Terminator

I was just offered Ohtani and Riley Greene for Mookie Betts and Oneil Cruz. What do you guys think? Also, it's a salary cap league and Ohtani costs a little bit more salary than Betts, if that makes any difference.

Some projected standings have been recently released: Fangraphs thinks we have a 48% chance to make the playoffs: https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds PECOTA thinks we have a 64% chance. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/

Interesting listen. They actually praise the pitching development and think they are doing a good job there. They knock the hitting side more and compare them to the Indians and think their cautious draft approach has lead to "a lot of guys (45s) but not a lot of dudes (55s and 60s)." Furthering their criticism of the position player side, I think they sum it up best when they state that there aren't many guys who can have an impact on both offense and defense. The bat first prospects have questions with the glove and the glove first prospects have questions with their bat. They kind of suggest that they should take more risks with the hit tool in order to get guys with more power or glove.

Lmao he asked for less than he was projected for and still lost. Now get your s*** together Vlad.

IMO something like this: Starter on a good team: Tiedemann, Orelvis Starter on a bad team: Schneider, Jimenez Utility player: Barger Platoon: Horwitz Bench: Parmesani Most of the other pitchers are single inning relievers except Francis who is a starter on a bad team and a multi-inning reliever on a good team.

That could be true but if we are playing that poorly then I'm not sure that overspending on mid FAs or trading good prospects to add a couple of wins would be the right play anyway. Might need to trade Vlad and/or Bo and then dip into a stronger 2025 FA class to quickly reload.

Perfect setting to tell Vlad why he sucks so bad. Can't wait for the Jays' lawyer to tell the panel that Vlad's comps are Ty France and then showing them the video of Vlad getting picked off of 2nd in the playoffs. Coddling him isn't going to help him perform better these final two years. And coddling him isn't going to get him to come down on what I can only assume is an astronomical extension number that he has in mind. The dude has been ass. We've all wondered if he knows this or not. Well today you can guarantee that he is going to hear it.

Josh H. Smith could be a good trade target. He's blocked in Texas with seemingly all infield and outfield spots accounted for AND Ezequiel Duran higher on the pecking order for a UT spot too. He's played pretty poorly in parts of two seasons so far but he is a former Top 100 prospect and the defense has graded out very well in both the infield and outfield. Bats lefty. Duran would also be a good target for 3B but he'd probably cost a lot more.

Hoping to extend Vlad for Matt Olson money. He's younger so tack a couple of player options on it. Then pray Vlad is a Hall of Famer and not the fatass we saw last year. If he's in between the deal still probably works. Not sure Vlad will sign for 10 years 200 mil though. Market is changing since then.

Kike used to be a GREAT bench player. Has sucked the last two years but a lot of that seems to be due to injury. He had double hernia surgery this offseason. I'd need to know more about his health situation but he's the type of guy you sign and he bounces back and puts up 2.5 WAR. Brian Anderson is a weird player. Looked like he might turn into a cornerstone player but has drifted into a barely serviceable bench player. I'd also be interested in him though for some reason he hits righties much, much better than lefties in his career. I know that unregressed splits but even if you regress them it looks weird still.

Ok, maybe we didn't have the best defense in MLB but it's in the conversation. A #10 OAA doesn't exactly tank the idea anyway. Still upper third to go with excellent numbers on the other two metrics. Not sure I agree with the common sense descriptions either. I'll give you Bo and Chris Farley (both in stature and his slapstick comedy in the field). But it's more accurate to call Springer an old centerfielder playing RF. He's still pretty fast and grades out just fine in RF. Catcher is a meatball but that meatball frame allows him to be the best in the biz at blocking baseballs. He's also a good framer (below average arm though). All told the defense is good! Trust me and the numbers. Not your lying eyes.

Def easier but I'm trying to drill down to be more specific. Too much "Vlad and Kirk will be better" and too much "the pitching will be worse".

Well we won the Team Fielding Gold Glove award in the AL, for whatever that is worth. But that is backed up by the metrics. DRS had us at +85, good for first in all of MLB, and the 2nd place team (MIL) was 17 runs behind us.

Well if anyone thinks that they are dumn. These guys are projected to be better: Vlad +3.2 WAR Kirk +1.6 Manoah +1.2 Springer +0.8 Varsho +0.6 Espinal +0.9 Bichette +0.4 These guys are projected to be worse: Kiermaier -1.0 WAR Gausman -1.0 Berrios -0.7 Kikuchi -0.4 Bassitt -0.2 We also lost Chapman (3.5 WAR) and Belt (2.2) and replaced them with IKF (0.9) and Turner (0.7). That is definitely a downgrade but Chapman had some of the worst WPA/clutch/RISP numbers in the league. He was just unlucky but if that normalizes with IKF, whose projection is getting dinged by the Yanks playing him in the OF last year, there might not be as much of a results based drop-off as we think. Turner projects to be better than Belt whose WAR was built on a house of cards. Everyone else is somewhat the same. And it's hard to do a straight comparison because Schneider obviously won't put up 2 WAR in 35 games but he does project for 2 WAR over 100. Paul DeJong put up -1 WAR in 10 games and won't be here. Things like that.

I think people really really underestimate the offense and how big of a bounce back we can expect. Vlad, all by himself, is projected to have a 3.2 WAR improvement all on his own. You could spend close to 350 million to sign Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman and push KK and IKF to the bench and you'd get roughly the same amount of WAR improvement.

Yeah I think there will be some regression but some of it will be good. Varsho was actually not that great in LF for some reason. I bet that corrects itself and you could see better defensive numbers from him. Regardless of the numbers though, he's in his prime and should carry on. My guess is that Vlad is A LOT better. Not because I think he is good. But his metrics were bordering on unplayable last year at -13 OAA. The other 3 years he played 1st he was -2, -3, and -3. If he merely gets back to -3 that alone could make up for regression we get from older guys like KK and Springer or the drop in talent from Whit to Schneider (which is really the only clear drop-off that we'll have).

Well how does 2023 differ from 2024's team, defensively? The only major change is Chapman but IKF is similar. Among semi-regulars, Whit wasn't anything special. Neither was Belt. Maybe Schneider and Turner are a setback but not by much in the grand scheme of things.

If you're willing to include a reliever then Mariano Rivera would have to be considered a generational talent. Ichiro has got to be close. Randy Johnson put up 70 WAR in the past 25 years despite not pitching since 2009, he added another 40 in the 10 years prior. Pedro Martinez is a mini-version of that. Those guys probably belong in this 25 year period. But the lines get blurred as I would consider them a part of the previous generation.

I suppose it could come down to having a logjam and then making individual decisions on the various players in question. De Los Santos got the majority of the starts at 3B toward the end of the season when the 3 real prospects were in AAA. Perhaps the Jays like him and wanted to get a look at him/see if he could improve with some coaching. Seeing as his value is all glove maybe they felt it necessary to keep him on the left side of the infield? And Jimenez, Clement and others were playing SS so 3B is where they put him? This blocked Orelvis and Parmesan who then switched to 2B and 1B, respectively, which they felt was no big deal because they might move there eventually anyway. Barger apparently has a cannon for an arm and he had never played OF before. Perhaps they felt it was his best chance to get some reps in RF before turning him into a UT player. I suppose it isn't a nail in the coffin of any of Orelivs, Barger and Parmesan playing 3B but it certainly doesn't look great when we knew we would need a 3B and instead were playing fringe org guys at the position instead.

Yeah it was weird. We knew we would need a 3B after Chapman's pending FA. But the viable AAA options all moved off the position. Barger, Orelvis and Palmegiani barely played 3B in AAA. Instead, fringe guys like Lantigua, De Los Santos and Tanner Morris played there. There could be some sort of reason for it that I'm not seeing. But it makes me think the Jays don't think too highly of Barger, Orelvis or Palmegiani's chances to stick at 3rd.

Lmao

I retired the Sheriff a few months ago but imagine the amount of gloating he'd be doing if he were still around. I do feel for Frasso though, poor guy was on the verge of the big leagues. But this is why he was never worth very much. Mid 20s pitchers mowing down minor leaguers for 40 innings a year doesn't really mean much of anything. I tried explaining this to his fanboys many many times and they just couldn't wrap their heads around it.

"The 2023 season was a step back for Toronto’s farm because many 2022 draft picks struggled." So they must mean Barriera? Along with our 2nd rounders like Kasevich, Toman and Doughty? Roden was our third rounder and he balled out.

It's not a pretty picture! I wonder if that 23-24th range is closely grouped with 15th or so? And there's a clear drop-off when you get to the bottom 3-5? Idk trying to find some silver linings here.

Oof, that's kind of depressing lol