Olerud363

Vlad, bad knees, Obese, at the old Pujols stage at 24, grounds into the double play, so sad... Jays lose... BUT: Jays, Houston are tied Jays have tie breaker over Houston it is 5:58 pm on Sunday October 1st. Seattle Texas still playing. Texas 1/2 game up on everyone, Seattle 1/2 game behing... at 5:58. Wait. What if it is a 4 way tie? Jays have tie breaker over Houston but who does Houston have tie breakers over? Can they get tie breaker over Seattle if they win the next series? Let's assume they can and do. Texas leading 5-3. If Texas wins all is OK and no tie breakers needed. It is 6:11 now. All is looking OK. Bottom of the 9th in Seattle two guys get on... J-Rod comes up. OH NO. Julio Rodriguez. Fit, happy, healthy. Good nutrition. Performing as a super star should. 6.5 WAR. Signed for 15 years. A city looks on in hope... and... JULIO does it. 3 RUN homerun. Mariners move into 4 way tie! Call comissioners office. Jays have tie breaker over Houston, so get in right? But Houston has tie breaker over Texas. So Houston has to get in. But Texas has tie breaker over Toronto. Now the day previous this was anticipated so they figured it all out that somehow even though Toronto has a hard earned tie breaker over Houston, Houston tie breaker over texas brings it to divisional record or something and.... So sad, so sad. Congruatulations to the Houston Astros, the Texas Rangers, and the Seattle Mariners for making the 2023 MLB playoffs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the boards sake so they understand the difference between Trolling and other bad posting behaviors Trolling - Making claims that you don't really believe just to get a reaction out of someone. Lying - Making claims that you don't really believe to get a tangible benefit. Being Wrong - Making claims you thought were true but were not. Rambling - Making a series of only loosely related or even unrelated statements which are often not even relevant to the topic being discussed. Being unhinged - Making a series of dramatic claims, sometimes laced with profanity and anger and often only partially true. The unhinged poster often truly believes their unreliable version of reality, this is very different than the 'troll' who doesn't believe what they post, but only post to get a reaction.

None of my posts are ever anything close to trolling. Peterkim or whatever the f*** is probably a troll, as he is not really an english as a second language speaker, and likely is a guy with multiple accounts. Being grumpy is not trolling. Possibly being mistaken on facts is not trolling, it's just f***ing being mistaken. Sometimes when I really get pissed at Grant he calls it 'trolling', but it's not trolling. Being pissed off isn't f***ing trolling. Our f***ing stupid as hell society doesn't even know what trolling is. About 2 years ago, Robbie Ray, laid an egg in the most important start of the year, and seeing Cole nail one of his last starts reminded of how dissapointing Ray's finish to 2021 and his Blue Jays career was. He also blew his second last start against the Rays. Robbie Ray f***s up -- mentioning this is not trolling. It is mentioning things in the past that pissed me off. Perhaps not relevant to today, or perhaps relevant, but talking about real things that happened isn't trolling. Shapiro gives home plate ladies seats to corporate bozos -- also not trolling. I heard that he was turning parts of the 1st level into a club and many long time (like families who have tickets from 1977) would be moved to worse seats, including home plate lady. If I am mistaken on this sorry. If true it really pisses me off. If home plate lady is not getting kicked out of her seats f***ing address it. Here is what to say - "You are mistaken. Home-plate lady is not getting kicked out of her seats. Shapiro is a nice man. He would never do that." If I am mistaken on Shapiro and what is happening with the lower bowl, than I'm wrong, but being wrong isn't trolling, unless you keep on making the claim, after proven wrong, then it is trolling just to get a reaction.

Reminds me of what a f***ing pathetic 'Cy Young' Robbie Ray fell into. Don't get me wrong. Guy was great for 95% of the season, but when it came down to it and we needed him he f***ing got ROCKED! I almost wish someone else won the Cy Young that year. 2023 - Garret Cole shows how you finish strong for Cy Young 2021 - Robbie Ray gives up multiple bombs and blows Jays playoff chances, leading 2-1 against a washed up Cory Kluber Yeah. I'm this negative after 1 loss. But Mark Shapiro has greated a miserable failure of a team that blows it in every big moment. Every piece of hope get's tarred and feathered, crunched up into a ball, puked on and thrown in the sewer, from Robbie Ray giving up 4 bombs in an inning to blow the Jays season (that's our Cy Young), to 'deadline acquisition' Anthony Bass not able to hold a 9-5 lead, to rookie sensation Davis Schneider, going from hero to zero in the blink of an eye, to Vladimir '80 hit tool' Guerrero, and Alejandra '70 hit tool' Kirk, becoming 40 hit tools because their big bellies get in the way of their swing, to the inevitable losses in key series. f*** you Robbie Ray. f*** you Mark Shapiro. I am sorry Home Plate Lady that this awful man had to enter all our lives and given every other bad thing we experience, he is now taking your seats away.

That's why getting swept by Texas really was f***ing big. If they don't make the playoffs that was the season there. Pathetic performance in the most important 4 games of the year. I guess tonight starts the next 'most important series of the year' and we'll see, but this team has yet to really win a series against a tough opponent where their season was on the line, and by this team I mean the 2020-2023 team in aggregate.

Semien was never quite as putrid at the plate as Varsho this year... but Daulton Varsho has more WAR through age 26 than Semien. Better through age 26. Semien and Varsho's age 25 season is exactly the same on offense. Both like .300 on base percentage with 27 homers. Semien at 26 and 27 was like Varsho at 26 except a bit more average. Can we expect Varsho to become super-awesome at age 28 just because Semien did? No. But kind of interesting none the less and maybe indicative of what a defensively talented, hard worker, without crazy bad b/kk could do in late 20s if they get their swing sorted out. Varsho kind of reminds me of Semien on offense. Nothing spectacular but I think you can kind of see what he'd be like with less popups and less swing at high fastballs. Same kind of power vibe. Same kind of short swing from the left side though.

I don't think anybody (except for total mentally handicapped) were really criticizing Atkins roster moves, more the culture, coaching and development teams that led to all the crazy fat people going from 4 WAR to 0, and the team from 100ish wins to 90ish. The latter is a weird area that depending on whether the team has had a cold week or a hot week people (like myself) either over-emphasize or totally forget about. If they win 89 and miss the playoffs Atkins is a god-damn beta grease ball, ruled by the corporate clown Shapiro who lost the team and the city and ruined several players careers because they allowed obesity and bad hitting mechanics to spread through the clubhouse un-checked. or If they win 91 and make the playoffs Atkins is a god of scouting and advanced analytics who built the best pitching and defense team in franchise history because he knew that the fat boys couldn't keep away from the buffet, so he built around them and didn't count on them for anything when he made his calculations with proprietary advanced formulas.

OK. Kind of scouting based on body type. Fangraphs - 2023 Kirk (290 pound slob) is equal to 2023 Moreno (Athletic 1st overall superstar prospect) Fangraphs - 2023 Varsho (Mr., Popup) is equal to 2023 Moreno (Athletic 1st overall superstar prospect) bref - 2023 Varsho (Mr., Popup) is equal to 2023 Moreno (Athletic 1st overall superstar prospect) bref - 2023 Moreno is way better than Kirk Super scouts - Moreno is worth 5 sWAR, Varsho 1 sWAR, Kirk -2 sWAR (sWAR is scouting WAR)

Fair enough. But I think this was based on nerd stats (projection) and not super-scouting.

This kind of happened. K rate down a small bit, bb rate up a small bit. Like a really small bit. xWRC+ up. Real WRC+ down. Hard hit rate down a bit. Popup rate up. Line drive rate fine. Probably fair to say a bit of bad luck in 2023 and moving forward could be more like 2022. Probably the kind of guy that will hit .300 the first month of 2024 and the announcers will marvel at the adjustments, and he will no longer hit popups or swing at high fastballs, until he does again starting May 3rd and will finished with a .237 average, but hopefully 25 homers instead of 18.

What I am saying is that, everyone is right about something some of the time, and can bring up their victories to show how right they are (while ignoring their losses). So even is someone used their super-scouting abilities to tell us Varsho was going to suck at hitting, it's not enough. They need a long term track record of looking at several guys like Varsho at age 25 (Hernandez, Grichuk, Varsho and more) and using their scouting abilities to accurately tell us what will happen age 26-28.

lol. You think Laika is a nerd? As far as I know the guy doesn't know how to code and is way more in tune with scouting reports and how scouting is done than most anyone else here. Varsho, Randal Grichuk and Teoscar Hernandez were all similar in their age 25 season. Out of the three Teoscar was the one who broke out, Grichuk flat-lined, and Varsho (thus far) has fallen apart as a hitter because his power has gone down. Are you saying the super-scouts on the board knew that would happen? lol. I don't recall anybody accurately predicting that Hernandez was the one who would hit .280 with power for his 3 year prime. Super-scouts are good looking back, though maybe I'm wrong and the super-scouts who watch every game on MLB-TV knew that Varsho would take a step back as a hitter, and tried to warn us on this thread. I'll have to read it over.

I think Moreno was at one time ranked as the number one prospect in baseball by Baseball America, however I think that was mostly a fluke due to promotions. Like he was maybe 5 or 6 to start 2022, and the guys ahead either got promoted or totally imploded. Then like a couple weeks after getting the '#1' he graduated not because of at bats, but days on the MLB roster I think. Moreno was really hard to evaluate because of the his 2021 injury, and lack of power. And even though he is having a nice season this year both fWAR and bWAR have Moreno and Varsho as very close. Dodgers traded Jeter Downs, Alex Verdugo, and maybe one other guy, for 1 year of Betts and David Price's contract. I don't know off hand how much of Price's contract they took on. At the time Downs was doing great as a 20 year old in A+/AA and Alex Verdugo was a 23 year old, 3 bWAR/2 fWAR guy in 2/3 of a season with good contact abilities and 5 years of control left. Depending how much you trust the defensive stats Varsho is still a potential 4-5 WAR piece moving forward. To put up 3.5 bWAR/2 fWAR hitting .218 is actually kind of impressive. At this point I guess the chances of an offensive breakout are way down, but if he plays centerfield next year and somehow hits .250 with a power bounce back? That's a nice player.

Gabriel Moreno has 5.4 bWAR+fWAR (1.5+3.9) while Daulton Varsho has 5.1 bWAR+fWAR (1.7+3.4). Funny how both system are far apart on each player, but track each other for each player. Doesn't work like that all the time. For example Kirk is 1.5 fWAR and 1.8 bWAR, about the same. Funny that Kirk, who has to be getting fatter every game (did you see the slo-mo YES replay of his homerun) is the same as Moreno in fWAR.

There is a great battle in the bWAR land. I believe Moreno has probably won the battle but it was a great battle between him and Daulton Varsho for the bWAR d-champion According to bref, Daulton Varsho is 3.4 WAR, 2.6 dWAR. Him and Moreno are kind of close in both fWAR (around 1.5 earch) and bWAR (3.4 to 3.9)

Almost impossible. Jays and Seattle would have to win almost all the rest of their games and TBR lose a lot to both catch TBR to push TBR down to WC3 and to Minnesota.

Who are the players who hit between 90 and 110 homers in the minors before age 22 and what became of them? Can you name the 5 most recent? A lot of Players, like Vlad and Bo will not get to 100 homers in the minors because they get called up before that... well Bo I guess not exactly as he got called up with 2 months left in age 21 season.

Congratulations to the Baltimore Orioles for clinching their first playoff spot since 2016 and for surpassing the Bo/Vlad Blue Jays high win total of 92 with their 93rd win yesterday. I know we all agree that the Blue Jays could never have survived the 2 extra down years the Orioles experienced in the zero fan 2020 60 game season, and the extremely fan limited 2021 season which Toronto played mostly in the U.S. And we all agree that the Orioles only achieved their 93 wins with the 5 first overall draft picks they received for being so crappy for so long. According to the fangraphs website the 1st overall pick Ashley Rutchman led the Orioles to Victory with 3.9 fWAR, along side the other 1st overall picks... ummm... Gunnar Henderson (42nd pick?), Anthony Santander, Austin Hays, Cedric Mullins, Ryan Mountcastle, Kyle Bradish, Felix Bautista, Kyle Gibson, Danny Columbe, Yennier Cano, and Grayson Rodriguez. We will not be giving the Orioles any credit for passing on Austin Martin and Jordan Groshans or any other savy pickups, decent scouting, or development of vets from the Dan Duquatte regime. It was the 6 straight 40 win seasons (or was it 7?) that got them here... and now that they've used up all these 1/1 picks what do they have coming for the future?? (news flash, most of the picks from all the years of losing haven't started contributing).

They are in a comparable situation to that they were in 2 years ago. Leading the NY Yankees by 1.5 games with 10 to go. 1 behind Boston. With NY and Boston playing a series. Very sad thing that happened 2 years ago. 1. Robbie Ray in his last inning as a Jay enters the 6th of the key game of the season leading 2-1, gives up several homers that inning effectively ending the Blue Jays season before that sad things that happened 1. The Yankees have a 7 game win streak starting at this point in 2021 including sweep of Boston. This was bad because Yankees were the trailing team at the time, and while the sweep put Boston back in play, it would have been better if Boston won at least one game. 2. The Twins (leading 5-0) and Nationals (leading 5-1 or something) blow their leads late in game. The latter was last day of season so very sad, so many tears. The former was actually September 13th, but the Yankees could have gone down 2 games and of course the way it turned out every game was important. 3. With Jays leading 2-1 against detroit, Marcus Semien throws a 30 foot throw in the dirt, it bounces softly and up toward Vladdy's glove ever so softly, but Vladdy wiffs, Jays lose (every game turned out to be vital) 4. Others may not remember this, but this one haunts me for some reason. Jays playing Boston in August at home. Double header. Leadin 1-0 late in game. Verdugo and Vladdy both hit hard fly balls to center. Vladdy's of course has a bit more exit V. Verdugo's of course leaves the Yard and Vladdy's (which would have won the game) get's caught in a miracle catch at the top of the wall. I don't think Vladdy's fly balls go 30 foot shorter than they should. But do they go 5 feet shorter than they should? I think they might. So sad. The point is that much pain could ahead (or maybe joy, who knows), and a couple of weird painful things, could lead to all the other stupid things earlier in the season coming back to haunt. Or maybe it will all be awesome? 2021 was so similar in some ways. Jays had a miracle run in September (earlier) to go from like 6 games back of playoffs, to 1 up. Of course they were the team of destiny. No. Not the team of destiny. Maybe this year?

But they couldn't fix Bellinger and the Cubs did... crazy game.

Outscored 40-17 or something on the week. 4 game sweep by Texas, yet end the week roughly the same GB behind the three Wild Card competitors. Gain .5 games on Seattle Lose 1 game to Texas Gain .5 games on Houston

Jays playoff probabilities have gone from 35%, back to about 70% in 2 days. At first may make it seem playoff probabilities are unstable. No. The chances of everything breaking exactly right the last 2 days was apr., 1/280 using back of napkin calculations. So the last 2 days have been a highly improbable outlier that swung the odds back. (If every team had an even chance of winning having 8 games go the right way is 1/256, but eyeballing the records and team quality KC and Cleveland were underdogs, Toronto slight favorites, and LA slight favorites, so probably the chances of everything breaking right were a bit lower than 1/256)

In the baseball reference version of team quality Jays are lowest amoung non-Minnesota contenders, but Looking at position player WAR and pitching WAR on fangraphs for some teams Jays 22.9 17.0 Mariners 23.9 20.2 Orioles 21.8 16.6 Rangers 30.8 13.2 Astros 25.1 13.1 Rays 30.0 19.3 1. Jays are a better position player and pitching team than Orioles 2. Mariners are really good when measured by WAR 3. Jays pitching seems low, but I guess this is because a lot of run prevention is from the defense

Not just sitting Olerud for Carter, but for old Pat Tabler and Jacob Brumfied. Sitting Shawn Green for Ruben Sierra and Juan Samuel. Picking fights with the Media, calling them racists. I remember when Ricky Henderson was acquired. The Jays could have had 4 guys with an average .440 on base percentage in the top four spots. If they had hit Carter 5th behind them, Carter would have 100% won an RBI title that year (he was close and missed by 6 or 7). Instead out of 'respect' he had to keep White and Carter ahead of Olerud and Molitor. You had Molitor and sometimes Alomar hitting 6th. Decisions like this made no sense at all. He Cost the Jays 100 wins. Cost Carter an RBI title. So exactly how is this decision benefitting anyone? Then later overworking Guzman, Hentgen, Duane Ward. Also apparently fighting with Roger Clemens. Then apparently wanting to fire Larry Hisle (hitting coach who had the Jays with the top 3 averages in the AL). I think people who were young or not born in 1993 just can't relate to how bad 95-97 were. In a time where the game was just starting to really embrace analytics, the Jays were terrible. OK. Some posters will be pissed I'm going on about Cito again. But I don't care. The guy took 100 wins teams and made them 95 win teams but even worse took what should have been young 90 win teams and made them old 75 win teams.

Cito is mentioned all the time by people other than myself. I rarely bring him up out of the blue and mostly just react to who-ever is claiming Cito was a great manager. I also think Cito is a fascinating guy, even though I don't like him much. He truly believes he, Cito Gaston, can massively affect the career arc and performance of his players. Even as manager he was constantly talking about hitting and his hitting coach's were always an extension of himself. I remember he took credit for Kelly Gruber's 1990 season, claiming he guided Kelly every at bat while essentially stealing signs for him.