Dick_Pole

You are like the librarian of this board. Too bad that job is pretty much obsolete now or else you would have had a comfortable unionized career.

I remember when Arizona jettisoned him there was someone hounding AA through the means of this board to go pick him up. I hope that person is happy now!

I think this is the first time I've heard someone truly complimentary of the dome to this extent. Outside of the roof being a godsend for April games.

Rogers is a publicly traded company. With that comes guidance on revenue and net profit figures. That straps the team with respect to short-term cost increases as any miss on net profit is going to have to be explained. In the longer-term there should be a salary increase because revenue is definitely going up. I don't think the Jays are ever going to have a "loose" budget, unless payroll is secretly $160M and the team spends only $140M of it. Who knows, maybe that's what it was under AA/Beeston and then they spent it all like drunken sailors on the Marlins trade and ran out of budget room for contingency plans.

Mod making sure RealAccountant's presence is still felt post-banning.

If that was the price to be paid for two months of mediocre starting pitchers, I'm glad that the Jays don't really need starting pitchers.

Are we so sure about this? Bautista 0.9 WAR so far this year, projects 1.1 to 1.5 WAR the rest of the way; negative WAR on the field. Upton 1.5 WAR so far this year, projects 0.1 to 0.5 WAR the rest of the way; more or less neutral on the field. If the Jays can trade him for someone who might get 0.5 WAR the rest of the way, and/or use Upton effectively for platoon splits and defensive opportunities or bank on him continuing his productive 2016 at the plate, the Jays could mitigate the loss of the projected 1 WAR. EDIT: This also assumes that Bautista has the team by the balls and Gibbons doesn't have the balls to get Bautista off of the field so that he continues to provide below replacement defense out in right in the non-trade scenario.

Jesse Barfield for Al Lieter. The precedent has been set by this team's greatest GM. Though 1989 was the year the Jays started off miserably before stealing the pennant at the end of the season so I'm not sure if that trade was considered to be during the middle of a "playoffs run". The team's performance while Bautista was injured and the acquisition for someone with a pulse who casuals might remember being pretty good for a division rival a few years ago certainly increases the possibility of him being traded without Armageddon reigning down on the Jays' FO.

To be fair that thread is pretty crappy: -arguments about to versus too -BTS engaging that weirdo who is serious about some no-name, low-level prospect being way too much to give up for Upton "off the scrap heap" -that guy who continuously posts the "burn" gif of the black teens in the park

Good trade, bad thread. I'm a bit shocked that the Jays did so well considering that they weren't the only ones in on him. The ones kicking themselves should be the O's front office for not topping that.

This is the most reasonable position I've seen in this thread.

Just because the Jays have been lucky so far with pitching health doesn't mean they are due to start having bad luck now. I side with the majority here. There's no need to pay for a rental for a negative scenario that might happen.

I look forward to a pitcher challenging Cy Young's 600 or so complete game record. And I'm only half joking with that. But seriously, the game of baseball has been changed in small increments so many times over the years, it has little similarities to the game played in 1916 outside of balls, strikes and distance between the bags. And some douchebag wants to mess with balls and strikes now too. ...and limiting relief pitcher changes actually makes the game more similar to the game 100 years ago. The 1916 Cubs, just as a random example, used 11 pitchers all year and 7 of them took the bulk of the work: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/1916.shtml

Let's say MLB puts in a minimum three batter rule for pitchers and works out all the kinks surrounding that, injury exceptions or whatever. How does that penalize strategic process? If anything I would think it increases strategic process because right now that strategic process is mostly limited to switching pitchers of opposite handedness to take advantage of left-left or right-right matchups. There's really not much thinking involved in that. Now using an example. If there's two left-handed batters coming up and a real lefty-masher after them, does the manager take the risk of putting in his LOOGY or does he stick with what he has, or put in someone else? Or even better, does he use his reliever that has enough talent to get all three batters out? I find that thought process to be much more strategic.

Somebody needs to do some SEO so the first 20 pages when you Google "The Phillips Plan" is nothing but pics of Steve Phillips eating a bunch of dildos.

Well I guess that's the end of this experiment. Total bomb. Nice try though, wok.

Ok, the way he said it was dumb, but I think what he was trying to get at here is that relief pitchers tend to pitch above their true talent level because of their limited and specialized roles. I can see the merits of wanting to expose Randy Choate's dumb career. The argument "well, what about pinch hitters?" has been made. It's not the same thing. Realistically a team would have two, maybe three guys who are worthy of pinch hitting opportunities with a backup catcher and a utility infielder comprising the rest of the bench. But there are 7 or 8 relievers so a manager has a lot of potential to overuse/abuse pitching changes throughout the game. To me, part of the charm of baseball is being able to manage limited resources in order to win a game. The 7-8 man bullpen is basically a bottomless pit in any game that the starter went at least 6 innings. Instead of a manager managing his bullpen for the next hitter, Manfred might be challenging him to manage for the next three hitters. I don't see anything all that wrong with that but judging the reaction in this thread I guess I'm in the minority on this one. EDIT: I don't even care about the length of time pitching changes take. I just find it kind of lame that a pitcher comes in just for one batter....then the next pitcher is used in the same way.

I agree. If enough of us wishes for it to happen, maybe it will become true!

This bet looked like a complete bust at the end of May. Now the team has some life to it. All the hitters are hitting as expected and Bautista is coming back. So far: 478 runs in 96 games, average 4.98 per game Needed to reach 850: 372 runs in 66 games, average 5.63 per game. June/July: 253 runs scored in 42 games, average 6.02 per game Think they can do it? I remain optimistic.

What if the Brewers think the same way and tell the Jays to f*** off? The only way your scenario begins to make any sense is if they ship Martin out, which in itself would be a rather large task.

It's the f***ing internet. If someone is such a pussy that they get their feelings hurt or are too scared to open their mouth for fear of ridicule, they're probably not going to be all that useful contributors. I disagree with many people on a variety of things, particularly in the fired up political threads in the off-topic section, and I do just fine. This I agree with. I rarely participate in the really long threads, and when I do I tend to forget about the conversation. A lot like what someone else said - it's too easy to lose your place, especially if you're away from this board for a few days and 15 pages worth of stuff is added onto when you last participated. This last point is fair, but I haven't seen a lot of that. The threads I recall being locked trended seriously off-topic or devolved into name calling or other nonsense.

Playoff teams with a ~$140 million payroll, two players getting paid a combined $40M+ next year, a top 5 player with two years left after this season who may get extended, three contributors who are hitting free agency and maybe one immediate replacement ready in the minors may not have that luxury.

Unless it's Red Sox players then they can all go f*** themselves unless it's them admitting that the Jays are the better team.

As punishment Ortiz has to play the rest of the season with Toronto...then he finds out he loves the place and convinces EE to stay.

Good. Though I don't see how the Red Sox can be punished for something one of their players did.