Dick_Pole

Meh...like it makes a difference anymore...let ol' biglips loose on the bathpaths in the most reckless fashion possible and let him collect those SB's so he can get his Vince Coleman-like payday next season. How embarrassing is it that the Jays have a white guy holding their all-time SB record? A white guy who played with glasses nonetheless.

Meh, keep Davis and let him go for the team's single season SB record. Need something interesting to care about for this season.

True, but it still is a component nonetheless. What about something like infield pop ups? In theory, those should be automatic outs by anyone who wears a glove on an MLB field regardless of the situation or infield positioning and could be considered as "defensively independent" as K's, so why shouldn't they be in the calculation?

That was supposed to be a sarcastic point...didn't come off 100% that way though especially with the odd turn this thread has taken. True, but K's are a component nonetheless so cherry picking one guy isn't the fairest thing to do imo. There's an argument out there that all this advanced stat chasing by pitchers and hitters are stimulating the higher K rates we've seen lately. I don't necessarily agree to that argument 100%, but it's out there.

Marlins are at an even better ratio...doesn't mean they have the better run franchise though or that those people in Miami don't have the right to complain. D-Bags have a better average too, but for every year they don't win #2, the Jays come ever closer to passing them again

I would contend the pitcher exhibits a lot more control on the game than what xFIP allows. Say the SP knows that his 2B and 1B have poor range. He pitches down and away to a right handed batter and he pulls a grounder through the right side of his infield. I would say that's stupid pitching. xFIP would say that's unlucky or not fully within his control and must be filtered out. I think DIPS were invented by agents to explain why their mediocre SP client isn't all that mediocre. Where else in life can your performance be "normalized" to weed out the effects of "things you don't control"? Let's take my above example and apply it to the real world. My work laptop is low on RAM, but I'm going to download a bunch of moves, games and other s*** on it anyways. Now it's really slow and effects my ability to get my work done on time. Who is going to get the blame? Me of course, even if I yap that I need a better laptop. I can completely understand the use of xFIP as a predictor tool. DIPS may have been useful for handicappers and such in the early days of their existence, but now that they are so prevalent they've lost their use. What good is using xFIP as a predictor tool if your bookie is doing the same to make the lines? What good is it in your fantasy pool if everyone else uses it? If everyone uses DIPS then the only thing you have to gain an advantage on your opponents is by going back to evaluating "intangibles" to try to gain an edge. The other thing I dislike about DIPS is that they encourage Brandon Morrow circa 2010 type of pitching. I don't want my pitcher going out there and trying to strike everyone out so he can blow up or burn himself out by the 4th, 5th or 6th inning. I have more respect for the SP who can go out there and keep his team in the game with a 5 or 6 K/9IP rate and pitch 230 innings a year by using his defense efficiently and conserving his pitches.

That is an improvement over what is currently going on imo. Stating strictly from a Jays' fan standpoint, I want the Tigers and Indians back as division rivals. But I fear they'll go the opposite route and do an NFL format. I also think it won't be too long before they start talking about expansion. It's been 15 years, which is the longest drought other than 1977-1993 since expansion began. They're slowly starting to sort out the Oakland/San Jose issue so once they settle Tampa that will set the table to expand without looking idiotic.

Dude you should be happy that someone even responded to this strange poll at all.

Really this is your argument? Might as well go start piling some burgers into your mouth right now. The impact of you doing that isn't easily quantifiable on your chances of getting a heart attack down the road, so it's not obvious that you doing that will adversely impact your health. Managers have impact on the game. Whether it's keeping personalities in check (or failing to do so), making ground-level decisions or giving advice on who to keep on the 25-man roster, having significant feedback on the coaching staff or getting players focused on every game (or failing to do so), they matter. That's why some get paid millions of dollars to perform that function in baseball. But no, apparently 13 year olds and other random internet posters think they know better. I'll agree to this - over the years the manager's influence on the game has waned. A good manager decades ago would be like what a computer is today in terms of a database of knowledge about the game. Now any idiot online can tell that Rajai Davis and Adam Lind would make a pretty good platoon by looking up some data on Yahoo Sports or wherever. The other aspect of that is with rising player salaries, players get babied a lot more now than back then. Bobby Valentine-like managerial styles don't work anymore but may have been a lot more effective in the old days.

Obviously a manager has some impact on the team in some way. Just because it's not easily quantifiable doesn't mean it's not there.

True, but that has been the problem in baseball since divisional play began intra-league. So you'd really love my opinion where I think they should abolish the divisions altogether, or at least put it back to two divisions and eliminate the unbalanced schedule.

For a s***** last place team, yes. For a team supposedly in contention, no he is not enough in the long term. So he will, in theory, not be an option for 2014.

It's not even 25 years old. It's going to be at least another 25 years before talk of a new stadium would be remotely serious. The only way it happens sooner is if Rogers sells the land to some condo developer and builds a stadium elsewhere.

And of course, I can't forget the politics of this...everything from higher taxes to legislation, like what some people pointed out on cell phone plans. Don't like it? Move south of the border where you will save a few bucks a year on your cell phone, gas, food, clothing and insurance, but you'll have to roll the dice trying to understand Obamacare so just hope you don't get sick.

Fine. Let Verizon in. Let everyone in. I promise you, the reason why some foreign investor would be interested in coming to Canada would NOT be to lower rates. It would be to get the higher revenue. Verizon has 100M subscribers. Best case scenario they get maybe 5M more from Canada. That's 5% more to their sub base. Do you think they care about that? Or do you think they'd prefer to squeeze every last penny through high margin? The only way in which Verizon would have an interest in providing Canadians some benefit is they can offer superior US roaming rates because of their strong network south of the border. That's a true economies of scale type of win for both the company and the consumer. But that's it. My bet, as someone with experience in this industry, is strongly to the idea that they'll "rip people off" as much as the other carriers in every other aspect. Same with absolutely anyone else coming in. A $30 rate plan is just not feasible in Canada. Rogers and Telus ARPU (average revenue per user per month) is about $60. Bell's is $55. These companies only make around 45% margin so their costs are $30 per user as well and they've been doing this for years so they are pretty efficient at it. Someone who offers a $30 plan is not making money unless they offer no subsidy on the phone whatsoever and even then the margin is not great. Wind may not be going bankrupt like the others but that doesn't mean they are doing well from an income statement perspective. They just have deeper financial pockets to support them with losses/razor thin margins. The value in Wind lies with increasing their subscriber base then selling that and their infrastructure to someone else. That was the speculation on their business plan from day one. With Verizon, even the sub base is pretty worthless to them. They just want the infrastructure. I can't believe people don't understand this concept....it's the same for every other facet of society - food, clothing and gas are all way cheaper in the States. But when it comes to cell phone plans - yes let's demonize the companies for "ripping us off". It's the same as everything else. We don't have the economies of scale, we don't have the buying power for the inputs to production/services and it costs a lot per client to serve a sparse population over a big land mass. All of these costs are going to be passed on to the consumer, whether it's cell phone plans or something else. And if it doesn't matter if it's the big 3 or some other guy.

Buffalo knows it's place in the world as being Toronto's bitch. We help keep their NFL team where it is by being half the crowd and when we crash our cars there we help keep their vibrant lawyer industry alive (the only industry they have there apparently). The Bisons are going nowhere.

Happ has done ok in the 70 or so innings he's had with the Jays...well better than a couple of pitchers currently occupying SP slots for this team.

David Cone was traded in late August to the Jays. The Jays were one of the top ranked teams (meaning bottom of the waiver hierarchy) and they still got done what they needed to do. For his two months of service, he assisted in the team winning the World Series, and to get his services, the Jays gave up the best prospect/young player they've ever had to give up in any of these types of deals in Jeff Kent. That little bit of anecdotal evidence pretty much pisses on everything discussed in this thread. From the usefulness of delaying the deadline (when the waiver wire deadline still exists) to the value of trading for a rental so late in the season.

If by winning you mean maxing out short term profits to pump up the stock price and cash in stock options, yes the focus is winning. Of course that version of winning revolves around creating the most amount of buzz possible, which may or may not be tied to winning on the field. Hell, all the Jays have to do to have consistent sell outs is have an Alomar, Carter, Winfield, Molitor etc bobblehead day every night. With 81 home games and probably about 200 players that have played for the team that are noteworthy enough for people to remember, that ought to set them up for a good 2.5 years! All they have to do is raise ticket prices by 2 bucks and find someone to make the bobbleheads for $2 each.

That will be the problem for Wind customers. Verizon isn't going to buy Wind to "help their customers". They are going to buy Wind for the infrastructure and spectrum then bring their US version of Rogers or Telus plans except with great US roaming rates. They are here to make profit, not to run crappy little $30 cell phone plans lol. In the meantime what we speculate inside my company will happen is that Verizon buys them out, they close up all of Wind's stores, load no more new people (even existing clients can't go into a store to get a new phone because the stores are all closed to be rebranded) for one year until they can complete their LTE network in Canada in 2015. Once that happens the Wind brand is now a new Verizon brand and they will give the middle finger to the existing Wind customers either in the form of a new expensive Verizon plan or some grandfathered piece of s*** plan that is a slightly kinder version of saying "please f*** off as soon as possible". And if Verizon ends up buying Public/Mobilicity then there goes any semblance of choice for people.

Hockey season is out in full force this year. There's not going to be enough the Jays can do to create buzz then. Jose Reyes, R.A. Dickey and even Josh Johnson carry a lot of star power. Those are names known to casuals, well Dickey was after his Cy Young award at least. Outside of Cano and maybe McCann there's not a lot of names known to casuals. I don't think signing Garza would create much off-season buzz and ticket sales. The easiest route to creating buzz for them would actually be signing Halladay imo.

lol...then you shouldn't be complaining...and there's a reason why Public can't offer you good handsets and will be going bankrupt soon as well as the others. Just wait until Verizon buys them out...then you'll REALLY get screwed. We are predicting over one year of limited customer service and no points of distribution (except maybe online/direct) for their acquired clients until they rebrand all the Wind stores and give you guys the middle finger big time in 2015. You want to know how to REALLY get a great deal on your cell plan? Work for one of the big 3. Free phone, unlimited data, roaming, whatever you want because it all just gets charged to a cost center that nobody audits

Completely off-topic, but I work for one of those competitors in corporate finance and get a close up look at the industry. Ya ok the Big 3 make pretty good money but it's not THAT good compared to the banks ripping us off or the telecom companies down south. Buying the spectrum costs billions. Building the network costs billions. Remember that Canada is a pretty freaking big country just to serve some 30M people or so with wireless services. Everybody wants their $500 Smartphone for free and if you add up the commission to the dealer each client signed up puts the company $700 in the hole. Then there's morons that rack up like $20K bills roaming in Europe or wherever that expect their bill to be significantly reduced. Yes the companies give clients credit back, but then they still have to pay the roaming costs to foreign company where the charges took place. I can promise you that on average the Big 3 do not make one penny on every client signed up at least for the first year. The reason why these small time companies keep getting bought up is because they don't want to survive or can't. Most MVNOs exist strictly for the purpose of signing up clients under some sort of marketing niche then selling them to the Big 3 for big cash. That was their business plan from day one. Not to compete with the big guys and bring long term competition to Canada. And these new entrants like Wind and Mobilicity are dying out because there's truly no money to be made in the country doing what they do. Simple as that. You don't want to get ripped off on your phone bill? Get a cheap plan, don't ask for the latest and greatest Samsung/Apple piece of crap for free and don't use the thing so damn much!

Definitely agree with you, except that often happens in times of cost cutting. It's interesting because it's happening in every Rogers division except Media right now. The Blue Jays were treated as a "growth corporation" and if anyone is familiar with growth corporation strategies, you know a lot of money can get spent inefficiently in an attempt to increase revenues as much as possible. The Media division is having its own little version of of the internet boom that skyrocketed and crashed the NASDAQ in the early 2000's. The Blue Jays will eventually have an internal audit if they continue to lose and revenues don't pick up where they left off next year.

The issues we have to face as fans of a team owned by a public company that must answer to shareholders, capital market analysts, and a bunch of other people who don't know a thing about baseball nor do they care. Beeston and AA could get away by slapping lipstick on a pig and creating enough hype to reel in casual fans and the $$$ for a while longer. It's very risky way of doing things. There's a chance it could gain traction and the Jays end up getting enough of a payroll leash to buy just enough players to have an inefficient but playoff-bound team. Or it could go the other way...the way the team is currently headed.