Olerud363

The Grand Slam was on an 0-2 pitch, my tin foil hat isn't too big. Just "asking questions" though. Visitor's clubhouse is in centerfield in Buffalo I believe. It went double (2-2), home run (2-0), walk (3-2), double (1-1), walk (3-2), homerun (0-2) then for Kay - single (0-0), homerun (1-1)

It's odd that they are able to "turn it on" just when they need to. Looked like crap against the Yankees then 0 bad swings the first couple of innings? This stuff happens I guess but it wasn't like it was bloops and a blast. Or deep counts, tough pitches fouled off. All walks and extra base hits, I'm not saying they knew what was coming, but that's exactly how a team would hit if they knew what was coming.

Poor Vladdy... didn't know the curve ball was coming, guessed wrong, and looked like a fool. Happens to the best of them. Poor Springer... didn't know a fastball was coming and took one dead center down the middle. Happens to the best of them. That's just baseball. At bat to at bat in any game guys just look silly sometimes. It's because there is always a bit of a guessing game. I think people don't realize what major league hitters would do if they knew what was coming. You'd see average guys and scrubs just hitting home runs all over the place, line drives every ball in play. Guys taking all the close pitches and walking.

Oh well. Consider it a compliment. They weren't scared about the Yankees, so didn't risk a little "clutch hitting". They are scared of the Jays and need this sweep. So will turn on the "Clutch hitting" this series.

lol... Red Sox in a bit of a slump, key game against rival. Start hitting in the first like they know what's coming... lol - explain to me again why Cora was only suspended for one year? Expect -- Game 1 - Red Sox get more runs in the 1st inning then they did last week, just a nice coincidence to get them relaxed. Game 2 - Close game but Red Sox get key runs in 7th "just when they need it" Game 3 - One of Ray's rare off games, can't exactly explain why but Red Sox hit him, in the midst of a streak where no one else can.

You are going to get two versions of reality here, however according to some (and I agree with them) Cito Gaston is by far the worst manager in Blue Jays history and one of the most poisonous people alive. Others will tell you he is a god who created Jose Bautista and is the most loved players manager ever (he is loved by the veterans he gave constant playing time to, whether they deserved it or not). (Broken record rant starting) Cito was an x-hitting coach, and surrounded himself with Cronies and was in constant passive aggressive stand-offs with this hitters. He allocated playing time based on 'veteran presence' and his lineups gave away 20 or 30 runs a year at least. He played favorites, and you were screwed if you weren't in his good books as a young player (or a random vet was blocking you). Imagine Randall Grichuk hitting 3rd. Or imagine Teoscar Hernandez having to be traded because Cito liked Grichuk better. Or imagine Cito pushing to acquire Roughned Odor to replace Biggio. Imagine Guerrero having an all-time season then taking a step back to very good (like .290 25 90 with a good on base) and Cito starting to bench him because he's "not in contention" for the triple crown). Or imagine Freddie Galvis being retained, and getting 1/4 of Bichette's playing time while Bichette learned the ropes. Stuff like that regularly happened under Cito (the ghost of Ruben Sierra playing for Green, Olerud getting platooned after winning the batting title, then benched for Jacob Brumfield, Green, Gonzales, Delgado, Stewart all brought along very slow while Otis Nixon, the ghost of Joe Carter, Juan Samuel played). I mean for Gods sake even when winning the world series he played a incredibly, unbelievably terrible Pat Tabler 1/3 of the time. Wow. In his second go there was stuff too. Like Alex Rios and Scott Rolen were lost midway through 2009. He took a 2009 team with a Halladay Cy Young like season, good players all over and mis-managed it to 75 wins. Admittedly Rolen became EE, Bautista had a break under Cito, so some will argue the seeds for the 2015 team came about because of him). Like I said polarizing guy who has his fans, who we may hear from. Rant over

I think he had an injury and missed the first two weeks then a bad May. However it probably is mostly random. He actually has the same problems with ground balls Vlad had until this year. However Soto's plate discipline is so insane he can still be the best hitter in the league with a 50% ground ball rate. If you saw Soto in the home run contest or ever taken a look at the video of his home runs you know that his raw power is elite. It will be scary if he can lower the ground ball rate like Vlad has, his plate discipline right now is a level above Vlad's.

That sounds uncomfortable and not worth it just to spite Stoeten. I will remain vaccinated then in honor of Wilner. On a serious note need Mike Wilner back on the radio. Does anyone listen to the radio anymore? I do occasionally and I literally do not know what in the f*** is going on except home runs. And even those it's like Buck and Tabby finish their conversation before Buck says "Get up ball". Wilner is fine enough and he tells you the count, who is on base, the score at least twice an inning, all using words when you can't see the pictures and graphics.

I got vaccinated because Mike Wilner (who is annoying but I find like-able) told me to. As a side-note it would be great to have Mike back on the radio (I have no idea what Buck and Tabby are talking about without the picture). However now I want to get un-vaccinated because Stoeten (who is annoying, insufferable and I find very un-likeable) was acting all superior and snarky about the unvaccinated. How do I get unvaccinated?

I'd rather they play in Buffalo then with zero fans. I mean can they get old timers and maybe some help from who-ever is available for the soccer games and do a no frills with 6000 fans, lower deck only? The Buffalo games were put together pretty quick and were completely no frills, no hot dog race, no between inning entertainment, almost all the vendors and ticket keepers were over 50, it seemed. No world's fastest grounds crew, yeah. Some of them weren't fast. lol.

Kevin Smith born summer of 96, .262 .322 .481 career, .262 .360 .549 in aaa this year. Griffin Conine born summer of 97, .259 .358 .532 career, .242 .382 .570 in A+ this year. Not sure why I am comparing them, other than that Conine has been in the news lately. Only a year apart in age but Smith has more defensive value, has experience at high levels, lower k rate and while Conine has the most "stats" power, Smith has quite a bit of "stats" power * too. ("stats" power is power I can scout using Chrome and MILB website).

Tony Fernandez (just looked it up) was awesome as a teenager. I didn't expect that because he didn't get a full time MLB job until 23. Amazingly Fernandez spent 2 and half years in Syracuse behind a Alfredo Griffin who played full time from 81 until 84 with on base percentages of .243, .269, .289, and .248. I'm really fascinated by the pre-internet, pre-sabermetric era that I grew up on in the 80s until about 95 (after which the Money Ball As brought sabermetrics to the mainstream). In those days Bill James was like the lone voice complaining about this stuff, but you had front offices making insanely bad decisions about guys careers. Tony Fernandez and Wade Boggs both spent 2.5 years in triple a. Would never happen these days. Top prospects spend like 6 weeks in aaa.

Not as a teenager. He really turned it on at age 20 in Dunnedin, but was a notch below Bo in low A. My list was best teenagers, not best prospects.

Orelvis Martinez is heating up and now at .270 .355 .509. However still has a high k-rate Where does Martinez rank in the list of all-time Blue Jays teenagers Vladimir Guerrero jr ----------------------- Bo Bichette ----------------------- Travis Snider Carlos Delgado Fred McGriff Orelvis Martinez Vernon Wells Felipe Lopez ----------------------- Probably missing a tonne of guys. Just did it by memory and a quick stats search. Guerrero was a level above Bo because he did the low minors at 18, and .400 in double a at 19, Bo a level above everyone else (.360 between a and high a)... then a bunch of guys who were decent as 19 year olds in low a, and became top prospects. Who am I missing?

This whole Yankee thing is just s*** bad timing. No idea what got deleted, but the Vaccine Efficiency thing is absolutely baseball related. A couple of posters were giving context as to why a almost fully vaccinated team would get positive results. Most Yankees were given Johnson and Johnson which is 75% effective against any type of infection I believe, however reduces hospitalizations by 95%. So expectation is that that a 85+% vaccinated team gets a big outbreak, 5 or 6 vaccinated players would test positive with (likely) asymptomatic infection, and some unvaccinated players would get symptoms. Relevant stuff to know for topics like homefield location of Toronto Blue Jays, future health and performance of baseball players or even Fantasy Team planning.

Yeah... bad timing. I heard they are all asymptomatic so far, some of them were vaccinated. Only thing they can tell the Feds is that the system is working. They are catching the positives and preventing further infection.

Joe Biden should be invited to throw out the first pitch. He's done a great job re-opening getting those who want to be vaccinated, vaccinated, and also subtly caring for both the new normals (I myself have been RNAd and am a new normal) and old-style humans. Honestly us new normals go to the stores, the games, the bowling allies, along side old-styles and no one knows who is who unless you advertise. It's OK. Joe Biden for first pitch, not Canadian but has helped us get along.

Not one person has explained how this resolves. When and under what circumstances to the Jays come back? There is no way the union will mandate vaccines. So does the government give an exception eventually? Perhaps they give exceptions for NHL and that breaks the stalemate, but alternatively they could just keep the Canadian bubble. Not sure there is any reason at this point to think this will end next year. Covid is looking like it will be endemic with vaccines helping but variants arising and continued case counts. What guarantee is there the team can play in Toronto next year? What if they start in Toronto and then they close the border because of a variant wave? Is Rogers even making money with attendance of 300,000 a year?

San Antonio, Charlotte, Las Vegas, or Nashville are the expansion candidates. Doubt it will be Buffalo permanently. Nashville would be fitting. They aren't afraid of the unvaxed there. Sigh. Just as a reminder the worst outbreak in professional sports occurred on the Vancouver Canucks, despite the efforts of the Canadian government... yes this was before we had vaccines, but the Canadian government did everything they could to "keep us safe". They prevented the Canuck's from travelling to the States, and it was worthless. They still had an outbreak as did other Canadian teams. The NHL Canadian bubble teams all had COVID problems and likely spread COVID in their communities a bit... We can't ban everything forever, so I don't hold it against them. However I do want to point out that the Canadian NHL bubble wasn't that "safe". MLB teams, mostly 85+ % vaxed with daily testing will be way safer than the Canadian NHL teams were last spring.

If they are banned in August and September and actually won it would be perverse and cringeworthy. Trudeau asks them back in October after banning them for 2 years? Or doesn't and then they go deep into the playoffs or even win? What does Trudeau, Ford and other Politicians do then? Do they even acknowledge they won? No chance anyone from Canada could give them a congratulatory message, what would they say? Justin - "I'd like to congratulate the Blue Jays, formerly of Toronto for winning the 2021 World Series, to save you, my loved Canadians I kept those unvaccinated, dirty, orange-man voting baseball players away. I kept my flock safe from the bad people, you are loved, now enough about the Blue Jays vote me back in. I love you!" This is why if they aren't back they should trade Ray and Semien. As a Blue Jays fan seeing a deep playoff run in Buffalo would be a bizarre thing I wouldn't want to deal with.

I was a huge Juan Guzman fan, and it's hilarious that in 1992 the old "just know how to win" guy was 0-3 and put the Jays behind 5-1 or something in his other game... the wild relatively inexperienced 24 year old (with great stuff) was lights out and won them 3 games. And that's exactly what analytics using k-rates and FIP, etc. would of predicted at that point in their careers.

Yes I know, another "90s" Jays rant above... just couldn't resist as 92/93 Jays are such a great example of teams winning different ways. And that's what is great about analytics, captures the different ways to win overcoming our pre-conceptions.

He also struggled in the 92 playoffs. Another thing about baseball Metrics is to accept that teams can win many ways and to ignore ******** about only "certain types" of teams being able to win. Someone says "homeruns don't win in the playoffs" or "you need starting pitching to win in the playoffs", or whatever, tell them to f*** themselves and quit baseball discussion. Those of us old timers know this (or should) because we followed the 92/93 Jays. 1. Jack Morris was suppose to be "just know how to win" guy, but despite going 21-6 in the regular season he lost 3 playoff games in 1992, and would of lost another except for Roberto Alomar. 2. 92 Jays were 2nd in homeruns that year. "Only" 162, but this was just before the steroid era and that was a good total then. They won the ALCS by out-homering Oakland 10-4, and the World Series by out homering Atlanta 6-3. 3. In 93 the Jays had a mediocre starting staff, but famously the top 3 hitters in the batting race and a great bullpen. That year they got out-homered in both series, but hit above .300 as a team in playoffs and won high scoring games. The great thing about analytics is it captures the different ways to win. If you create an analytically sound team that outscores it's opponents it will make the playoffs long term, in the playoffs there is a lot of luck, but different types of teams win in the playoffs, so don't listen to anyone who says 'such and such' a team can't win.

I forgot music concerts in above post. See if we cherry pick we just get the things one person likes. I assume there will be some exceptions for some "arts" and "music" events the next couple of months. Maybe I am wrong. However if Justin's medical team are all big classical music fans, they'll probably make an exception for world famous flutists, no one will know about it or care... I guess that is the problem with the Jays, too American and too high profile. Sorry about the politics... I could care less discussing politics here, except as it pertains to where the team plays, and right now the issue is political.

It doesn't matter what percentage of people care about the Jays, it matters what percentage care about something that requires a more open border (a different sports team, business connections, an arts event, relatives, a business that needs tourists, etc, etc, etc,). Otherwise our politics will get even worse. If they let Calgary Stampede horse jumpers or something in, and an NHL team, but not the Jays, then it just becomes toxic favoritism and cronyism. So we need to figure out what "non-essential" events need a more open border, and how many people want those sort of things. Then if enough of our population all has "something" they want, make a work-exception for "event performers and help" which requires full vaccination or daily testing.