Olerud363

I know grumpy old men who boycotted the NBA. Others are all for the social justice messaging and have been supporting them as much as ever. Who is going to be looking for the games tonight?? The grumpy old men? I suspect they are tuned to Fox already.

If that is the case the timing is terrible, as tonight is Trump's speech... so they've made grumpy old white men, grumpier, and the only thing to watch is Trump speech, in which Trump will explain exactly why the grumpy old white men, missed their games. Don't think this is going to make the grumpy old white men into allies.

He had an all time great night last night for an average -15 launch angle. Two 110 mph groundball doubles. It looks according to the savant box score 110 mph at -4 degrees is still a .410 expected average, at -18 degrees it's only .210 or so. I think if he has to hit ground balls he needs to distribute them evenly so he's not shiftable. If he takes that approach he could still be a .300 hitter with 40 doubles, 20 homers, and if he can be really patient could still eke out a good career. Of course as everyone has pointed out if he can start hitting even an average amount of fly balls he is a man-god-legend-child and will for sure out hit even Fernando Tatis JR.

What does the process look like for finding the next Matt Stairs, Jose Bautista, Luke Voit, Gio Urshella?? a) dedicate to 1 guy like Rowdy cage match between Rowdy and Vogelbach and Fisher etc. I think you need to collect a lot of these 26-28ish guys and let them sort it out. Unless you have a super-computer that knows how to choose which guy, but I don't think they have that yet.

Also Buck just now -- "Home runs are like rally killers" Cito - "Don't need those base cloggers" -- Despite everything I haven't yet put Charlie below Buck and Cito... needs a couple of years of sub .300 obp teams and encouraging it for me to rank him that bad.

Dan and Buck hitting it on the nail... Tampa has a bullpen day last night and a major league debut today... Jays score 1 run last night, 2 so far today. Are they mentally prepared at the plate?? Vladdy takes two meatball hanging sliders right down the middle of the plate. Just randomly looking for something else?? Bad luck or wasn't prepared? Trent Thorton starts on 2 days rest after a terrible performance is seen grabbing his elbow before the game ... should he of even been out there?? Would Zeuch or someone been a better choice? These are the things that Charlie is in the end responsible for. Sure upper management and the analytics team has some responsibility too, but if Buck and random fans are asking these questions Charlie should be too. Every plate appearnaces Charlie should be asking -- is my hitter prepared to crush meatballs and take bad pitches?? Is he prepared enough to get the most out of his ability? Every pitching appearance Charlie should be asking -- is my pitcher healthy, mentally prepared and ready to rumble?? Sure the other coaches have important roles in this, but Charlie needs to be helping hire the right staff and ask the right questions.

I don't really care if they fire Charilie or not, but I'd have to see more from him to say he's worse than Gaston. Keep in mind how Gaston treated Olerud/Green and Snider. Imagine Charlie did that with Biggio ?? When Biggio was struggling last year he would been in Gaston's dog house and at the very least platooned, or perhaps replaced with a modern day Ruben Sierra or Jacob Brumfield. I just want to see the young hitters progress and the young pitchers keep healthy and find their roles. That's what I'm evaluating Charlie on, because I think it's the managers job to set the tone for the coaching staff. If the young players progress I'd be fine with keeping Charlie until he shows he can't handle a close pennant race or playoff series. These little minor non-optimal moves mid season aren't that important, at least in my opinion.

Nothing too crafty but Vladdy seems to be third and Teoscar 4th. Charlie is a moron. Vladdy has a higher on base percentage and Teoscar higher slugging. Doesn't our moron manager know the guy with the higher on base percentage should be fourth, so he can potentially lead off the second?? That is why LA was hitting Bellinger 4th a lot. Charlie has cost us 1/10000000 or so runs with this move that goes against all common sense. Fire Charlie. Fire him. Fire him now.

It was a lefty on the mound and the difference between Jansen and Biggio may not be as much as it appears right now. I suspect they have some analytics that Charlie is using, and analytics that uses minor league stats and batted ball data and also considers pitching type might have Jansen/Biggio vs Yarbrough closer then one would think. They were planning to hit Rowdy against a righty in a high leverage situation anyway, so the third spot was really Jansen + Rowdy. I agree 100% that they are probably being too clever if they are using over-fit analytics, or not clever enough if they are just throwing Jansen in the third spot based on a hunch, but it has marginal effect.

This looks like a close game developing. The .15 runs Charlie has lost us might matter in this one... How do we start the firing?? Do we call up customer support at Rogers with a complaint about one of their employees??

Good move. The extra 0.6 of an at bat given to Jansen instead of Biggio will cost them about .03 runs. However Jansen has missed 2 at bats of development time when bunting and the extra at bat will make up for one of them.

My list above I'm sure isn't that Great. Maybe. I don't know. Ben Greive wasn't really as good as accomplished as Vlad, but Nick Johnson had like a .500 on base percentage one year in the minors. Jeremy Giambi was a grown man in the minors. Maybe a bad list... Who are the most comparable prospects to Vlad?? Maybe almost nobody has done what he did to the minors as a teen-ager... even Pujols and Cabrera didn't smash the leagues apart. which brings us back to why the hell is it not translating (yet?). Bo and Bichette seem to be the same player in the majors as minors. The translation worked so far for them, and for Reese McGuire and Rowdy (same weaknesses in minors and majors)... and Teoscar has translated OK. Why isn't Vlad translating? Imagine when he does.

I think the prospect ratings are as good as they can be given the inherent randomness in sports. However the uncertainty isn't really expressed. One thing that they need to do is put out a list of the 10 most similar prospects. For Vladdy I can think of Pujols, Cabrerra, Prince Fileder, Jesus Montero, Nick Johnson, Jayson Heyward (as a hitter), Delmon Young, Ben Grieve, Matt Wieters (as a hitter), Jason's Giambi's brother Even for prospects of Vladdy's level the failure rate may be 50%, and the "Pujols" rate may be 10%. Vlad JR. needed to come with a warning. Dear fans -- we are introducing a new player called Vladimir Guerrero JR. Please do not believe the hype. There is only a 10% chance he will be a Pujols. There is a 40% chance he will be a very good hitter and nice piece for our upcoming run at some playoff spots. There is a 50% chance that he will just be a big fat ass who hits the ball hard sometimes and is dissapointing in a number of ways, see Grieve Ben and Giambi's brother. Thank you.

I mean fair enough. I don't care if they bunt or don't bunt as long they don't bunt 150 times. Whether it's 4 times a year or 30 I don't care, unless it is hurting the players somehow. The only guys that have bunted are the .150 hitting catchers. 4 bunts this year (all catchers). However if the 2 are related, that Jansen and Reese have been bunting in the late innings when they should of learned how to hit ace relievers, if that is the case then stop the bunting if it is making our catchers suck... but it's probably not exactly the case and Charlie's bunting isn't unusual in any way. Charlie bunted 14 times last year https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TOR/2019.shtml Gibby bunted 30 times with a high on base percentage home run crazy offense (this was before 300 homers was the new 240) https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TOR/2015.shtml

He's made some small improvements but they probably aren't statistically significant yet. Cavan Biggio swings at 15% out of zone, and about 60 in zone. Randall is still at 30 out of zone, from around 35 other years. As a side note Vladdy probably swings too much in and out of zone. (goes to fangraphs takes a look at Trout and Juan Soto) Trout, Soto and Biggio swing about 35% of the time. Vladdy and Grichuk still swing 50% of the time

He's always been a 2+ WAR guy even with a .290, .300 on base percentage. Last year it took a .280 on base percentage and a slip in D to get him down to 0.5. If his defense rebounded he could be a 4-5 WAR guy with a .340 on base percentage. This year he's projected as a 5 WAR guy but that is with -8 defense... I think getting guys not to completely suck is important. A good team has a few great players and a few players who aren't the worst. Improving fat-asses like Vlad from a -20 defensive rating to -5 would be huge. Improving base non-cloggers from a .280 on base percentage to .300 is big. Improving an innings eating piece of s*** from a 6.00 era to 4.75 would be big. That's assuming you develop some stars and the above are the other guys.

I should concede that obviously the bunting won't always be successful. The bunt itself won't change win probability, but a guy might not get the bunt down, or a guy can be thrown out at another base. So in the long run Charlie will move the win probability down a bit by constantly bunting, but it's not that big of a deal. The bigger issue is still the player development aspect. If he is so dumb as to make these minor, but also un-needed moves, that hurt the team a small amount, how can he be smart enough to monitor the coaches?? To monitor players health. To tweak mechanics. To understand scouting reports. To help players with their approach at the plate, pitch sequencing for pitchers. I know the coaches are responsible for most of this, but the manager supervises the coaches, so that's an important aspect of his job.

Not saying we should keep him. Just saying he (along with the coaches) should be evaluated on Player development, not whether he bunts in the 7th changing win probability from 70% to 70%. This time Danny Jansen's bunt apparently moved the win probability up a bit 55% to 56%. Blue Jays message board: Charlie has changed the win probability not at all with his stupid moves. I hate Charlie for making moves that don't matter. Also Blue Jays message board: Nate Pearson is having a rough time. Is what it is. Good coaching wouldn't change it. There is no usage pattern, pitch selection pattern, preparation pattern that will help Nate. Of course a lot of good things are happening too, Biggio, Romano, the manager and coaching staff should be evaluated on the player development picture as a while, not on moves that don't change the win probability.

I'm being over dramatic to some extent... last year this kind of thread was ridiculous. However this year the Vladimir bust theme has more to to it. It's discouraging to see that the two problems (conditioning and ground ball rate) are worse this year... no matter what problem domain it is a bad sign when identifiable problems become worse instead of better. You work at Subway and need to be there at 8:30, first month on the job you show up at 8:45... manager identifies a problem, speaks to you, then next month your showing up at 9:00... you get fired. That's it. A major league baseball super prospect will have more rope, but annoying that the easily identified problems are getting worse.

At that point he'd be a bad month or an injury away from busting sadly. Both Travis Snider and Jesus Montero busted beyond repair at age 23... up to their age 23 season they had similar numbers to Vlad, then a bad month busted them. Guerrero is a year behind Montero and Snider... a bad month in 2021 likely just gets him sent down to condition and rebuild his swing with another shot in 2022. Hopefully he won't need a demotion, but if it happens we won't be able to officially call him a bust until we see how he reacts to the demotion. Does he give up or come back stronger??

He is striking out a bit less than those guys... over 160 he's at about 118 ks, while Teoscar is at 188... so more balls in play. He is still striking out more than his minor league numbers suggested, his projections would indicate less than 100 ks a year. So what was suppose to happen is he'd hit the ball hard a lot, walk more than his Dad, and k less than 100 times a year. Scary thing is though Pujols is still hitting the ball hard with a fairly low k rate and it leads to .250 .300 .420 or so... Laika disagreed but he think might have to hit to all fields to beat the shifts. On the other hand Fernando "franchise changing legend" Tatis isn't hitting oppo too much... though on the highlights it looks like he is hitting oppo homers every night. hmmmmm... Maybe obesity and ground balls just don't work post 2012... with all the shifts and data they know how make fatties ground out.

I agree but what happened to Montera and Delmon young should be a warning... even what happened to Pujols and Cabrerra in their 30s should be a warning. Prince Fielder is the exception, can most of these big guys, even ones with lots of talent hit when they are out of shape? Seems these big guys tank fast when they lose a step, whether from age, conditioning, or both.

Fernando Tatis hit two bombs and continues to produce mind blowing, franchise changing, legend making, community building, historic numbers. Vlad hit two ground balls. Amazing how day after day, it's 2 ground balls out of 3 in play.

I don't understand the focus on Montoya's inconsequential moves. I looked up the win probability box score the other day, and even the worst Montoya moves don't mean much The Reese Mcquire bunt Sunday moved Jays probability of winning from 70% all the way down to 70%. If this went on over and over throughout the season it may cost the Jays a game or two. Or maybe it wouldn't. It's all about Player development nothing else matters. Good teams are made of 5 and 6 WAR players... developing 5 or 6 WAR players is all that matters. Not Charlies stupid moves that changes the win probability from 70.38 to 70.11

Awesome for Boston, They reset their salary cap, will draft high, will have a large international bonus pool, all while tanking a season that no one will make much revenue anyway.. This is an organization that has won 4 world series in the last 16 years, including a World Series in 2013 with a team built on the fly off of a last place finish. I wouldn't put it past them to do it again in the near future.