Dick_Pole

If we are going to go with what-ifs, it should start with the team having done absolutely anything better in terms of drafting and developing. What the Jays have done in terms of free agency and trades should be more than enough to build a winner. No regrets about Lindor, Seager or anyone else. Problem is they were building a team from the ashes of a farm system that has provided nothing from Manoah onwards. Jobber role players with a couple hot months or who are fodder for free agent contract trades notwithstanding. A team that acquires Berrios, Gausman, Springer, Kikuchi, Chapman, Varsho, Bassitt and supplements it with guys like KK and even Semien for a year should not need to get even more guys outside the organization to win.

That's a Grade A+ baseball name the Jays got. I want the full English pronunciation not some dumbass Spanish one like Genesis Cabrera that has me picturing Phil Collins in a sombrero playing maracas.

That's a complete inverse correlation. If all that happens the Jays are a 90 win team.

The 5D chess move here is clearly ensuring that Bassitt, Berrios and Gausman have 2 ERAs for the first few months into the year then somehow parlaying that through the trade market into Paul Skenes, Jackson Merrill and Jackson Chourio.

The only way you get Bichette for 2/50 after this season is if he has a .500 OPS again or channels his inner Osuna sometime before next November.

I'm 100% sure that the team is intent on bringing in two bat-first guys. Whether that succeeds, or results in dumpster diving 40 year olds past their prime, is another story.

Reading the reaction to this trade is like looking at a U.S. electoral map and results by demographic from 2008 to 2016 to 2024. A lot of people who I didn't expect to hate the trade hate it while some are coming out in defense of it that I also would not expect. FWIW, I think the trade in a vacuum is fine..and the trade in the context of the team is also fine. 2B was a black hole last year. Such a black hole that it even overrides the offense/defense mismatch. This was an easy but expensive way to improve the team. Could the dollars have been spent better? Probably. But could Atkins have spent those dollars better in free agency? Probably not. The biggest indictment of that baseball trade values site is that up until now they have pretty much universally loved Atkins trades, which is the wrong conclusion. Maybe they are wrong here too.

Another thing that's good and something that I alluded to last year. Yankees are for now "America's team" and the top franchise. They are on a trajectory to be supplanted by the Dodgers. Losing their top star to the Mets. This would be unheard of 20 years ago. But the guys coming into the majors now are old enough to remember maybe one Yankee championship. This team doesn't have the mystique it once did. It's just another big market team that can throw around the wallet. But Ohtani and Soto prove that they can no longer get anyone of their choosing on the FA market.

RIP to the Cardinals. The city of St. Louis has been punching WAY above its weight class with one of baseball's greatest franchises for 150 years. But with the way baseball has changed, the money being spent and their current roster and other resources, that franchise looks to be headed for some dark times for a long time. Say what you want about the s***** situation the Jays are in right now, but they have the backing of Rogers. Which puts a significant floor on how bad things can get, especially if the team decides to house its front office with competent people.

That is ridiculous, Soto is getting NBA star money. In a sport where he shares responsibility with 25 other guys at any given time. What stocks are Cohen shorting now? He's deserving of a short squeeze. When's the CBA expire? We are heading towards a lockout if this craziness keeps up. At least the power balance is shifting strongly towards the NL. AL playoffs will be easy to make.

Remember how much teeth-gritting there was over the length of Berrios' contract at the time it was signed? Now he might be the best non-arbitration asset the Jays have. Goes to show that as long as you can keep a pitcher's arm alive, eventually inflation will make his contract look great.

As much as I hate to admit it, it's getting to the point where the Jays could consider moving Gausman and Berrios and get a great return. Assuming Berrios takes the opt-out, both come with less dollars committed than Kikuchi, should still be considered pitchers that are a tier above Kikuchi, and Kikuchi's deal is now considered a steal.

Well, this is the moving of goalposts. The extra inning ghost runner was a f***ing stupid idea. Grant was the only one to really die on that hill. With that fully implemented and baseball traditionalists like him beaten into submission now we can move onto Manfred's even dumber ideas. Maybe we will get a mid-season championship like the NBA! All this ridiculous s*** to shorten games and increase offense. The game of baseball was just fine for about 150 years until Tampa with their stupid s*** gaming of the system ruined things. Now every team rotates through 30 pitchers a year. Force teams to roster no more than 15 pitchers all year. Then the need for ghost runners, shift limits, 3 batter minimums and whatever the hell this nonsense is goes away.

You mods should re-allow a politics forum with a promise from everyone to keep it quarantined there. Look, I get it. Back when this site was functional and the team was good, you didn't want politics mucking up the comradery and conversation on the main boards. Now that the site is a spammy mess, the team is aimless and everyone hates on each other as well as the front office, what do you have to lose? Is endless diatribes about woke losers and Trudeau really all that worse than any conversation that has gone on here since May? We're not still going with facade that this board is trying to grow its membership, are we? Not with page-sized popups for Asian sex dating thanks to all the keywords that connor has brought up to this site.

Ya'll do realize that Trump won largely on the backs of young men, right? Younger generations aren't the problem. It's (supposedly well off) old farts like Jim who like to pretend they have empathy who hate Trump the most. Because looking at Trump is like looking into a mirror and they can't deal with that so they do a 180.

Hernandez's comparable isn't Sabathia, it's Stieb. In terms of counting stats, peak and early career end. Ignoring 1998 and adjusting for each pitcher's era for strikeout rate. So if Hernandez gets ousted early, at least that keeps the bar relatively consistent across eras. I guess you could say Sabathia is Hernandez's Jack Morris, if you go by the former having more playoff success, longer tenure and a bigger name.

In a way, it's a good consolation prize for the Jays. Stack the NL as much as possible. Make the playoffs in the easier AL. Hope you 1987 Twins your way to a World Series as all the stacked teams beat up on each other.

Okay. Then the Raptors get in then get their asses kicked by the Celtics. So? At least they made it. Year over year improvement and beating expectations. Winning begets winning. Losing begets losing. How's that superstar chasing working out for New Orleans? That's been their thing pretty much since the franchise moved there. How did trusting the process work out for the 76ers? Record amount of shameful losing and all they have to show for it eight years later is last place. Meanwhile, who was the generational superstar who single handedly won it for the Celtics last year? When did the Raptors win? 2019, after nearly a decade of being a respectable team. Didn't have a high draft pick since the Bargnani years. You add talent by being a good team that develops players and drafts well, not tanking and having a loser mindset. The Raptors today proved that when they are mostly healthy, they are a competitive team. You could say that about a lot of teams, except that the Raptors don't have any fragile players who are out after a papercut. Show me the superstar that will carry a team to a championship? This isn't 2015 anymore. There is no James or Curry or Durant level domination. We're in a new era.

Tank??? What? The east is f***ing terrible this year. Like "Raptors being a joke #1 seed and 48-win teams in the West missing the playoffs" level bad. Philly's a mess as Embiid can't play more than 10 games a year anymore. Bucks over the hill. Pacers learning that you can't make Siakam your #2 option when your #1 is an inconsistent bum like Haliburton. Hawks meh. Heat meh. Raptors have an equal shot at the 5th seed as they do the 15th even with the 3-12 start that's how bad the east is. Even Detroit has a legit shot at the playoffs since they are the only team outside the top 3 seeds in the east that have improved. I wish I could send all the people with the loser talk of tanking to loser jail. Now I understand why guys like Putin and al-Assad can be so brutal. Round up all the dissenters. Raptors should have one goal and one goal only. Making the playoffs.

Do it, and say they will save money to pay Soto by cutting their DEI department. I can't wait for all the non-baseball fans (online feminists, pathetic male feminists and/or the alphabet crowd who don't watch sports, commies, poor people and other various demographics I don't like) to have a big hissy fit about Rogers spending this much on a baseball player if it happens while at the same time ripping off the plebs. That alone will be worth the contract even before he has his first plate appearance. Capitalism FTW!

What a sad organization. Imagine being so second-rate that you have to play in a division rival's MiLB park that's named after their owner LMAO. Yankees are literally the Rays' daddy. Now the front office has churned to the point that the nerds of this forum and other places are no longer fellating them for all the cheap and cheesy, I mean, smart and asset-maximizing ways this shitball team used to compete on a budget. Now we have bullpen days in the World Series all thanks to a trend the Rays started, yay!

I'm fine with letting both enter free agency. With the big market spenders looking to blow their load this year, I think next offseason will be a buyer's market. As for trades at the deadline, if the Jays are out of it, it'll be because they both performed poorly and the return will be s***. Bichette's 5 WAR decline is the reason why the Jays didn't compete for a playoff spot this year.

Their fumble was not predicting that Tampa's stadium would fall apart? I can imagine some people were planning the idea of expansion or getting a team, just not this winter.

Holy f***. The same stupid circular arguments over and over. The team's trade and free agent history, looking at the entire body of work, is fine. This team is where is is because it sucks dog balls at drafting and developing. Despite all the resources it supposedly has. I'm way too lazy to fact check this. But my guess is the ratio of 2024 WAR from players acquired outside of the organization compared to internally is through the roof. Well above average, maybe highest in the MLB. Certainly on the pitching end since that number is basically infinite this year. The Jays also massively underperformed on WAR versus expected WAR in 2024. My guess is that externally acquired players were more or less in line, while internal options were the reason for the tank. It's one thing to have a barren farm system. Teams can compete with that. But when basically all the top prospects who graduated from 2019-2021 simultaneously take a big s*** or are injured a few years later, that is a serious indictment of the incompetence of this regime. Doing a deep dive on the Springer contract doesn't change that fact. This is the new Varsho trade. Just trying to find something to nitpick at while glossing over the root cause of this team's suckage.

There is nothing inherently wrong with assuming the Jays can sign Soto. No need to be like Krylian who carries this self-hating Canadian bias despite all evidence pointing it to be not true. The Jays sign more than their fair share of top free agents. The problem is getting more than your fair share means getting more than 1 out of every 30 free agents. Or a little more than 3%. Jays probably have a 10% chance of signing Soto or any other free agent. Which puts them at three times above league average and one of the 10 most likely teams to sign him. Problem is a 10% chance of signing him equates to a 90% chance of not signing him. Assuming Bregman plus Soto plus Guerrero long term contract is just so insanely unlikely. Even if that exactly what is needed to bring this club's offense from fringe contender with a window rapidly shutting to likely contender for the rest of this decade.