John_Havok

Ive been looking at all the back and forth from the league to the PA and vice versa...and i gotta day the league is doing a hell of a job making themselves look good to the casuals. Their very first offer including the cap and floor (which most casuals see as necessary) and now a few more that include all kinds of things that the PA absolutely wants as long as they agree to a cap and floor... and the current union head just flat out saying no to everything and their counter offers being borderline lunacy... as it stands now i think the players are going to lose in the court of public opinion, which is a pretty important court in sports.

I have no issues with the Jays deadline at all. No way they were looking seriously at contending for playoff berth. They were already clearly out of the division race andd 4.5 back of WC3 with 6 teams to pass. Cleveland was holding the WC3 spot and only 3 games back in the central because it's dogshit. So, some calculated moves were made that have turned out pretty well. 17-11 in August and actually held the WC3 for a blink. Swapping out Gausman for Soriano has pretty much been a push with more control for the next 2 seasons and a clear upside win when you consider where they are in their careers. Hoffman being turfed was expected, he was no longer the closer, was making a ton of money, and they had Miles to take over Hoff's role (which he's done nicely). Either way, what's carried the Jays has been some key guys actually remembering how to hit and the pitching being solid overall despite a rotation in shambles due to injury. Vlad Jr being the glaring exception

Realistically, we're all just guessing at to to how much input Atkins has on the on-field decisions. Based on everything I've seen and heard, and inferred from decision making... it looks like all on-field decisions are made by John Schneider. Yes, there's a pile of data given to him about hitter splits, pitcher splits, who matches up well with who based on X and Y for both hitters to opposing pitchers and our pitchers to opposing hitters and there's probably very obvious decisions based on that data more often than not. I very much doubt Atkins pours over this data daily and questions Schneider's every move or cross-checks it with decisions he would have made with that same data, but I very much assume that large decisions that end up impacting games that maybe don't match up with the data, he's going to want an explanation, as any GM in baseball would to hold his manager accountable for decision making. I would certainly want to know why Manitply was the play in a 2-1 game. Even looking at all the decisions JS has made, the vast majority of them work out just fine, but nobody remembers the good... the good is boring. It's expected. Mantiply in a 2-1 game though??? I struggle with that one myself but we don't have all the info JS has about his player's availability. Maybe Flu is dealing with someone nagging right now and said he was at 90% even after the off day. There's any number of different reasons that may have played into it, but sure, on the surface it looks like it doesn't make sense. Managing is not really even a leadership position in a traditional sense. He isn't on the field playing with the 26 guys in the clubhouse, he can't lead by example on the field, or be the first guy over the wall on a walkoff HR. That's on the players. It's the players game. A managers job is mainly in-game decision making, ego management in the clubhouse, keeping them pointed in the right direction and discipline when it's needed if the player leaders haven't handled it themselves. Look at Torey Lovullo right now in Arizona... having to try and keep that clubhouse together with Marte being the world's biggest twat. Is that a failure in Lovullo's leadership because Marte is a clown? JS is a perfectly fine manager that probably impacts the game far less than ret*rds like Aaron Boone who's only job seems to be screaming at clouds.

Shapiro may actually be the next commissioner after Manfred.

No doubt. it HAS to be a part of his arsenal to help keep the defense from shifting into his more prominent ground ball zones, especially against LHP

disgusting. I suppose the plan to face a guy with this kind of stuff on this day is just to eliminate the outer half of the plate and hope you don't miss the fastball when you get it.

Glaring omission really when #2 and #3 weren't even league average hitters over the month. he had 92 PA so it can't be that. Kirk being #1 is a no brainer as he was one of the best overall players in MLB in August.

Apparently nobody can hit the curveball tonight so he'd fit rit in

I hope so, tonight might just not be the right night to be seeing if the improvements have stuck. He's going to get his PAs for sure over the next month or he wouldn't be up

Well the 3 hotter hands from all of August are already in the lineup. If you cut the sample size down to the last half of August to get the more recent recency hotness, Straw is sitting at 137 wRC+, behind Sanchez -138, Bateman - 138, Lukes - 141, Kirk - 148, Okamoto - 167 and Springer - 233. That's 6 pretty hot hands right now... and Sanchez. Vlad? 43 Ernie??? 20 Gimenez? 73

Keys also can't hit breaking balls and 2 of William's 3 most used pitches are the sweeper and curve ball. Not really a good matchup for him on any level.

He served his purpose well enough here but yeah... see ya! He'll catch back on somewhere as a depth guy to be abused at some point

awesome, he's not very good. Long man to soak up meaningless innings at best i think unless he figures out how to develop any of his pitches into plus territory. He's a pure command guy with 0 margin for error.

Great catch Vomit inducing

It's rather disheartening the best FA hitter options begin and end with Jizzuki.

Hard to do that with a 14 pitcher maximum amd theyre already cartying 13. Its likely gonna be Tiedemann and Smith coming back from injury rehab unless they do something creative with the roster and send someone else down and bring up both Smith and Keys maybe

They dont get savant data from any level other than AAA or A ball. Guerra spent most of his season at A+ and AA until his last 2 appearances. Data will be limited

No team just smiles and wins through through injuries to like 8 of 11 starting pitchers.

Clement played for Cleveland when Demarlo Hale was their bench coach right before Hale came back to join the jays. Atkins was the VP of player personnel when Lukes was drafted by Cleveland in 2015, right before he was hired as Jays GM. Might not be finding diamonds in the rough as much as already being liked then by those coaches and/or execs who left cleveland and came to TO.

Yep, going to be quite the end of the season. Realistically tomorrow's game is must-win for both teams, but moreso for Seattle. Sure would be nice to sweep them at the RC and be the ones that start tapping the nail in their playoff coffin while staying alive at the same time. A decent winning streak or winning 8 of 10 or something like that is exactly what they need.

Im about as non-optimistic as the next guy that they'll make it but... lets look at the math. 25 games left, gap is 1.5, being 2 wins better than Cleveland over the last 25 and at least 1 win better than Texas and Baltimore is not a gargantuan task. The permutations and possibilities of which team gets in are insane though. Texas and Baltimore are saying the exact same thing about the Jays and each other. Thing is, Cleveland as 1 more game remaining and both Texas and Baltimore have 2 more games to play than they Jays. That's not insignificant.

the logic from most people who whine about his moves is "if it fails it was wrong and if it works it was right..." It was right.

nah, no thanks. one underachieving headcase is enough. nice they put him on waivers with enough time to get claimed for playoff eligibility tho

There's definitely some deception involved in his delivery as his stuff and location+ numbers from his first start were really... meh. We'll see how today's numbers look when they come out

Out of town scoreboard check... KC up on Cleveland 8-2 in the bottom of the 8th. Houston losing to the Mets also in the bottom of the 8th White Sox beat the Twins. All good so far, need the Athletics and Milwaukee to beat Orioles and Texas to make it a great day. Gonna need to unlock that playoff thread.