Olerud363

Good question. We have them under control for essentially 5 more years. Basically the first 3 years of a players career they are paid minimum or close to it, next three years salary is decides by arbitration. However if a team plays their cards right they can get almost 4 years at minimum. Which is why teams often call up guys around May instead of right out of spring training. So give or take we have these guys for 5 more years. For most of them 2 or 3 cheap, then they get more expensive arbitration salaries. Except Lourdes who signed 7 years out of Cuba at a good price... we may have him cheap for 4 more years I think. So will they be traded?? You never know for sure but probably not. Perhaps the most likely to be traded is Vladdy. There have been a couple of recent trades of great hitting prospects, a guy called Jesus Montero, and another guy Delmon Young... both struggled like Vladdy then the team decided they didn't believe in them and traded them before their value was nothing. Another guy we had a few years ago, Travis Snider, was one of the best hitting prospects we had, he struggled for a couple of years and was traded for a reliever. Team just decided he wasn't going to hit and looking back they were right. So will Vladdy be traded?? Doubt it and I hope not. Even though I've been critical of him he has such a high ceiling that I would never want them to risk it. Just saying that in baseball, one of the scenarios in which a young player is traded, is when they struggle just a bit, and the team wants to trade them before the value gets even lower. In general I think they hold on to these guys for a while. Maybe in 3 years if they come close a couple of times, but don't win they could make a big trade. That happened just before our first World Series. Jays traded two starts, McGriff and the late Tony Fernandez for two other stars, and it worked out well obviously. At the time it was just done to shake things up really, team came close but didn't win. I'm rambling as I tend to... others will have more intelligent and more concise observations for you.

Maybe they can have Don Cherry in on zoom too... was Don's cancellation lifetime or just a few months??

I thought the border was still closed?? How did they get Pat across?? Or will he and Buck be on zoom ? They sort of do that with the Yankees broadcast. Paul O'Neill is on zoom in Cincinnati I believe.

Take this with a grain of salt as I was 14 or so last time I watched Pucket many years ago... like a lot of fans around my age they would of seen Pucket and Devon White in the same game every time Jays played the Twins. I remember Pucket looking like you'd expect, kind of like Kirk would chasing fly balls, tried hard, determined, made what looked like spectacular high effort catches but didn't get to everything. White got to everything and most of the time got there in plenty of time, so it didn't look high effort. He was very graceful. I'm probably just remembering it the way I think it should of looked based on the advanced stats 30 years later.

You may be right... I don't know. Career Snell is .205 .280 .312 first time through, .234 .316 .390 second, .247 .329 .412 3rd... The small sample size data for 2020 is even more crazy extreme... .140 .253 .209 first, .307 .350 .600 or so second... third just as bad as second If Tampa doesn't pull him after 4 it's just because they are all talk and in reality aren't progressive enough... and that's OK. America is a center right country and doesn't need to go full bat-s*** progressive.

Obviously the pitching matchups are different and everything, so it's going to super be optimized with killer strategy... 1st thing I will be interested to see is how each team handles game 1 starter... Wouldn't surprise me to see Tampa pull a guy throwing a shut out after 4 innings Mean time Charlie will leave Ryu in and he'll give a run or two in the fifth or something. I mean.. not that I can predict that's exactly what will happen. But I predict Tampa will pull some crazy s***, against the spirit of the game, against all that is manly, against all that is good... It will piss people off but it will be a justifiable choice statistically. Tampa will lose or win on a crazy choice, I s*** you not the outcome of this series will decide the moral and philosophical direction of this board, and perhaps humanity itself for the foreseeable future.

Look at any random 3 games between Toronto and Tampa 1st series 2-1 Tampa, last game was a coin flip, Jays were 1 strike away 2nd series 2-1 Tampa, first game blow out Jays, 2nd 2 coin flips in favor of Tamps 3rd series 2-2 -- bunch of coin flips

Kirk fatness = 265, groundball = 62.5, oppo = 44 Vlad fatness = 260, groundball = 55, oppo = 24 The only way either can work is fatness = 250, groundball = 45, oppo = 33 So follow those three stats, all the answers are there if groundball goes lower then 45, oppo can go lower.

Not sure how he created the comparison group but when creating a comparison group you need to have players who are better and a few who are worse in each category. You want players with an average of Jansen's bb, k, and power rates. Using Jansen's rates as the minimum means the group will be Danny Jansen and guys who have better bb, k, and power rates.

He had a 33% line drive rate, a 33% ground ball rate, and a 33% fly ball rate, so a pretty good day by his standards.

Early returns on Kirk's ground ball percentage are still Vlad like. His Opposite field percentage is 46% though I'm still convinced that guys can survive a high ground ball rate if they hit to all fields and can't be shifted. Am I wrong? Also if he hits foul pole to foul pole a small percentage of the 360 foot fly balls will be useful. Those aren't useful hit to center. No idea if these trends hold long term. Like can Kirk and Vladdy have the same ground ball and fly ball and hard hit rates, but Vladdy hit's grounders into the shift, and fly balls to center, but Kirk hits foul pole to foul pole and is better long term?? Or will it just even out. Like eventually one week Vlad will random pull a bunch of 380 foot homers instead of flyouts to center... hmmm...

He hit .230 in Las Vegas one year with like a 25 - 115 bb/k... then he came back and was better in Las Vegas the next year. It was Las Vegas though. Crazy place for hitting. Hitting .230 in Vegas is pretty bad. Most random guys hit .300 in Vegas no problem. So even Arencibia 2010 season in Vegas wasn't super impressive. If 19 year old, 230 pound lightning-cat Vlad went to Vegas he'd probably hit .500... Well for a while at least, the Buffets would of sped up his transition to 270 pound panda-cat Vlad from a matter of months to weeks.

One of the partly true things said on this board is that Cito Gaston was very popular. After Arencibia went 4 for 4 in his debut he didn't play much the rest of the year because "Buck" I think was the veteran. Buck "I love Cito. Cito's the guy. I love keeping my job" In retrospect Arencibia sucked, so maybe Cito was right. Still you want to look at the young players. How would Cito handle the Jansen/Kirk situation?? He'd play Joseph. Joseph is the veteran in this triangle. Years later Joseph would say "I love Cito. I loved him in 2020. He was a players manager. A great guy. I loved playing down the stretch for Cito a beautiful man" Cito isn't the manager, so how will Charlie handle this? It won't be Joseph at least.

I know you are half kidding, I guess, probably. Jansen can be a 3 WAR player if he hits .230. He's 2018 Russel Martin. Another loss of Covid ball -- don't get to find out if Jansen could of got the Average up over .200 again and collected a couple of WAR.

Pudge wasn't much of a hitter at first. Came up really young then got better and better and peaked as a great power hitter, though that was in the late 90s *. No idea if Pudge was a user. I think there were rumors but it came from Canseco or something. Mauer was always a natural hitter. Kirk is much more like Mauer. Numbers in the minors are comparable. Also - Vladdy and Kirk both played at BlueField, Lansing, and Dunedin. Kirk's overall numbers if you combine the three levels are better. That is from killing Bluefield, but being just a tad behind in Lansing and Dunedin. It's hard to evaluate guys without minor leagues. In a normal year kirk would been in New Hamphire and Buffalo before coming up in September. There wouldn't be any surprise or a-ball to majors narrative.

I saw that. Is he any better then Rowdy long term though?? The walk rate is intriguing.

As much as I complain I'm not sure sending him down is the right move. I just glanced at Juan Soto vs Vlad on fangraphs and honestly didn't come away with an obvious difference. Soto's ground ball rates seem to be high too. Biggest different I found was in zone swing rate. Vladdy is chasing less than last year, but swing a lot in zone. I want to see him over 150 games, let him get comfortable and settle into hot streaks -- sending him down next year gives him another split season... On the other hand maybe getting sent down helps mentally. Like a refresh. I guess give him 6 weeks next year, and if it looks like this send him down?

He didn't rebuild in 2000. Those bad numbers were just part of his terrible 2000 season. The rebuild started in 2001. He was sent to a-ball and made his way up from there. In 2001 his numbers, especiall k/bb were dynamite everywhere and completely different than anything he did before.

You can't just forget the last 6 games. I guess if you really want to remove the 6 game losing streak, in that case we need to evaluate Charlie as 26-20 on a +8 or do you want to take away the Mets blow out too?? Charlie 26-19 - on a + 27 run differential. So if we remove the blowouts, it seems Charlie is performing about at his run differential. Is it fair to just remove the Blue Jays blow outs though?? If you wanted to use 'Run differential - top 6 blow outs' Charlie would still look good compared to other managers. I'm not saying Charlie is good. Just that he is not having a huge effect on the W/L. Logic on the other side seems to be "Charlie has made 5 terrible moves that resulted in a TSN turning point. Let's back track, undo those moves and we get 5 more wins" When really that's just saying, if we undo the TSN turning point it helps a lot... and it would if you had a time machine. Since we don't have a time machine the best we can do is change the future. If you have 15 moves you are concerned about that resulted in 5 losses, you could do all 15 correct moving forward, but it would probably result in 5 losses again. In the real long term over many years you could gain a win or 2... maybe. If there were 150 moves that resulted in 50 losses, doing it the other way might get you an extra win. "Strategy" doesn't swing things more that a game or 2 in a 160 game season, or a fractional game in a 60 game season.

Brom was on deck and he has the same lifetime OPS as Harper. I admit it would of been righty vs lefty with Harper, righty vs righty with Brom. I am suspect he made the move that was correct in the win probability sense. Putting the winning run on is almost never a good move. I guess you are discounting Brom, as you assume he isn't for real. His minor league record is decent enough. It doesn't seem an "obvious" decision to me, unless you are player development expert and are able to confidently discount Brom.

You can't cherry pick it. Run differential is often like that. If you used that logic you could say the Jays are as good as the Yankees because the differences between them only occurred in 6 games. You could say the 2015 Jays weren't as good as their differential because 35 of that was done in a 5 game winning streak in late August.

This seems another case where we are saying the same thing. To keep players as productive as possible you do everything you can to make sure they are in shape and don't make mental errors. Not saying we hold him responsible for every player's success and failure, just evaluate him as the "quarterback" of the coaching staff and training staff. Coaching staff is responsible for keeping team healthy, producitve (hitting mechanics) and mentally ready. There are arguments to be made both ways.

Long time posters have pointed out that they would like to see the scientific method used more on this illustrious board. Almost impossible to use a real controlled study on this and it would be immoral. You could select all pitchers mid 30s and older and give half TJ, and the other half as control group. However the control group would know they didn't get TJ, even if you gave them a fake operation, they'd know whether their arm still works or not when they wake up. One thing you can do is take all pitchers 35-39 who have had TJ and come back to MLB, and use them as Verlander's comparison group. It isn't really fair to start at Verlander's age and go up, because then Verlander is by definition the youngest in the group. Just a small thing you could do to help make this place more scientific.

A quick investigation reveals that Jamie Moyer got Tommy John at an age 10 years older than Justin Verlander will be getting his at. Moyer came back and put up a 5.70 era for Colorado. ERA isn't the best measure for those who follow the newer stats, and Jamie Moyer didn't rely on velocity, and it was only 50 innings. But then again... 5.70 era isn't all that bad in Colorado 5.70 era isn't all that bad for a 49 year old 5.70 era isn't all that bad 1 year after TJ Not sure how this pertains to Verlander. We need more samples I guess. Make a list of all guys 37 and older who got Tommy John and came back to MLB.

If you look at the game probability measures none of the mistakes really change things much. Blue Jays have 52% chance of winning game, Charlie calls for the bunt, Blue Jays have 52% chance of winning after bunt. What do you think the win loss record of this team would be with perfect strategic managing but the same player performance?? I mean they already are out performing their run-differential. Do you think if Charlie didn't bunt 8 times it would change things a lot?