Terminator

Believe it or not but Boston is a flagship franchise for MLB and most players would jump at the chance to play for them.

If this is the case, then it likely means that Tellez is the DH, Fisher will be the 4th OF and Anthony Alford will head to waivers. That's leads to a really deep lineup, every starter is project to hit 100 wRC+ or better according to Steamer. On the flipside, that is some awful defense.

The other option is to sign Jose Bautista as a two way player! Do it Atkins you coward!!! Guarantee you he’ll out produce Alford’s sorry ass.

Pardon how in depth I get here but I just popped an Adderall and am itching for the season to start. The 26th man will depend on what the team does with the DH spot IMO. Seems like McGuire, Panik and Drury will make up 3 bench spots so there's one more to give out. -They could elect to keep Tellez up and if they do that they might as well put him in the strong side of a platoon at DH. He hits the ball hard and Steamer projects him for 103 wRC+. Fisher becomes the 4th OF and the backup CF. Probably our best offensive team and leads to a very deep lineup. Every starter would be projected by Steamer for 100 wRC+ or better. But that's pretty bad OF defense. Grichuk I think is a sneaky capable CFer but he won't shine there and Teoscar and Gurriel are likely below average to terrible in the corners. Fisher could be ok in a corner but I don't think he's CF material, even as a backup. Throw in Vlad Jr's awful infield defense and we could be one of the bottom 10 defenses in the league or worse depending on how Bo and Biggio do. Yikes. -If they elect to start Teoscar at DH that would open up RF for Fisher. That likely improves the OF defense some. Since Tellez bats left and Shaw is already on the team I don't think it makes sense to carry Tellez on the Opening Day roster which is fine since he has options. But who else would get the spot? Alford or Davis both suck ass. They both run well though (Alford extremely well). I think Alford is a decent OFer and I know Davis is. So I guess if the 26th man is a specialist pinch runner/defensive replacement it would make some sense, particularly when the OF defense is bad. They are both so putrid with the bats though that the WAR will never work out in the team's favor, you just have to believe that the specialization that they bring as a 26th man makes up for it some. -The other option would be to sign Puig or even make a trade. Puig is solid defensively, probably a league average RF at this point which is probably better than any of the other options we have. He also is probably a better hitter than Tellez as well. For a 2 WAR player like him he also carries some star power for whatever that is worth. I can't imagine he'd command a ton at this point. Anywhere from a 1 to 3 year deal could get it done. I'd put him in RF, Fisher on the bench, Alford in the Mexican league, and Tellez in AAA. It would improve the defense, offense, and gives us more depth in case of injury. We'd also never have to hear the name Anthony Alford again. Doesn't seem like this will happen but one can dream.

They should consider taking a page out of the XFL's playbook and interview them during the game when the player is on the bench. Mic'ing them live kind of sucks it's a bunch of garbage. All the interesting stuff is what they are thinking not their excitement about things happening. And don't have the commentary crew do it, have the sideline reporter do it which will make them more useful. Interviewing a kicker after a missed FG or a QB after a s*** drive is pretty entertaining. Interviewing a batter after his 3rd strikeout or a fielder after he makes an error might provide similar entertainment.

I hate nicknaming him “the Airport”

Yeah if I'm up late I like watching west coast baseball too. The Dodgers are the easy choice.

Stros players have been hit 7 times in 3 games. I assume this will carry on for a while and their pitchers will start beaning guys back. This was inevitable once Manfred let Astros players escape with no punishment. The players from other teams would use the only recourse they have.

Mitchell just wrote an article about this. https://www.tsn.ca/a-late-february-projection-of-the-toronto-jays-opening-day-roster-1.1448520 He has Tellez, Panik, Alford and Fisher on the bench with Drury on the outside looking in. But he also doesn't have anyone listed as the DH so I'm not sure how helpful his article is.

Do we really have any positional battles right now? 5th starter and the bullpen I suppose? What about the bench? Are Alford and Panik really going to make the team? Seems like those two, Drury and McGuire will be the bench.

This is some good s*** guys! I love the aggressive ranking on Kirk.

How do you guys factor in defense? Do any of you actually scout the defense or do you mostly rely on other sources for that?

It's good to diversify LGJ's skillset but without another right-handed bat I don't know how much it helps to platoon him there against lefties. Shaw goes to the bench and then what are the options to replace LGJ in LF? Fisher as a bench OF comes to mind but he's a lefty.

The lineup order really doesn't matter that much. It does serve as a litmus test for how retarded Montoyo is though.

This is horrible news. Only 57. He was an all-time Jays great. Maybe even deserving of being on the franchise’s Mt Rushmore. He was a little bit before my time but one of my favorite memories of him was in 1999 when he hit .372 at the ASB. A little bit before that he was flirting with .400 and this was 2.5 months into the season in his age 37 season. He was a stud. Better player than quite a few HoF, including fellow SS Omar Vizquel who will get into the HoF.

The mods are drunk on their own power! Something needs to be done!

I gotta say I’ve been posting with the Dogg for well over a decade now and while the quality of his posts and trolling are sometimes questionable, every once in a while he strikes gold lol

Shapiro and Atkins (along with the SJW Canadian fanbase) have no balls whatsoever when it comes to this kind of stuff either. He'll probably get traded for pennies on the dollar now.

Mods, turn the video code on. The board would be better if I could embed my videos.

[video=youtube.com/watch?v=HtQT62NN3p0]

Yeah I agree- that's a great point about Pearson. If he's legit, Ryu holds steady, and then a couple other guys prove they are capable then it could turn around in a hurry. On the flipside, if Ryu and/or Pearson gets hurt and nobody really steps up it could be a disaster. Pretty big year in terms of seeing what we've got in the rotation and if it will allow us to contend in 2021.

Our rotation kind of sucks tbh. Ryu and then a bunch of spaghetti thrown at the wall. Hopefully some of them stick.

Yeah that might not be bad and it would be easier to plan for than trying to use him as a reliever.

The overwhelming demand for being a major league starter eats into his value as a position player. Right off the bat he takes a hit because he's a DH and not an OF. Then factor in rest/injury time and I'm not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze. Would probably be worth more WAR as an OF only rather than a SP/DH. But if they do want to squeeze some value out of his pitching talent, I think being a RP might be the best way forward.

They should just give up on the idea of him being anything close to resembling a starting pitcher and just make him a high leverage reliever. He could be a DH/OF/RP that pitches 50 innings and is used in high leverage spots as much as possible. So even though he doesn't get a ton of innings (which protects his arm and allows for more ABs), the limited innings are at least maximized because of the WPA.