strike zone. Get him the Tampa Bay mentality and he's a stud Related to the question above - if you want to see some multi-inning weapons out of the bullpen the answers for 2022 are probably already on the team and they would be Merryweather, Borucki, and Pearson. Those guys need to figure it out and stay healthy. Of course Pearson may be a traditional SP which would be even better. Thornton, Kay, and Hatch are not lost causes and could also be helpful but don't expect contributions from them.

Gotta wait at least a couple more years before using the P word. Law has the momentum though.

I'm not sure that's fair. I mean, the front office did everything reasonable to amass quality pitching depth in 2021. Bringing back Ray, signing Ryu two years ago, bringing in Matz, trading for Berrios, trading for Stripling last year, being aggressive with Manoah, and then a number of pen additions. I doubt the team thought about Stripling as a reclamation project - more likely they saw him as a solid arm who was likely to regress to the mean. Perhaps same could be said of Matz. I think the organization DID expect to compete this year and tried hard to field a pitching staff. The thing is, you can only do so much in a year or two with acquisitions alone. It takes 5+ years to actually construct the pitching/developmental pipeline from the minors up, and this organization is just not quite there yet. Getting essentially NO CONTRIBUTION from young arms like Kay, Hatch, Thornton, Merryweather, Pearson, Zeuch, Murphy, and Borucki was a killer. I think only two young arms really helped - Manoah and Mayza. That's not a fantastic developmental hit rate. Pete Walker gets a lot of credit for guys like Ray and Matz but he does so while sitting on top of a pile of useless prospect corpses. Some of those non-contributing youngers have wicked stuff.

No. He's here next year I do believe. If they fall short again.... maybe.

I don't want to read any "it was a fun season" ********. This season was agony 2/3 of the time and ended up as perhaps the biggest waste of talent / production in baseball history. Cy Young winner. MVP candidate. Record setting second baseman. Phenomenal rotation health. Franchise shortstop playing like one. And they end up as "the best 4th place team in baseball history" as their only solace. Just awful.

Thing is, Rays bench players are good. And I bet the Rays want all of these teams to experience chaos and the longest possible tie break scenario

Pretty f***ing nuts.

I mean even if they don't make it in, being alive in game 162 is basically the same as making the wild card game. lol.