Ehjays

I didnt realize we had that much cash left.

Jays getting some well deserved love south of the border

Not even close, he came here not in a trade but on his on accord, he switched positions, he put his money where his mouth is and he has performed as good as any 2nd baseman, He gave Toronto a chance unlike most free agents, at a great price. If he does leave we still get some value out of him with a pick so lets not place him with Kawhi

I saw an interview with Semein in the last week or so and he said its not just about money, geography counts as well. With his wife and kids not with him as they are back in the Bay area where he grew up and played many years with Oakland, I dont see him back. I hope im wrong. If San Fran stepped up I think he would do that in a heart beat...I will try to find a link.

Blue Jays Hopeful Of Retaining Marcus Semien, Robbie Ray By Mark Polishuk | September 5, 2021 at 5:53pm CDT Marcus Semien and Robbie Ray have been two of baseball’s best players this season, let alone big reasons why the Blue Jays are still in the hunt for an AL wild card berth. Both are scheduled to hit free agency this winter, and it isn’t any surprise that the Jays have interest in keeping both players in the fold. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports that the Jays have already tried to sign Semien to a contract extension, while the club intends to discuss a long-term deal with Ray after the season. The wording would seem to imply that the Jays have yet to broach an extension with Ray, which might not necessarily mean that the team is prioritizing Semien. Ray (like many players) might simply prefer to not talk contract during the season, in order to focus solely on baseball. Also of note, Semien is represented by the Wasserman Agency, which has traditionally been more open to in-season negotiating — in the last month alone, Wasserman clients Travis d’Arnaud and Brandon Crawford each inked new deals to remain with their current teams. Barring a truly massive offer from the Blue Jays, it was probably unlikely that Semien would’ve accepted an extension this close to free agency, as the veteran infielder looks set to land the pricey multi-year deal that eluded him on the open market last year. Semien didn’t hit well over the first month of the shortened 2020 season, leaving him with only a .223/.305/.374 slash line in 236 total PA even after he hit much better in late September and during the Athletics’ playoff run. Rather than take a multi-year contract at a lowered cost, Semien opted for a one-year, $18MM deal with Toronto, betting on himself to deliver bigger numbers over a full season. That bet has paid off handsomely, as Semien hit his 35th homer of the season today, and is now batting .266/.334/.530 over 601 plate appearances. With the abbreviated 2020 season folded between Semien’s big years in 2019 and 2021, his three-season cumulative total of a .268/.346/.501 slash line over 1579 PA works out to a 128 wRC+, solidly placing him amongst the best middle infielders in baseball. Semien had been a starting shortstop in Oakland before becoming the Jays’ second baseman this season, to accommodate Bo Bichette at short. Ray also had something to prove in the wake of a rough 2020 season with the Diamondbacks and Blue Jays, and he moved quickly to rejoin the Blue Jays on a one-year, $8MM pact soon after the opening of the official free agent period. Ray had always been plagued by inconsistency and high walk totals during his five-plus seasons in Arizona, but after working with the Jays’ coaching staff and overhauling his offseason training regimen, Ray has blossomed as a candidate for the AL Cy Young Award. Including today’s 6 2/3 shutout innings of work against Oakland, Ray has a 2.60 ERA and 32.3% strikeout rate over 166 frames. Perhaps most importantly, Ray has only a six percent walk rate — easily his career best, and in the 82nd percentile of all qualified pitchers this season. Ray has also gained enough innings to qualify as baseball’s all-time leader in K/9, with an 11.2 total over his eight MLB seasons. In short, both Semien and Ray project to be two of the offseason’s top free agents, and re-signing both could potentially cost the Blue Jays upwards of $200MM. While it remains to be seen if the Jays will indeed be able to bring even one of the duo back for 2022 and beyond, money alone shouldn’t be a deterrent. The signings of George Springer and Hyun Jin Ryu are evidence that Toronto is willing to spend big in free agency, and many of the Jays’ young stars are either cost-controlled via arbitration or (in Bichette’s case) are still over a year away from arbitration eligibility. The Blue Jays also don’t have that much money on the books in future years, creating the possibility that both Semien and Ray could be slotted alongside Springer, Ryu, and possibly major extensions for the likes of Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or Teoscar Hernandez.

Here is that play.......MacDonald was there but it was Howie Clark he called off then after the game he lies .....he was a douche.

I thought the same thing then figured they meant his jersey number.

Valera is one of charlies pets, I think we lost a better player than what we should have lost.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/hurricane-ida-causes-extreme-flooding-at-yankee-stadium-forces-delays-at-us-open/

The owners want to set an age for free agency not years of service. It would be a bad thing for players coming up young but good for late bloomers like Donaldson. At least they are talking. MLB Proposal To Players Association Included Changes To Service Time Structure By Anthony Franco | September 1, 2021 at 10:59pm CDT Major League Baseball proposed a radical altering of the league’s service time structure in collective bargaining discussions with the MLB Players Association last month, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post. The league’s proposal included an offer to make players eligible for free agency at 29.5 years of age. It also involved a $1 billion pool (which would be tied to revenues in future seasons) that would be dispersed in an unspecified manner to replace the current arbitration system. Both features were part of a broader package proposal the league made to the MLBPA in mid-August, which Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported also included the lowering of the first luxury tax threshold to $180MM and the institution of a $100MM salary floor. Much about that proposal still remains unclear, although the lowered tax thresholds alone seem likely to make it a non-starter for the Players Association, which is widely expected to push for higher tax thresholds in the upcoming CBA. The current CBA is set to expire on December 1, leaving three months for the parties to continue to negotiate before the current deal lapses. (It’s not entirely clear what kind of impact such a scenario would have on the offseason were it to come to fruition, as teams were still permitted to make transactions the last time the CBA expired without a new agreement). It seems likely those talks will pick up in earnest the closer we move to the winter, but intervening reports offer a glimpse of how those more serious negotiations might take shape. MLB’s offer to base free agency qualification on age is in response to players’ concerns about service time manipulation. Under the current system, players first qualify for free agency at the end of the season in which they accrue six full years of MLB service time. A full year of service is calculated as 172 days, meaning players first promoted to the big leagues in late April of their rookie seasons fall just short of that benchmark. Not coincidentally, various top prospects have been held in the minors until just after that cutoff point in recent seasons — ensuring their teams essentially gain a seventh year of control over the player. Under an age-based system, there’d be no incentive for teams to keep prospects down past the time they’re deemed ready to play at the major league level. It’d also be a boon to late-blooming players, many of whom have to wait until they’re into their 30’s — and potentially past their physical peaks — to market their services around the league. Sherman cites Yankees star Aaron Judge — whose free agency timeline would’ve accelerated from next offseason to this winter if eligibility were set at 29.5 years — as an example of a player who would stand to benefit from such a change. That said, setting the free agency qualifying age at 29.5 would have an adverse effect on many of the game’s top stars. It’s not uncommon for the sport’s brightest young talents to reach the big leagues in their early-20’s in spite of the existing service time structure. Those players will often reach free agency before turning 29, setting them up well to land lengthy mega-deals. For reference, three of the top four players on MLBTR’s most recent Free Agent Power Rankings — Carlos Correa, Corey Seager and Trevor Story — wouldn’t be eligible for free agency this offseason if it were only granted for players 29.5 and older. So while an age-based system would benefit some players, it would likely depress the earning potential for some of the game’s top free agents — many of whom land market-resetting deals precisely because they’re young enough to shop around multiple seasons of prime-age performance. Young, extremely talented players who are most likely to land top-of-the-market contracts are also the ones most likely to be impacted by service time manipulation in the first place. That makes it all the more challenging to find an age the league would find agreeable that meaningfully changes those players’ free agency outlooks. For instance, Kris Bryant — whose delayed 2015 promotion pushed back his free agency until this winter and led the MLBPA to file a highly-publicized service time grievance on his behalf — wouldn’t have reached free agency until this offseason regardless if the qualification age were set at 29.5 years. That’s not to say MLB’s proposed age threshold couldn’t be modified in future negotiations, but it also demonstrates that basing free agency eligibility on age isn’t inherently a universal benefit to players. As with free agency, arbitration eligibility is presently determined by service time. Under the current system, players qualify for arbitration upon reaching three years of MLB service. Players in the top 22% of service among those with between two and three years will also reach arbitration as Super Two qualifiers. If the team and player can’t agree on a salary, it is decided by a panel of arbitrators, who use comparable player salaries often based upon traditional statistics. That can lead to a bit of a disconnect between arbitration values and teams’ valuations of players, which are often based on more advanced analytical data. Arbitrators’ heavy reliance on traditional metrics can fuel non-tenders for players whose box score statistics (e.g. home runs, RBI, pitcher wins) are more impressive than a team’s ’wins above replacement’ type of formula or Statcast data. On the surface, it does seem revamping or replacing arbitration could be a positive endeavor for players. Sherman estimates that arbitration-eligible players made approximately $650MM this past offseason, so the $1 billion pool would be a rather significant increase. But Sherman also notes that a revenue-based pool system might be viewed by the MLBPA as too closely resembling a salary cap — which the union has always rejected. It’s also not clear how that money would be distributed or how arbitration eligibility would be determined if the sides were to abandon service time considerations. Sherman also offers one additional piece of information on the league’s proposal. While MLB’s offer included a lower first luxury tax threshold, the league was willing to remove escalating penalties for repeat tax payors. The current CBA requires teams to pay a 20% tax on the first twenty million dollars above the lowest luxury threshold. That tax increases to 30% for teams that exceed the threshold in two consecutive years and escalates to 50% for teams exceeding the threshold in three or more years straight. The escalating penalties have led some high-spending teams to pull off a tax reset. A team that exceeds the threshold in Year One has extra incentive to dip below for a year and reset their penalty bracket before going back above the mark the following season. That seemed to be of particular import this season for the Yankees and Astros, both of whom exceeded the threshold in 2020 but appear to have narrowly dipped below the mark this season. It bears repeating that MLB and the MLBPA remain in the very early stages of bargaining. Drellich and Rosenthal previously reported that the MLBPA made its first offer in May, and last month’s proposal was the league’s first. The full terms of both sides’ initial offers remain unclear. There should be plenty more about the sides’ back-and-forth that emerges over the coming weeks and months.

AJ Hinch was sitting in the dugout laughing at charlies moves.

just wow

We might like this move even more or less when we see who is gone to make a roster spot for him

Agreed but again not surprising as that would be an obvious move for an successful manager

Larussa always looks like Im watching a Weekend at Bernies

I know he had 4 straight balls and had a 2-2 count...then GIDP

Ross atkins on with Bobcat today

The question is never how he does against the oppisition, its always how he feels afterwards lol. Lets hope no setbacks this timeout. Thanks for the update

Thanks, makes sense, but god awful ugly jersey. lol

I thought the Rays dumped the "devil " in their name a couple years back. Today they have Devil Rays on their Jersey. Guess I was wrong,

Honestly if shatkins doesnt see this or react to this then maybe one of them should go

Hinch is showing you what a decent manager can do for the team

f***in fire the f***in guy now!!!!

If its not the manager f***ing us its the ump

we are in the 10th because charlie is being out managed