Dick_Pole

Too young for 1985. But one of my earlier memories of baseball at 8 years old was getting that Topps Dennis Lamp card for Boston turning it around and seeing he went 11-0 for the Jays. Wow! How was he so good! I remember my young ignorant self watching those Jays teams of the late 80's early 90's and that four year period out of the last 50 where the Yankees were hot garbage and thought that was how baseball always was. Boy did I get a shock when I got my first Jays almanac and saw it only went back to 1977 and what happened in 1977

So many f***ing sensitive squares. Society is a cesspool of immorality and we just have to accept it. But gambling turns legal and ads are broadcasted and now...NOW this is where all you douchebags draw the line. Those ads help pay for the now bloated salary the Jays have in order to field a good team. If you don't like them, just ignore them. If enough people do, they'll give up. But it's obviously a lucrative business right now or it wouldn't be so saturated. It'll probably normalize anyways. Look at the cannabis industry. Couldn't get away from that s*** 3 years ago now a ton of operators are either going out of business or consolidating. In a couple of years you'll see a few ads here or there by two or three companies instead of the dozen we see now.

Maybe the way I said it was poorly written. What I meant is that it doesn't eliminate the possibility of very long games. Like putting a bandage on a leaky raft. You'll slow down the leak but there are ways of addressing the underlying issue that can be more effective. The problem is there are very long games because of low offense in the late innings. There is low offense in the late innings because teams rotate 20+ relievers with similar skill sets through the club and use them sparingly. For max effort low output pitching, new looks to hitters, limiting scouting report data available to the opponent, etc. Limit the amount of total pitchers a team can use throughout the year (different than the 13 roster limit). That'll force them to find guys who can throw 80-100 innings out of the BP like the good old days instead of four guys covering that same workload throughout the year. Some teams will succeed at this, some teams will fail. The teams that fail will lose extra inning games quickly. When every team runs through a bunch of AAAA relievers with similar skills sets, and every team starts the inning with a runner at second, all you're doing is increasing the odds of scoring runs approximately equally. You want games to end quickly in extra innings? You need variability in run scoring ability. One team needs to be able to score runs while shutting the other team's offense down. Basically instead of using these cheap-ass Tampa Bay Rays methods of slithering through and finding ways to game the system, I want teams to actually develop and pay quality pitching out of the BP. How many of us can name every pitcher the Jays used last year without looking it up? 30 years ago you could have done it, maybe missed a guy who threw 5 innings that year. Barely knowing half the guys on your team like it's some kind of NFL practice squad isn't a good fan experience.

Great! Now all we need is data from 1979 to compare to 2019. See if there is some non-stupid rule that can be implemented to reduce the length of games.

The Score offering boosted odds +250 for the Jays to win the AL East. Mostly going around +200 to +220 elsewhere. I'm dropping some pesos on that. I think the Yankees are going to underperform this year. If I can get above +400 for them to miss the playoffs I'm taking it. I think a lot of people forgot how absolutely mediocre that team was for most of the year after that .780 start or whatever it was. Then 3-6 in the playoffs.

I agree with Grant, this rule is dumb. I also fail to see how this is viewed as some kind of sure bet to shorten games. Road team scores a run, home team returns the favour with a bunt and sac fly to tie it and we are back to square one next inning. I can't wait for the 17 inning 15-15 game which you know is eventually going to happen. I'll admit I did enjoy the rule when I had some total over bets that were DOA that hit thanks to this stupidity. You want shorter games? Stop allowing teams to roster 20+ AAAA relievers throughout the year who can all throw 95+ and average a K an inning on 20 pitches of max effort. Force teams to go the Rich Gossage route and actually pay good relievers to eat up innings or fail to do so and guarantee no long extra inning games or extra inning wins. I admit the weakness to my argument is total lack of data. I honestly have no idea if there were more really long extra inning games in 2019 versus 1979.

I don't think this was a choice made by the FO. The players forced their hands. I'm happy, I have some Nets under season win totals and missed playoff bets that were looking real good for the first month of the season, real bad a couple months ago and now real good again. Heat, Raptors, Knicks and Hawks all have a chance to overtake the Nets now. Hopefully the Bulls can step it up in the play-in. Honestly, the Nets didn't do SO bad given their situation. Compiled a bunch of middling guys and draft picks while doing a reset. They might keep Simmons now. Who knows maybe this mish-mash of okay players actually clicks and they still make the playoffs.

I like the direction the Raptors are going. I guess they see what I see. A reasonably easy schedule and not a lot of traffic between them and 6th place.

Even if Kirk was 120 pounds, he'd still look funny running and be a slow runner because of his munchkin legs. That's just who he is. Let's all be grateful that the Jays found a way around the Eddie Gaedel rule.

The 1,100-runs-scored Toronto Blue Jays based on RC+ projections are going to get 88 wins this year. Make it make sense.

Him putting up a big game while the team loses to a team they need to beat if they have any hopes of playoffs is peak 2022-2023 Lakers.

The Braves just went ahead and skipped that phase, straight into a championship. Not to call out Shapiro individually because every team expected to win that doesn't spews out some half assed BS excuse like this. But it's such horseshit. This iteration of the Jays is still working on its first playoff win. Better to just highlight the good things that were actually done to shore up this team's glaring weaknesses than hope some magic fairy dust sprayed over Vlad and Bo that turned them into grizzled playoff vets.

Yes, exactly that.

Raptors are 25-30, +0.6 per game point differential and are heading into the part of their schedule where they could win 8 of their next 10 games. They are a middle of a pack team that has had terrible luck closing out close games. People are acting like this team is s***. It isn't.

Yes to any of this.

Only if Montoyo is the manager.

I guess I'll be in the minority and say I don't like it. I'll admit though it is different and coming from a team that has whipped through about a thousand different designs since the World Series years, they are running out of ideas to put something new on the market.

So...like...why are we pretending an extra hit a week is no big deal? The cosmic microwave background had variances so minute that scientists are amazed at how uniform the universe was in its early days. Yet those teeny tiny variances led to all the galaxies and super clusters of galaxies and massive voids we see in the universe right now. A hit a week is a huge freaking difference and laika's example of a 5'10 dude versus a 7'0 dude is totally and completely apt. The variance in per inning rate of hits for Ty Cobb versus JP Arencibia is close to zero. Are we saying that those two players are basically the same now too?

For about the thousandth time I say f*** Krylian's loser mentality. It's like people haven't watched the NBA in the last two years. This isn't 2017. There are probably more legitimate contenders to take the NBA crown right now than in the MLB to win the World Series. At the start of the year when the price was Barnes I would have said no to a gimpy Durant in the latter stages of his career. If the Raptors can pull it off with anyone other than Barnes or Siakam, do it. A team with those two plus Durant absolutely can take down anyone in the East right now. Hell, even without Durant, the team in its current form would have maybe a 25% chance of knocking off a top seed. That's more of a commentary that the top teams are just not that dominant. Boston has had a lot of losses and barely wins to s***** teams lately. As much as I dislike the 76ers, I'm reluctantly picking them as the team to beat out of the east if I had to pick someone. I'll believe the Simmons rumours when I see the actual trade. Right now it looks like a bunch of butthurt Nets fans on Twitter trying to use Toronto as their garbage dump. Apparently Claxton would need to come along with him which in that case might make a bit more sense.

And I am not offended about it because it wasn't an egregious decision. Maybe voters didn't want to give Santana the award because he had won it the year before? I know it sounds ridiculous out of context. But then compare him to Clemens and Maddux. The guys who won back-to-backs at a similarly young age. Maybe voters didn't want to put Santana in that category yet? Compare Santana's seasons to Clemens and Maddux's first two Cy Young seasons and they are a step down. Then we can extend the idea further to Clemens' 1988 season. Even though he put up a WAR that should at least put him up for contention against Viola and Gubicza, he finished 6th in voting. Finishing behind even inferior teammate Bruce Hurst. Voters clearly said "yeah, we aren't giving you three in a row. That would make you possibly the greatest pitcher of all time and we aren't comfortable admitting that just yet and we have other viable candidates". Had Santana won in 2005, he'd have won three in a row which would normally have cemented a HOF career. I think most people would agree that he falls just short of HOF status. He makes more sense having Saberhagen and Lincecum as peers rather than Maddux, Clemens or Johnson. So maybe voter instincts were right all along?

Two things about my post, a day later: 1. I guess I can feel privileged that the only thing that has triggered me lately was arguing online about the relative importance of baseball stats. 2. I'm happy to see the conversation my post has started.

RE: Pitching wins I know this rant will come out of nowhere but I got into it with some dumbass Fangraphs/Savant zombie who thinks he's smart enough to be a baseball stat gatekeeper. I know similar sentiment is shared by some on here so I'll blast my opinion here too. Of course, pitching wins is not a very useful stat to evaluate a pitcher going forward for the next year. Except maybe durability since you have to be able to go late innings when it matters to rack up a lot of wins. But it is a stat to look back at as a baseball fan and appreciate. It's a stat that should never be eliminated. Over the long term, it most definitely can be used as a stat to evaluate a pitcher. The perfect example is Roy Halladay. He went 148-76 on a team that was .500 for his time with the Jays. You know he was a damn good pitcher just from that. If some pitcher goes 20-5 with a 6 WAR, I see no great crime if he wins the Cy Young over some other pitcher that went 15-10 with a 7 WAR. They both had great seasons deserving of consideration. The pitcher with 20 wins had a slightly more memorable season because he did something that not a lot of pitchers do nowadays. Did he get luckier than the other guy? Yeah probably. Is society a perfect meritocracy or do people get awarded over others due to more luck in absolutely every other facet of life? Definitely the latter. The issue I take with the obsession over advanced stats and the condemnation of old school stats like pitcher wins and RBI is that advanced stats try to peel away luck and team mates to try determine an individual's worth. In a sport that is inherently lucky and team-based. Advanced stats obviously do have their place in projections or trades or salary determination. Old school stats shouldn't be completely abandoned though. And just because someone appreciates or values those stats doesn't make them dumb.

Another thing I'll add in. This team is spending money. It's not like Harold Ballard who cheaped out on the roster then jacked up the price of tickets. If they want to charge $200 for the new seats to offset a tiny bit of that cost (and be incentivized to continue to spend money to put a competitive product on the field) more power to them. I hope those seats are consistently sold out, filled with Boomers and Bay Street finance bros.

Meh. If you take ticket prices as a percentage of the city's housing/rental costs, I'm sure the Jays come out as one of the best deals in the MLB. The team is just testing what the market will bear. Time and time again, people in the GTA will complain about everything being too expensive. Costs being out of control. But won't do anything about it like move to somewhere cheaper in order to alleviate some of those demand pressures pushing up the prices. Someone will pay the asking price. Most likely those who made $800,000 in paper capital gains on their houses purchased 20 years ago.

Meh. Manoah is still 25 so he has time to mature. What do they say? The brain completes development at age 26 or something? Stroman was 28 by the time he really wore out his welcome here. And Stroman was a steady stream of consistently annoying behaviour. So far I count three Manoah outbursts. This, the time he defended Kirk, and the Cole cheating accusation. So once he was defending a teammate and the other time he was just being truthful to a question he was asked, whether you agree with him or not.