Laika

Holy s***. Brendon Little just has bottom tier command. 82 Location+. 20 grade. Hoffman has 91 Location+ for his career. 30 grade. Dominguez is the same as Hoffman. Double minus natural command. You would expect these three to go through stretches like this. For it to happen simultaneously is poor luck at the team level. Yariel should not be this bad though. Varland is the one who is supposed to have plus command. I don't know about Fluharty. Kind of one of the follies when you ACQUIRE and don't DEVELOP your plus Stuff relievers is that they almost certainly have warts, command being the most likely wart, because teams just don't tend to let guys with plus Stuff and Locations go very often. They retain them, extend them, etc. And maybe there is a cumulative effect issue where opposing teams can kind of have a general gameplan against the entire Jays pen - make them throw strikes. Unless it's Louis Varland, then you should hunt meatballs early. Probably some benefit on the other side where they don't have to check the iPad and gameplan every single opposing pitcher with intensity or even if they do, there is this overarching preparation theme to fall back on. All of them suck at throwing strikes. Wait them out. Let them hit you. Wait for Jeff to throw a 96 mph fastball down the middle because he just missed with every other pitch.

The Jays don't really have any SP that you want to just trust to go deep. All of these guys, except for maybe a Bieber when he is on, probably have bad drops third time through the order and they become worse options than your worst RP. Just look at Bassitt last night at the end. He was cruising and then he wasn't. And the Jays also don't really have a bullpen depth problem. So shrinking the pen isn't the solution. The only thing they could really try to do is hunt for more talent/quality which is obviously almost impossible after the deadline. The aggressive moves to this end would be callups. Other than getting Fisher back up for Bruihl soon, the only one I see is Yesavage. That's kind of it. Get Yesavage up and see if he is a difference maker somewhere. Or get in the heads of Little, Varland, Hoffman, etc. and get them to figure it out. Really no reason that Varland should be getting hit around like this. Little needs a different game plan because guys are not swinging as much. Hoffman needs a lobotomy and his Jekyl/Hyde shtick is stale at this point.

Ty France as a Blue Jay: .274/.343/.355 for a 95 wRC+ Davis Schneider this year .245/.364/.453 fir a 131 wRC+ Ty France has 70 PA since August 1st and Schneider has 44. Schneider even has 3 bombs and a 162 wRC+ in that limited time. If the team wanted a different backup 1B they needed to just be repping Schneider/Lukes/Springer/Barger at 1B for the last few months. Any of them can probably play 1B fine with some reps. This is kind of an indefensible downgrade offensively! France is old and washed and just not it. Schneider is 26 and was peaking and they bumped him down for what? 1B defense!?!? What f***ing year is it!!!!!!!!!????????

Horrendous loss. Hoffman was ass, again. He has bottom shelf command and it's sort of the worst kind because he both walks people and gives up meatballs. The other relievers were trash as well. The offense was pathetic. Outhitting a team 14-9 and losing 7-5 is unforgiveable. The season is over.

Sigh. I miss Yimi.

imagine typing or saying or even thinking "I am not the biggest fan of Alejandro Kirk" Go watch football

Well they are .500 since their last win against Detroit Not stumbling or bumbling but not surging or blurging either Have not had that killer instinct and have just seemed like a decent team for the last month

Literally tied in fWAR. Yankees fans and people who only like offense will tell you it isn't close but I think Cal is the odds on favourite right now. The Yankees are a mess and Aaron Judge is their leader. What does that say to a certain subset of voters? And the slashline numbers may continue to get closer. Judge has been pedestrian since coming back.

that's why it was so nice to see Boston take 3 of 4 Comparatively, the Jays have such a harder slate than NYY or BOS. This MIN series is probably the easiest but they start it off against Joe Ryan. Every other series is a playoff team or hopeful, or Baltimore / Tampa which won't be easy games. CIN and KCR will not be easy series. The Yankees still get CHW TWICE!!!! and MIN and WSH Red Sox still get PIT, CLE, ARI, and Oakland TWICE!!!

Nice to be back home. 18 home games left, only 13 road games. Jays have had some sloppy or bad road series in the last few weeks and it's amazing they are still out in front by this much. sloppy Miami series, lucky to win 2 lost 2 of 3 in Pitt got lucky to win 1 in LA dummied at BAL 2 game sweep to Oakland limp final game loss to CHW Really just the two solid road series since the start of July - Colorado and Detroit.

What is the historic reason that New York, Chicago, LA, and SF/Oakland had one AL team and one NL team? I am having trouble finding a thorough explanation and solid justification for why it was seen as so important, and why it remains important to split them up. I do understand that at some point it probably seemed to make sense, because you could attract a different market of fans and visiting fans and kind of build your own brand without directly competing with a team a few miles away. But does all of that matter now? Wouldn't it be awesome to have these regular season cross-town rivalries? Why does that have to wait for the odd interleague matchup or the tiny chance at meeting in a world series? Or are the White Sox, Mets, and Angels owners too chicken s***?

The AL Central is funky there Everything else seems fine

Yes, good pitchers sometimes throw bad pitches or miss their spot What is your point? Are you panicking over a few earned runs and already demoting Varland in your bullpen hierarchy? If so, silly and too reactionary. Which is basically my point

Yes that happens when you throw good pitches and they get hit hard

Louis Varland has a 3.02 xFIP as a Jay, he's fine. Most of it has been random variation or bad luck.

Bo is kind of having a Derek Jeter season Ostensibly he has been a solid defender. If range statistics didn't exist impressions of him would be so much better. Like today, two heady plays.

Actually, Bo for like 6/$140M to the Rockies as their 2B might be his floor. That would make sense for them for baseball and marketing reasons. So, something like that might be what Toronto is told to match

Wow! Playoff difference maker right there.

Yes

check out what this article on FG from this year says about changeup IVB not sure if he's just wrong if they display it differently https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-more-it-stays-the-same-the-less-it-changeups/ "Changeups, like most other pitches, are designed to sink, so a positive IVB number means more relative drop. That -7.6 inches is relative to induced break for your average right-handed..."

caveat being not everywhere uses IVB and IVB means different things in some places! I know on some sources they actually flip it around for changeups, so positive IVB means more drop.

Unfortunately there is no standard for pitch movement stuff. You kind of need to learn what each source means with their references.

Basallo seems more like a catch 2 days a week, then DH/1B the rest kind of player Doubt the Os think his extension pushes Adley out at all

Adley Rutschman is a .320/.392/.590 hitter as far as the Toronto Blue Jays are concerned

Ugh.