John_Havok

Just based on pure star power... Seattle gets the edge certainly when it comes to both pitching and offense. But the Jays are a far greater sum of their individual parts. That's probably the best way to describe the Jays this season honestly. There's some greatness there no doubt in Vlad, Bo, Springer, Kirk and Gausman, but the role players are just being plugged and played so well and their strengths being played to it's pretty amazing to see the results.

To a certain degree, it can be a little pedantic as "What defines a #1 vs an ace".. etc etc. are the aces the 6+ fWAR guys? 5.5+ ? 5+? Or, just the top 3-5 SPs each year regardless of WAR? If we take the 6+ FWAR - There's only 4 aces in the league, or 4 if you allow for leeway in fWAR ... Skenes(6.5), Skubal(6.6), Sanchez(6.4) and Crochet(5.8). Are the #1s that arent aces in the 4.5 to 5.5 range? That list is Webb, Yamamoto, Fried, Brown, and Luzardo. But, that type of system then discounts the guys that come up late, or come off injury and put up solid #'s on a per game basis but just arent there long enough to accumulate the fWAR. Is Schlittler a #1? Snell, Ragans, Woodruff, Megill, Lopez... all those types fall in there. Hunter Greene? Trevor Rogers... There's probably some what to quantify it based on combined per game stats, actuall stats etc, but as we all know for SPs, staying healthy is huge. But, to continue your eval of Gausman, I agree. He'd be a solid #2 on any staff in baseball where you'd also get the occasional flashback to the Gausman of the past like we saw with his CG not too long ago. Really right now for starters the Jays are counting on Gausman, Yesavage and Bieber. Not the worst trio by any stretch and if they are all at their best, they can match Seattle's top 3. But when you look at the question marks and what ifs, you'd probably lean towards Seattle having the edge.

No, the problem with using #'s from the staff is that they won't be facing the entire staff, the garbage relievers that contributed garbage numbers wont be on the roster. Take their top 4 starters and top 4 relievers #'s vs the Jays top 4 starters and top 4 relievers and I bet the edge is solidly on the side of the Mariners. Offense overall is about tied as far as wRC+ goes, but how they got those numbers is different. Mariner's 238 HRs, Jays 191. K rates, Seattle 23.3% (7th worst in MLB), Jays 17.8% (1st overall). Despite trailing in HRs by alot though, Jays SLG was higher than Seattle, .427 to .420, largely due to hitting 294 doubles vs Seattle's 234. and outhitting them overall 1461 to 1345. Basically, Seattle can put it over the wall better, but they don't put it in play as much. Jays put it play far more, and find the gaps far more. Defense is so far tilted to the Jays it's not even remotely close.

Rough way for the Phillies to lose - pitcher forgets how many outs there are and instead of taking the force at first tries to throw home and airmails it. That guy has to feel like s***

Which they will. Jays fans travel well to Detroit too, and Detroit will also try to lock out Jays fans. Happens every year in the playoffs, every home team does it to opposing teams.

Bo himself is probably a guy they'd have to instantly pinch run for as there's no way his leg will be 100%. good enough to get out there and hit only... we'll see, but I really doubt an extra 3 days is making the difference between unable to play and being well enough to be a DH that can't run.

Agree that is probably not a playoff calibre starter. I agree he can probably air it out for 2-3 IP at most a few times in the 7 game series, but is that as a more leverage arm in a close game? or more of a being-up-or-down-by-4+ and eat up innings type?

Agreed. Seattle is much more comparable to the Jays as far as depth, and their top end talent is better, especially for SPs and elite RPs. But they're still beatable. I think the travel would be more taxing on the Jays and add another edge towards Seattle on whatever matrix one uses to decide who gets the edge on certain factors LIke.. SP edge goes to Seattle, no doubt. Elite pen arms goes to Seattle. Power goes to Seattle. Jays get the edge on hitting for average, defense and depth. Seattle can bury you really f'n quick if you pitch poorly. Detroit is less "scary" for sure outside of having the best single SP on any of the three remaining AL teams.

It's really one of those things where you weight his veteran presence and experience vs the fact he's pitched like dog sh*t in the very recent past, aside from a few starts. That's a tough call to make and either decision can be legitimately defended.

When the tickets went on sale for the ALCS this morning the waiting list was over 90,000 people long "The cheapest ticket in the house at face value was $190 for the 500 level, which quickly soared to as high as $1,119 for resale for a seat in the same section."

If there's one guy you can't hang this on, it's Boone. I kind of agree with A-Rod in that regard. He didn't assemble a team with 5 DHs, 3 LH catchers, extremely limited flexibility and wildly inconsistent defense. If you look at Yankee's players, there's very few well-rounded players, but many that do 1 thing really f***ing well, and get exposed when their weakness is targeted. That's not to say the Jays don't have those types either, there's just fewer of them, and the skillsets of the rest of the roster cover them up incredibly well.

This is an important point. Some card companies now in their very high end products actually put low serial #'d cards (/10, /1 etc) out already slabbed, but not all of them, so there's really no point in grading them. First, the grading companies charge way too much money to do it, and it really doesn't add to the value at all. There's some nuance with grading the base card rookies... on one hand, yes, getting any massively hyped baseball player's base rookie card graded doesn't make such sense since there ends up being thousands of them as you said. But for the types of players that have 0 hype when they're a rookie, break out later... that CAN make sense since the populations of those guys are going to be way lower.

Pretty sure hes hurt

I knew you were old, but DAMN

Holy s***. Two moons? Dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria! Masterbather next??

Jays are playing with house money now. The playoff monkey is off this core group's back. Maybe this is the season we get the movie Vlad promised us a few years back?

Judge hit .500 this series with a 1.273 OPS and Yankees fans are gonna whine he wasn't good enough. What does the guy have to do?

Black Lotus was/still is the king of value.

You're supposed to hate it more the deeper you go, that's why sports is such a giant pain in the ass. The closer you get to the goal and lose, the more it hurts, and the more it makes you want to come back for more next year, and get further. The mindset of wanting to lose early to avoid pain is the real loser mindset. It's just a ******** coping mechanism. "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The hard....is what makes it great."

I irrationally hope today's game is another blowout in the Jays favour, just for the Yankee tears alone. They are delicious and I could drink them all day long. I don't think that will happen, probably a much more scrappy game, but still, I don't want to see the Jays at the dome again until the CS

When do the ROY for 2026 betting lines open? Might be a decent time to start sprinkling some units on a certain Jays pitcher

Sure, but thats every trade deadline for any team looking at the playoffs. Nobody is ever truly untouchable and you always listen with an open mind, whether you truly have one or not. All those quotes around the deadline w are just the cliches of the GM world akin to players and their "just give it 110%" and "gotta take it one game at a time"

Why did anyone even think he was going to get traded? There was literally 0 rumors or chatter of him being talked about in any trade discussions

Fox got Yesavage first.

I love how many things went so right for the Jays in the last two games that nobody is mentioning Varsho's 4-5 day with 4 HRs and 2 doubles. That says something.