John_Havok

We definitely don't want both the Rangers and the Stros to win though...

heh, okay, so you dont understand comedy. Noted.

Hilarious how you straw-manned what I said to be outraged. I said they were a sub .500 team, which they are. And we can finish in a tie and still get in, as long as it's a 3 way tie with Cleveland, us and the Sox.

Gausman/Soriano have been perfectly healthy. Aside from that, ....... yeah. Grossly terrible

They've only won 1 series this month so far, havent even been playing top teams and were swept by a sub. 500 Pirates team. There is as much chance of the Sox collapsing as anyone else in this glut of AL teams at .500-ish sh*tshow

They tried to close the thread and the whole site tanked for an hour. Just let it exist

Definitely has the power hitting profile this team covets.

Naw, that's just what happens when someone tries to close the Jays Playoff Hopes thread. Even the internet won't allow it.

It's actually kind of astounding how close the Jays are to a .500 team with the clusterf*ck of injuries and underperformances from key players all year. Schneider should get manager of the year for this mess to make up for him getting shafted on it last season.

I agree mostly. I just wonder how many years from the opening of the pitching lab is a reasonable expectation to be able to poach the right talent from the right organizations doing it right. I also wonder how much the extra picks and draft money plays a role for the smaller market teams over the course of 10+ years. Yes, of course they still need to do development correctly, but it's certainly an advantage to have 2+ extra picks in the top 100 or so every year to go along with that extra draft budget. Like, why would the Jays not just go to the Cleveland or Milwaukee or Tampa orgs and say to the guys in those development positions, here's 50% more money to come do that for the Jays. I guess for all we know they've tried and failed as there's obviously a limit on what people are willing to do in their own lives as far as moving to entire new cities and places with their families for work but... it seems like 5 years is a decent length of time to see some fruit on the tree. So, looking at the Jays 40 man roster of pitchers... Trey, Dallas, Tiedemann, Van Eyk and Fluharty are really the only farm to table arms there. Some credit could be given to polishing up Fisher and Little into useful pieces and Miles has clearly benefitted to some degree. Though with those guys it's more of a scouting win than a development win. Other interesting wait-and-sees are Stanifer, Perry, King, Guerra, Messina, Coleman. If even 3 of those guys in the wait and see pile pan out over the next 2 seasons into the 3/4 or pen roles... is that enough to declare improvement in the development?

True, but the Jays don't have the tiebreaker on the White Sox, so that's a negative. Murakami has cratered so hard. Since the calendar flipped to August he has a 66 wRC+ compared to his 157 wRC+ up to July 31. A bit can be explained with the babip dragon of .188 in his slump, but a much larger problem is his 42% K rate over that period. Heard the White Sox manager the other day on why he hasn't been moved down in the order. quote was something like "Moving him to 8th isn't going to fix his swing"

And the Paleface Sox need to not choke again...

hit expectancy on the ball was .060

Straw is the best 4th OF in baseball. The rest of the list is accurate

Legend

Its like people maybe dont have the right perspective. the difference between a 95 win team and an 82 win team is about 2 wins per month.

I win the pool. I predicted the injury would occur before a call-up. I was also the only member of the pool.

For anyone who hasn't looked up the numbers... Mantiply vs LHB this season/career by OPS against: .599/.646 Fisher vs LHB this season/career by OPS against: .750/.657 Ergo, Mantiply the better choice by season to date, basically a push career but ... Fisher's career much shorter so some likely variance there. What about lately? Who's pitched better lately? Last 14 days by OPS against: Mantiply: .583 (28 PAs against) Fisher: .728 (19 PA against) So, hard to really say it was a bad decision because "intuition" or whatever argument is being presented. Fluharty wasn't available so it was either Mantiply or Little and i can't even imagine the whining if Little had come in and gave it up. Mantiply was the best choice available unless you wanted a 2 inning push from Varland and probably sidelined him for the remainder of the series when you consider what his pitch total might have been. Seems to me there's not really a valid argument against the move. What "intuition" would be present to make him think a guy who has struggled overall lately and has struggles against LHB all season was the better choice?

Fair points, but I think it's completely unrealistic to have expected Cal to repeat that season when it was such an outlier to begin with. There's probably some homer-istic bias for me too given that Vlad has been essentially disapointing every year since 2021 (exception - 2024 and playoffs 2025) so this year just seems like a continuation of that trend.

And then Varland gave it up anyways, so... even the right decisions go sideways sometimes.

Good call. His season is actually a worse than Vlad's with the bat. Still great D though

This I agree with wholeheartedly. When a decision gets made that went wrong when there seems to be a very obvious alternative, it seems a reasonable expectation would be to have the manager explain at least the high level version of why it happened. But, even back in the day there was a whole handful of completely contrary reporters who would nitptick every tiny detail to death even after winning by 10 runs. "Why did you take out 'insert superstar player here' when you were up by 10 in the 7th?" A happy medium would be nice.

The "Vlad staring at the first pitch every time because reasons" thing is so weird. Granted he's only faced Jansen 3 times prior to last night's game... but defaulting to "be ready for the fastball" seems like a great idea for virtually all situations to start with.

When i started the article that was what I was looking for, where Bichette was going to be ranked. Like, i knew Vlad, Raleigh and Tucker would be in there near the top in some order, but I though Bichette would easily crack the top 10. I don't even know if Raleigh is the correct choice for #1, he's still popped more than 20 HRs even though his overall production is way down. Plus, he doesn't have the mega-contract against him like Vlad and Tucker do.

And more than once....