TwistedLogic

Matt Joyce hits a ball back into the BP machine. http://mlb.mlb.com/images/4/9/2/80638492/tb_joyce_smallball_ooht3ook.gif

Anyone else feel like Votto and Hendriks look very much alike?

Screenshot it, it's the same on my screen as it's always been.

Pipeline Perspectives: Blue Jays made out best in Draft Hoffman, Pentecost head up large group of talented youngsters selected by Toronto By Jim Callis | 6/18/2014 10:00 A.M. ET There's a good amount of subjectivity regarding baseball prospects. With the evaluation of talent being in the eye of the beholder, finding consensus is often difficult. Even Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLBPipeline.com don't always see eye to eye. They discuss their viewpoints regularly in a feature called Pipeline Perspectives. Submit a topic for them to debate. Writing that the Blue Jays had the best Draft this year isn't exactly making a bold statement. It's maybe a little more daring than saying Mike Trout is the best all-around player in the Majors. We won't know for sure how the 30 teams actually fared in the 2014 Draft for years down the road, so the club that makes the strongest initial impression usually is one that had more than its share of premium picks. And only one team in Draft history ever had two earlier selections than Toronto did this June. The 2009 Nationals owned the No. 1 overall choice on the basis of having the Majors' worst record the year before, and they also had the No. 10 pick because they failed to sign Aaron Crow at No. 9 in '08. They parlayed those selections into Stephen Strasburg and Drew Storen, who helped Washington win the National League East in 2012 and have the Nats in the hunt again this year. The Blue Jays earned the No. 9 pick this June with their 2013 performance, and they added the No. 11 choice as compensation for not signing Phil Bickford at No. 10 last summer. With its pair of early selections, Toronto landed a pair of potential impact talents. First, the Blue Jays chose East Carolina right-hander Jeff Hoffman, who was a candidate to go No. 1 overall before he blew out his elbow and required Tommy John surgery in April. The track record of elbow reconstructions leads to optimism that Hoffman will regain his once-formidable stuff: a mid-90s fastball, a big breaking curveball and a deceptive changeup. If he does, Toronto will have a front-line starter. With its second first-rounder, the Blue Jays took the best true catcher in the Draft in Kennesaw State's Max Pentecost. After winning Cape Cod League MVP honors and leading the most prestigious summer circuit with a .962 OPS in 2013, he encored by topping NCAA Division I with 113 hits and ranking second with a .422 average and 168 total bases this spring. He still needs to improve as a receiver, but he's more athletic and quicker than most backstops and has a strong arm. Hoffman and Pentecost were just the start of a banner Draft for Toronto, however. When its second-round pick arrived at No. 49, a first-round talent was waiting. Sandalwood High (Jacksonville, Fla.) right-hander Sean Reid-Foley ranked 18th on MLBPipeline.com's Draft Top 200, but the depth of prep pitching in this Draft and the general skittishness on the part of many teams to take high school arms early caused him to slide. As a result, the Blue Jays were the only team who grabbed three of our top 20 Draft prospects. Strong and athletic, Reid-Foley throws four pitches, including a low-90s fastball and a low-80s slider, for strikes. The Blue Jays continued to find high-ceiling high schoolers with its next three picks. Battlefield High (Haymarket, Va.) left-hander Nick Wells (third round) is ultra projectable at 6-foot-5 and 180 pounds, and he already hits 93 mph with his fastball. Thorsby (Ala.) High's Matt Morgan (fourth) was one of the best all-around prep catchers available. And Bearden High's (Knoxville, Tenn.) Lane Thomas (fifth) has the hitting skills and speed to fit the center fielder/leadoff hitter profile. In 2013, Toronto made a couple of big late-round splashes by inking 11th-rounder Jake Brentz for $700,000 and 30th-rounder Rowdy Tellez for $850,000 on the day of the signing deadline. The Blue Jays have put themselves in position to again make some dramatic moves deep into the Draft. Collinsville (Ill.) High right-hander Tanner Houck (12th round), College of Charleston second baseman Gunnar Heidt (13th) and Lemont (Ill.) High catcher Mike Papierski (16th) all made the MLBPipeline.com Top 200, as did all but unsignable Osceola High (Largo, Fla.) righty Keith Weisenberg (38th). Other intriguing third-day choices included Papierski's teammate, left-hander Jake Latz (11th round), American Heritage School (Plantation, Fla.) outfielder Todd Isaacs (22nd) and Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School (Brampton, Ontario) righty Zach Pop (23rd). Dodgers national crosschecker Roy Clark likes to say that there's only one certainty with the Draft: when it's over, 30 scouting directors tell their GMs they just had the best Draft in baseball. Jonathan Mayo makes a case for the Brewers, and I cited some other clubs with productive Drafts here. But top to bottom, no team did better this year than the Blue Jays. Jim Callis is a reporter for MLB.com and writes a blog, Callis' Corner. Follow @jimcallisMLB on Twitter. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs. Callis and Mayo having a debate about which major league team had the best draft of the year. Mayo nominates the Brewers and Callis goes to bat for the Jays. I should note that Callis is incorrect in saying that only one other team in history has had two draft picks earlier than the Blue Jays. If I remember correctly, the Diamondbacks drafted Bauer (3) and Bradley (7) in 2011.

Welcome to the forum. Nice way to start off. Keith Law is such a fabulous *******.

According to the Yankees broadcasters, they finally got clarification on the Navarro pop-up. When a runner comes into physical contact with the fielder, he's automatically out and the ball is considered dead. At that point you put the batter on base, and score it as a fielder's choice. So the end call of Navarro getting put on the bag was correct.

And the Blue Jays aren't? Give me a f***ing break. The Yankees look like s***.

Feel bad for Hutch. Defense has f***ed him over so hard today. Anyone raging at Hutch needs to grow up, he went 7 scoreless innings in two of his last three starts.

Gibby yelling at Melky for that haha.

Sorry, I meant Voldemort. I didn't say they did. But he is employed by The Score, correct? And as far as I know, The Score is owned by Rogers. He's said this a little more than 46 million times.

LOL Holy f***, Gruber, FAA, CHP and Moogy going at it at once? Is this really happening? http://i.imgur.com/py2PxcN.gif http://i.gyazo.com/2998ccd82282eb184cb8e508df77a773.png

Agreed. I thought the post Convo made was stupid as well, but it wasn't so stupid as to the point of extending it into a full argument over two days and still be giving him s*** for it. You realize that he made both of those accounts and tried to dogg out of it by talking to himself, right? I disagree on the front that Rogers did a terrible job about the situation simply because their employees are morons. Rogers owns The Score and The Score employs Stoeten. Do I hold Rogers responsible for all the stupid s*** and outlandish opinions that Stoeten posts on his blog? No, not really. The guys working for Sportsnet get pulled into speculative rumors on a very consistent basis, which is how these rumors get spread to the casual base in the first place, and it's a large part of why the entire fanbase has a meltdown when things don't get done. I don't believe that the team could have said anymore than they did to "temper expectations" before the signing took place, and I don't even necessarily think that they should have. Even if they had absolutely no intention of signing Darvish, the fact that the entire industry thought they would creates a strategic point that forces the Blue Jays competition to bid higher. All of that being said, I fully understand why you're taking that stance, because the argument from your side is also defensible in many ways. People that do think Rogers should be held responsible for the words of their writers and radio hosts, and the fact that the team could have spoken on the matter after the signing took place, both present a situation where a point can be made from either side and I'm comfortable in saying that we can just agree to disagree on it.

That's at least my biased perspective based on what I've seen on other forums. Europeans that follow American sports often have to stay up long past midnight just to watch the games. The guys that stick around end up pretty dedicated fans. Europeans don't often have the severe inferiority complex that the fans of Toronto-based teams generally have, since they aren't as familiar with that feeling of seeing no real success in sports for two decades; which usually makes them more objective and easier to talk to, as well.

Well, at least you can admit the stunted capacity of your intellect.

And how did they do that, exactly?

I was one of the first ones to throw out his name, but this needs to stop now. There's a less than zero chance that the team leading the AL Central is going to trade away their ace and start a rebuild.

Christ, you guys are really, really bad at trying to cover for your duplicate accounts. AA said absolutely nothing to imply that the Jays were front runners for Darvish. It has always been the dumbass fans that put 2 and 4 together and end up with 5. The Jays are the most consistent team when it comes to hiding the things they're working on and not giving anything away in interviews, and it's their stupid fans that keep believing the idiotic rumors they read on the internet and taking it to mean that the Jays are always lying to them. AA doesn't give a f*** what you think about his trip to Japan, he made a scouting trip, he didn't tell anyone "I'm going to sign this guy". People drew that conclusion themselves. This is such a joke. "If we signed Tanaka"? If we signed Tanaka, we would probably have dropped nearly 200 million dollars on him, and anyone that thinks that was a smart investment at the time is a moron, should really get a grip and should probably stop watching baseball -- or at least stop following the Blue Jays.

Beyond the fact that they likely wouldn't hire me, I have absolutely no desire to become a moderator of this forum. I don't need a single reason to spend anymore time here than I already do, and even in the event that I did, I don't want to deal with the added stress that would accompany the fact that I'd constantly disagree with the other mods on letting useless *******s like you stay around. http://cdn-usa.gagbay.com/2012/06/i_sense_a_rustling_in_the_jimmies-92336.jpg Enjoy the ban. It's not like the old board disappeared, lol. You can go back there at any point.

Welcome to the forum! I gotta say it's great to get some fans here from the UK. From what I've seen so far, European fans in general are pretty loyal to their teams and are often among the better posters when they do join up to American forums. Great to have you here and I hope you choose to say.

I was one of the more active posters during my time there, and even though I ended up getting sick and tired of the people, I still had things I liked about that site, so it's strange now that I went back and lurked at it recently to realize that the place has died a very slow and painful death. In 2012, the time when I was probably most active on PSD, it was commonplace for their Blue Jays GDTs to get 2000-3000 posts a series. Now it's been relegated to something like 200-300 posts per series, with the bulk of those posts coming from the same bitchwad poster that drove me to leave that site in the first place. All of their forums have seen that kind of misery across the board. The Red Sox vs Twins matchup that just ended in a back-to-back homer walkoff has a total of 15 posts for the entire series. That's f***ing crazy to me. Just really weird how far the entire board has fallen. But at the same time, there's a satisfaction in that. PSD was a major corporate forum that was run exactly how you'd imagine a corporate website to be run. Seeing them fading is almost redeeming in that sense. If I had some sort of power or say in how to run one of these forums, I think taking many of the elements from this board with many of the elements from that board and coming up with something out of that would make a phenomenal forum.

I know I talk about the negatives of this place often, whether it's the GDTs, the trolling, the lax moderation (which has seen a massive improvement over the past week or two) or whatever else, but I will say one thing. Despite the fact that there's a bunch of people here with high post counts already, the quality post to total post count ratio is pretty high. I think King has the forum lead at nearly 19K posts, but the majority of his posts are quality posts, and by that I mean they further or add to a discussion one way or another, whether positive or negative. There's not much empty posting done. PSD had threads where individuals would get more than 1K posts each during a single wrestling pay-per-view or a single playoff series. The GDTs are the GDTs, but there's very little spam here compared to other places I've seen. Part of it probably has to do with how the GDTs have devolved and a lot of the main posters aren't as super active in them as they can be, and another large part of the reason is probably because OTTs (off-topic threads) aren't very popular on this forum. Most other sites have very high traffic OTTs since people get familiar with one another and can discuss basically anything, pushing post counts to the sky. All things considered, this is a baseball forum that actually discusses a s***-ton of baseball. Most of the active posters almost always have something to add to a discussion, and in a way, that's probably why everyone disagrees with each other so often, because there's so much to discuss and debate in the first place. And if you ignore all the GDT crap and the trolling and the banhammer requests, that's a really healthy thing to have on a forum. Take it from someone that was a moderator and one of the first registered members of a sports forum that was trying to get off the ground (failed project). Getting people to consistently discuss topics that are worthy of discussion is really hard, and this place has no problem when it comes to that. I think that's kinda remarkable.

I had an MLB.com account for their s***** fantasy ball, and despite the fact that I looked for an active Jays forum for a while, both the official Jays forum and Real GM had layouts that were way too messy for me. Maybe that's a preference I developed along the way of moderating and being an active part of several established gaming/sports forums, but I can't stand a bad forum layout. Especially the "old board" I have no idea where the hell they got that jurassic formatting, but there wasn't even a proper quote function. Beyond that, everytime I tried to check out that forum, I never got the impression that it was very active, but from what everyone here says, I guess I missed something. Had I known how active it was, I might have bit the bullet, but I guess I caught a lucky break because I never met any of the famous trolls from that board. I had more than 10K+ posts on PSD before coming here though, which was arguably at times a bigger cesspool than any other forum I've seen, excluding what goes on in the GDTs here.

No, no, he's right. And on that note...

This is such blatant backtracking. You didn't "show who's struggling" you wrote "SUCK" in all caps next to every player's name. Learn to put things into context.

Jose Bautista, April 12 - May 6: | 325 - 467 - 578 - 1045 | RUTHIAN Melky Cabrera, May 20 - May 22: | 462 - 533 - 1.077 - 1.610 | BONDSIAN Edwin Encarnacion, April 25 - June 3: | 297 - 386 - 775 - 1161 | ENCARNACIAN Adam Lind, April 1 - June 3: | 341 - 419 - 573 - 992 | PLATOONISH MUSALIAN Jose Reyes on April 4, 2010 in New York Mets High-A Affiliate | 000 - 000 - 000 - 000 | ARENCIBIAN