Olerud363

there was zero need for ikf and vogel

Totally. The one thing AA did in 2015 was leave a little room for some young players. Travis, Pompey, Pillar and Goins were all given spots and contributed 6 or 7 WAR.

Maybe he learned from misery izturis or whatever that guys name was. No need for ikf for f***s sake. And vogel? Maybe even no need for Turner (though he is playing well).

I think everyone should prepare themselves for YEARS of misery. I mean what at the chances the new GM is even good? Like 50% There's a good chance we hire a boob who makes this worse and suddenly we're the White Sox - who not so long ago were flush with great young players and prospects themselves. There's a good probability we're a last place team until the turn of the decade.

Hopefully it self regulates

1. If they are a 55 win last place team, after a couple of good drafts international signing phases they bounce back quick. 55 win teams should be able to get players that can arrive in 2 years (whether it be 18 year old superstuds arriving at 20, or good college players).

SO could go 71 55 53 65 90

2. If they are a 72 win last place team that could go on forever as the 11th pick isn't as much of a sure thing.

HERE IT IS

1. Win 50 a couple of times

2. Hire 40 nutritionists, 40 sports mechanic experts, 40 psychologists. ANNOUNCE. VLADIMIR GUERRERO JR FAILED. BO BICHETTE FAILED. MANOAH FAILED, KIRK FAILED. Pearson failed. Biggio FAILED!

THEY CRashed to nothing at combined age of 25.5. A devastating horrible experience for Toronto sports fans. We are sorry. We are so sorry. Shapiro was a phony. Atkins an obedient puppy dog. WE ARE NEW REGIME AND WE LOVE YOU. WE WILL TRY TO RETURN HAPPINESS TO BLUE JAY LAND IN 2029.

HISTORY WILL NOT REPEAT. Everything will be done with new group. Psychology, Nutrition, mechanics, everything will be optimized. They will be monitored closely from 18 to 28 and everything possible will done for these players to have normal development curves as follows

18-20 minor leagues

21-23 - early major leagues 88% of capabilities

24-27 - early peak 100% of capabilities

28-30 - late peak 99% of capabilities

31-33 - early decline 95% of capabilities

He's the youngest player in that league. He's struggled a bit, but this is beyond early for any judgement given his age.

I remember watching the Derek Jeter documentary and Jeter totally sucked as an 18 year old, and it is true. Jeter was at a lower level than Nimmila and sucked hitting .200.

Long time ago but I am always interested in the question as to what is the best outcome a player has had when they look like player X.

Of course I am sure you can find 100 18 year old short stops who were first or second round draft picks (Tucker Toman cough, Kevin Ahrens cough) and their first 25 games in A ball told you everything you needed to know...

Honestly this year sucks, and everything nice is taken away and given to the Orioles. Their Joy is unlimited, their happiness unbounded, yes maybe Holliday is performing bad but they get a Holliday no problem with the 40th pick (Gunnar Henderson) and will probably get 3 more with their first 3 picks...

What I am saying is in a world where everyone got a little bit to be happy about, Jays would suck, but Nimilla and Bonilla would be hitting in A-ball giving a bit of joy and hope and box scores to loook at...

Instead there are no nice things, probably no nice things for a couple years, when the next happy thing will appear I do not know....

Yep, they'll need to focus on rebuilding for a couple of years. The fans will have to understand it is going to take time since the prospect pool is thin right now. The good news is that the Jays have the resources to add free agents when the time is right again.

Get the new GM in tonight, then do some rapid fire trades. Get rid of Turner and Isiah and Biggio and make room for Barger, Howritz.

Turner is great just need to get Howritz 500 ABs to find out if the 'no power Bro' evaluation of Howritz is true. Need infield room for Barger and later Orelvis.

Gausman, Vlad, Kooch, Berrios, Bichette, Romano trades can be closer to the deadline.

Special message from commissioner Rob Manfred

Baseball is a game of legends, a game of dynasties, a game of joy.

Your team can't win every year so to be a fan you must be a fan of the game. If you are serious about a positivity thread you must find joy in the positive success stories around the game.

It was just this week announced that Baltimore has the player of the month, and the rookie of the month, and 3 first round draft picks coming off of a 101 win season. We have never seen anything like this.

Not content to be a distance second, the Washington DC Metro areas National League entry looks to be on the verge of contention soon as well, as we saw by their heart warming series win over Toronto.

Are we on the verge of a beltway series? I would not be surprised if we see that soon, but it is oh so important that the Nationals have success too as they will be in the shadow of the Baltimore multi-generational dynasty for the next several decades.

So as baseball commissioner I am pleased as punch to see the Nationals play well over the weekend.

Baseball, a game of joy, a game of happiness, a game for the fans! Enjoy it all beltway fans. Enjoy it all!

No. Its time. The Jays need to clean house to bring in new objective leadership to lead the transition from the Bo & Vlad era. Sooner the better. Thanks Mark...we'll always have the cup holders.

Shapiro isn't going to be fired probably until his contract runs out. Justin Trudeau may resign before the next election if polls look horrible but won't be fired tonight.

This game will end at 6:10. Atkins and Schneider need to be fired before 7:00. Interim manager can be anyone. Mattingly for all I care.

New GM search begins. Should take 4 weeks at it, then the new guy has a chance to prepare for trade deadline and a couple weeks for the draft I guess. The right GM trading Bo, Vlad, Kirk, Gausman, Kooch, Berrios, Romano, Varsho can get some stuff.

Announce to the fans that there will be two 45 win a year a seasons in 2025 and 2026 and that they will be looking to pull a baltimore/houston type turn around going right from 45 to 90 in 2027. Tell fans any game the Jays winning percentage is below .400 beer will be half price.

why the f*** are they putting the bunt on with clement who almost never strikes out and is extremely tough to double up. f*** off schneider.

Following need to all resign tonight at 7:00 pm

1. John Schneider

2. Ross Atkins

3. Mark Shapiro

4. Justin Trudeau

Please god tell me Vlad didn't do that whisper finger gesture s***.......

Oh yeah + a fake put on the homerun jacket thing which is new... lol. Just for the laughs I hope he hits a homerun today in the 9th to make it 14-9 Nationals and puts on the whole show for you guys.

Pearson is officially a flop.

This entire organization is a joyless flop.

Yes, but if there was an expanded Wildcard like there is today, maybe the Jays under JPR make some more/different moves at the trade deadline in 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2008 or even during the offseason. Those were solid teams he put together. Also, factor in that decade the AL East pretty much was dominated by the Yankees and the Red Sox. It was like having the Dodgers & Braves in the same division.

 

I wouldn't say JPR had more success during his tenure than Atkins. I still prefer Atkins to JPR but at the end of the day I don't think there was much of a difference between the two. If Atkins gets the praise he does on here by some members, JPR shouldn't receive as much hate as he gets.

The quality of 2005-2010 teams was similar to the 2020-2023 teams in terms of run differential. Can't believe people don't get that if the 89th win was important (which it wasn't in that era) the team would have done much more to get the 89th win.

JP's *best* team won 87 games and still likely wouldn't have made the playoffs a single time even with expanded playoffs. This doesn't really feel like an apples to apples comparison if you are going to legitimately say that JP had more success in his tenure as Blue Jays GM. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Thing is though they would have been contending for a playoff spot in 2003/2005/2006/2007 and 2008 so may have made different moves at the deadline and offseason.

From 2005 to 2009 they weirdly under-performed expected wins almost every year, I believe the run differential from 2005-2009 is better than the best 5 year run differential of AA or Shatkins.

Quality of the team from 2005 to 2010 (which was still basicaly Ricciardi's team) was good. With expanded playoffs it is pretty reasonable to say they squeak a few more wins out each year if they are playing for something the entire time... instead they were mostly 10 games behind Red Sox/Yankees/Rays most of the season.

Obviously we don't know what's going on and you could be correct. My comment stems from a comment made by Turner who said "what if" in response to what's the problem a week ago. What if it's a slider. Guys are caught between pitches. That and we've steadily gotten worse for a couple years now offensively. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Whatever caused George Springer to take a 90 mph fastball in a 1-1 count right down the middle has to change. If its more analytics, not less so be it.

 

My thoughts are truly wild speculation of a frustrated fan. I fully admit it..lol. I think if Joey Votto retired and immediately became our hitting coach tomorrow and tried to get players to do all the things he did as a hitter that it would fail spectacularly. All players have different strengths and some aren't capable of doing the things Votto did in his career.

 

My hypothesis is our organization is well versed in identifying what good hitters do to be successful and are trying to mold or fix players rather than playing to their strengths. I could be completely off base. Whatever we are doing it isn't working. That's the obvious thing. The solution is a sphynx riddle.

Totally agree that it is frustrating beyond belief. On the "Whatever we are doing it isn't working" note... why does Vlad Guerrero Jr. play 160 games?

In 2019 he was given an off day 2-4 times a month. Which was frustrating because Tosco was brain dead about it (like giving him an off day in front of a big Victoria day home crowd after a big weekend on the road)...

Still they maybe try the Barry Bonds treatment with Vlad? 145 starts, 150 or so games. Why not at this point. Why load manage him as a fresh 20 year old but not as a struggling beat up looking at times, 23-25 year old?

It's all... all the other ones

A special message from commissioner Rob Manfred

In honor of your positivity thread here is the positive story of the day. Gunnar Henderson, 2023 rookie of the year and led the Orioles to 101 wins. 2024 major league homerun leader and has the Orioles on pace for even more wins!

Now that the Orioles have won 101 they will surely lose out in the draft? Not so fast. To keep the game strong we need dynasties so give teams with top performing Rookies even more draft picks and for that reason, the Orioles (thanks to Gunnar Henderson) will have three first round draft picks this year!

So many good things happening to our Oriole friends and it is such a delight to see Blue Jays fans cheering with them, instead of just frowning as their own prospects, like that Indian kid, fail! **

(** Nothing against Indian kids, we are totally confident that once the Orioles get their hands on one, baseball will indeed have it's first Eastern Indian Star!!!)

Baseball, a game of joy, a game of legends!

This has been a special message from commissioner Rob Manfred

As an outsider how do we know that 'simplifying' things will help? What if the problem is the opposite that they aren't advanced enough?

 

Here are the opposite problems.

 

1. Jays analytics is behind the times so when they say 'look slider in this count' they are just wrong. Solution is not to go old school but to get better at analytics.

 

2. Jays video and pitch machine prep is way behind so not recognizing out of pitcher's hand as good as other teams. Correct me if I am wrong, but these teams have massive video analysis teams, and pitch machines that can replicate any pitch. The good teams are having their hitters exposed to both video and pitch machines and getting good at recognizing pitches early. Jays are behind on this.

 

I guess the concern I have is that if the problem is that the Jays analytics is two years behind, then going old school will just make the situation worse.

Maybe a dedication thing to. Maybe Ohtani when he is not gambling and throwing his translator under the bus is just video/video/video/prep/prep/prep. Some of the Jays personalities aren't prep-rats as much.

Maybe some of the young players will be better prep-rats.

George Springer took a 90 mph fastball from a lefty right down the middle. Middle, middle! No swing. They are playing paper, scissors rock with these pitchers. Pre game meetings going over a million scenarios. Well in the pre game meeting he was suppose to throw me a slider in that count. Seriously. Look for a pitch, adjust to what comes. Trust your eyes and your natural athletic ability. Swing and miss might go up a tick, but the problem isn't the swing and miss. It's missing pitches you should do damage on.

 

Bo, Vlad and Springer were all great in training. Granted there are all types of pitchers, some not major leaguers. The vast majority of pitchers they faced in spring were major leaguers. There's not scouting reports or pre game meetings. You go out and trust your eyes and hit the ball.

 

4 f***ing hitting coaches. How many little mechanical adjustments are these guys making on a day to day basis? You need to tinker and make adjustments but there's too many voices. Fire 3 of these guys and have one consistent voice. Implementing minor mechanical adjustments takes times. These guys aren't hitting and will literally try anything to break out and they have way too many voices in the room.

 

The bulk of failure is mental right now. That's down to process in place. That flows from Atkins down to Schneider to the staff and the players. A strong manager might step in and change the process. Schneider clearly isn't that guy. We aren't getting rid of Atkins. We probably need to get rid of Schneider and bring in a strong manager with experience and give him some autonomy.

 

There was a report from a reporter last week that Terry francona's health was improving dramatically and he stated a desire to get back into managing. Just saying.

As an outsider how do we know that 'simplifying' things will help? What if the problem is the opposite that they aren't advanced enough?

Here are the opposite problems.

1. Jays analytics is behind the times so when they say 'look slider in this count' they are just wrong. Solution is not to go old school but to get better at analytics.

2. Jays video and pitch machine prep is way behind so not recognizing out of pitcher's hand as good as other teams. Correct me if I am wrong, but these teams have massive video analysis teams, and pitch machines that can replicate any pitch. The good teams are having their hitters exposed to both video and pitch machines and getting good at recognizing pitches early. Jays are behind on this.

I guess the concern I have is that if the problem is that the Jays analytics is two years behind, then going old school will just make the situation worse.

There's a huge adjustment once you get to the MLB level. Look at Holliday the number 1 prospect in baseball, he couldn't hit s*** when he came up.

 

Everyone always clamors for a "sustained window" however its pretty hard to actually pull that off since there is a big learning curve at the MLB level and rookies often struggle.

This is one of those things that I'm not sure is true or not just going by my memory of various players first 50-100 at bats.

Bo Bichette, Davis Schneider, Brett Lawrie, Devon Travis, and many others all did fine their first 100 or so PAs. Scheider and Travis under pressure of playoff expectations.

Going way back Junior Felix, Fred McGriff, John Olerud all brought up in contending years and did fine.

The teams that do have sustained windows bring up Rookies. The Yankees have had 33 winning seasons in a row and cycles in Sanchez, Judge, and Torres in 2017 or so, and some other players last year.

So on average rookies do fine and do exactly as the minor stats predict with the usual variance of anyone in 40 at bats. So Jackson Holliday, or Barger can suck for 30 at bats just like Julio Rodiruiguez can.

Barger was too big of a liability in the field (for now) to continue to wait on his bat.

 

Overall, I'm definitely down on him after this stint, as small of a sample size as it is.

 

My view on his bat hasn't really changed much, but reports on his defense were all over the map. But after seeing him play the field it's hard to imagine him being an even average 3B or OF. Pair that with his bat and he seems like a bench player at best.

I don't know. This isn't Cavan Biggio's son we are talking about. He took a bad route to one ball, and butchered another ground ball at third, but he also showed the greatest arm in Blue Jays history (tie Barger, Barfield, Whiten).

People think I am a real joker with stuff like this, but not at all. I'm 100% serious. I think Barger had the first 100 mph outfield throw in Blue Jays history and it was right on the mark, maybe Barfield and Whiten did it before stats cast. He also threw some bullets from third. Can't teach that.

Maybe you can teach routes and better footwork on slow grounders... maybe not, but he has a tool or two.

So you fully admit you are one of the brain cell deprived. Odd how that worked itself out so quickly.

 

Do you really struggle this hard with being human?

 

I'm not here often enough to care about any posters (nor do I know ANY of them), but so far I've seen, there are some posters like you who have the literary chops of a dancing plough horse with a peg leg. Guess the ignore list starts now.

? Fully admit I am one of the Brain cell derived? Yes. I have no problem being one of the common people. I try to keep up with the four smarter posters I mentioned when I can.

? LIterary chops? Not sure what to say. Would you like my reading list? I read the classics. X-Men issue 94 onwards, Bill James 1984 abstract, Bill James 1985 abstract, Bill James 1987 Abstract, Bill James 1988 Abstract, Bill James 1990 Baseball book, Bill James 1991 Baseball Book, BIll James 1992 Baseball book. The Stand by Stephen King. The Dark Forest (middle book) by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu, I do not know Mandarin of course). Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer, A pale blue dot by Carl Sagan. Calculus 4th Edition by Edwards and Penny, Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Win Bigly by Scott Adams.

Of course I am a bit embarrassed to admit I read the pop bullshitter Nassim Nicholas Taleb... "I know the fooled by randomness, I know Black swan, I am so smart so I can be an angry ******* even though I just read pop airport book that everyone else reads.". So I would like to clarify I do not take Taleb too seriously, sometimes he has an interesting point but mostly it is just light reading, and I would like to clarify I'm not angry based on being one of Taleb's cult members. I am just really an angry guy having to deal with so many morons here and other places.

I think that is it. Don't remember reading any other books but that list is a pretty good selection including literary classics, financial, cultural classics.

ANY negative posts will be deleted

 

This is a safe space where we can be positive about the 2024 Toronto Blue Jays! Let's go Blue Jays!

Special message from Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred

Baseball is a game of generations, a game of legends, a game of joy, a game of friendship and a game that we all love, so it was with great pride that I saw this morning that you Blue Jays fans have come around to having a positive attitude.

Looking at the fangraphs WAR leaderboard should bring a smile to any fans face. Together as fans we can...

Cheer with LA Dodgers fans as two 1st ballot hall of famers head towards 10 WAR seasons.

Do a happy dance with Baltimore as Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg join the WAR leaders.

Smile with NY Yankee fans as Juan Soto, the games best hitter, puts up numbers worthy of Mantle, Gehrig and Ruth.

Stand tall with Kansas City as Bobby Witt Jr. has the best tools in a generation and the WAR to go with it.

Wink with Cincinnati fans because they know a secret, Elly De La Cruz might have even better tools then Witt.

There has never been a time when baseball brought so much joy to so many. Never a time when so many young players fulfilled their potential, never a time when 29 fanbases had something to cheer and laugh about.

As commissioner I could not be prouder and it is a delight that Blue Jay Fans have turned positive and are now cheering for the game of baseball and the joy it is bringing so many fanbases.

This has been a special message from Commissioner Rob Manfred.

When you do that you also have to take the two best wins which were 8-2 and 9-2. So in the 4 most extreme games they are 17 for and 22 against,

 

pretty much the same in extreme games as the other games.

 

This get's me every year because people say the same thing if there is like a 20-2 game ... well there is also usually a 16-3 game or something the other way, so in the 2 most extreme games win and loss the run differential isn't too extreme.

 

Can't cherry pick the most extreme wins only or losses only.

In 2022 when there was a 28-5 game, the worst loss was 12-0, so the most extreme game stat was 28-17, which distorted things a bit, but not nearly as bad as just taking the 28-5.

In the 2020 60 game season there was a 20-6 loss to the Yankees which everyone said messed up the run differential but soon after there was also a 14-1 win so the 2 most extreme games were 21-20 so run differential not messed up at all in reality.

Is the expected win loss calculated from run differential?

 

The reason the Jays are our performing it might be because -18 of the -31 comes from just two games where we got clubbed to death by Houston 10-0 and 8-0.

 

Most of the other losses have been fairly close I think

When you do that you also have to take the two best wins which were 8-2 and 9-2. So in the 4 most extreme games they are 17 for and 22 against,

pretty much the same in extreme games as the other games.

This gets me every year because people say the same thing if there is like a 20-2 game ... well there is also usually a 16-3 game or something the other way, so in the 2 most extreme games win and loss the run differential isn't too extreme.

Can't cherry pick the most extreme wins only or losses only.

Boggs could play defense too. Horwitz is a nothing burger anywhere on the diamond,which is a big problem for a guy with 10 HR power.

Right. And Boggs was an 8 WAR player in his prime. No one is claiming Horwitz is that.

The frustrating thing about Blue Jays Message Board is they have no critical thinking skills. A bunch of f***ing Morons except for Spanky, Laika, Connor and JimCanuck. Those four have their differences but all have brain cells. The rest of you have serious issues.

The question I have been posing for a year now is give me a list of the 10 most similar players to Howritz and what became of them. No one has answered.

YO BRO. 10 homer power.

We know that. That doesn't mean he won't be a 3 WAR 1b men. Lot's of guys with 10 homer power in the minors develop 20 homer power in the majors anyway.

Of course we can look at the projections which already show Spencer hitting .260 .360 .380. If his defense is OK, like -5 instead of Vlad like -20 that is a 3 WAR player with current league average hitting levels.

And he could be better. The projection systems don't work for unique players for what there aren't a lot of comparables. Which is why I am interested in all the guys who hit .340 .440 .480 or so in the international league and what became of them.

Barger's AAA success is translating so well at the ML level that it is really odd they haven't called up Horwitz yet.

This is moronic. If you want to come up with a recent translation factor simply take Schneider/Barger + Clemente and tell us then how these guys are translating from Buffalo.

What we are interested in is these guys 2022-2024 Buffalo and Toronto numbers as a group. Eye balling it they hit .270 .390 .480 in Buffalo, .260 .380 .500 in Toronto

So they are actually translating at an amazing rate. They met yet fail but if we want to use a low sample size the Buffalo to Toronto translation is pretty damn good.

Was at the game yday... zzzzz

 

My wife said I should get a new jersey, I said there isn't a single player from this team that I want to walk around with on my back and left it at that.

When Spencer Horwitz proves the doubters wrong and hits .290 with 7 homers but good 1b defense and still gets 2.9 WAR you should get his Jersey. He will be the best player on the Jays 75 win future teams.

(cardinal rule of Jays down cycles, can't lose more than 70 and get good draft pick so guys like Spencer will always help them to the 75 win mark).

There is nobody on this team getting you Holliday.

Varsho and Gaussman?