Terminator

Going to get tarred and feathered for this, but I might be coming around on Kyle Tucker. His market might not be as hot as expected. Passan says the Dodgers aren’t going to make a "massive financial splash". The Yankees might prefer Bellinger since he plays CF. The Mets won’t drop a billion on two outfielders. Those are the only teams that can outbid us, we can hang with the rest. Tucker might be better than we realize. On pace for 8–9 WAR seasons the past two years before injuries hit. You’re paying for a 5 WAR guy, but there’s upside for 6+. If we’re making a splash, now’s the time. The FA class next year SUCKS. Jizz Chisholm and Varsho are the two best position players. After a WS appearance, it’s perfect timing. He's a Florida guy We couldn't sign a California guy if our lives depended on it (their wives usually put the kibosh to it) Tucker and his wife are both from Tampa which is where our ST complex is. I wouldn't dole out $400M for him, but if the tally comes in closer to $300M I'm in.

Hell of a career for him 11 years, 27.3 WAR, about 85 mil in career earnings...all with a fastball that averaged 87.6 mph over the course of his career

Fun game. There's a few intriguing scenarios out there. It's Too Obvious ($49/51M) Bo 26 Imai/Ranger 23/25 Build Depth/Spread out Risk ($50M) Bo/Murakami 26/23 Cody Ponce/Zach Eflin 11/8 Tyler Rogers 9 Willi Castro 7 Dream scenario where Ed Rogers goes full Steinbrenner and starts writing blank checks (and honestly, there’s a non-zero chance of it). We add about $90 million to the payroll instead of just $50 million and suddenly we’ve got ourselves a legit super team. Bo 26 Murakami 23 1 of the top SP (Cease, Ranger, Imai) 23-27 1 of the top RPs that isn't Diaz (Devin Williams/R Suarez/R Helsley/T Rogers) 9-16

Yeah it's probably unlikely Clement is on the bench next year but if we added someone like Murakami I think the path to 400 ABs is still there for Ernie. Clement would start against lefties (for ethier Murakami or Gimenez) and could also pinch hit and be a defensive replacement. He'd play pretty much every day and if there was a major injury he would be on his way to 500+. He's coming off a 3.2 WAR season though so adding another 3B might not be the best use of our resources. This all hinges on whether the Jays think Murakami is a 40 homer bat or not. They may not.

Good point Spanky. If the Dodgers are even mildly interested I’m out. He’ll sign there for 70 cents on the dollar if the Dodgers come calling.

Yeah I agree he’s risky, that’s why I mentioned the Jays needing to do their due diligence. I’d only want them to sign him if they felt confident that they could help him make the adjustments to MLB pitching and that his defense was good enough to stick at 3B for a couple of years. I don’t know anything about swing changes and can only rely on what I read with regard to his defense. But I trust that the Jays FO can evaluate those things and if they like him I hope they are aggressive. Also, I’m not worried about outbidding the Mariners for anyone. They are notoriously cheap!

The upside with this guy is crazy. He could be Schwarber with the stick and he might be able to stick at 3B. And you’d get him in his prime years. Jays need to do their due diligence on him but if it checks out they should try to get him. I don’t think the Dodgers have a spot for him so we might have a chance.

Spotrac lists ISE Sports as his agent

Starting to come around on Murakami. He’s got 80 grade power and he’s young. Let’s stack the team and sign both him and Bo. Barger in RF and Clement becomes the top bench option who can spell Murakami and Gimenez against lefties. Then sign a starter and a reliever and the World Series will be easy to make.

Old Man Monfort is salivating over the potential batting titles. I know he promised DePodesta full autonomy but he's going to renege on that promise real quick. I can't wait to watch Luis Arraez bat 2 for 5 out of the 2 hole next year in a 12-4 Opening Day loss to start the season

If I'm the Rockies owner I'm out bidding everyone for Luis Arraez. He should be a lock for a few batting titles there which might be some of the only good press they'll get the next few years.

There's only a handful of teams that will even give out a $170+ million dollar contract. And among those teams, there's not a lot who need infield help. LAD: Seems more prudent to acquire an OF and leave Edman at 2B. NYM: They could replace Baty or McNeil at 3B or 2B but they have bigger needs. NYY: The only spot open is possibly SS but they won't want his glove there. PHI: No room for him. ATL: They could play him at SS. HOU: No room. SD: No room and they won't add anymore big contracts. TEX: No room. SFG: I think they could be a sleeper team and could put him at 2B. BOS: No room. DET: I've seen them mentioned as possible suitors but they are kind of cheap. The Rockies are probably worth mentioning but they have a SS already and I doubt Bo wants to switch positions to join those losers. Everyone else is probably too cheap. Tl;DR Seem like the Mets, Giants, Braves and Tigers might kick the tires on Bo but none of them would seem like obvious fits due to money concerns and/or positional fit.

Yeah I am officially OUT on Kyle Tucker. He has the same WAR projections as Bo. No way he should get 3x what Bo does.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46859761/mlb-2025-2026-top-50-free-agents-rankings-contract-projections Kiley McDaniel is pretty down on Bo as well. Ranks him as the #7 FA and projects just a 5 year/$130M dollar deal for him. I agree that he's going to be a Blue Jay and it might be on a deal that is smaller than we had thought.

Agreed. They should hire him as hitting coach.

I'm just glad Bo's agent isn't multi-platinum superstar Marc Anthony That guy bent Ed Rogers over his knee and spanked him belt to ass during the Vlad negotiations

If he fired his agent and signed with Boras then you could expect a long winter with him signing with the highest bidder some time in February. Since he is sticking with VaynerSports, it suggests that he's not necessarily trying to squeeze every last dollar out of whatever team he signs with. Hopefully that keeps him in Toronto.

Ok this is actually real lol He was pretty funny in the interview, self-deprecating and ultimately made the right choice

It has to be this way now. Can't say we are all in and allow other teams to drive up the price on him. Good news is that his agent is VaynerSports, the same agent for Alejandro Kirk. They were a football focused agency before but they bought Bo's old agent's firm and got into baseball. Other clients are Harrison Bader and Ramon Laureano. Hopefully his camp is just hoping to figure out what his market is and then resigning with the Blue Jays so long as they get 95% of the way there.

I'd love that but with all the highly regarded casuals in our fanbase we wouldn't even be able to get through the first series without the crowd starting a We Want Gibby chant after the first pitching change

I wonder if they'll even replace Mattingly. Seems like they just made up a spot for him after bringing Popkins in. Hale is currently the Associate Manager and they could just make him the Bench Coach.

A 7 to 8 year deal for Bo would take him through his age 34 or 35 season. Not ideal but certainly not as reckless as other deals like locking up Bogaerts until he's 41. So with that said, I would not mind if the team paid market value for the main stretch of the contract and then tacked on extra years at a discount to bring down the AAV. They did this with Vlad whose market rate was something like 9 for 450, but we tacked on 5 more years at 10 mil a year to get that AAV into a reasonable spot. So say Bo wants 7 years at 200 million. Maybe he would go for 10 years at 220 million? That drops the AAV from 28.6 to 22 million, which would be great but the downside is that it carries him through his age 37 season when he's going to be ass. So yeah, it could make the Vlad/Bo years painful toward the end, but given that we are a tax team, lowering the AAV can really add up over time. Plus, I was a fan from 1994-2014 so I can handle some lean years so long as we hang on to our stars. Seeing Halladay being claimed by the Phillies still pisses me off to this day. Tl;DR Give Bo a 10 year contract!

Unless the Jays just know this season was a fluke I think you've got to bring him back. His arb projection is $4.4M. But his projections suck. And he seemed to succeed based off of his 90 mph fastball which somehow got elite results this year. Can he do that again? Maybe a trade is the way to go? We could sign tons of starting pitching and put Berrios in the pen to replace Lauer as the long man.

Just listened and yeah they are really low on Bo. Contact on pitches out of the zone ages really poorly and that's a bad sign for Bo, is their argument.