Dick_Pole

My guess would be that players with such a small amount of projected playing time would have WAR greatly overstated because they would tend to be used in niche roles that cater to their strengths. Defensive replacements, pinch runners, pinch hitters.

^^^ This dude was a former politician. Presumably eventually voted out in embarrassing fashion after years of sucking at the public teat as a champagne socialist. He knows a little something about need to account for job performance sooner or later.

There are three ways to interpret the Varsho-Moreno trade which look bad on this FO: 1. Atkins totally misplayed his hand and made a bad deal. Selling low on Moreno and/or buying high on Varsho. 2. The deal was fine. Moreno had no actual value. But then Arizona tapped into something and made him a superstar. 3. The deal was fine. Moreno was a top prospect but Varsho was also a good player under years of control. The Jays then proceeded to ruin him to the point that his bat shouldn't be in any contending MLB team's lineup. There is only one way that Atkins can save face on it. Laika has written about 500 words on this topic on this board and Max about 50,000 words but it can be summed up as follows: Moreno was lucky last year and success for him is unsustainable. Varsho was unlucky last year and will improve this year and going forward. Okay, that's all well and good. That still doesn't move the needle much for me though. Varsho could be a 6 WAR player next year and the Jays win 90 games (he pretty much has to achieve 6 WAR for the Jays to get to 90 wins if the rest of the roster performs similarly to last year). The Jays then get trounced in the first round. Same s***. The team no longer lost on the Varsho trade but the other pile of things that went wrong still went wrong. The Varsho trade is just a lightning rod for the overall frustration of fans. I already explained this in the past.

Even if Atkins said back in 2017 "we are going to be ass at drafting and decent at handling the MLB roster but not quite good enough to win anything" while wearing a JP Ricciardi mask, I would still have the same opinion about him. The only one pushing this offhand comment back in 2017 is Brownie. In some kind of twisted way to try to defend him because we shouldn't believe what people with privilege and power say and should just accept the crumbs they give us.

I truly do not understand this narrative. Everyone goes into a job or challenge or school or whatever hoping they will succeed. Olympic athlete says he will win gold. He finishes 5th. Country is not allowed to be disappointed! He really meant he'll finish 5th when he said he would win. Student goes to class thinking he will get an A. He got a C. Parents not allowed to be disappointed! Instead of him going to law or medical school, he'll be sleeping on his parents couch to age 40 while waiting tables for a living. But that's okay, he really meant he was going to get a C all along. Politician promises sunny ways and equality and happiness for all, including the middle and working class. Instead there's an affordability crisis of rent and food and an entire generation of people have complete economic hopelessness. But that's okay! You should have assumed he was a sleazy failure all along and just expected it because other countries are doing slightly worse. Vote for him again and like it! Atkins said he will be good as his job. Seven years later there are no post-season wins and a bottom-third farm despite a healthy payroll. Some good moves, some bad moves, but overall not good enough. That's okay though, we should just accept that because he was just talking ******** all along.

Three years ago the Jays graduated a bunch of guys who had an immediate significant impact on the MLB roster. The farm rankings took a hit but that was expected and totally fine because the team had time to replenish it. But fast forward three years and the team isn't nearly in the same situation as I expected them to be based on what I heard about sustainable winning and prospect development. It doesn't matter whether the farm rankings are 25 or 23 or 20 or 18. If the Jays move up the rankings, it'll be because other teams graduate their 4 WAR ROY candidates to their MLB squad, not because things have drastically improved for the Jays. The Jays don't have any MLB ready impact players like they did in 2019-21 to take over an MLB role and excel. Maybe Tiedemann, but his upside is limited because his workload is unlikely to be significant. The rest of the guys are a bunch of jobbers that unless the Jays get lucky or have found the golden key to player development, aren't going to be more than 1-2 WAR players. Nobody should be excited about Spencer Horwitz or Davis Schneider. But that's all we hear from the ultra bulls on this team about "prospects" for this coming year. If this was the Orioles guys like Spencer Horwitz wouldn't even be mentioned in the first ten options.

Atkins is deserving of any scorn. The guy comes into the offseason with Stone Cold Steve Austin level of swagger and is getting his ass kicked like Barry Horowitz. And that comes from a guy who totally defends the club's actions around Ohtani even if it didn't pan out. The team has a worse roster right now than it did four months ago. And people are defending him because he is in a tight spot with not a lot of options? Um, okay? There are only 30 MLB GM slots available in the world. You get the job understanding that it's hard and that you need to be very good at it. If he can't handle it, then he should just quit. A lot of the circumstances surrounding a mediocre farm, out of shape players, questionable team culture and dumbass computer model decision making is of his own doing. It's not like he inherited a cluster f***. He created it. People have every right to be critical while still trying to remain optimistic.

Jays haven't made any significant improvement to the farm and no prospect has taken a significant step forward in months. The top prospect is a walking injury and the rest of them are these kinda sorta okay prospects who might be able to provide 1-2 WAR in 2024 or 2025 with some luck and playing time. So it's not like the Jays are going to go from spot 25 to spot 7 in any update.

They haven't? The guy is on indefinite leave. What more do you want? The fact that Manfred hasn't had to stick himself in front of the camera 24/7 to denounce him likely has much more to do with Dodgers (media and fans care) versus Rays (no one cares) than any bias towards each individual player.

I think what he means is attempted cancel culture, from virtue signaling reporters and annoying "fans" on social media who make mountains out of molehills and who think coaches should be fired because they support Trump instead of being fired for being bad at their job. Bauer returning would hopefully cause the movement to go full Jim Jones Kool-Aid level. But in terms of baseball players being jettisoned for various non-baseball related acts, we do have three examples that come to my mind just on the Jays. Osuna, Yunel Escobar and what's-his-face RP from this past season (too lazy/don't care enough to even look up his name on BR). Now one could easily argue that Osuna was justified/necessary, what's-his-face sucked anyways and only Escobar was the bad move made for PR. I also recall that there was a big hoopla over something Pillar did that last about 10 seconds before blowing over.

If he's disappeared, where do you even send the checks to? People here are talking about settlement when the first step is even finding him. He's either not thought this through or is willing to forego the money in favour of catching up with Andy Dufresne. Not sure how serious the charges are but there is always the possibility he takes the Aaron Hernandez way out too.

It's actually a decent debate here. There are solid points made on the pro or con side. The pro side being that the team increased the floor in case they absolutely fail to improve the infield between now and opening day. The con side being that they used a material amount of the budget to do so and lowered the ceiling. The issue is with that "absolutely fail" part. People who are frustrated with this FO see the writing on wall or at least fear the writing on the wall and are rightfully pissed off about it. But may be overstating the uselessness of this deal in the process. Atkins hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt that he sees something with this guy at the plate that the team can unlock some potential or that this is merely a depth move. Base case right now is 500 PA at 3B of .650 OPS until Atkins proves otherwise.

The East has three dominant teams at top and three dreadful teams at the bottom. The other nine teams sit in the middle with -2 to +2 point differential. Anything you could say about the Raptors being in limbo you can say about those other eight teams. Do you expect all of them to effectively tank? I read somewhere that the best performance the Raptors have put up so far this year is when the trio of Barnes, Anunoby and Trent are on the court. They don't need to dump all the guys and tank (which won't work anyways because of all the mediocre to terrible teams). They just need to do a semi-rebuild by shipping out Siakam and building around Barnes. Then if Anunoby and Trent continue to work as well with Barnes as the stats suggest, it'll show up in the results and they may want to stay here.

The Jays have generally been pretty lucky over the last several seasons and as a franchise with respect to starter pitching performance and health. There should be no complaints on this end from anyone.

Absolutely no point in trying to make Pearson a starter until he can get at least one injury-free and consistent RP year under his belt.

The plural version of those words makes it so much worse. Goes from "Yeah some 21 yo dating a 16 yo, that was normal in America 50 years ago" to "Subway Jared" pretty fast.

This is the most not unhinged take Gruber has ever had.

The Varsho for Moreno trade gets brought up over and over because it's a stand-in scapegoat for the issues that fans find most irritating about the team's performance under Atkins. If Moreno wins MVP, but the Jays win the World Series (or at least a playoff round or even game), no one talks about this trade. Except for 2020, the Jays have been bitterly disappointing. They have been passed by the Orioles and the Rangers, two teams frequently mocked by the fan base over the past decade. And those teams made it look so, so easy. We as fans have had this idea drilled into our heads that the "window" ends when the six years of owning Guerrero and Bichette are up (as if either have proven to be must-have leaders on a championship team). You hear stuff about heart or team culture or conditioning. Meanwhile the team has made changes to the culture and there are plenty of fat asses in the history of baseball who were top performers and winners. You can't really point to anything terribly wrong that Atkins has done. At least as an outsider looking in. He's just another off-putting weenie who sucks at drafting and developing home grown talent, like Ricciardi. So in lieu of having a coherent thesis on why the guy should be canned, raging about the Varsho trade as the outcome of a broken system becomes the go-to for frustrated fans. Why people who type out paragraphs defending the trade as not as bad as it seems don't realize this by now, is beyond me.

Siakam's getting traded. For sure by the deadline but it could come any day now. I've noticed that they are transitioning away from him and towards Barnes lately.

A bunch of wannabe bean counters in here. "Devaluing Varsho as an asset" is not a relevant argument to make. The Jays are trying to win and put the best team on the field. If that involves Kiermaier being in CF and Varsho being in LF, then that's the configuration the team should go with. If that negatively impacts Varsho's WAR or RC+ or whatever in some way, then that's just an indictment of the weakness of the nerd stats. Any front office worth a damn would have figured this out years ago and wouldn't use these stats as gospel in valuing Varsho. If anything, it might help the Jays in lowering an arbitration number because that s*** is always about a decade behind in determining the fair value of a player.

Raptors have been good forever. Not sure how that's much of a surprise. Most other good teams had a couple of really s***** years while the Raptors had just one and that was a shortened season.

Two very different scenarios so I can see why some people would be offended by one and not another. FWIW, I don't find either of them guilty of anything that should blackball them from the MLB based on the facts we know so far.

Jays should aim higher. Them signing Gurriel in mid-December at that contract probably doesn't bode well for how they think the rest of the off-season is going to go.

You know what this says to free agents? Don't even consider Toronto in your top 5 because their fan base will throw a big hissy fit and boo you if you don't choose them. You know what fans should actually do? Give him a polite welcome.

Confirmed.