Cooler Heads Prevail

Ok, its only spring training and the Jays score 11. So some of you are still going on about Goins and Happ. With a better hitter then Goins do we score more then 11 then ? Is that your point ? Or could it be we need better defence behind our possibly shaky pitching ? If Cabrera and Lawre hit this year our offence is going to be huge regardless of Goins. I'm still thinking Rogers joins the rotation. He's out of options and they need to find out if he can pitch given a proper chance. He'll give you innings, especially if they don't tax him as a swing man early in the season. Seems more durable then most other candidates.

Based on what ? We have a fairly healthy team and didn't really lose anybody valuable. We really haven't had this offensive group play many games together yet, the potential is quite good to score runs. Exactly what has happened to this team that suggests they are worse then last year's team ? Last year we started with Lawrie hurt, Reyes hurt weeks later, Dickey and Buehrle totally ineffective. We just have too good an offence to roll over and play dead this season. The team has no depth and hence injuries could be a huge issue later in the season.

Ok, here's your big chance, hot shot. Based on your model, you should be selling your guitar and taking whatever tuition money you have saved up and investing it on Washington to beat Toronto at home on Sunday. How could they possibly lose given everything you know ? What your model is saying is the Leafs will get blown out and Grabovski will score multiple times. Especially since Bernier is out and Reimer took a fairly hard hit to the noggin in the last game. Easy money buddy right ? How can you possibly go wrong, invest everything you own on this. :rolleyes: ps I wouldn't touch that game either side but I have no model to guide me to riches like you do.

He's been more then above average, he's been steller. People keep griping on here and I see other people afraid to speak the truth because they'll be flamed by some of the idiots like BTS and Havok on here. Toronto has been gifted by a great season by the Raptors and a good season by the Leafs, two franchises that were bottom of the league in the near past. Casey is in the running for NBA Coach of the Year, Havok is in the running for grabbing another beer before he posts another idiotic complaint about something on a baseball site. BTS is clearly delusional at times.

4 points out of 6 on this west coast swing is massively good. I know a few cynics on here expected 6 points and are were deeply disappointed by their loss in San Jose . Not a ton of games left, Leafs are a pretty solid shot to get a playoff spot now. Not to worry, cynics, you will still have your Jays to cheer against every week.

Isn't that kind of what Esmil Rogers did for us last year ? We have several guys who might upside surprise, their pitching will tell the tale. If Romero is for real ( I have my doubts ), they need to move some surplus mediocre ML pitching out for an IF or bench player. Need to anyways but even more reason. Otherwise, with that contract he has to go to AAA because no one will claim him ( kind of like Lind a few years ago ), and be ready for call up if he dominates AAA. If AA continues this 2013 charade of an extended bullpen and dodging waiver claims its all going to be pretty silly if we have the weak bench again. I lost confidance in AA last season when he started doing that nonesense.

I'd have to assume you've never worked in trading if you make this absurd statement. These two areas are very similar in nature.

This kind of post puts you clearly in the nut job category. Do you seriously think that Toronto's goalies are so much better then say New Jersey and Vancouver that they have overcome the supposed huge disparity in quality of the rest of the line up ? And further to that, good luck finding anyone credible that thinks those two teams have far superior line ups to Toronto. Yes, I understand your silly model tells you this. You might do well in snake oil sales, used car sales, or maybe a Nigerian start up makes sense. I'm not sure why the group on here laps it up so easily.

Except that he's not, and you are being absurd again. Washington is struggling this season. Seriously, you need to get a grip on reality, you are lost in your numbers and seem oblivious to reality.

You are clearly delusional when you present this ridiculous model and are proud of it. Seriously, you remind me of some of the young guys in trading that create all sorts of useless models then get their ass handed to them by the markets. What you don't seem to understand is organizing data based on faulty assumptions just creates more bad data but with an author who is supremely overconfident in the model.

Trolling ? The stat was real as of two days ago and Bozak was being trashed on here by several people before the season even started. Some suggested he wasn't even an NHL caliber player. The idea that I am trolling because I present a contrary view on the Leafs is a joke. I've been consistent on my message about this team all year. There is no doubt that the criticisms of the Leafs have been way over the top all year, and a strong case could be made that those posts are a lot closer to "trolling" behaviour then anything I've posted here. Posts like "lol Leafs" and "Nonis sucks" etc etc are all over this thread.

Leafs beat Anaheim on the road despite being out shot by a wide margin. Is this a positive story for the Leafs or a negative one ? It is clearly a positive one, and if they were doing it entirely on luck earlier this season ( as guys like JFAs were posting ), they'd have fallen back by now not be rallying up the standings. Still a lot of season left and anything could happen because the East is tight. But two points in Anaheim is like two free bonus points.

You litter this thread with overdone criticisms of the Leafs. In case you were unaware, Bozak leads the forwards on this team in +/-. Just for a change, say something positive about the Leafs instead of s***ing on them even when they beat a top team on the road. btw I'd love to play road hockey against you, see what your made of.

I invite anyone to view this guys posting history and how negative he is on almost every post. To be called abrasive by this guy is a joke. It would be kind of like being told by a felon that I need to be nicer, or that the world would be better without me around. Oh wait ... .

He looked real good last year as well in spring training. We all know how well that ended up. JJ's stats clearly indicate a down turn since 2010, possibly due to arm issues. The question will be how meaningful those arm issues have become. That is the key point that the "we should have QO'd him" group seem to be missing, you have to factor in a discount on salary to reflect that risk. So if you think he's worth $14M, then a healthy JJ has to be worth $20M-$22M. I'm not convinced he will regain his form from 2010 and prior.

Johnson hasn't been an elite pitcher since 2010. I checked into this a long time ago when people first started chirping about the QO. There is no way in hell he is worth $14M given his injury history and 2013 pitching performance. Ask any actuary how they would value such a situation. Yes, track records are worth something, I don't see people talking about Morrow's contract like its a bargain. For some reason, you want to have both of them on the team, like stockpiling injury prone pitchers is a strategy. But bottom line is, as I stated during the season when this debate came up, the market itself would settle he topic. And it did. He's apparently worth roughly $8M despite a fairly inflated salary year. The continued insistence that some of you guys think you know far better then the real GMs is absurd and tiresome, but seemingly a given on here on all sorts of topics. Put it on your resume and apply for GM. You can state you'd have paid a 75% premium to market on JJ because of his track record. See how much credibility that gets you.

Leafs have a strong set of sharp shooters and are in pretty much every game. It might be time to just admit you and others severely underestimated this team. Ducks are one of the best teams in the league, beating them on the road goes far beyond a hot goaltender. Of course, you totally wrote off Bozak and he was on another three points this game plus some good two way play in the third. So I'm not sure you really know a whole lot about hockey. Show us a little maturity and admit you were wrong. The gong show on this thread trashing the Leafs was way over the top. I can only imagine if the Leafs were collapsing like Vancouver, rebuilding from the bottom like Calgary, or sucking wind like Edmonton despite all those top draft picks. No, what Burke started and then Nonis continued was taking an absolutely awful aging team and rebuilt them into a solid playoff contender with a relatively youthful core and deeper farm system. I thought that was the kind of management that baseball stat geeks loved ?

The fact that "expected performance" is based in part on your highly subjective assumptions makes it debatable. Not sure why you don't understand this, but thanks for making this clear in a concise way in this post. It would be foolish for any team to pay Johnson this season without discounting him based on his recent injuries. It would be especially foolish for the Jays, a team with many pitchers that are injury prone, to overpay for a pitcher with a tendency to get injured.

More hilarity from the recent past. Leafs win with Bozak in the line up, he was a very good signing. There isn't an executive on the team that doesn't like that contract.

Too funny.

Perhaps AA has read all the negative posts that you and others have made about Santana and decided he's not worth a contract. Kind of strange that you'd pull a 180 and recommend they sign him now.

The offence will often look better then it is because of our home park ( and vice versa for our pitchers ). I still see it as a strong offence but one without any depth at all. So any big injury will be meaningful. Adding only one decent hitter ( OF/DH/2B ) would have greatly strengthened this unit and the depth. I base my opinion on the idea that Lawrie will have a break out year this season ( I predict he will ), and that Reyes will play more games. Of course, this kind of lineup could be improved upon at any point via trade once the pretenders drop off the map during the season. I think Cabrera is the big risk, he should have been their depth not somebody they depend on.

I remember watching the latter half of 2012 and they really made no effort to compete. 2013 I found to be somewhat refreshing in contrast because some of the new guys actually contributed at times.

Their current model seems quite successful in terms of running a profit. If the fan base doesn't shrink a lot, and I doubt it does in our big market, they have no worries. In fact, our long term commitments to players are absolutely dwarfed by almost every other big market team. The Star published a chart on this last year and it was rather obvious how cheap Rogers strategy is beyond 2015 season. The stadium is cheap now, TV revenues are a great synergy, overall baseball money even pumps a little money into the team. Note that winning on the field may not matter. Basically, just don't outwardly suck. No need to dump contracts, as of 2016 they don't have any to dump.

Hindsight analysis, they were on paper good enough to go for it. And from a business point of view, there are a lot of new fans that were deeply disappointed by the latter half of the 2012 season, when we basically tanked the rest of the year playing prospects. So they needed to make a splash or risk losing their new fan base. Previous poster was bang on, the idea was right but the execution and injury luck wasn't. In particular, after we did the Marlins trade, AA seemed to quickly dump several useful players that didn't fit his plan. Sometimes risks have to be taken, playing it safe ( as JPR often did ) runs the risk of never winning either. Yankees, Angels, Dodgers, Rangers, Red Sox, Mariners ( re 2014 ) don't seem to mind taking big risks, and some of them do well and some don't.