TDotttt2005

I agree that the GM/Mgr Skillset is not as rare as elite level players, but it looked like the Rays caught lightning in a bottle there for a while with Sternberg/Friedman/Maddon, winning on a shoestring budget.

Looks like Rays' foundation is falling apart. Good news for Jays fans. Sad to see for Rays fans, though. They had a nice run if it is, indeed, over. or...as the Toronto Gibby-Worshipping media will tell you...Managers don't make much of a difference.

THIS. Although, I believe the inability to attract free agents here is a myth. The inability comes from not offering enough money and contract term. Not Canada/Not the Turf. Assuming payroll is pretty much stagnant, to those saying take Melky's money and use it to shore up 2B/3B and the Pen... For the Pen, they wont spend on high end guys, so i'd assume money in = money out there. But who do you think we'll get at 2B/3B? Similar to Melky, what will happen is that we will be unwilling to give the dollars and term thats necessary for a guys like Headley, Hanley, Weekes, Panda, so we will have to use our prospect capital, a Norris, Sanchez, Pompey, etc. to acquire that. So then we don't have Melky and we've given up top prospects. Unless we're getting 1993 Roberto Alomar to play 2nd, and importing the whole 2014 KC bullpen, then there is no way a Pompey, Gose, Pillar, Bautista OF rotation competes in the AL East. No Way.

Well looks like the 2014-15 Offseason Blue Jays Front Office spin has begun. They probably leaked to Heyman or whomever that they have begun talks, so the fans can get all excited and think the team is actually making a valiant effort to re-sign him. They'll offer 3-years with 15mil AAV. Wont budge. Then when he signs for 5years 15mil AAV, Beeston and AA can say NO NO NO it wasn't the money at all, we have all the financial resources in the world at our disposal, we just werent prepared to match the term that he was given. And so it goes, this playoffless streak of ours.

Travis Snider Please.

I believe this is a terrible article, which really is trying to be way too much. How does Wall Street have anything to do with proprietary baseball stats and openness? I guess he's attempting to make the connection between JP Morgan organizing his business in the late 1800's/Rickey and the institution of the amateur draft in the 1950's/and the fact that Sternberg and Friedman came from Goldman Sachs, but really, other than a catchy 'everyone hate on wall street' era title, its a laughable connection at best. And on the lack of openness of Sabrmetrics, has he heard of the concepts of trade secrets and Competitive advantage in business? Should every team just put their whole database on the internet, transcripts of every meeting, phone call, text message (No offense Astros), in the name of openness. Should Coke give away its formula for everyone to make? This 'strangling' he mentions is what leads to progress. Entrepreneurs/Smaller companies with 'ideas' are hired/bought every day, making the founders rich, and bringing them into the fold of larger companies, who can make actual products out of simple ideas, which in turn, are used by millions of people every day to make life simpler and more productive. Once these products are eventually deemed obsolete, it incentivizes new ideas to take hold, and new products to be developed. Its the same thing with SABR. For example, take a stat like WAR. Someone invented and refined the statistic and put it out there (not sure if it was James). One team hired that person, paid him a lot of money to develop it further, and put it to use to acquire talent and win baseball games. Eventually, that competitive balance is eroded, as every team used that stat, and it spawned the need for more ideas, more stats, more potential competitive advantages, etc. Thats how we've get progress in the SABR discipline, and any discipline really. I think the author is trying to be a populist, socialist, capitalist, anti-wall street, pro-labor, pro-minority, sports geek, and a journalist all in one article. What we got was this terrible mishmash of ideas.

So is it only luck? Theres no method?

With all the talk of how good the KC bullpen is this year, and how much the Jays' 'pen floundered after being a huge strength in 2013, got me thinking about how the hell do you build a bullpen? Gone are the days when you count on the likes of Timlin, Ward, Henke year after year, although that was rare even then. Nowadays guys like Delabar and Santos are all-star worthy one year, and could be in the minors the next. Janssen was Rivera-esque in the 1st half, and couldn't get anyone out in the 2nd half. Are there advanced stats that have proven to show what pen arms are more likely to be consistent year-to-year? AA has tried a number of different things, but in the aggregate, nothing has really worked. He tried the veteran route, with acquiring mid-reliever/setup/low-end closer types in Rauch, Francisco, etc. but that didn't work. He tried the "electric arm" strikeout potential guys in Santos, Jeffress, Delabar, Rogers, etc. and that worked, then collapsed. Where does AA go from here? And overall, whats the best way to build a sustainable, consistent, and successful bullpen?

I do understand the realism part of it, the fact that Rogers will never spend and do whatever it takes, but why should we accept that fate. Thats really my point. Why should we shoo'd away and taught to think in terms of contract value and bargain basement shopping, when there is the wherewithal of ownership to do whatever it takes. Maybe thats part of the problem. Also, don't get me wrong, this isn't a blame Rogers rant. I think the $130-$140 million is more than enough, and I blame AA and Gibbons, and hold them accountable as well. What upset me and really got me thinking about this was at the trade deadline, when Rogers apparently / allegedly / reportedly / who f***ing knows at this point didnt come through and we were left talking about the great LHP killer Danny Valencia when Martin Prado and a couple others couldve been had for just money, and wouldve filled our biggest hole. Yet there were the Rogers apologists like Wilner laughing at the Yankees for taking on such a big ticket over the next few seasons, and jays fans falling right in line as our team fell out of it.

Yes, but by stating his worth last year at 2.6 fWar, and using that as a relative metric to anticipate future seasons, you are understating his performance. ie. had he stayed healthy and gotten to 3.1fWAR, an average of 2.2 wins over the next 5 seasons is less of a reach than comparing it to the incomplete 2.6 win stat.

He missed the last month of the season with a freak injury.

I am surprised the sentiment here is really against this. Say we are conservative and we say $6 million per win average over the next 5 seasons, thats 11 wins from Melky over 5 seasons, or an average of 2.2 wins per season. I think that is completely doable, and as I stated before, dude will be 34 when the contract ends, not in his late 30's where you are pretty much guaranteed a dropoff. Bautista and Cruz (he of similar PED taint) are 34 now. Ive wondered this before, and this makes me wonder again if the Toronto Rogers-run media is to blame for Jays fans being brainwashed to always think more about contract value than about winning the division. The goal is not to assemble a roster of 25 undervalued players. The goal is to win the division, and ultimately the world series. If you overpay by a few million add on a year of lower productivity, but you get a championship out of it, so be it, its an uncapped league. Flags fly forever. Not many Jays fans are lamenting the fact that Jack Morris sucked in '93 are they? I dont think other fanbases are like this, really. Wilner always wonders why Jays fans believe they cannot have nice things. The reason why, is because apologists like him keep hammering into the fan base contract value / too much term / too many years...and have upped that sentiment re: Melky since they got inside word that negotiations were stalled, in order to take the blame off the team for any perception of them being cheap. And a lot of you fall for this. You think Yankee fans are crying about 8 years to Teixera after he led them to the World Series in '09? No. They expect their team to sign stars like that in order to win, and they expect them to sign more when they don't. They don't sit back and laugh when perennial playoff teams and world series contenders sign a guy to an extra couple years and extra couple mil to secure the deal like Jays fans do. It'll be sad when AA comes out with his excuses, "we lined up on dollars, but we couldn't line up on term with the player", and you guys eat it up, and laugh at a team like Seattle or KC who will go the extra mile to sign a guy (KC with Vargas and Infante) to plug holes, meanwhile 6 months later, we're talking about the upcoming offseason, while their fans are watching their team in the playoffs. /end rant.

If thats the case, may as well go the Marlins/Astros route and start over.

What I am more scared of than the dollars and term of Melky's contract is the opportunity cost of not having him. Per what AA and the Rogers talking heads have said, everyone asked for Norris/Sanchez/Stroman/Hutch, etc's at the deadline. So if we are not going to go with Gose in CF and Pillar/Mayberry in LF, what will we have to give up for a replacement for Melky? Even if youre overpaying for Melky and keeping your young pitching core in place, doesn't that turn something that may look shortsighted (going too much $ / too much term with Melky) into something that is actually better for the team in the long run. Worst case scenario is another Reyes / Buehrle debacle, where they couldve been signed for the same contracts the season earlier, but instead we gave up 3 top prospects for them the year after. The counter-argument there is that those players wouldnt come here as free agents, but Melky has already come here as a free agent, played here, and enjoyed it, so thats thrown out the window in this situation. I'd rather sign him to that stated contract than give up assets to acquire his replacement, or even worse, don't replace him at all, and basically throw away next season with Pillar and Gose taking up 2 OF spots.

Even if he doesn't age well and has to DH, with salary inflation the way it is with the new national/regional TV contracts everyone (but the Jays) are getting, $15 mil in 2020 will be worth 1.5-2 wins. You don't think a 34 year old Melky can put that up?

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/10/free-agent-profile-melky-cabrera.html MLBTR is predicting a 5-Year 66mil contract for Melky. If he gets that, and its not with the Jays, who would not have to surrender a pick, Jays fans should burn down the Rogers Centre. This is less than the QO would be AAV wise, he'd be 34 (Jose Bautista's age now) when the contract was up, and it fits within their asinine 5-year contract limit. If the Jays are actually serious about fielding a contender, and this is the deal that Melky signs elsewhere, no apologist alive should be able to calm down Jays fans.

Did the Schultz claim take away your right to vote? Im guessing you meant disenchanted.

It may very well be, but lets not forget last year this time when we thought all of the waiver pickups would just be footnotes to the other big offseason moves for a SP, 2B, etc. Turned out, the waiver claims were the actual novel and not the footnotes.

They were up this year, thats why Rogers poured so much money into the team payroll at the deadline.

Well, according to most of the Toronto media, and many on this board, a guy who can look through a binder to play the percentages everytime can be a major league manager of a top 10 payroll team, fail miserably, and still deserve to keep his job.

He also guarantees that payroll restrictions had nothing to do with the failure to improve the team at the trade deadline. I don't believe anything he says, but thats just me. http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/beeston-blue-jays-expect-payroll-to-rise-in-2015/

Wilner is still fapping to Danny Valencia.

Prediction - Similar to Orioles/Buck and Indians/Tito, the team that hiresGarden (see what I just did there) will be in the playoffs before Jays/Gibbons.

FINAL RESULTS OF THE 2014 SEASON Atothe 12 Nabru 66 Over500 77 TheHurl 77 BTS 78 Dylan 79 bowld 80 Eddiek19 80 King 82 Olerud363 82 John_Havok 82 Gen.disarray 82 FrenchSoup 83 TDotttt2005 83 Anemic0ffense 83 jaysfan2014 83 Angryrioter 83 JfAs 84 GordieDougie 84 Sammy225 85 Havok24 85 orgfiller 85 ElNik2013 85 Spittin@Umpz12 86 Gsnarls 86 Jays_Fever 86 Fatcowxlive 87 KSaw 88 play2fade 88 Walkoff93 89 Ambomination 89 wilko 89 Gruber92 89 Northof49 90 theblujay 90 sAAviour 90 o2cui2i 91 Maahface 91 Spanky99 91 saskjayfan 91 Chappy 92 jays4life19 93 Jonn 94 awesomest 97 eastcoastjaysfan 100 Dineke 101 WINNERS ARE FrenchSoup, TDotttt2005, Anemic0ffense, jaysfan2014, Angrioter AT 83 WINS!! Congrats to all who won (i'll pat myself on the back as well). You win year #21 of no post-season baseball. Looking at the stats for our survey, the Jays underperformed Mean and Median expectations of our group. The most common choice of our group was 83 wins, which was ultimately correct. Mean Wins - 86 Wins. Median Wins - 86 Wins. Mode (most common choice) - 83 Wins. Min - 66 Wins. Max - 101 Wins. Expectations based on rS vs rA: 723 Runs Scored 686 Runs Allowed .526 pW% Jays underperformed their Pythagorean W-L. 85-77 Better luck to the Blue Jays next season.

But..But...Beeston says the payroll is going up.