Terminator

Oh no, bringing up Diaz for who??

Before the season weren't a lot on this board dreading AA trading Sanchez for Samardzija?

AL East race might be closest ever Projections have all five teams finishing within two games of one another Updated: May 6, 2014, 3:30 PM ET By Dan Szymborski | ESPN Insider Sometimes our expectations are thwarted by reality, as Arizona Diamondbacks fans and Pittsburgh Pirates fans looking forward to October baseball have found. In the case of the AL East, the expectations coming into the season were that of a brutal melee, a yearlong war of attrition that left all five teams beaten, battered and bloodied in its aftermath. So far, these predictions have come true. As of Monday morning, a scant 2 1/2 games separate the AL East leader, the New York Yankees, from the AL East cellar dweller, the Toronto Blue Jays. While that's a larger number than the separation between first and last in the NL East, the difference is that nobody really considers the Mets, Marlins and Phillies to be in the same tier of ability as the Braves and Nationals. The AL East is a different story. Five competitive teams In the preseason, the ESPN Forecaster panel picked the Blue Jays to win 77 games on average, the best predicted record of any last-place team in baseball. The ZiPS projection system saw the AL East as excruciatingly close. The difference in average expectation between best (Boston) and worst (Toronto) was only seven wins over a 162-game season, the smallest spread in the 11 years ZiPS has projected the leagues. Since the end of March, that race has gotten even tighter. The two teams projected to be at the top of a very tight division, the Red Sox and Rays, have been treading water so far, and those mediocre Aprils are baked into the final record. The closeness of the race now is almost shocking, as can be seen in the ZiPS mean projections for the five teams for the rest of the season (see table). ZiPS projects four of the five teams in the AL East to have a mean projection of finishing at 83 wins, with Toronto only a couple of games back. Now, that doesn't mean that 84 wins will win the AL East; it just means that, according to the projections, no single team in the division is more likely to finish with more than 84 games than not. In other words, the AL East isn't likely to come down to who has the most talented team, but simply luck and which of the very evenly matched teams play above their expectations. Historically close In the million simulations that make up the ZiPS final projections, the eventual AL East winner ended with just 89 wins. That's an unusually low number for a division that features some of baseball's most talented and wealthiest teams. Not counting the years shortened due to strikes, for obvious reasons, 89 wins won the AL East outright on only three occasions during the divisional era: 1972, 1990 and 2000. Among tight races, where does this possible one rank historically? Going through the million sims of the ZiPS-projected AL East final standings for 2014, the average standard deviation for the teams in the division is 3.27 wins. To compare this historically, I repeated this simple measure of spread for the top five teams in every divisional and league race going back to 1901 and found that, yes, this projects to be an unusually open race. Of the 354 races looked at -- the strike-shortened 1981 and 1994 seasons are excluded, and 2014 projections for the other divisions are included -- the 2014 AL East projects to rank sixth among all races in tightness of the top five teams, and the tightest race of the wild-card era. Smallest standard deviation among top five teams 1. 1988 AL East, 1.48 2. 1973 NL East, 1.92 3. 1964 NL, 2.00 4. 1967 AL, 3.21 5. 1915 Federal League, 3.24 6. 2014 AL East, 3.27 (projected) 7. 1987 AL West, 3.35 8. 1933 NL, 3.56 9. 2005 NL East, 3.81 10. 1940 AL 3.90 Not surprisingly, the most wide-open races by this methodology include some of the most storied races in baseball history. The 1988 AL East was a three-way battle between the Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers until the Red Sox built a five-game lead that they nearly blew in the final week. The 1973 Mets pulled out the pennant in a weak division after being in last place as late as Aug. 30 that year. The 1967 American League race is still known as the "Impossible Dream" year by Red Sox fans; it featured a final day of the season in which three teams had an opportunity to be the sole first-place team, and the race was decided only when Twins starter Dean Chance melted down in the sixth inning of the Twins-Red Sox game. If early results are any indication, this year's AL East race could end up being an all-time classic. It's rare we see a true five-team race, but this is shaping up to be one of them.

Yeah, that option has a lot of merit as well. A Getz/Tolleson platoon at 2B with Francisco getting a pinch hit AB once a game would give us solid defense.

I'd start Francisco at 3B and Lawrie at 2B. I feel that Francisco has a chance to post a 2-3 WAR season whereas whatever shitbag 2B AA wants to call up (whether it be Tolleson/Getz/Kawasaki/Diaz/Goins/etc.) is replacement value at best. This plan also kind of hinges on Lawrie being able to play 2B acceptably, something I'm not entirely sold on. It's not ideal at all, but this roster has a gaping hole and I think it's the best way to fix it.

Not sure where else to post this but AA's solution to a Lind platoon partner is staring him right in the face in the form of Erik Kratz. He should be on the big league team, even if it means having 3 Catchers. Heck, when facing a lefty instead of having Kratz DH just have him catch and move Navarro to DH. Kratz is better defensively and it will give Navarro some needed rest. He's also played some 1B so perhaps in a jam he could do it again. Same for Thole. C/DH/1B- Kratz C- Thole INF- Tolleson INF- Getz I'd swap Getz (keep Tolleson bc his splits against lefties are pretty solid) for Gose and then you are looking at a somewhat serviceable bench.

Henderson stunk but Cone did have .9 WAR in his brief time here. Pitched okay enough in the playoffs too.

I don't know if this team is good or not. But we are leading the AL East in run differential right now, so we've got that going for us which is nice.

Reyes is fine at SS and would definitely be better than Lawrie.

Check out his starts before that. Pretty sure he got his tits lit starting in the 6th or 7th inning in most of them.

Who is fighting and over what?

The question comes down to Juan Francisco at 3B vs. Getz/Tolleson at 2B. You also have to factor in Lawrie's glove at 3B vs. his glove at 2B. If Lawrie's defense was as equally impressive at 2B as it is at 3B I would probably prefer Francisco. But I think Lawrie's defense drops when he plays 2B so I probably prefer the Getz/Tolleson platoon.

I cheer for them and always will but my expectations are low this season. I've watched probably 20-23 of their games so far and each time they lose I just kind of go "meh" and get on with my day.

Gose is actually a bench player. Is he a good one? Not quite sold on that but he can at least play defense and pinch run. Tolleson makes some sense (given the slop we have). I just ran through his minor league splits and he's been pretty good against lefties. Perhaps a Tolleson/Getz platoon gets them average defense and a .650 OPS.

Francisco and his Swiss Cheese defense at 3B, Diaz whiffing on his bunt attempts, or Getz and his .300 SLG...does it really matter?

And brings in his only lefty to face the meat of our right handed middle of the lineup.

And for all those who hate Gibbons I present Ned Yost.

Lol nice. I turned the game off but I do recall the two hits off Santos were ground balls. If that first one was hit closer to a fielder it would have been the end of the inning.

Gibbons is fine. He's not perfect but he's rarely the reason we lose a game.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

I wonder if the Padres will even exercise it....

Best he could get was 8 mil on the open market. Why should the Jays have given him almost double that? Especially with his injury history. I just wish all those on the JJ QO bandwagon would admit defeat so we can move on.

Yeah I mean for a starter going down he's not the worst replacement to have. The difference between him and Lind for two weeks is negligible.

I agree, it's completely reactionary and over the top just as this whole fail of a thread is. We've got respected forum regulars acting like we couldn't give Dickey away and others saying he should have been gone a long time ago, whatever that means. This on top of the usual knee jerk comments we get after every loss. Everyone needs to keep in mind that it's 23 innings in April of 4.70 FIP baseball. He'll be fine.

Good lord people, he's def struggling right now but to say he sucks is a little strong.