jaysblue

Printing those World Series tickets as we speak!

No he isn't. When Kirk comes back, he should be DFA regardless and BV deserves to stay up here.

Lowball offers incoming for Paul Skenes!

Varland + Hoffman (when Hoffman is right) could be an epic late-inning combo. Could really throw either one in the 9th inning if that's the case.

Yeah I think he's a HOFer. If he pitches for another 3-4 years, might even eclipse 70 WAR.

Yeah, all great points. I doubt they’ll ride Kirk that hard in terms of playing time right away, especially over the first couple of weeks. It kind of reminds me of 2022 and 2023, when the Jays had Kirk and Jansen working more as a tandem - and that was a real team strength!

I don't mind having Heineman stashed in Buffalo. Would be nice depth and he has an opportunity to work on a few things down there. I think if he's DFA, he definitely passes through and Jays could option him to AAA if he doesn't reject the assignment.

And Patrick Bailey is still only 26.

-9 wRC+ and a -0.3 fWAR at age 35. Doubt it.

Yeah I think the Jays could make it work with both Kirk and Valenzuela on the active roster. Need to squeeze as much offense out of this lineup as possible, and keeping Valenzuela around over Heineman is a significant improvement on both sides of the ball.

Heineman doesn't have a trade market lol. He's a DFA candidate and likely passes through waivers.

Toronto is 12–12 when Brandon Valenzuela starts at catcher. Blue Jays are 9–12 when Heineman starts behind the plate. When Tyler Heineman appears in the game at all, the Blue Jays are 11–16.

Didn't Cleveland sell as well last deadline?

Have to at least split the series or take 3 of 4. This can be a big turning point in the season.

Watch Flaherty mow down this Jays lineup lol. I think the Jays should win the series. Definitely a must win today.

Last season, the Blue Jays got a lot of helpful and in some cases unforeseen offensive contributions from guys like Nathan Lukes, Ernie Clement, Myles Straw, and Tyler Heineman. Schneider was actually solid, too. Barger was a call-up who stepped right into the lineup after guys like Roden and Wagner didn’t really work out. Springer had a huge bounce-back season, Bichette stayed healthy, Varsho provided power when he was in the lineup, and Kirk basically reverted back to his 2022 offensive form. Vladdy raised his level in the Postseason. A lot went right with the bats starting in mid-to-late May, and the Jays rode that into a big run. Pair that with strong defense, healthy and durable pitching, and a lineup that put the ball in play a ton, and it’s easy to see how they got rolling. This season, though, a lot of that has gone the other way. Springer has regressed, which I think most of us realistically saw coming (but not this bad). Kirk being hurt is a massive loss on both sides of the ball, although Valenzuela has actually held his own and been a positive. Losing Bichette as an impact bat and not really replacing him with someone similar has hurt, too. The front office clearly tried with Kyle Tucker, so I don’t fully blame them there - there’s only so much you can do in free agency or trades when it takes two sides to make a deal. Okamoto has been a solid power addition, but he’s not really an impact bat in the same way Bichette or Tucker would have been. He feels more like a Matt Chapman-type offensive profile. Gimenez is Gimenez - he’ll have the odd stretch where he’s driving balls out of the park, and then he’ll look completely lost at the plate for weeks at a time. Clement has been about what he is offensively, but the defense hasn’t looked quite as sharp. Lukes and Heineman have looked more like DFA candidates, which was always a risk given that they’re both in their 30s and have mostly been career minor-league types. Schneider has been awful. Barger getting hurt really stings because they lost a potential 25–30 HR bat. Straw has actually been solid again, but he’s not someone you want to rely on as an everyday starter. They also haven’t really been able to catch lightning in a bottle with guys like Sosa or Jimenez. Jesus Sanchez is useful when deployed properly against right-handed pitching, but he’s still more of a platoon bat than anything else. Pinango, to his credit, has been a nice surprise.

Never thought I’d hear “elbow surgery” and “Berríos” in the same sentence. The guy was as durable as it gets. Always reliable, always healthy, and you could basically pencil him in for 30 starts every year, even if he wasn’t always the most effective. That kind of availability is rare, and it’s easy to take it for granted until it’s gone.

When Kirk comes back, I’d probably still keep Valenzuela around given the team’s overall offensive struggles. I think there’s a way to work both him and Kirk into the lineup regularly and even play them together on occasion, with one catching and the other DHing, even if that means moving Springer to the outfield once in a while. At this point, they need to squeeze every ounce of offense out of this lineup, and keeping Valenzuela up helps accomplish that. It just requires some creativity with lineup construction and matchups. Rotation-wise, the Jays should be fine, especially once Bieber gets back. They just need to avoid any significant injuries to the big guys. A rotation of Cease, Gausman, Yesavage, Bieber, and Corbin looks pretty solid, especially if they also have someone like Spencer Miles available as a bulk innings option or even Yariel if they decide to stretch him back out. The bigger concern is probably staying healthy, especially since they’ve already burned through a lot of their depth with guys like Berrios, Ponce, and Scherzer all out now. If the main arms hold up, the rotation should be fine but there isn’t much margin for another significant injury in the rotation.

As much as I love Springer, expecting him to repeat his 2025 offensive season was probably unrealistic. It was completely reasonable to temper expectations for him in 2026. That said, I still think he can be a valuable bat. The Jays don’t need 5-WAR, 166 wRC+ Springer again - they just need him to be solid and help stabilize the lineup. If he can be a 2–3 WAR player with something around a 120 wRC+, that would still be a very useful piece.

Shocked we haven't scrapped the pitchers W category across fantasy baseball.

I honestly don’t disagree. Pitcher wins are pretty meaningless as an evaluation tool because there’s just way too much outside the pitcher’s control. So yeah, as a serious barometer of pitcher quality, wins are basically useless now. The only reason I don’t think MLB will ever fully erase them is because historians probably still value the continuity of the stat. It’s been tracked forever, it connects eras, and it’s part of the old baseball record-keeping language. But in terms of actually judging who pitched well? Yeah, that ship has sailed.

Yeah I think King Felix's 2010 season was the turning point, where we started to see a change in how the baseball world views a pitchers W-L record. It's no longer significant when it comes to determining who the best pitchers are, or when it comes to player contracts or awards.

I get the argument, and pitcher wins are definitely flawed, but I wouldn’t erase them completely. They’re not a great measure of how good a pitcher is - way too much luck involved. A guy can go 5 innings, give up 4 runs, and still get a win because the bats go off and the bullpen holds it. Or a reliever comes in at the right time, throws an inning and gets a win added to his stats. Meanwhile another guy can throw 7 shutout innings and get nothing because his team forgets how to hit. But wins can still tell part of the story, especially now when starters going deep into games is becoming a rarity. If a starter piles up wins, it usually means he’s at least giving his team length and keeping them in games often enough to qualify for those decisions. So yeah, agree that we shouldn't use wins to decide who the best pitcher is. That’s outdated and for the most part majority of people around the game agree. But as a historical/context stat? I still think there’s some value there. Just don’t treat it like it’s ERA, FIP, K/9, WAR, or anything close to that.

Big Nick Turturro is probably losing it on Twitter haha.

Could use another bat with pop to lengthen this lineup. Losing Barger again to the IL does suck.