Laika

And Lynn was not nearly that good in 2020, or 2018, or any other time in his career. Toronto just isn't in the position to be trading very valuable futures for one year of an older pitcher. Lynn is solid and he's on a nice 2020 contract but Jansen is worth twice as much as him in trade and Toronto will be targeting players who can grow with the team or help them over the next few years

Jansen is worth more than Lynn. Probably significantly more

I know two of these players Is John Carlson all of a sudden better than Erik Karlsson? Weird

Cavan Biggio trying hard to recruit George Springer over Zoom, lol

Pretty interesting Sun article, shockingly: https://torontosun.com/sports/baseball/toronto-blue-jays/bold-and-aggressive-blue-jays-ready-to-pounce-on-high-end-off-season-moves

No, the former is just a thing that happens and the latter is a large, rare investment. Well-rounded catchers are kind of boring. Russell Martin was kind of a boring Blue Jay.

Toronto has good depth at C so Springer, for sure. There's also a "been there, done that" element with Realmuto, with Martin being the biggest signing in team history. That shouldn't matter but for my lizard brain it kind of does, for some dumb reason.

TJ Zeuch has a 3.52 MiLB ERA and threw a no-hitter in AAA last year. He has never failed in a traditional sense: NCAA - 3.33 ERA MiLB - 3.52 ERA MLB - 3.71 ERA Even if we assume TJ Zeuch is physically capable of becoming a completely different and better pitcher through modern training (not obvious to me) how do you get a player like that, who has never failed, to buy into it? Do you tell him his K/BB is fugly and Fangraphs thinks he's bad? If you use a heavy-handed approach and make him change his pitching gender, what type of impression does that give to prospects thinking of signing with Toronto? Who wants to sign for an organization that will make you go through a wood-chipper at their whim?

The Angels are a terrible org. Also, in a lot of instances the player is not willing to fully buy in to the overhaul until they have failed emphatically... lots of times these player transformations require an org change for this reason.

Driveline's methods aren't all in a black box. Any individual player is able to do their weighted ball programs and aggressive velocity training, inside or outside of their actual program. Advanced teams are doing in-house pitch design already. The think with Zeuch is that he probably isn't just some added velo or a spin efficiency tweak away from being a good traditional P prospect. I'm not sure it makes sense to train him in those typical methods. It might be like trying to get a cat to play flyball - the wrong species.

Grant is right, sorry King. TJ Zeuch probably does suck but he's worth keeping around as a depth SP while he still has options (unless he gets bumped off the roster by better players) and there is a chance that he ends up as a useful SP. I believe he has a better minor league ERA than many of Toronto's young SP depth (Thornton, Kay, Hatch, Waguespack). Minor league ERA is dumb to look at in almost every instance but maybe not when you are trying to evaluate a guy with a stupid/weird profile like Zeuch. He's completely outside the mold of current analytic trends and he's a weird player because it's probably SP or bust - hard to imagine him as a useful reliever - and in the current game backend SPs who chew up mediocre innings are not coveted. The type of player who, if the team gets into SP injury trouble, could end up supplying ~15 not terrible starts in a season. Grant's ceiling comps are generally too sexy but here is a more fitting one: https://www.fangraphs.com/players/aaron-cook/1571/stats?position=P Toronto should have traded Zeuch for David Dahl!!! why the f*** did that not happen

arms like them grow on trees but they might have some utility as long as they are making league minimum and have options

That's pretty pedestrian for a RHRP these days. Not sure that would even qualify as a 60 grade pitch.

If Realmuto's price tag starts to come down a little bit there are probably a number of teams that will be pretty interested. I know he was projected for something like 5/$125 but that might have always been a bit too rich for a catcher like him. Grandal got 4/$73. Toronto gave Russell Martin 5/$82. At say 5/$90 are teams like the Tigers or Rockies getting in line? I'm with Carlos. I think it would be forcing the issue for Toronto to sign Realmuto even if his price tag drops.

I think it's the second half of a trade made previously

Not sure why everything can't be so spread out? Relax

Matt Wisler now too.

Some of these non-tenders are insane.

It's not a high risk signing if he gets non-tendered and is willing to sign for something close to his projected arbitration salary, which is $8M. I don't think that dollar figure is high enough for him to get non-tendered. It's not like the Padres have a rock-solid alternative OF ready to slide in. If he does get cut loose he'd probably be #2 on my OF pref list, just behind Springer.

Vlad is playing in the DWL. Same team as Wander Franco. We might see some clips on twitter soon. This stuff is televised somewhere right? Like you can catch a stream? I imagine he'll play 3B.

I'm all for people who did phenomenal things getting into the Hall, even if they don't quite have the traditional career WAR totals. Buehrle string of 200+ IP and 30+ start seasons in the 2000s is pretty amazing. I'm not sure he should get in and not sure that I would even vote for him, but he's be far from the least deserving guy in there (as much as I don't like that argument).

remember when Jesse Litsch had exploratory shoulder surgery and it ended his career

it's shoulder surgery... TJS would be less scary, lol.

Baseball probably needs to embrace what it is. Bat flips and show-boating and bling make the game marginally more entertaining for the younger crowd, but all that does is add some flair in place of the previously entertaining grit that now outlawed takeout slides and now severely frowned upon brawls / plunkings. Baseball is a good sport for people who are on their phones and laptops. Heck, even hardcore old fans keep score on paper, in other words they look away from the game regularly because there are huge pauses in the action. Somehow MLB needs to leverage modern technology to embrace what baseball is. It's a game with a very drawn out and punctuated display of athleticism, with very rare snippets of peak athleticism... it's made for people who like suspense and/or monotony, it's made for people who can't pay attention, it's made for nerds who like to do math outside of the games, and it's made for people who like to multi-task during the games. I don't actually know what the answer is but it certainly is not trying to compete directly with basketball or football by being as cool as those sports. Just no chance.

Already some discussion about this. I think the league would rightly expect some players to opt out after getting drafted - their orgs might tell them not to play anymore. "Jackson alludes to the fact that the league expects some players to pull out of the league after being drafted, noting that “after the draft, we’ll be able to take some kids — some of the seniors and some other guys looking to get those free-agent opportunities and put them in that mix.” But it is an MLB organized league so is it much different than these kids going to short season, or whatever, after the draft? And pre-draft, you really would not expect pitchers who have just had a full college season to come in and throw but you might instead see mid-round arms looking to make an impression, guys who were dealing with nagging stuff all season and did not throw a lot during their college / high school seasons, etc. I dunno, more data can't hurt. This is probably just replacing lesser showcase type things that some of the players do anyway so who knows how much more baseball it would even be for them. It would be cool though to see a bunch of first and second rounders immediately after they have been drafted, in a league that's broadcast through MLB.tv (or whatever) with good camera angles and some of the newfangled tracking stuff. One issue historically with MiLB and the promotion of MLB is how remote and mysterious and inaccessible baseball is when it is further away from the big leagues. You can't watch instructs, you can't really watch most minor league teams (at least not on good camera angles). Maybe part of what MLB is trying to do with the MiLB reforms and this is to elevate the minor leagues just a little bit - decrease the sheer number of teams but create a more concentrated and watchable product from the time players enter the system. This type of league, with heavy investment, could really promote that end. Imagine if a few weeks after the 2020 draft we could have tuned in to watch Austin Martin dig in against Nick Bitsko (RIP) in HD?