Dick_Pole

I'm glad I'm old school so I still use gaylord as my go-to word like I'm stuck on some playground in 1992. Also the mods are gonna have to do a better job at wiping quoted posts too if they want to scrub this site properly.

No big deal. Every year the Jays win the season series against the Astros despite getting outscored. They'll take the next two games by one or two runs.

The other way of looking at it is that the Jays have massive payroll flexibility. Of course, we saw what they did with flexibility this offseason though...

Gotta think how braindead this move is too. On normal nights he probably generates like a couple hundred dollars worth of bets and some parlays. Then BOOM out of nowhere big spikes to unders on his prop bets and he tanks. Not like he's Lebron who could probably hide something like that if he was so inclined because enough people will bet on him to succeed or fail in a given night.

Laugh now, but the man is going to make a big stink during the next CBA.

I guess it's written ambiguously enough with words like "handful" and "few", but other than the starting staff, this team is reasonably homegrown. I'm so used to saying that the Jays just graduated a bunch of young talent that's why their farm took a dive in the rankings. But I guess in 2024 that narrative no longer applies. It most certainly should have recovered by now. When it comes to homegrown talent, Atkins is definitely trending more towards Ricciardi than Gillick. As far as the team being done, nuh-uh. Let's look at the prospects of the AL East: Baltimore - very bright for at least the next three seasons. Could get messy for them after that with a history of mediocre front office decisions and a middling market. New ownership could be big spenders though which makes them a massive threat for a long time. TB - their future is always in doubt, but could also be competitive at any time. A wild card into the mix. Teams around the league are getting smarter and the league has implemented rules that neuter their workarounds. This means their competitive advantages are eroding but their disadvantages (low payroll) remain as long as they remain in Tampa. Boston - feels like they are aimlessly wandering the desert and need their Moses before they are a threat. NY - f***ed. Massive long term contracts to deal with. They are going to lose their franchise tag as America's Team and most valuable franchise to the Dodgers. Cashman's been exposed as an idiot, but the ownership might run with him for a while longer. Jays - probably the worst farm system of the five. But a ton of payroll flexibility going forward with reasonable contracts and control to key players outside of Bichette and Guerrero. The only team with an unambiguously better future than the Jays right now through 2026 are the Orioles. I see the Jays being in the top 3 in the AL East over the next several seasons, mostly because I expect other teams in the division to be bad. A top 3 finish in the AL East gets you into the playoffs. Unless the Central starts stepping it up a notch.

I guess my bold prediction can be that the team underwhelms/disappoints at an individual player stat and accomplishment level but still manages to do well overall.

Yankees less than 85 wins and miss the playoffs. Deja vu from my prediction last year though this time it doesn't have the weight since enough people are starting to see the cracks in this team. As for the Jays, I don't really have any prediction. Nowhere do I look at this team and say "boy, I expect a breakout campaign from that guy". Okay, one. I expect the Jays W-L to outperform their Pythagorean W-L. Which if you look at recent history (2021 but not the last two years) and the franchise history as a whole, is a rare feat. 90+ wins with a run differential that suggests 85. I expect the Jays to be on the right side of a lot of close games. The team is built to protect leads.

I was complementing the man, stop being so sensitive. I've never liked Ohtani so much as I do now. Thought he was just some boring asexual weirdo like the Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory of baseball. Now I realize I had him all wrong. Ohtani should join this forum and post in the betting thread. So we all can do opposite of what he does because he's obviously terrible at it when not throwing games.

Some of us now have an improved image of Ohtani. A lying gambling addict? Now he's cool!

Amazing how the media can construct an image around someone and how quickly that can unravel. Two months ago I assumed Ohtani was an asexual baseball-playing AI. Now I think he's a regular Wallstreetbets degenerate who will end up cucking out his wife to pay off gambling debts.

Okay if this guy is raking it thanks to Ohtani throwing games, how is there a massive debt to pay off? He lost like $15 million on non-Ohtani bets?

I get that there is hypocrisy. I called that out too. It's not along racial lines. Bonds is tarred and feathered the worst of them all and is black. Ohtani is Asian so he only gets a half-point for "racial advantages" the way you see them existing in society. Plus his situation has less to do with race and more to do with international appeal. Yeah the two are correlated because Ohtani looks more similar to other people who live east and southeast of Russia than Mike Trout does. But it's not explicitly about race. Take it from the guy who would be more likely to see eye to eye with you on "conservative values" than most here. The race baiting thing you're doing is on the same level of insufferable as what a Harvard social studies professor would do on the opposite end. Not everything needs to be seen through a racial lens. Ohtani would get special treatment the same way Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady might. Due to name brand not due to race. Focus on that bit of hypocrisy instead.

And let's not forget that part of the reason why baseball grew so successfully in American culture IS because of controversy back in the day. Shoeless Joe. Ruth, Cobb and others being violent with umps and fans. Cap Anson being too cool to play with black people and Jackie Robinson being too cool to not play with white people. If Ohtani does a perp walk, the sport probably grows if anything lol

I get the idea of it lamenting it being "terrible for baseball", and then on the other hand I don't. Do 4chan or Stormfront users care if they are popular or not? Not really, as long as they enjoy it and have their own little community. MLB isn't going to be wiped off the face of the earth. It'll just lose some fans. Fans who I don't interact with so it won't personally impact me. Instead of a franchise being worth $10 billion dollars, it's worth $8 billion. Instead of a star being paid $30 million a season, he gets paid $25 million. Instead of MLB battling the NBA for second most watched sport in the US, it'll be firmly in third. I'm not crying over any of this. A deep desire to "grow the sport" - unless you're employed by the league - is such a weird impulse for me. I get it for leagues on the fringes like lacrosse or CFL. MLB is not that. Maybe if you have kids and are searching for a baseball league for them or a beer league for yourself to play in. But presumably most people here are in North America and don't have that kind of problem (or are so remote that lack of access to baseball is way down the priority list).

Guys, Jim is right about once every five years. That's why he defends the time he's right so hard because he wants to make sure everyone sees it. Just let him have this one. I mean, a team's top prospect potentially making the MLB roster out of the spring. No one ever sees that one coming, this was a special prediction. Next Jim will tell us the exact location of hypothesized planet nine. Jim will be elevated to Le Verrier status.

Nobody knows if he is involved or not. I'm guessing the people who are jumping to conclusions are hoping that he is involved to see the resulting shitstorm it would create. I am in that camp. Why? Because the selective bias of the MLB will have caught up with it. Bonds and Clemens blacklisted (I know technically by the writers) but other guys get into the HOF no problem. Varying levels of punishment for guys like Bauer, Chapman and German. Come on MLB, let's see what you will do to your biggest star if he's caught in some s***.

It's not MLB that is going to drive the investigation. It'll be the Feds and/or IRS. I'm sure if the MLB had their choice, they would have swept whatever they could under the rug regarding Bonds and Clemens and we'd have a normal looking HOF instead of a generation of asterisks. If Ohtani is found to be involved in illegal s***, we'll just have to see if the league will be consistent or hypocrites RE: Pete Rose. Could be also that he was involved in illegal gambling but that gambling didn't come close to MLB games. Maybe he's betting on dog fights.

Oh imagine if Ohtani got the Pete Rose treatment? I don't give a s*** about the negative impact on the image of baseball, or the lost revenue and especially not the loss for the Dodgers. I'd be laughing so hard I would pee my next six sets of pants. Also, in the alternate universe where Ohtani signs with the Jays, 100% he gets a lifetime ban for gambling on MLB games March 27, 2024. Krylian is then named god.

With all the bitching here about Espinal, end result is 5 WAR over a season and a half worth of at bats and the Jays paying the league minimum. We can only hope that a prospect like Pearson who the team has spent a lot more effort and resources on gets to that level. The team did well with Espinal and he had a good run. Time to move as there are better options for the Jays.

Bet Jays to win the AL East at +450 lately. Not because I'm super bullish on the Jays but the rest of the division doesn't look threatening at all. Everyone knows my opinion on the Yankees and that's just been magnified the last few days. Orioles seem susceptible to high variance. That team could win anywhere from 85-105 games and I wouldn't be surprised. Took a hit the last two years doing this bet at lesser odds (did offset last year with a small flier on the O's at +2,500 or something). Maybe third time is a charm. 90 wins could win the AL East this year.

Ok, he might be worth it in that any player might be worth that type of deal since the risk is so low. But he's not worth lamenting over that some other team got him.

Other than the perfect game against an AAAA squad I must have missed the memo on Domingo German being good? Might as well go see if Drew Hutchison is still an active pitcher and sign him again.

I actually like the Cease deal for the Padres. I envision him having a 1.50 ERA at Petco. Padres could probably flip him for an equivalent or better package at the deadline if they are out of it.

Too bad about Jansen, but I'll trade him being out for the demolishing of the Yankees squad any day of the week. Also, as an extremely right-wing and hate-filled person, I am totally fine with slurs. Especially those against weaker and more vulnerable people than myself, which is most of the human population. But after having gone through 10 pages since I last checked this thread only to find out that 7 pages were garbage and 3 were about Jansen, I'm fine with what the mods are trying to do by keeping the board free of "triggering" words. I come here to check up on news about the Jays and quick analysis. If I want to dunk on sensitive losers I'll go to political Reddit subs. Mods need to do a better job of eliminating the trolls though. "One" goof posts something useless and then the "three" same goofs thank his posts. Not even trying to hide it?