Dick_Pole

Move the Jays to Vancouver?

The re-build is over. Just waiting for all the tear-it-down schmucks to shed a tear.

The win on Smoak versus EE is worth 2 Morales contracts but yes let's harp on the one bad move forever. If the Jays' FO calls up Cleveland to offer Smoak and Morales for EE, Cleveland takes that in a heartbeat.

I'm already resigned to the fact that Bo Bichette's ceiling is Profar's performance to-date because of all the premature fapping on this board.

Well...it's not like those people are seers. He was the #1 prospect at the time and the team looked like it was falling apart. The idea wasn't egregiously bad for a rebuild mindset. Had Profar turned into a 6 WAR player then it would have been a pretty good move. The reason for getting him now is completely different. He would be a buy low candidate that sadly would still be an upgrade to what the Jays are currently trotting out at 2B. No one is saying to acquire Profar because he was 2013's top ranked prospect.

He was a strong Hillary supporter so we already knew that. We have further evidence with him bitching like a 12 year old little girl on the court to the refs after every play and blackmailing the Cavs' FO into hiring the coach that he wants. Oh, and the 1...2...3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Yeah let's have the team go for 65 wins instead of 81 so it's harder for them to renew season tickets and attract free agents next year. All for the chance of a slightly better player hitting the roster in 6 years when any competent FO could have filled the roster with good players by then anyways. Great f***ing idea! Your employer should fire you for bad baseball analysis.

Happ, Estrada, Smith, Pearce, Smoak....all evidence of this FO's ability to fill the roster with warm bodies that produce without any long-term drain on the budget. Morales was the only mis-step so far and the production out of Smoak versus salary makes up for two Morales-sized mistakes. I expect more of the same over the next three years and at least 80-85 win teams until the lower minors players can hit the big leagues. Defeatist attitudes like "the Jays need to tank", "free agents don't want to come to Toronto" and "the A.L. East is hard" is just sucker fans who drank the Ricciardi kool-aid and mistake 20 years of non-playoff teams as anything other than the complete bungling of the franchise by Ash, Godfrey, Ricciardi, Beeston and to a lesser extent Anthopoulos (I don't put him in the same category of suck as the other goofs I mentioned).

Beta male loser mentality seeps in this thread again! "I should just really, really suck now...and in 5 years I'm magically going to get a hot chick to date me" I guess the equivalent would be study hard, get a good job and in a decade buy some gold digger....except nowadays studying hard doesn't mean you'll get s*** all in the work force and good luck ever affording a home in the big city. The point is you never know what the future brings. Losing doesn't guarantee winning down the road. All it guarantees is more losing in the near future. Any competent front office can go for it now as best they can AND build for the future at the same time. That is the expectation I have for Shapiro and Atkins.

Kawasaki 2.0

The Phillies had multiple very bad contracts. It's not hard to imagine that the Jays can get better production in 2018 from the $45M+ paid to Estrada, Bautista and Liriano this year, including raises to the players they want to keep. Out of all the rebuild vs. go for it debates I haven't heard anyone bring up the fact that the FO has a lot of payroll flexibility to work with next year. Which means they have a lot of room for creative ways to rebuild this team.

Because letting him go for nothing is embarrassing PR? Ideally he announces his retirement this off-season or maybe shortly before that so the team gives him a nice sendoff. If that's all we have to look forward to come September.

It probably is....maybe not on the court but in terms of general douchebaggery.

There's just something so wrong about judging the statistical relevance of a defensive metric number by the number of plate appearances.

People have shown some pretty good restraint for what has been a pretty weak argument from you. You should be pleased that you're not getting roasted. Ok I wouldn't go THAT far. There has to be some middle ground between these two opinions

So....wait is this all your ******** or Scott Mitchell? I thought his opinion was just the first paragraph and the rest yours. But at this point I'd claim it was all his if I were you to save yourself from further ridicule. LOL at the Jays needing Maile to step up. Yes all he has to do is step up and increase his batting average and RC+ by a factor of 10.

I think it's a great time to be a Blue Jays fan....or any other fan of an MLB team. Back in the late 90's it was a foregone conclusion that the Yankees were taking top spot in the A.L. East. Now we all have hope that a playoff team could be had with as little as 85 wins in a year. Then comes the one game, but at least it's an exciting one game.

How has this team been down this road before? Meaning when has a refusal to sell off veterans resulted in many years of mediocrity? Ricciardi did a purge in the early 2000's. It failed because he failed to draft or develop any star players. The only time this team has really "gone for it" was 2013 and 2015. 1997 as well but I already voiced my opinion on that. If you trust that this new FO regime is competent, then you'll trust that they'll be able to make the Blue Jays competitive, regardless of the situation.

Yeah but the Jays also had a hell of a young core coming up, none of which were touched in that Pittsburgh trade - Delgado, Green, Stewart, Gonzalez, Cruz Jr., Carpenter, Escobar, Halladay. Add Clemens to Cy Young award winning Hentgen and the young pitchers. Add Canseco, Stanley, Fernandez and Santiago to those young hitters. It was the right idea, just that the Yankees were inhumane at that time and Clemens wanted out too soon and somehow it didn't click at the right time. Nobody today would have questioned Ash's moves back then. Yeah ok, Pett was moved and he was a big prospect back then but I don't think anyone would have complained that much given the nearer term talent coming up. Imagine an equivalent talent level team to the 97-98 squad today. This forum would be down constantly from all the people salivating over it. You gotta take a look at that roster around the late 90's and figure out how the f*** did that team top out at only 88 wins.

Yes, if that's how the front office chooses to go, then I'm ok with that. But the issues of this team from 1995-2014 weren't as you described. It was incompetence of the buffoons running the team that led it to be so mediocre. Ricciardi dumped everyone he could at the beginning of his regime. None of those trades panned out. And the root cause of his failings was a complete inability to draft and develop players, not his MLB roster moves. Hill, Lind and Romero don't build championships. Ash netted the team Jose Cruz Jr. for two relief pitchers. He was useless otherwise. Only AA did what you described in 2013 and it backfired miserably.

Are you morons all so brain damaged that your mind can only function in two either/or states like an on-off switch? The two free agents in 2018 are Happ and Donaldson. Liriano and Estrada are the big ones in 2017. First off, there is nothing to suggest they will lose them for nothing. They could always re-sign them. Or if they don't they can use the salary freed up for signing similar players. Ok, let's say they trade Happ. Does that mean they throw in the towel on the season? No, they put Biagini back in the rotation and the team continues to play hard and the FO looks for other opportunistic trades to add to the roster. Even if the Jays traded Donaldson, as long as they got MLB ready talent back so that they're not throwing out the Three Stooges of Goins, Barney and Coghlan out there on the left side of the infield, they can still field a competitive team. No wonder the Philadelphia 76ers managed to get away with their "process" of four years of record-setting futility being a piece of s***. To finally be maybe a playoff team in a weak Eastern Conference this year. With a team that might one day be as good as the Raptors are now at their peak if they're lucky. Because there are so many beta male sports fans with a loser mentality who actually eat this s*** up and think that losing is the secret to future winning. Meanwhile teams like the Yankees, Spurs, Patriots and the 1983-1993 Blue Jays keep on chugging along winning year after winning year with a seemingly endless supply of good players. The Blue Jays are not in a situation that is THAT bad. One guy is signed beyond 2019. On a team expected to be in the top half of the league in payroll. That is a lot of payroll flexibility to work with. This is not the 2012 Phillies.

Put all your savings into one of my penny stock plays and I'll show you how to do that in a matter of weeks, not years

And this is why baseball fans aren't execs. Even the so called "smart" fans of this board. Do any of you have any idea how hard it would be to blow it up to this extent? And what kind of reaction there would be from the bosses who are trying to protect the franchise value both long term AND right now? LOL @ trading Montero. Yes, the Jays are going to get so much for a guy who they just acquired basically for free. This isn't Esmil Rogers and AA isn't on the receiving end of any trades out there.

I was so young back then, not giving a f*** with my meager 241 posts.

Wild card is within reach, make shrewd moves to help this year's club and the future. Not buy as in AA's version of buying.