TwistedLogic

Or to make it more "concise": every person on this board would hate Neal Cotts if he had just pitched the exact same 2014 season, but for the Jays instead of the Rangers. Nobody would care what his advanced stats were if they had sat through him blowing 9 games, because they'd know that you can't trust him coming into the game. Same reason everyone suddenly hates Janssen, despite him being excellent for three and a half seasons before he got sick.

My point is that he's always performing worse than his peripherals. His career numbers look a bit better because of one good year in 2013 and one good year in 2005. Outside of that, he consistently underperforms his peripherals. Even last year, he had a 4.32 ERA and he blew 9 games. Yeah, herpderp traditional stats, but a 3.86 xFIP isn't a very great number for a late-inning reliever either. Relievers are the toughest players to predict, but some guys just don't perform well under pressure. If we had a strong need for someone like Neal Cotts, I'd be all for a flier to see if he can get back to his 2013 numbers, but we already have two lefties in the pen and there are better relief options on the market.

Speaking of terrible deals, I'm like a coke addict for the idea of trading for Kemp. I know how bad of a move it is, I know it makes no sense for the team, I know that the contract is an albatross, I know it would quickly tie the team down and I know he doesn't have a lick of defense left in him, and I would still spaz the f*** out if we got him. http://i.gyazo.com/8e5a57e1d58c2fcb185d7add91048cef.png Sigh. The heart wants what the heart wants.

No offense, but this is one of the worst proposals put forth so far this offseason. Not only would it be the dumbest thing for this front office to ever do, taking on that much payroll again, do you have any idea what kind of prospect capital you'd have to send the other way to even make that trade? Ruben Amaro Jr wants a package like Norris, Pompey and Osuna for Hamels alone (that might not even get it done). The moves you think would make this team better would actually obliterate the future of the franchise. It's moot anyways. Rogers would never sanction that much new money for the payroll, and Alex would never give up the assets he'd be asked to give up to make that trade happen.

Cotts, despite always having good peripherals, always pitches like s***. Outside of 2013, he's always had an incredibly bloated ERA. I know we're supposed to look at the advanced stats, and it almost feels blasphemous even typing this, but when it comes to relievers who make a living off small sample sizes, stats like his matter. Nobody's going to care what his RA9 WAR is or what his xFIP is, if everytime he comes into the game, he gives up runs. This is somewhat of a problem with guys like Todd Redmond as well. His fangraphs page always looks good, but when is the last time you actually felt comfortable with him coming into the game? I'm not gonna stop spamming Jesse Crain's name until I get banned or until someone else signs him. The guy's been an absolute beast since 2010, and he's gotten better every year. He's coming off injury, so he should be dirt cheap, and probably best of all, he comes with a free ******** maple syrup narrative attached. Think of all the Wilneresque headlines! "The Jays trade Brett Lawrie, somehow start 2015 with 4x as many Canadians" Outside of Crain, who I think is a must-sign if his medicals check out, I like Neshek as a buy-high, and Grilli, Romo and Ogando as buy-lows. None of these guys should cost as much as even Gregerson.

Not sure I'd want them to sign any of those guys for what they'd cost either. Unless my prediction is completely off base, you can probably get both Lowrie and Crain, or all three of Crain, Neshek and Medlen, in how much Robertson alone will cost per year.

A guy who went from Rookie ball to the Majors in one year seems mentally fragile? LOL And yes. Yes he has destroyed every level: http://i.gyazo.com/1d25210bbd335b6c58126d46abf618b1.png 124 wRC+ at 18 years old in Rookie ball. 159 wRC+ at 19 years old in Low-A. 115 wRC+ at 20 years old in Class-A. 150 wRC+ at 21 years old in High-A. 138 wRC+ at 21 years old in Double-A. 137 wRC+ at 21 years old in Triple-A. Even though it's a small sample at almost every level, he has dominated in those small samples. There isn't a league he's played in so far where he was even average offensively. He's also got far better plate discipline than you give him credit for. Just because he struck out a lot in a 40 PA sample at the majors doesn't negate the fact that throughout 1400+ PA's in the minors, he's got a BB rate of 11.7% for a K rate of 19%; that's better than Josh Donaldson's career K/BB rates. Anyways, the point I was trying to make is that there is absolutely no harm in giving him a shot at the 2-hole if he performs well at the majors. He profiles very well in that spot, and if he does well enough, I would have no problem with him pushing Reyes out of the leadoff spot either. I don't get why he's randomly being projected to be the 2nd worst hitter on a team that features Smoak, Martin and Saunders, all guys that have yet to show that they can be consistent offensive threats.

Hah, nice catch.

I can see where you're coming from in moving Pompey 8th and sliding everyone else up a spot, but why are we presuming that Pompey will be the 8th best hitter on the team though? He's destroyed every level he's played at, if he translates well to the majors, he'd fit perfectly in that spot on the lineup. If he doesn't, the lineup can always be reshuffled. He doesn't even have to be nearly as good as he was in the minors to be a better or more reliable bat than Saunders, Smoak and Martin. It doesn't matter if you don't get anything back for him if he can give you 200 decent innings in a contending year.

This is how I see the roster right now. http://i.gyazo.com/e1fd8c5503bcafc25518d329effec2fd.png That's probably how I line up the offense and the rotation. The rest is not necessarily what I'd do, but what I think is probably the general idea for the Jays right now. As of now, it looks like they have 4 righties, 1 lefty and 4 switch hitters in the lineup. Personally, I think T-Hole, Tolleson and Navarro need to f*** off, but I wouldn't be terribly opposed to Izturis on the bench. You also ideally have Estrada in the pen (if he's not traded, which is what I really want) and Sanchez stretched out in the minors, but I think Norris will be the one that ends up in AAA while Estrada will probably be given the ball to start the year. That bullpen is a monstrosity, and it's clear they're going to be working on it, so the end result is probably something like Cecil, Loup, Estrada, Redmond, New Thing 1, New Thing 2 and whoever does better in spring between Drabek and Delabar. Which still looks like a pretty custy bullpen, depending heavily on how good the new guy(s) is/are. AA should just go into full savior mode. Medlen, Crain, Lowrie, Neshek, Rodriguez, roster complete. If you can ditch Estrada on someone, might as well pick up Beachy as well (yeah, he's probably not signing on as a swingman, but dreams are dreams are dreams).

lol

He's probably busy going over Crain and Medlen's medicals

Ugh. Anyone else calling ******** on this?

I completely agree. If this was true, Beane, Friedman and Zaidi wouldn't be where they are right now. My direction of that post was more towards the idea TheHurl offered, that you could pick up someone off this forum, put them in a front office, and have them build a better team than AA. I just don't agree with that at all. Just because someone is adept at evaluating advanced statistics or has a decent grasp of player value, that doesn't mean they would immediately succeed in a role where, like you said, they have to hire people to cover all of the other bases. Just because you know your stats doesn't mean you'll hire the right scouts. It doesn't mean you'll succeed in that atmosphere or be able to deal with the pressure of that job. There's so many more factors involved.

Really really cool by the Indians.

You're absolutely right that he doesn't have the background to be considered qualified for his position, but that's why he pales in comparison to executives like Zaidi and Friedman. My point is that he wasn't just thrust into the GM role out of high school either; he was working in the office for years and he had an idea of all the factors that play into the job beforehand. He also had a scouting background; as much as we love sabermetrics, the draft is considered one of the most valuable places to recruit talent out of, and there's no reliable way to sabermetrically evaluate high school amateurs. You still need scouts. A lot of the people on these boards would probably alienate their scouts within the first year on the job. NJH made a brilliant point about being able to build relationships, and there's no easy way to do that in an office full of people that make a living off the "eye-test" when you're absolutely positive that you know more than them through advanced analytics.

Cool sarcasm. He said JFaS would make a better GM than AA. With all due respect to JFaS, you seriously think he has the experience and qualifications to hire the right scouts, cross-checkers and executives, to surround himself with a good enough administration that can aid him in making the best moves in baseball? Or I guess he doesn't have to, since he can probably do all of those things himself. For all the credit guys like Jay Sartori and Andrew Tinnish get, guys like AA are the people that hire them.

I'm sorry but this is where you lose me. I seriously think that it's borderline delusional to hold the belief that random people with zero idea of the inner-workings of a front office can easily step in and do a better job than the majority of the General Managers in charge. There's so much more to that job than just evaluating talent. You have to convince free agents that they want to come to your city. You have to convince GM's, who you clearly think are dumber than you, that they should give you their players and they should evaluate your assets as highly as you do. If you can even get anything done, you have to make marketing sense of all of your moves, so you can sell each of them to upper management and ownership, to get them to believe it's a good deal, something that is impossibly more difficult if you've made a bad move in the past. And you have to do all of it with hundreds of voices of scouts and executives chirping in your ear, and while being pressured by the media to spill your juicy secrets every step of the way, and while being put under a microscope by millions of rabid fans that'll make snap judgements about your adequacy at your job over every move you make. This isn't a fantasy league. It's a billion dollar business.

As I've already said, I don't think there's much budge in either side of this debate so the best we can do is agree to disagree. Brett Lawrie being traded away is precisely why I think that upper management is no longer meddling in baseball operations. Rogers has a new CEO, and Beeston could have lost his job last month, giving him enough of a motive to finally let go. Or maybe I'm wrong and AA randomly shifts from being a great GM to a terrible GM to a great GM again, which makes less sense to me than meddlesome executives, but is theoretically still plausible. Anyways, who cares, the FO is doing well right now and we should be enjoying that rather than dwelling on their past failures.

The difference is that upper management almost always has a large hand in moves of that calibre, with the payroll implications that it had. Illitch with Fielder and Moreno with Pujols/Wilson come to mind. All of those were dumb moves by guys that are considered decent (Dipoto) to very good (Dombrowski) GM's. I'm just going off of Beeston's composure throughout his interviews that were documented in "Great Expectations" and making a deduction based on that. Like we've both said though, all of this is limited to simply speculation, so there's no way of really knowing, and people are free to conclude what they personally believe is the most realistic scenario.

No offence, but I really don't want to get into a debate about baseball administration with you. It's virtually impossible to break through your biases towards this FO, so I'm not even going to try.

I've already made it clear that I don't evaluate the Mets and Marlins deals in the same context as his other transactions. There's enough of a reason to believe that there was heavy involvement from upper management in those moves, so without knowing what went on behind the scenes, I'm not gonna sit here like a keyboard executive and pretend I know what really happened. You can choose to look at it differently and you can choose to think that my opinion on the matter is a stupid one, but that's my perception of those trades and that's probably not going to change until we get some more insight from the FO. I should also point out that at the time, I was among the many that thought the Gomes for Rogers trade was actually a good one, and was probably more worried about losing Aviles.

Sports fans are a fickle bunch. It took three moves for everyone to go from calling him the ninja to hating him (Marlins, Mets, Gomes) and it took three moves to repair a large brunt of that damage over the past few weeks. Who really cares what people think though, as long as the team does well.

I think you mean Snider, not Thames. Thames for Delabar was a great trade, no matter when you look at it. Snider was bad at the time, he salvaged it by turning it into Kratz. Napoli-Franky and Gomes-Rogers remain his two most unforgivable moves in my eyes. If you're going to judge the trade in hindsight, then Escobar's been pretty bad since his first year off the team. He performed terribly this past season, and he embarrassed the Rays league-wide in that stupid brawl he caused. I don't know if I'd put him as top-5 even now, but I really don't see an argument where AA was ever a bottom-15 GM throughout his tenure. With some of the guys that are employed in the MLB, you could have so much worse, it's not even funny.

I remember a few years ago when I was looking at Sickels' "Top 20 prospects for 2012" lists and I remember how much envy I felt for the Diamondbacks when he gave four of their prospects an "A" rating, something he only gives to guys he considers absolute blue chip prospects. For comparison sake, that was the highest d'Arnaud's stock ever was, and he was rated a B+. At that point in time, the Diamondbacks had Parker, Bauer, Skaggs and Bradley. What an atrocious f***ing job that front office has done to butcher such a fantastic core. Parker for Cahill, Skaggs for Trumbo, Bauer for Gregorius... jesus christ.