KingKat

I'm not complaining about something that's going to make the game better. I love that they are expanding video replay. I'm just saying that the part about the splitting the replays into two groups based on inning just complicates things to no benefit. That's what's half-baked not the idea of expanding replay which is obviously a good idea. But you know don't pay attention to what I actually wrote. Just write cute phrases like Stay Classy and post Conan O'Brien gifs.

You just know that it's only a question of time before this rule screws a team in a big game. Why would there be less bad calls in the first 6 innings than in the last 3? It's a half-baked rule.

Seems fine today. I'll keep monitoring it but maybe it was just a passing thing.

If this was another team, we'd be having such a laugh over it all. This is like Peter Angelos era Orioles.

Man there isn't much of a silver lining to his season is there? Second base is actually his worse position by UZR. Stick a fork in him.

Is that from his Fangraphs page?

Really hard to say, I don't know of a place that parses out overall defensive value that way. He was brutal at 3B at first but he got better as the season got along so I'm not sure that it was such a huge factor. He also had some truly terrible SS play out there too but I don't know if it was enough playing time to have a significant impact. I think it's just varying levels of bad all over the infield with him and his bat is so bad now that I can't see how he could possibly provide vallue above replacement going forward even if he only plays 2B.

Everything is trending downwards for the second year in a row. He's not ancient but 32 isn't young either especially for a middle infielder. I have to admit I defended this signing and was practically pleading for him to start over Bonifacio but a guy his age who follows up career lows with even lower career lows probably doesn't have a whole lot left in the tank. Maybe he isn't much better than Bonifacio even though a lot of us have been telling ourselves he is. The fact that Bonifacio was really hyped and is the kind of player who attracts attention anyways has kept scrutiny away from Izturis but he looks an awful lot like another sunk cost (and a costlier one to boot). The defense isn't good enough to carry him if he's going to be an offensive sinkhole. I guess now we're left to wonder how long it will take for AA to realize what this board is realizing. The track record suggest it will take awhile, probably another season.

Yeah the AA quote doesn't make him sound like someone who is going to learn from his mistakes. It sounds like someone who is likely to repeat it. It sounds like someone who still doesn't know where he went wrong. What I really would have liked to here from Anthopoulos is something like: "I think that what we learned is that it's very hard to get more out of your pitching while also ignoring defense. I think we need to take a more holistic approach to run prevention if we are to be successful with this staff."

There's a 360 OBP in the middle there that's an obvious outlier but even if you remove that, his OBP is somewhere around 325. That's still way way better then what the Jays got out of him this year. No one would argue that AA should have anticipated a 258 OBP from Boni but I don't think anyone would argue that his previous track record was good enough to justify the ridiculous amount of rope he was given. Once Reyes returned from the DL, that should have been the last anyone saw of Boni.

You'd really have to dig into the numbers to see what's happening. There are any number of factors. Assuming that there aren't problems with fWAR would be naive but sometimes that may not be as big a factor as simple timing. Every year there are teams that get better or worse results than their run differential would suggest. Whether that's being "clutch" or "unclutch" or simply good or bad fortune is up for interpretation. Generally, because clutchiness doesn't seem to be repeatable skill, it's assumed to be largely the product of good fortune but that's not set in stone or anything. Do the Cards and A's have a superior way of evaluating value that allows them to consistently outperform their fWAR? You'd have to see a year to year trend to support that belief but those are two of the smartest orgs in baseball so I wouldn't put it past them.

I can see the argument for better offense. He was bad but he was never this bad before. The garbage defense though was exactly as advertised. There was no reason to expect anything better except "faith in the player" or whatever the f*** passes for rationale in the Jays front office these days.

Oh if you go back through history into pre-sabermetric days, you will find plenty of spectacuarly s***** catchers who got even more ABs because they had a reputation for calling a good game or some other folksy justification. Believe me if this message board existed in the 80's, we'd all be JP is great because HR + RBI. Evaluating players is a lot easier these days. Just look at this year's WAR/Win graph. http://blogimages.thescore.com/mlb/files/2013/08/fwar-to-wins-2013.png This is seriously amazing stuff. fWAR isn't perfect but the relationship to actual wins is remarkably strong and with tweaking it can only get better. With fWAR, the casual fan can readily access a single number that gives a better idea of value then anything the smartest pre-Billy Beane GM could access. This is why in today's baseball, we expect a guy like JPA to get weeded out but in another era he probably sticks around for twenty years.

Baby steps. That they did it at all is a small victory.

First good trade since Thames for Delabar, I think.

Path of least resistance with maybe a bit of willful optimism thrown in.

I'm not really sure what Boni gives them that they don't already have in Jarod Dyson but if Dayton Moore wants him that's his perogative.

This is a good site but be warned that people around here tend to be brutally honest in their assessments and opinions. Rick Litsch took any criticism of his son's performance quite personnally and got into a bunch of fights on the old BlueJays.com board. It got quite awkward. I don't think you'll see a lot of talk about your nephew here but don't be surprised if someone gives a low assessment of his odds of making the majors (I don't know much about your nephew but the odds of any draftee making the majors are low to begin with and that's something that's going to be discussed openly around here). If you can accept that your nephew will probably be talked about in those terms, I'll think you'll find this community to be one of the best places (if not the best) to find out what's going on in the Jays organization.

I don't really see the huge upside. Neither can hit. I'll give you the floors though (assuming that Jimenez has Gose level defense which is still a question mark for me).

At this point, I'm just going to asumme it's cash. It's such an addition by substraction that a decent minor leaguer in return though nice is almost too much to hope for.

I don't think that's moronic. The Jays are supposed to be good at MLB scouting. That's supposed to their edge. So why did they move both Hech and Y.Escobar in the Marlins and flip Aviles while running with Boni and Izturis. Heck, why did they acquire Boni? He wasn't going to morph into a good player and that Lo Viste stuff doesn't make up for lack of baseball ability. Why didn't they anticipate Cabrera's problems when they gave him a physical? The Red Sox held up negotiation with Napoli because of health concerns. The Pirates held up their negotiations with Francisco Liriano. Both of those guys are in way better shape than Melky or Josh Johnson. If the Jays MLB scouting was worth a damn, they would see this stuff coming but the Jay's faith in MLB scouting is about as vindicated as faith in homeopathic medicine.

At his best, Bonifacio is merely a bad player rather than a terrible one. No reservations praising this move. Literally anything is a good return at this point because at least Boni won't get any more playing time for the Jays.

Burns has had the best offensive season of any season but whether he's actually the best prospect is up for debate. - Jimenez is a wild card. It really depends how good his defense is. It needs to be great for him to be a good prospect but maybe it is? Defensive scouting isn't worth a damn so who really knows. - Pillar had a good season in a sense but it's the kind of season that doesn't profile well at all for a major league OF. As many have pointed out, too much of his success is tied to batting average. Depending on his defense, he might be a good reserve. - Gose still has the same floor, he's always had. The gap between his ceiling and his floor is shrinking but he's at worst a valuable role player. If you take the pessimistic view on Burns, Gose is the better prospect but like I said I'm jumping on the Burns bandwagon and I really don't think Gose will ever hit. - Barreto is really young but he's not amazing. He had some pretty glowing scouting reports prior to signing and he's young enough that those still hold some weight. Given that the upside of the others isn't so high, I wouldn't argue with someone who calls him the best prospect. I kind of felt that way myself for awhile but now I'd rather reserve judgement. Right now for me it goes: 1. Andrew Burns (the only guy I'm high on) Big gap 2. Barreto Big gap 3. Lopes 4. Gose (the defense is for real, the base stealing is worrisome but I'll make allowances for him being in the minors and possibly being intentionally over-aggresive as part of his development, the bat will probably never come) 5. Jimenez (I realize I've done a 180 on Jimenez but I'm just not comfortable making assumptions about the quality of his defense anymore). Pillar doesn't register for me. I'd rank anyone who's had a decent short-season year ahead of him.

Anyone else finding that they have to constantly log in? I don't mean from session to session, I mean within the same session, sometimes even in the midst of writing a post.

If the source of Johnson's struggle can be identified and if there's a reasonable assurance that it has been corrected then you might as well offer the QO. But you need to be damn sure of both of those things. You can't have a repeat of the Melky Cabrera scenario where assumptions are made about a player's current ability that turn out to be way off the mark.