Laika

It's weird that Toronto would earnestly try to get him to take a salary beneath his projected arbitration salary AND try to get a club option on him. Normally you'd see something like the team offering him a little bit more in exchange for the club option over him. Toronto is trying to eat its cake while simultaneously retaining its cake. The greed of these bean f***ers.

Honestly, MLB should perhaps strip Houston of their banners if this stuff is proven (depending on how deep it runs) and any player or staff member implicated should be suspended under the PED punishment schedule. I don't think I can be convinced otherwise. Houston's moral depravity is a blight on the game. The organization sold its soul a few years ago. There is now a laundry list of immoral acts. This one happens to be straight up cheating, though.

Actually not a bad strategy. If a guy sucks at one position but is borderline playable, why not at least make him versatile enough to suck but be borderline playable at multiple positions? Then if the team suddenly has a good defensive option to replace him in left and a hole at 1B, the versatility of borderline defensive competence helps.

Man, the MLB team has enough fragility and holes as it is. It would be a shame to have to move someone useful when there is so much SP volume to just be signed in free agency. I don't think Gurriel is the answer to much or a slam dunk starting position player year-to-year but he's certainly a nice piece to have. On a contending team I could see prime Lourdes Gurriel Jr. as a guy who can be part of a super productive platoon while providing adequate emergency defensive coverage for multiple positions. He has been worth 2.2 fWAR in basically a full season over his career and last year was over a 3.0 fWAR pace for the full season. I get why teams would maybe want him but it just seems retarded to ship that out when the payroll is zero. And I guess the main point would be that, with Gurriel's flaws, I have a hard time seeing a team giving up a very good, young, controllable arm for him. Mediocre and controllable - maybe. Good and young-ish without as much control - maybe. Apparently Toronto controls Lourdes through 2024. That's a long time!!! Of course there is a path where trading Gurriel for an arm and signing an OF makes sense, I just have trouble envisioning them getting appropriate value for Gurriel which makes that all hard to see. Who knows.

Revenue sharing and all of its associated rules and ramifications are a blight on the great game of baseball. Shame. The QO system should not have penalties for the signing teams, but if it must, then the signing teams should lose a set amount of signing bonus space and/or international signing space for signing a QO player but they should not lose the entire pick. They'd just be forced to pick a below slot value player. There, that wasn't so hard. I fixed the entire system. Hire me, MLB.

Every team's highest pick is protected. Nobody loses a 1st round pick unless they have multiple 1st round picks somehow, then they could lose their second best.

People talk about sacrificing the 2nd round pick to sign a QO player as if it should or will be a categorical reason to avoid certain free agents. That's really not how teams think. I get that sometimes teams mention retaining draft picks as a reason for not pursuing QO free agents, but that's mostly politics for the fans - giving them a legitimate reason that is not the complete truth, which is that the organization did not want to spend money. Really, what orgs likely do is place a dollar value on their draft picks and factor that into the calculation of the deal for the free agent. If the second round pick in the 40s is worth $15M in surplus value you just tack that on top of whatever monetary offer you are making - that's how much more the player costs. Every team loses picks for signing a QO player but the pick values vary so that's where the bargaining power differences come into play.

Don Cherry is senile but his comments are being (surprise) exaggerated. He was talking about urban people in general, and his language seemingly referred to immigrants as a subset of that. Not exactly targeted and racist weaponization of the poppy as some are saying. Being said, he should still apologize or at least clarify and he should no longer be on the air but that's not because of this - he should have been off the air a decade ago because he sucks. "I live in Mississauga. Very few people wear the poppy. Downtown Toronto, forget it. Nobody wears the poppy. Now you go to the small cities. You people . . . that come here, whatever it is — you love our way of life. You love our milk and honey. At least you could pay a couple of bucks for a poppy or something like that. These guys pay for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price for that."

I mean they just scored like 4 runs in three games and failed to move on sooooo

I can't believe the Expos organization finally won a world series! so great

how do you think they get so tall?

I don't think it's really a talent issue. Canada seems to produce an appropriate number of MLB players and there are always Canadians in the draft now. I mean the Baseball Canada program seems kind of wonky. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

ernie "winter" whitt

The Canadian baseball program seems really stunted. They should perform better than they do.

lol “probably”

Good printing, Devon! *gold star*

ERA since 2017 Chase Anderson: 3.63 Chris Archer: 4.43 Something has gone wrong with that slider. Or something else. Archer has been trash for a few years!

Pitt would want a good prospect. They’d probably ask for someone near the back of the Jays top 10 + some other lottery ticket type prospect. He wouldn’t be free

The depth is adequate, at least. Shoemaker Anderson Thornton Borucki Waguespack Font/Gaviglio/Pannone (opener team is basically a SP) Kay Zeuch Pearson Perez + Diaz + SRF + Merryweather + Murphy + Hatch + Sopko + Harris + Joey Murray --> upper minors prospects who are most likely relievers but some may be MLB starters It would be wonderful to add two really good SP so the organization can commit to guys like Hector Perez and SRF as relievers from the jump in 2020.

All first round picks are protected now IIRC

I.... guess I'll fap to this? It's the Sears catalog underwear section of acquisitions but something is better than nothing.

fWAR might fool you on Anderson. 7.5 career, but his ERA is 3.94 and his FIP (fWAR) is 4.54. or maybe that's just random and he's not a FIP beater. Either way, a good acquisition and it's like that made a lower-level FA signing to help the rotation out.

The team needs to sign multiple players on this list, and I would be happy with nearly every player at their crowdsourced contract except for like, the handful of C and 2B/SS on the list who aren't needed. Homer Bailey for $6M? sure! Jordan Lyles for 2/$12M? i guess so! The Toddfather for $7.5M? better than nothing! 2/30M for Hamels? 1/12 for Pomeranz? 3/39 for Puig? sure, sure, okay. I guess the possible exceptions for me are the bigger deals for the older dudes. Not sure that Bumgarner, Donaldson, or JDM make sense for Toronto at those dollar values / terms.

Please like my sport!!!!!

Have you looked at the SP depth chart? Thornton - gave up a lot of runs! Borucki - didn't pitch Shoemaker - barely pitched Waguespack - sucks Kay - rookie, barely pitched Tanner Roark was a 2 win pitcher and he would be at the top of Toronto's depth chart. Wacha sucked but he is two years removed from being good and at 28 he's a good project. Toronto should be trying to get like three arms, including Tanner Roark, an equivalent pitcher, and ideally someone even better like Wheels Ontario.