Laika

I know it's cheating but I don't think you need to prefer one to the other, unless the budget makes you pick one which I don't think would necessarily be true. You predetermine how much you are willing to pay both. You start with reasonable aggressive offers to both to see if you can tempt them to ignore free agency (unlikely) then you stay engaged and open minded while only moving your maximum offer up if the overall market has moved up. And you court replacements simultaneously. Now if I HAD to pick only one it would be Ray. I think Semien is a better guy to have long term objectively because of injury risk but Ray is more crucial to Toronto if you look at the next couple or years. I think the team could get by without Semien but I think if they don't have Robbie Ray or someone as good as him the rotation looks like s***.

THE spreadsheet would never say to sit Kirk. Charlie's spreadsheet however...

Have to manage for the entire four game set though

Yeah I would now honestly. It's probably one more PA with a chance for two from that spot and it would have been six full defensive innings. Good trade I think.

Kind of looks I'll, honestly.

Really nice execution. It's like a mature playoff team or something. Manufacturing runs against their Ace? Who the f***

Couple more tries at it. Dick will poke

Lmao holy f*** Don't they have like one good player

How about we just f*** up his entire season so Ray can win the Cy Young

I like Dickerson leading off because he's the type of guy who can jump a pitch and ambush Cole with an early homer. Rattle him early. Wait for it, this is pitcher specific.

He's also arguably not, if Kirk and Dickerson are both in the lineup, depending on what you think of Dickerson.

yes ser, that is how numbers work

Gurriel seems like one of those average / below average players who will have a 5 WAR season out of nowhere and people will think he figured it out but then he will go back to being a below average player.

Think about what you just said.

Visual strength of schedule using my arbitrary opponent quality bins. I chose not to include Seattle. I also could not bring myself to call Seattle a hard opponent but it seemed dishonest to just call them average so they get a special colour. Did not colour the matchups between these teams because we know those will be critical. Was mostly interested in the strength of schedule outside of those matchups between competitors. Takeaways: - Oakland has a tough grind towards the end and not a lot of easy matchups overall, especially if Seattle stays in it and has something to play for mathematically to the bitter end. - Yankees kind of have an easy road; TB will probably be locked into winning the division and playing reserves in the final series. Makes it even more crucial to take the majority of the games against them. - Toronto has the most easy opponents, but also has TB six times. Got to take care of business against the trash teams and then not lose ground during those TB series. - All eyes will be on New York and their 9 games with Toronto and Boston. Those three series have a good chance of deciding the wild card teams.

Why is he playing? Have you seen the standings?

Because you touch yourself at night

Thanks for setting the matchups

12-2 is greedy even against bad teams. No matter what, Toronto has to go bananas. The easiest way to do it is probably to destroy the Yankees and Tampa... I mean that's the hard path in terms of baseball but easier to make the math work

Haha yikes. Teoscar could probably do better there but maybe they don't want him to get hurt chugging around in CF. Seems like a bit decision though.

It was one game so zero worries here. He doesn't need great command to be a great reliever. On balance the stuff we saw wasn't worse or much worse than Romano's s***, for example. He's a huge upgrade over certain other options.

Oh is he a shortstop now?

Bad luck, a lot of it. An error by Bo, then a bloop double, tough start. Then two solid singles. Was throwing 98 (not 100+) and not getting ahead of hitters so didn't exactly look amazing.

It's part of why they drafted him Go listen to the Baseball America podcast with the Jays scout who signed Manoah. Cool insights.

Holy f*** what a win