John_Havok

Theyre somehwat kidding, with multiple people married and having kids, the available time to get together just faded.

Really hard to say on Giles, he only faced 18 batters. Fastball averaged 94.8 (career avg 97.1) slider was 84.1 (86.4). Struck out 6, walked 4.

The luxury threshold only matters at the end of the year. All that matters is how much money a team actually spent on salary by the time the regular season is over. Where they start at the beginning of the season doesn’t matter

Yeha, i was just adding on in case anyone was wondering what his projected salary might be. The Jays are probably right up against the luxury tax right now, so i wonder if they would really want to go over in order to add a guy like Ramon .. or even Pollack. I know we've heard the lip service from the top saying that the tax isnt a barrier, but lets be real, if the options are go over my 2 million and have Laureano, or stay under and don't get him, i'd vote to stay under. I would only want to go over if it was a significant add. No point in taking penalties for being just slightly over.

3.6 Million projected arb salary too, wouldnt be a big hit

If you could get Laureano without taking away from the current roster, its a good get. The only reason I balk at trading Biggio is because all last season all we heard about was how light we were on LH hitting, so .. trading one away doesnt really make sense. There's still only going to be 2 Lefties in the lineup on a regular basis as is. Yes, in a vaccum Biggio for Laureano is very defensible, i just dont think it's the best way to fill the need of the 4th OF, which is really even debateable that the guy has to play OF. Getting any kind of lefty masher IF or OF would be fine with this roster's positional flexibility.

Exactly. Many defensive metrics rely on # of chances and how difficult those chances are. Maybe a guy never gets a ton of 4 or 5 star chances, and even if they don't convert many into outs, well, they were never supposed to make that many in the first place. Plus, you don't get really get credit for making the 1 star plays, since... everyone should make those plays. It's the 3 Star plays and their percentage of out conversions that make a really big difference. If a player gets a disproportionate # of 3 star chances and does even slightly better than average on them, that system would rank that player very high defensively.

I dunno, Ramon doesnt really mash lefties (107 wRC+ career), plays ok D and average power. Strikes out a ton, walks less than league average. Id rather just spend money on AJ Pollock. He actually hits lefties much better (130 wRC+ career), and doesn't defend that much worse. Just keep him from facing RHP as much as possible and he's a far better bench option IMO. Plus if your trading Biggio, there goes that extra LHB they'll end up needing on the bench.

Yeah, it's not somethign that really makes sense with really small sample sizes and total runs scored/allowed over 162 games is not even really that big of a sample size. There's any number of ways to present the game to game #'s ... if you blow a team out 10-0 one game then lose 2-1 the next... you outscored your opponents 11-2 but only went 1-1. If someone was not looking at W/L and just a 2 game run total it would be natural to assume the team that scored 11 runs and only gave up 2 would be far more likely to have won both games.

Exaclty. Yes, the offense may be slightly worse than last season but its not like the Jays will fall off a cliff. They'll be fine

Yankees are the biggest wildcard in there. No way you can project Judge to repeat his seasons and if he doesn’t, where’s all the offense going to come from? Stanton will be hurt half the season, Rizzo is good but not great, Donaldson is cooked, LeMahieux is more of a contact guy and will probably be hurt again at some point…Trevino, IKF and Hicks are all limp dicks to average. Unless Pereza and Oswaldo come up and shoot out of the gate like the second comings of Jeter and Bernie Williams I don’t see where they’re going to score all these runs. Pitching they are pretty good up front in the rotation though.

Like I said I stopped listening when they both had their #1 picks as an NL team. The ajays never even came up as a team they considered as top 5 and just thought other teams were better. I don’t get it, Teo is a loss, but Gurriel isn’t. Varsho’s projection offsets a bunch of Teo’s loss, so I just struggle with the complete lack of consideration for the Jays being a top 5 offense when there’s no real reason to think they’re suddenly going to take a giant step backwards. It’s possible these guys were not factoring in gains from baserunning that should occur this season with the pitch clock and limited throw overs to 1b. I see the Jays benefitting quite a bit from that while some other teams won’t see large differences.

Was just listening to the MLB Network over my lunch break and they were running down their predicted top 5 offensive teams for 2023. It was Lidge and some other guy I cant remember, but neither of them had the Jays in their projected top 5 offensive teams in baseball. They had the same team #1 (would have been the Mets or Braves, but stopped listening as soon as they said it was an NL team), Houston #2, then each had a different 3-5 consisting of a mix of Dodgers, Yankees, Cardinals, Phillies, Padres. Am I crazy for thinking the Jays are still easily a top 5 projected offensive team for 2023? LIke I get losing Teoscar is a blow, but the Jays were a top 2-5 team in virtually every offensive metric last season. Losing him and Gurriel and gaining Varsho isnt even close to dropping off a cliff. Are they high or am I expecting too much from the Jays?

4/5 at best which for this rotation right now would be just fine.

Bigger, drunker and more….drunk than ever before

Yeah he was good at dragging it past the pitcher on the 1b side where neither the 1b or 2b could get it and throw him out before he outran it.

For all we know that’s a gym backdrop in front of an ice cream buffet

A completely balanced schedule is not practical in terms of travel. West coast teams already get the travel shaft with divisional play as it is, with a balanced schedule it would be ludicrously different from central teams

Groshans?

How did Gooden not make the Hall? It’s called cocaine.

Yeah, probably Kiermaier will sit against lefties. I deleted that part of my post as it was getting too long

Back to the lineup/ batting order for a sec. Here’s the Jays main 11 players career splits vs lhp/ rhp in wRC+ Varsho: 66/112 Bo: 147/121 Springer: 145/130 Kirk: 126/124 Vlad: 115/140 Chapman: 120/119 Jansen: 83/105 Espinal: 125/91 Biggio: 101/106 Merrifield: 115/98 KK: 84/102 Didn’t think I’d see Espinal hitting lefties better than Vlad, but there it is. Strictly by This measure vs lefties you’d see a lineup like Bo SS Springer RF Kirk C Espinal (I know he won’t hit cleanup…relax) 2B Chapman 3b Vlad 1b Merrifield LF Biggio DH Kiermaier CF This lineup would be very good defensively and only have 1 hitter below average career vs Lefties in Kiermaier. I doubt they’d go this route and they’d probably have Jansen in the DH spot due to recent successes. Last seasons his LHP wRC+ was 136. It looks like they’ll keep Vlad top 3 no matter what so what I suspect the LHP lineup will look like is: Springer Bo Vlad Kirk Chapman Jansen Merrifield Espinal KK Could they swap a place here or there, sure. Espinal ahead of Merrifield, Jansen 5th over Chapman…sure. Vs RHP is probably not a big change from the above. Biggio probably swaps out Espinal, Varsho in for Merrifield. Top 6 hitters stay the same, bottom 3 would be Varsho, Biggio, KK, unless they wanted to split the lefties up or just continue using Merrifield at 2b instead of Biggio. I think they’ll probably run with Biggio initially though to see if the shift restrictions ends up being a boon for him. If they do they probably drop Jansen one place and move Varsho to 6th.

He was the best defender in baseball last season. Don’t worry about the D

Lgjr career PAs per HR is 27.41 in just over 1864 PAs. Varsho career PAs per HR is 24.93 in 1022 PAs. Both are large enough samples to be pretty stable. Maybe Gurriel recovers from his injury and gets his power back, maybe not. Even if does hit 20 HR next season…what’s he doing when he’s not hitting those 20 HRs? The other 550 PAs, defense and baserunning matter too. Those other aspects matter less the more HRs he hits, but if you’re thinking 20…they matter a shitload more. This is the thing that people need to keep in mind. HRs are cool, they generally equate to scoring runs. But when you’re only hitting 20 per year, in a full season, the other aspects of your game take up a much bigger chunk of your value.