Atkins just did an hour long interview on Stoeten's podcast. It's behind a paywall now since Stoeten works for The Athletic. Does anyone have access to that and would you care to post some highlights?
Sogard is near the bottom of the league in Barrel %, Exit Velocity and Hard Hit %. He does have a great launch angle though and combined with his BB rate he looks pretty useful. Still, I'd expect he comes crashing back to earth at some point.
That would be pretty awesome. I think it'd be good for baseball in Canada and I think it would be good for the Jays as well. Not sure the split city is the answer but a full-time team there in the AL East would be awesome.
I think so. I've even gone as far as cheering for the Jays to break up Paxton's no hitter in the bottom of the 9th. Never wanted to see a team curb stomp the Jay's before in any sitch but here we are.
I'm so bitter and disillusioned with this team that somehow Mike Trout hitting monster bombs against us is a form of release. Hitting them against toilet Sanchez probably plays a large factor.
If you look at his Statcast page his pitches all suck but for his curveball which has to be one of the better pitches in baseball. As we all know he doesn't throw it that often because of the nail. If he didn't have this bizarre nail issue we might have a really solid pitcher on our hands.
Ah ok, so it covered 2 years of his arb and 3 of FA? That's a lot better. That said he's looking like a non-tender candidate right now. Hopefully he shakes off his slow start (which he usually does by now) soon.
If Biggio can exceed expectations that might be one of the few things to go better than expected this year and will take some of the sting off of this disastrous season.
Other realistic things that can help:
-Gurriel establishing himself as a solid corner OF who can play the INF in a pinch
-Vlad becoming a star
-Grichuk pulling his head out of his ass (that extension looks awful)
-Jansen also pulling his head out of his ass
-Thornton establishing himself as a solid mid-rotation starter
-Phelps regaining his form and showing he can be a setup man for next year
-Kingham showing something
-Borucki getting healthy and showing something heading in to next year
Not all of that will happen but it's just a list of realistic things that could happen. The more of those that go right the closer we will be to being competitive next year.
Fair points but it doesn't seem like he gets very high grades on his defense despite having good speed. He's almost 26 and his bat looks like s***. We got Teoscar (who at the time was more interesting IMO) for an old Liriano. Fisher seems like the type of guy that can be had for an ok reliever. He has very very little value IMO.
Atkins is on the hot seat and needs guys that can contribute soon so my guess is he rolls the dice on more post-hype sleepers who are "big league ready." Derek Fisher seems like a strong possibility but he screams Drury or McKinney to me.
Derek Fisher suxxx. Whatever Atkins does I hope he avoids his post-hype sleeper pickups this year like he got in the Happ deal and gets some meaningful prospects.
Yeah I get it. The Broncos won the Super Bowl but I'm not a huge NFL fan so it was kind of cool to go out and party that night but I wasn't very invested in it.