TwistedLogic

Imagine having a manager that understands batting your best hitter 2nd.

Yeah, exactly. The things that jumped out to me most in his small sample of spring training AB's so far were the new max exit velo of 106 and the four balls hit harder than 100. He's definitely got a little more sting in that swing. The 104.4 was also really impressive (I remember watching it.) Scorching line drive homer over the left field wall that surprised the commentators (away booth, iirc)

I was curious on how much of my perception on Espinal's power uptick was anecdotal so I decided to dive into the game logs (since StatCast doesn't show cumulative stats for spring training, reeee). Here are all of Espinal's recorded exit velocity numbers in spring training so far: 67.9 95.8 102.5 95.7 90.4 102.6 99.5 79.8 104.4 91.3 106.2 67.6 94.2 67.7 That shakes out to a 90.4 average exit velocity, which is in between Vladdy's 2019 and 2020 numbers Espinal had an average EV of just 84.8 in 2021. He hit 17 balls over 100 MPH all season long last year, with a high of 104.2. He's already hit four balls above 100 MPH in the above 14 at-bats, with a high of 106.2, the single hardest hit ball of his career. Espi's power gains are legit. Breakout incoming.

I've actually been contemplating drafting Espinal as a late-round sleeper in several of my D&H leagues over the past few weeks. I think the muscle he put on over the off-season has him poised for a potentially big breakout. His exit velocities in spring training so far have been reflective of a significant increase in strength.

I wonder why this front office hates Samad Taylor so much. Kid crushed AA pitching last year as a 22-year-old and they left him exposed to the Rule 5 draft before they knew it would get canceled. Then he gets no action in Spring Training while career-bums like Mallex Smith and Nathan Lukes got a ton of playing time. They must really see nothing in him. Shame, because he was super exciting to follow last year. Edit: Scratch that, they did play him. For a single at-bat. In which he hit a home run, lol. His only other career "MLB" at-bat was also in spring training, when he hit a two-run go-ahead single against the Yankees in 2019. Something tells me this kid is going to make the Jays look dumb whenever he inevitably ends up playing for another team.

Yup. I had to tinker with it quite a bit but it ended up in place that I'm really happy with. I think the mix of hitters and pitchers at the top of the board is fairly reflective of the best players in the game by WAR. I also discovered that Shohei Ohtani is broken in Draft-and-Hold Fantrax leagues. Because you can't set lineups, he's pretty much just locked into the position you draft him at. The other two D&H leagues I was in (another Discord league and the one on this forum) were showing his projected points as half of what they should be. I read that if you want him as a two-way guy, the commissioner has to manually go into the scoring and add hitting stats for Pitchers, so I just went ahead and did that. Of course, Ohtani was broken OP afterward so we decided to add a little quirk to the draft where whoever picks him loses their next pick. It was interesting wondering how long he'd fall and when someone would decide he was worth two picks instead of one. He still got picked 5th overall, hahaha.

This type of depth signing and the reports that Jose Ramirez might be signing an extension in Cleveland pretty much tell me that the Jays are likely done for the off-season. If Michael Conforto wasn't an anti-vaxxer, they probably would have signed him by now and if they were going to trade for Ramirez, it probably would have been done by now. If they are truly done and this is the team going into the season, I'm pretty damn happy with it.

https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/mlb/player-news/10672801

Laika got me hooked on Draft & Hold leagues so I set up a couple of them myself. Me and some Discord buddies are drafting one tonight. I made a custom scoring ruleset inspired by TangoTiger's linear weights and FanGraphs' Ottoneu scoring system, with some f***y fun stuff also mixed in like rare milestones, outfield assists, catcher's interference, pickoffs, drawing double plays and pitcher defense. Thoughts or suggestions? (I know some of the RP stats look over-valued, that was a deliberate decision to bring them up closer to their ADP rankings versus the projected fantasy scores of the hitters and starting pitchers in my new scoring system.) Here's what the 2021 season would look like with my scoring system:

Vic Carapazza calling this game was worth it for one reason specfically. This heckler: https://streamable.com/en2mrh

I actually did replace Vasquez with Phelps on my list but I made some formatting mistakes and hit the undo button a few times, must have accidentally undid that one and didn't notice. I'm not attached to Vasquez at all and would much prefer Phelps get a shot to see what he can do when healthy. He could be a potential difference-maker.

Vic Carapazza in midseason form.

My first shot at rosterbation for 2022!

The struggle of Hazel Mae trying to pronounce Japanese players' names with the Japanese pronunciation but using Latino pronunciations instead. Scorching liner up the middle that went right into the CF glove.

How the f*** do the Yankees project eight wins better than the Blue Jays? https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/ Baseball Prospectus needs to be Old Yeller'd.

I badly need to know what Bird's deal pays him if he makes the major league roster so that I can plug him into my Rosterbation opening day payroll spreadsheet. It's irritating my OCD to not know his exact dollar figure.

The guy credited with being the key cog in this team's elite pitching development getting fired because of a DUI charge before the season even begins would mean the wet blanket thread has already jumped the shark.

What a f***ing *******.

Does show him on the Transactions page as well: https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/roster/transactions

This is hilarious, hahaha. Feel free to educate me, boo. I've already shown once in this thread that I'm open to changing my opinions when presented with new information.

You really didn't need to elaborate. I said that I would trust the stats over whatever anecdotal conclusions you drew up based on what you think you saw and I'm still going to do that. You say that Tapia is a boneheaded base-runner that is constantly getting picked off and running into outs. That he's done one of those things almost every time you watch. So let's look at the numbers. Raimel Tapia had 533 plate appearances in 2021. Based on Baseball Reference's baserunning leaderboards, he got picked off 3 times and thrown out on the base paths 2 times all year long. He had a 77% stolen-base rate, for 20 SB and 6 CS. You keep comparing him to Villar, so let's look at Villar's numbers. Jonathan Villar had 505 plate appearances in 2021. He was picked off 7 times and made 5 outs on the base paths. His success rate on stolen base attempts was 67%, for 14 SB and 7 CS. He was considerably worse than Tapia in every number. It's entirely possible that 2021 was an anomaly and super-scout Grant77 was just remembering what he's seen in past years. So let's expand the sample size. Tapia made 5 "bone-headed" outs (picked off or thrown out while advancing) in 2021, 1 such out in 2020, 8 outs in 2019, and 0 in 2018 (small PA sample). Compare that to Villar who made 12 dumb outs in 2021, 7 in 2020, 12 in 2019 and 9 in 2018. Tapia's made a dumb out 14 times in the last four years. Villar has done it 40 times. To further put those numbers in perspective, the league leaders in those types of outs each year include people like Jose Altuve (13 outs in 2021), Francisco Lindor (7 outs in 2020), Tommy Pham (16 outs in 2019) and Javier Baez (12 outs in 2018). Tapia also had an XBT% (the percentage of times a runner takes more than one base on a single and more than two bases on a double) of 44 in 2021. That was plainly in the middle of the league and pretty much exactly in line with his career numbers. Compare that to a guy like Grichuk, who was in the bottom 15% of the league in 2021 with an XBT% of just 31. Tapia is a very fast runner that has been squarely average or above average in smartness/dumbness stats for the past several years. So yeah... on a guy who ran into an out twice and got picked off three times over the course of an entire season, you made the claim that he makes a boneheaded base-running play almost every time you watch. That's pretty much a perfect case study of why nobody should care about what some guy on a forum thinks he's seen with his own eyes.

This was posted in here earlier but didn't get much attention so anyone who hasn't already seen this video needs to watch it: Tapia has some really promising things in his game and could be a tweak or two away from becoming a genuinely superb hitter. For starters, while Tapia only hit 6 home runs in 2021, these were the pitchers he hit them off of: - Walker Buehler - Jacob DeGrom - Hector Neris - Aaron Sanchez - Seth Frankoff(?) - Max Scherzer The average distance on those home runs was 414 feet, which was tied for 9th the highest average HR distance in the game. It's like he knows how to crush the ball and tries for it when he's facing elite pitchers but he's just smashing the ball into the ground otherwise. Tapia has really nice contact numbers and actually had one of the highest average launch angles in the league in 2018 (18.1 degrees) before gradually tumbling down to the lowest launch angle of all time in 2021 (-4.4 degrees). It almost feels like some crusty old coach must have told him "you have really good speed, just beat the ball into the dirt and out-run the throw" and he's been doing that ever since. If the Jays' coaching staff can help him adjust his launch angle and start hitting line drives on a more consistent basis, he could become a contact-hitting god.

With all due respect, I'm gonna trust the stats over your eye-test on this one. Grichuk had -4.9 BsR in 2021. Tapia was a +3.9. Those numbers are consistent with their longer-term track records as well. And BsR takes into account dumb base-running plays. Tapia is a massive upgrade on the basepaths.

Laika already made a ton of good points but further than that, what won me over on Tapia earlier today was something a guy on reddit pointed out. While Grichuk has like 20 points on him in wRC+, that's pretty much all based in his considerable power advantage. Tapia is actually a much better hitter. Career splits have Grichuk at a .245 BA and a .293 OBP versus Tapia's .280 BA and a .325 OBP. Both guys pretty much played to those career splits in 2021. Tapia has also been striking out almost half the time as Grichuk lately, is a much faster and smarter base-runner, and he has grounded into 16 double plays in his entire 439-game career. Grichuk had 17 GIDP in 2021 alone. Tapia has absolutely no power but he's a better offensive player than Grichuk in every single other way on top of being a lefty bat. And this is one lineup that can afford its 4th OF to not be a power-first guy. He's considerably less of a black hole in the lineup than Grichuk and is much more likely to keep the line moving (let alone killing rallies with a double play), which is perfect for this current Jays roster. I totally understand why Atkins repetitively said he's a much better complimentary piece for this team than Grichuk in his media availability earlier today.

I'm okay with some agent drama but I really hope we don't see any Paul Marner/Michael Nylander type ******** come into play with the Jays' young core. Hope none of their dads are annoying ****s. Would be nice to see them locked up sooner rather than later so there's no anxiety around that.