Olerud363

I didn't check and just trusted SaskJayFan.. either he was mistaken or just being sarcastic. For immediate release from the desk of Commissioner Rob Manfred. "The historic collapse of the Toronto Blue Jays combined with the expanded playoff format has given several long suffering teams a very good chance at making the playoffs. However this morning a false rumor was circulating that the Los Angeles Angels had for all intents and purposes clinched the last playoff spot, due to their easy remaining schedule. In the next 7 days the Angels will be facing the Padres and Dodgers, two very good teams. However given that the Padres and Dodgers both will have clinched a playoff spot these teams may not be playing with passion and intensity these final days. Thus the Angels schedule should be considered of intermediate difficulty. Not easy, but perhaps not hard. In our view the Angels, along with Baltimore, and Seattle all have equal chance to take the playoff spot vacated by the Blue Jays collapse." Commissioner Rob Manfred

I evaluate Charlie on player development and performance so at moments this season he looked OK. I know people disagree with me, but I don't think it's possible for a manager to add too much either way with "strategy". Main job of the manager is to coordinate the coaching staff, keep players healthy, keep players productive as possible given their talent, put players in a position to succeed. Depending on how the next 8 games play out that could play out either way. 60 game season sucks. No time to re-adjust, if they randomly end on a down note it could look really bad for the coaching staff. Charlie should be fired if they don't make the playoffs. It would be an implosion of such epic proportions there'd be no choice. Charlie should be fired if Shapiro isn't confident in his ability to run a coaching staff, keep a pitching staff healthy and productive and help develop players. Otherwise he can keep his jobs in my opinion. Shouldn't be fired for meaningless strategy mistakes.

87 - 7 games left 3.5 2020 - 8 games left 3 game lead Seattle, 3.5, Los Angleles, 3.5 Baltimore Baltimore gets to play head to head. Anaheim has an easy schedule and talent Seattle is looking to break 19 year playoff steak

Collapse continues no end in site. Every game feels impossible to win. I gave up on this one early. Probably irrational but when they couldn't get any lead off walks in, and Bo hit into the 3rd inning double play it felt over Looks like one of the teams will be within 3 after today. After tomorrow there could be a team within 2 with 7 to go. At that point it actually becomes far less remarkable then the 87 collapse.

Biggio is also a guy who supposedly had no talent. He was a contact hitter his first year and hit 0 home runs in a-ball. Then he remade himself, taking more pitches and swinging for hard contact at the cost of a mediocre season and a huge number of strikeouts in a+. He stuck with the approach though and here he is. It feels like every at bat Biggio takes a bunch of close pitches. He works hard. Looks in dynamite shape. Plays 4 positions. Is 20-0 as a base stealer. A lot of great things about Biggio, even if he had the same OPS as Vlad (which he doesn't)

Maybe they sat him because of the pitch that bounced off his helmet. And yes, maybe I'm being over dramatic.... If Sitting Vlad for c+ players becomes a regular thing next year it's more of a concern.... If he keeps on playing like this he deserves to be sat down for c+ players.... Hopefully mediocre Vlad ends April 1st 2021 and he arrives as an A player.

Very significant night in the road to Indy Ball. Vlad sits tonight so Villar/Panik/Shaw can all be in the lineup at the same time. Every other time he has sat in his career it's been "load management". But with 1 week to go is this really "load management"? If he was playing well he'd be in there. Not an outrageous decision, especially given the repeated defensive mistakes, but still a new era has begun. Vlad now has to play above replacement to get playing time. Makes sense. He was given 600 plate appearances or so. Going forward if he is below average he will lose playing time and risk a demotion, the days of unlimited playing time without performance are probably over.

>> 174/22 ans = 7.9091 Every 8 games or so. Keith Hernandez says he doesn't know if "that swing" will play. Says there is too much of an uppercut so he is hitting the top of the ball. I know this from watching the Mets broadcast the other night. Keith seems to think Vlad's swing needs to be shorter and flatter. They have made adjustments I believe late last year, and for a 2-3 week period this year... but the adjustments resulted in more strikeouts and less exit velocity so Vlad seemed to have given up on them quickly.

I think the Angels are the real threat. Trout, Rendon, Dylan Bundy, Ohtani. Ohtani hasn't hit but what if he does next week?? We play the Orioles in the final games. They just have to gain 1.5 for the final 3 to be relevant. With 5 hungry (or not so hungry) teams chasing us there are many scenarios for disaster, unless we win 3 more games. Can this team win 3 more games?

I agree. At the same time I can't believe how much I want to get the fake playoff spot, and how annoyed I am with these losses. It makes no sense. I guess getting the participation trophy feels like a required step on the road to the awesome 2021-2025 team... and not getting the fake playoff spot, would end the season on a down note with all kinds of questions.

Also, I am being a bad scientist with the above post. Just because he hit a homer 4 days ago doesn't mean he won't hit one tonight. It just seems that way. Every day he has about a 1/10 chance of hitting a homer that game, depending on the matchup and other things. It's independent of what happened the previous days. He could (and has) even hit two in a game.

Some guys are polluting last nights game thread with a "Vlad to Indy Ball" discussion. Nothing too new there. I will say Vlad is the same guy every night. 2-3 ground balls and something different. When the "something different" is the homer that comes around every 10 days and a grounder gets to the outfield he seems like he is turning it around. No. Next night no homer, and no grounders get by the infield. It happens the same over and over and over and over. He had a homer 4 days ago, so next homer will be in the Thursday to Saturday range next week. Tonight the only question is will a grounder get by the infield or not?

In 87, it was one on one, Detroit was the enemy and they played head to head the final weekend. In 2020 there are several enemies. Each unlikely to catch us, but if just one goes 6-2 we have to go 3-6. Can our beloved Blue Jays win 3 more games in their current configuration? The contenders Baltimore - well it would kind of suck if they get us -- is Orioles Hangout still operational? Kansas City - similar to Baltimore, an annoying organization whos rebuild should be 2 years behind us atleast. Detroit - WHAT IF HISTORY REPEATS AND IT IS DETROIT AGAIN JUST LIKE 87??? Seattle - Long playoff drought, if we collapse I'm OK with them getting in Angels - same. It would be OK to see Trout in playoffs. It is pretty amazing that 4/5 lose every night. On our side only 1/1 loses every night.

Really started following in 88, so my memory's from 87 are really from hearing them talk about it in '88. I remember Loyld Moseby was on the cover of Sports Illustrated October '88, except it probably sucked because the photo was taken a day or two before the 7 game losing streak started. They were probably eliminated when the issue came out. Don't remember the issue on the stands in '87, but I bought a used copy a couple of years later.

They platooned a bit. They had Mulliniks and Gruber at third I think, and McGriff and Fielder at DH. McGriff and Cecil Fielder were a seriously awesome DH in 87.

I can't believe how much I care about this playoff spot. It's completely irrational. In fact if you have to collapse every 30 years or so, the best time to collapse would be for a fake playoff spot with no fans. Minimizes revenue loss because of collapse. The irrational part of me thinks if they collapse it will have long term effects on the franchise. Saturday Morning October 1st 2016 sucked. Seemed it was an epic collapse and we were behind Orioles and Detroit and would only get 1 playoff spot from Donaldson/Bautista/EE. Then they won 6 epic games in a row until Andrew Millar stopped them.

It's like the X-Files You can't spell Fisher without Fish A Fish started the collapse And opened the door for the Trout. Scary.

At this point you have to think the Angels are the biggest threat. Looks like they might be the only ones to win tonight which would put them .5 behind the Mariners. Jays go 2-7, Angels need to go 6-2 I believe. How do they break they tie?? Does Trout sense the collapse? Does he smell opportunity?

It will be like the Vlad to Indy ball thread. Only Vlad keeps that thread alive. The Blue Jays win tomorrow the thread won't gain traction.

Can't imagine they've ever given up more runs in a 5 game stretch. There were a couple of nut crunching stretches in September 2016. One where they went from 2 up, to 2 down in the division with a 2-7 stretch and a 3 game losing streak where they lost the wild card lead and looked done (they came back the last 2 games). Not sure how any of it compares to getting beat 58-20 and starting to get nervous you can't win the 29 games needed for a Pandemic playoff ticket.

Before this thread gets merged into 'Blue Jays 2020' or whatever, please consider this is a place for those who remember 87 to support the newbies who haven't gone through a collapse. And of course it may be bat s*** crazy to think this is a collapse in progress. Like the Orioles are going make the playoffs 28-32?? I don't know. Is it possible for mods to pause the thread until which time they determine a collapse comparable to 1987 is happening, and then reactivate the thread, as comparisons of the two collapses will then be needed?

This is perhaps irrational at this point. Let's assume Mariners win tonight it's still a 3 game lead with 9 to go... Still it feels like 1987... let's compare 87 - 7 game losing streak. 87 - Did they turn it around? No. They couldn't. The season ended. 20 - 5 game losing streak. 20 - Did they turn it around? Unknown. 9 games left to find out. Will they win another game? Unknown but perhaps unlikely. It feels like this is the curse of Charlie and the fake playoffs. Will Seattle be happy to make the playoffs with 27 wins?? Ask them. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe Seattle wins the World Series. Or the Orioles. We will have to see.

Seriously messed up finger similar to what Sanchez went through for a couple of years.

They should have 2 young guys, hard core passionate sports fans, one a CS/Data graduate, the other a Kinesilogy graduate, pay them 50 grand for a year, team them with a 2 scouts, one young, one old and grumpy, have them consult with 2 sports psycholagists and 2 nutrition experts. Fund the entire thing for about 350k Entire project is dedicated to Vladimir Guerroro JR. A fat young man who should hit better then he is. Wouldn't the investment be worth it?? I guess they are likely doing this in some form or the other... you would think. Though if Charlie is an idiot and they can't recognize it, maybe there are other things they can't recognize. The question of whether Charlie is a complete idiot or not (the purpose of this thread), is highly correlated to the answers to a bunch of other questions.

Hard to see that they do. If you had accurate BMI and percentage body mass indexes for each year you could put them in. But It's hard to get accurate weights for players even in 2020, so hard to see how you'd get a good historical dataset. I would hope the high performance team is keeping careful track of all fatness related metrics and how it affects ability to hit. I know Vlad can still crank a grounder out at 115 once and a while, but is the fatness affecting his ability to hit different pitches consistently??