Laika

He's their best player, man. Vlad gets all the hype. Bo gets all the ladies. Biggio gets all the walks.

L54's window is halved, remember. His clock expires at 6:00 PM Eastern. L54 if you see this you have two picks to make here.

Man, they have Matthews, Marner, Tavares, and Nylander. Plus a handful of guys like Kapanen, Hyman, Reilly, Sandin, Barrie, Johnsson, Muzzin, Mikheyev, Freddie who appear to not suck. They certainly have a prayer against the elite teams. One seeds lose to eight seeds frequently.

Leaves fans are insufferable. They are an annoying team to be a fan of but they are sitting in a playoff spot, right? It would be pathetic for them to have sold anybody, and I see and hear so many fans whining that the team is not ready and they should have been sellers.

Keith Law's Jays list seems a bit... lazy? As far as the right ups are concerned, I mean. Keith Law’s prospect rankings: Toronto Blue Jays By Keith Law 2h ago 4 The Jays’ system has been boosted by tremendously productive work on the international front, which has made up for some significant misses on college players in the draft the last few years. The Top 10 1. Nate Pearson, RHP (Top 100 rank: No. 11) From Keith Law’s Top 100: Pearson bounced back last year from a lost 2018 season where he threw just one inning before the Arizona Fall League. A dominant 2019 campaign saw him strike out 104 batters in 83.2 innings between High A and Double A before a late-August promotion to Triple A that left him on the cusp of the big leagues. Pearson throws hard, sitting 97-100 mph and occasionally bumping 101-102, with a fierce slider that’s usually 86-90 when he starts but up to 92 when he’s pitched in relief. He even has some feel for a changeup that’s especially impressive given how hard he throws, with zero platoon split in 2019. He’s a good athlete and an extremely hard worker who looks and throws like a top-of-the-rotation starter, and the injuries he suffered in 2018 were flukes rather than anything related to his delivery. It’s control over command right now, but there’s no mechanical reason he can’t get to above-average command in time. As long as he keeps ramping up his workload, and maybe throws more quality strikes, he should end up at the top of a rotation in a few years. 2. Jordan Groshans, 3B (Top 100 rank: No. 73) From Keith Law’s Top 100: Groshans was the Jays’ first-round pick in 2018 and got off to a terrific start in 2019 in the full-season Midwest League, hitting .337/.427/.482 in 23 games for Lansing before a left foot injury ended his year. Groshans has a pure hitter’s swing and has shown an elite ability to make adjustments to pitchers so far in his brief pro tenure. He rotates his hips early, and the power he has shown to date comes more from his hand strength than his legs — although that’s as much a timing issue as anything, and if it ever becomes an issue it’s probably fixable. A third baseman in high school and in 2018, Groshans moved to short last year and wasn’t terrible, but third or second remain more likely long-term positions for him. If he improves at short enough to stay there, his average/contact/OBP combination would make him a potential star even without big power. A full, healthy year in 2020 will help establish just how advanced his bat is and whether he has the power to be a star even in a corner. 3. Alek Manoah, RHP (Top 100 rank: No. 76) From Keith Law’s Top 100: The top college pitcher — and the second one selected — in the 2019 draft, Manoah had a dominant spring for West Virginia, punching out 144 batters against 27 walks in 108 innings for the Mountaineers. He’ll sit 94-95 deep into games, touching 98, with a four-pitch mix that includes an above-average changeup at 86-88 with great arm speed. His breaking stuff is less consistent, with the slider more of a chase pitch for righties while the curveball is more effective in or near the zone. He’s very big at 6-foot-6 and 260 pounds, and he pitches with intent, attacking hitters consistently with his fastball to set up everything else, including, quite often, more fastballs. He pitches from the stretch all the time, which is atypical but not a red flag, and was used a little heavily by West Virginia in the spring. Other than that, he checks all the boxes for a mid-rotation starter. 4. Orelvis Martinez, SS (Top 100 rank: No. 89) From Keith Law’s Top 100: Martinez was just 17 in the GCL but hit seven homers, good for second in the league behind a 21-year-old org player, while also showing the plate discipline of a player a few years older. Signed in 2018 for $3.5 million, Martinez has impact tools across the board, with big-time bat speed and raw power already, as well as a 60 or better arm and great hands in the field. He’s a bit thickly built and is going to be very strong when he fills out, so the odds are he’ll end up at third base rather than at short, with a good shot to be above-average at the hot corner. He’d gotten away from the leg kick he used as an amateur but restored it last summer and went on a tear to finish his first pro season, hitting six of those seven homers in August, showing the ability to hit velocity and pick up breaking stuff as well. He’s still so young that you want to temper your enthusiasm, but he could be the Jays’ best prospect in a year. 5. Anthony Kay, LHP Kay and No. 6 Simeon Woods Richardson were the return from the Mets for Marcus Stroman, with Kay the more advanced of the two while Woods Richardson has the higher ceiling. Kay should be a fourth starter in fairly short order; he’s consistently 92-94 mph with an above-average curveball and changeup, not having a clear plus pitch but with good feel and control. Triple A baseball didn’t agree with him, but that isn’t a reflection of how he’s pitched everywhere else. 6. Simeon Woods Richardson, RHP Woods Richardson is a strike-thrower already at age 19, sitting 93 with an average changeup. But he lacks an adequate breaking ball, and his arm is always late relative to his landing leg. He’s a good athlete and still quite young, so it’s easy to see the upside potential. But there’s a lot of reliever risk here too between the breaking-ball issue and the delivery. 7. Eric Pardinho, RHP A command right-hander, Pardinho will miss the entire 2020 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery and may not pitch again until mid-2021. He was up to 96 before his elbow started bothering him last season, with a four-pitch mix, but not necessarily showing a clear out pitch. 8. Gabriel Moreno, C Moreno, who just turned 20 on Valentine’s Day, is coming off a promising partial season for Low-A Lansing where he hit .280/.337/.485 with surprising power for his build. He’s a very athletic catcher who needs work on receiving and blocking but should get there in time, with an above-average arm and good physical projection remaining. 9. Alejandro Kirk, C Kirk has tremendous bat-to-ball skills, can receive and frame, and throws well. But he’s very heavy – listed at 5-foot-9 and 220 pounds – and has to improve his conditioning so he has the durability required for a catcher. He can really hit, though, and has walked more than he’s struck out at all three of his stops so far in pro ball. Toronto Blue Jays ✔ @BlueJays THAT'S how you end a game @alejandro_kirk | #ST2020 Embedded video 1,520 4:29 PM - Feb 23, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 199 people are talking about this 10. Miguel Hiraldo, SS/2B He gets overshadowed in this system by Orelvis, who has more impact at the plate, but Hiraldo has good hand-eye and makes a lot of contact, even with a slight tendency to overswing and collapse his backside. He’s probably not a shortstop in the longer term, with second base likely. The Next 10 11. Dasan Brown, OF Brown was the Jays’ third-round pick in 2019, a local kid from Ontario who was one of the fastest runners in the draft. He’s an 80 runner who’s already plus in center and could end up a Gold Glove-type defender out there. But there are a lot of questions with the bat right now – unsurprising given how young he is and his relative inexperience compared to kids from areas where they play more baseball year-round. The Jays sent him to the Appy League rather than the GCL, which was puzzling, and he struck out quite a bit, only salvaging his stat line by being hit by a pitch nine times in 63 plate appearances. 12. Adam Kloffenstein, RHP The team’s second pick in 2018, Kloffenstein is a big, prototypical high school right-hander from Texas. His velocity backed up a little in his first full pro season as he transitioned from pitching once a week to working in a professional rotation, but he can still spin the ball well and has a good enough delivery to get to above-average control. 13. Leo Jimenez, SS Jimenez is an elite defender at short with a good swing and promising exit velocities, but he’s so far from filling out that he hasn’t produced more than singles so far at the plate. 14. Patrick Murphy, RHP Murphy has been up to 97 mph with a power breaking ball with good spin, but he’s been hurt more or less constantly since the Jays drafted him in 2014, with only 89 appearances in five-plus seasons. He also ran into trouble with the MLB Umpires’ Association, which ruled the toe-tap part of his delivery illegal and forced him to change it midseason. 15. Kendall Williams, RHP Williams was the Jays’ second-round pick last year, a projectable right-hander from Florida who is 6-foot-6 and can show both velocity and spin on breaking stuff. But he needs help with consistency in his delivery and also has some physical maturation ahead of him. 16. T.J. Zeuch, RHP Zeuch is a sinkerballer without a swing and miss pitch and who doesn’t have the pinpoint control he’d need to start, but he could be a useful long reliever. He’s 6-foot-7 and gets good plane on the ball, but the 2016 first-round pick also hasn’t developed anything to get lefties out. 17. Will Robertson, OF Robertson has good power the other way, enough to profile as a regular in right field, but closes himself off at the plate so much that he can get locked up too easily when pitchers attack him inside with fastballs. 18. Sem Robberse, RHP Robberse was pitching in the Dutch major league at 17 years old when the Jays signed him last July. He’s gone from 83-87 moh when they first saw him, to touching 93 with some spin on a breaking ball and feel for a changeup. He has one of the best deliveries in the Jays’ system and didn’t walk any of the 41 batters he faced in his pro debut. 19. Anthony Alford, OF Alford is about to run out of chances with the Jays; he’s already out of options and has yet to produce even in Triple A, despite some of the best physical tools in the system and some history of plate discipline when he first moved to playing baseball full-time. 20. Thomas Hatch, RHP Hatch was the return for David Phelps in a minor trade last July, and he pitched extremely well for the Jays in six starts after the deal — albeit at Double A, where he’d been pitching for almost two full seasons. Hatch was a sinker/slider guy with the Cubs, working in the low 90s but never generating as many groundballs as expected. The Jays had him use his changeup more, and his groundball rate also spiked. So while it might all be a tiny sample, he’s at least worth keeping an eye on. (The Jays also fired the pitching coach who told Hatch to ramp up the use of his change.) 2020 impact Pearson is ready whenever the Jays want him to be, and Kay is probably more polished right now without Pearson’s huge upside. Zeuch could help the team in relief. The fallen It was a tough year for the Jays’ 2017 draft class outside of Pearson. First-rounder Logan Warmoth hit .235/.324/.333 between High A and Double A at age 23 and is moving off shortstop. Fourth-rounder Kevin Smith, who had a good half-season in Low A to start 2018 at age 22, was exposed in Double A last year, hitting .209/.263/.402 with a 32 percent strikeout rate. Sleeper Brown’s speed and defense give him as much upside as anyone in the system after their top 100 guys, and I think he’ll show more discipline at the plate when he’s not pushed to a level above his experience.

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you'll only have room to use 5 anyway, right. can i just give your worst pick to ftd?

spanky, pick you maggot

Okay I gave BTS those two picks he figured were his (55 and 67). Now everybody has 5 except for Abom and FTD who have 6 and 4. Is that correct? Should Abom have 6?

Round 2 begins! The Butt Stallions --> Bryan Abreu Taijuan On! ISO Horny Abomination 25 Year Olds Welcome The Beach Cowboys The True Cardinals The Bryce is Right Saskatchewan 54's A 3rd Leg to Stanton Off Daily (insert clever name) Seniors Circuit A 3rd Leg to Stanton 25 Year Olds Welcome The Eze The War Pigs Burrito Boyz The War Pigs Ten Cent Beer Night

No, we don't snake these. I am up.

Bubic, Balazovic, Manoah, Houser, Thorpe, Ivey

Easiest way to do it is probably just how the LoD does. You can still put red-flagged players on your IL all offseason. Add/drops are legal all offseason. You are not allowed to add a red-flagged player though. Player hoarding really does not become an issue. It all works out in the wash anyway because as soon as a news report comes out that he player is healthy they lose the flag, and the owner can't do anything until they correct their roster.

I'm not saying that you have to care, but you just said that nobody else who feels strongly about it is allowed to if they so much as cheated on a test in high school. You're a trader. On the spectrum of wrong doings, what the Astros did is closer to insider trading than it is to peeking at your desk-mate's answers. They expressly and knowingly chose to play outside of the established rules, and they reaped significant financial rewards in the process. (Also, there are reports that certain players and teams reported their suspicions to the Commissioner a couple of years ago and Manfred did nothing).

Quite a comparison. The Astros are currently being sued for what they did. Not just by damaged players, but I believe by online gambling websites and fans. Bolsinger's lawsuit might have the only chance of going anywhere. I believe he is suing them for "unfair business practices, negligence and intentional interference with contractual relations" which seems appropriate even if he probably can't show damages in a clear enough way to get any money out of them. It doesn't make sense to minimize what they did. It was intentional cheating with multi-million dollar consequences for a host of other parties.

Derek Fisher and Charlie Morton were essentially not even participants in the scheme. They are also making statements like that as personal PR to appeal to their current fan bases. The core position players of the 2017-2018-2019 teams are the ones who need to own up to things. They have not shown adequate remorse. If anything, their public statements have only raised more questions. And we do know how they feel about it because they have all talked about it publicly and what they said was lame as s*** and not credible. Players like Bregman, Correa, and Altuve aren't going to make statements written by Jim Crane. The fact they their opinions are so aligned with the owner's lack of professed responsibility is because they are all in responsibility-bucking cahoots together. A bunch of weasels. An adequate display of remorse would be if the players all came together, auctioned off their World Series rings, donated the proceeds to charity, then held a media event where they talked at length about everything that happened, full disclosure, no two-faced ******** that only peels back the veil as much as Rob Manfred has already lazily done.

The Butt Stallions --> Kwang-Hyun Kim Taijuan On! --> Yoshi Tsutsugo ISO Horny --> Salvador Perez 25 Year Olds Welcome --> Randy Arozarena 25 Year Olds Welcome --> Austin Hays The Beach Cowboys --> Sam Hilliard The True Cardinals --> Mark Melancon The Bryce is Right --> Josh Lindblom Saskatchewan 54's --> EXPIRED A 3rd Leg to Stanton --> Domingo Santana Off Daily --> Ian Kennedy (insert clever name) --> Julio Teheran Seniors Circuit --> Yaz Jr. Jr. The Five Year Plan --> Jordan Hicks The New Matt Olsons --> ???? The Eze 25 Year Olds Welcome Burrito Boyz The War Pigs Ten Cent Beer Night

Sometimes it is an organizational projection, too. Or even a league-wide depth projection. The Blue Jays have one starting shortstop and there are only 30 starting MLB shortstop jobs to go around. Even if a guy like Jordan Groshans could, in theory, handle SS without embarrassing himself, he's almost certainly a 3B on the Blue Jays unless Bichette gets traded. So it's not entirely up to the specific player. They are always getting pressure from other teammates and players UP the defensive spectrum - guys who are better defenders at the premium position they might be able to play. When Vlad ultimately gets moved off of 3B, it might not be because he utterly fails. It might just be because someone else who is a solid 3B has pushed their way onto the roster. It's a bit like position plinko.

No. I don't think "living with shame" is an adequate punishment. Also, they have not even demonstrated that they are honestly shameful! They have stated in public that they don't even think the cheating necessarily helped them win! They haven't owned up to f***ing anything in a sincere way, and essentially all they have said is "we collectively regret doing the things that the report specifically said that we did."

Yeah this is a fairly common issue. I mean, most players can't stick at SS and they do slide down the spectrum, so it's true to kind of generalize that many iffy SS prospects will end up elsewhere, but prospectors are sometimes a little quick to just assume that certain specific players won't stick.

"They've got to live with it. That's more than enough punishment." Highly debatable. The Astros players are hiding behind the Commissioner's report, likely covering up certain other facts and methods of cheating that have not become public, and they are not even admitting that their cheating might have helped them win the World Series.

Will fix this later today, unless Boxy or Spanky or someone else can trace the problem better and tell me what the correct solution is. Boxy currently has 7 picks and you only have 3, so it's likely you are owed 2 somewhere and likely they are 2 that Boxy currently holds.

One of the beautiful things about baseball is that success can come in all shapes and sizes. It's the professional sport of physical diversity and inclusion. Altuve, Judge, Bartolo Colon, Jim Abbott, Eddie Gaedel, Pete Gray, Satchel Paige, Jamie Moyer, Moe Berg, Pat Venditte, RA Dickey, Phil Niekro, and every other knuckler, etc. etc. etc. I don't think Kirk owes any kind of debt to the Blue Jays. They've probably paid him like, $50,000 total during his four years of professional employment. There's also an argument to be made for not fixing what isn't broken. MLB has a history of fat catchers, so there might be some unexpected merit to playing fat. He's a bigger target back there! It helps him block the plate! Maybe hitting fat helps with power a little bit? #PlayFat

The Butt Stallions --> Kwang-Hyun Kim Taijuan On! --> Yoshi Tsutsugo ISO Horny --> Salvador Perez 25 Year Olds Welcome --> Randy Arozarena 25 Year Olds Welcome --> Austin Hays The Beach Cowboys --> Sam Hilliard The True Cardinals --> Mark Melancon The Bryce is Right --> Josh Lindblom Saskatchewan 54's --> EXPIRED A 3rd Leg to Stanton Off Daily (insert clever name) Seniors Circuit The Five Year Plan The New Matt Olsons The Eze 25 Year Olds Welcome Burrito Boyz The War Pigs Ten Cent Beer Night