Olerud363

You have some good points here. Hopefully the team recognizes all this even after losing a tough series. Hopefully after losing game 6 they said... all we have to do is come back next year and do the exact same thing. Good defense, hit some jacks, be patient at the plate.

It's a complicated issue. Revere and Pillar had good enough on base base averages last year given their other contributions. If Pillar hits .280 he's a fine player, if Revere hits .320 he's a fine player. The problem is that if Pillar hits .250, and Revere hits .290, they might not be good enough to play on a contender. Does the team recognize that?? Do they understand that Revere and Pillar and Goins, as a group need to put up a .320 on base percentage. If they slip to .280 as a group it doesn't matter what their character is.

I mostly agree with you then. A key for next year is for Pillar and Goins and Pompey (if he gets significant playing time) to keep their on base percentages at around .320. If guys like Donaldson and Martin really do help them accomplish that... that is an argument for "character".

Gruber -- people are frustrated with you and AA, because apparently neither of you understand why the team won. It wasn't character, it was because they had a Yankees/Red Sox approach to hitting. Be patient and then knock the tar out of the ball. Even your best buddy Ryan Goins was extremely patient. Ryan Goins moved from "piece of crap" to "maybe just maybe he's a player" because a) he has character he is gritty c) for some reason he started taking a surprising number of walks If you say anything else but c) you don't understand the blue jays 2015 season. If AA doesn't say c) he doesn't understand it and should be fired. If Ryan Goins does become a "player" it's because he has turned the corner with plate discipline. If Goins goes back to a his previous walk rate he's not a viable major leaguer. So you can go on about character all you want. Plate discipline is much more important. Hopefully internally the Jays know this, and can help Ryan Goins, and the rest of the players to future success (regardless of character).

The ironic is that if we do this a couple more years... make the playoffs but not the World Series, the "character" of this team will start becoming a problem again. As soon as next year if the Jays build a power house, win 100 and lose to a play off series to a luck-plucky team people will start questioning the character of the team.

Replacing Lawrie and Rasmus with Donaldson and Pillar was a 10 WAR increase in production. Pillar is a guy that got sent down for taking a fit after getting pinch hit for, Donaldson got traded because Billy Beane didn't like something he said. Playing well quickly solves character issues.

You're absolutely right. I didn't look closely at his argument. Full apologies.

As far as I can see he hasn't accounted for ageing either. The guys in the second sample are a year older. Many, if not most of the guys making a league transition after a 100 inning season will be on the wrong side of the aging curve.

Our chances of winning the series went from 50% to 20% in about 10 minutes last Saturday... I guess this could be worse. If we get a big lead the chances chances of winning the series go back to almost 50% (ie if it's a 95% chance of winning tonight, and then 50 tomorrow). If we blow that lead fast the chances could go from 50 to 0... so that would be pretty devastating... otherwise we allready experienced the biggest probability drop.

It's so crazy. Donaldson had 40 doubles and (as far as I could see) had a great season hitting opp-field. Let's say you turn 20 of Donaldson's homers to doubles. Then he would hit 60 doubles and 20 homers, and there would be a narrative that Donaldson was the grittiest, dirt-bag, line drive hitting doubles machine ever seen. Reynolds would say "Donaldson almost broke the doubles record, I haven't seen a guy like him... well since Don Mattingly or Paul Molitor... he's totally old school.. 60 double!!!! That's the way the game was meant to be played." Turning 20 of Donaldson's homers into doubles would make him a worse player, but I bet the media would think he's better. And if you took away 50 of his walks, and replaced them with 15 singles (15/50 so it didn't effect his average much), then Harold would think Donaldson is almost good enough to play for the Royals.!!!!

Looking at the park factors K.C. seems neutral to slightly hitter friendly. However it does repress homers http://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=pf&season=2014&teamid=0 Rogers center overall park factor is similar to Kaufman. However the homerun ractor is higher. K.C. 0.95, to Rogers 1.09 Putting it all together I'd say if you have 10 homerruns in Rogers center, 8 of them will leave K.C., one of them will become a double and 1 an out.... Somehow there are about as many runs scored in Kaufmann as in Rogers. Not sure of all the reasons. Maybe the grass is fast?? Jays hit a lot of hard ground balls, and liners to the gaps. Maybe these have a better chance of being single/doubles Kaufmann.

Crazy talk. All ready told my buddy the Mets fan to watch out for the Royals. The Mets young arms won't have a chance against the aggressive Royals. Harvey, Degrom and Thor are used to passive hitters taking their fastballs, Royals are going send the fastballs up the middle in clutch situations. Rex Hudler's Royals win it in NY. Only question is will the Farm Boys be intimidated celebrating in the big city?? Harold Reynolds seems a little more worldly, since the Royals have revolutionized baseball for Reynolds, I hope he shows them some good places to celebrate.

It's unbelievable, they got this guy Gordon hitting 8th, he's no Escobar or Salvadore Perez, but the Royals are sooo good... Gordon is not aggressive enough to be elite, but he's a perfect 8 hitter, his passive approach doesn't hurt the team at 8. A lot teams would have to hit Gordon 1st or 2nd where he'd get exposed by fastballs down the middle.

This is so f***ing stupid it is ridiculous. But how can we blame these guys when the media is just as f***ing stupid. Last night on prime time sports they were trying to figure out the last time a good hitting team won the series. AND THEY f***ING COULDN'T. 2013 Sox, 2011 Cards, 2009 Yanks -- were hitting dominant teams. Your not going to make the Series if your pitching sucks rocks. However these teams had dominant hitting. 1993 Blue f***ing Jays -- won all their series games with 8 or more f***ing runs. Blue Jays - lets win 15-14 against a bunch of beer leaguers. Let's win 8-6 on a last minute famous homerun. I KNOW HALF OF f***ING YOU WEREN'T EVEN BORN IN 1993 and ARE SICK OF HEARING OF IT!!!! And that's fine. But Bob McCowan was godamn alive and well in '93 -- and as a media member it's his job to say - "Remember in 1993 when they won 8-3, 11-3, and then f***ing 15-14" 15 TO f***ING 14 That is winning the series with hitting.

Let me ask you this. What would Ryan Goins OPS against Bob Gibson?? The AVERAGE OPS against Gibson was about .600 so Aaron was above average against Gibson. One of Gibson's team mates in 1968 was a guy called Larry Jaster. I never heard of him before 5 minutes ago.. I just went to look up an average sort of guy that played in the same era. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=jastela01&year=Career&t=p Jaster won 30 something games 3.5 or so era... you know what his career OPS against was?? .709. So great hitters turn Bob Gibson into Larry Jaster.

Wind needs to be blowing out for Saturday...

Sarcasm. I'm not that religious myself, but don't have strong feeling for or against organized religion. I do have strong feeling against those who believe baseball gogmas like "good pitching beats good hitting" (except when it doesn't).

David Murphy is very religous. I'm sure Jesus is having a role in all this. This just proves the point, Hitting good pitching in the playoffs is so hard that it can only be done if Jesus intervenes.

I'm still waiting for Brett Wallace to win the batting title... wait?? Didn't we actually get Wallace back this year?? So we actually do have our lefty bat for next year as long as we get Wallace signed to a contract and put him on the 40 man... Grant promised that Wallace would be a hitting machine, and Grant is never wrong.

It's such ********. I heard a recap of the '85 playoffs and they were claiming George Brett just willed them to win... sure... And he didn't want to "will" them to win the other 7 times Royals were in the playoff in the 70s and 80s??? He didn't want to will them into the playoffs in the twilight of his career?? George Brett made the playoffs 7 times, won the series once.

No it's all true. Good pitching beats good hitting except when it's David Price, Clayton Kershaw or Cueto. I guess those guys are weak mentally.

First ptich - swinging strike (game day shows ball bounce at 45 feet) YAAAAAYYY!!!!! Harold Reynolds - and he's swinging, he didn't get that one, but I like it. He's not going to take a walk. Go Escobar!!!!!

Between Donaldson, Tulo, Bautista and EE we have a combined 10 years of control over big scary right handed slugger bat. Why would we trade 5 of them?? Why would we trade the one who plays short stop?? This is insanity I am Tulo, I am the short stop, I can hit .278 with 29 homers and 93 rbis I am Goins, I am the short stop, I can hit .220 with 7 homers and 36 rbis We have 2 short stops trade one!!!!!!!!!

Harold Reynolds is very excited to see his hero, his god, his man-love, Escobar recieve the ALCS MVP trophy. This is something we need to stop, I don't know how, I just don't, but we have to stop it. first pitch 4:07 (in play (no outs)) -- Reynolds - "that's how you play the game, swing early, swing often." NOOOOOOOO!!!

I have a feeling Gibby will do down fighting with all his bullets... if he somehow survives he'll figure out what to do then.