glory

Tiebreakers are very important in the current playoff format. So if the Jays can go 5-5 during this road trip (which I agree would be fine), then ideally it would be 2-2 against Tampa and 2-1 against the Yankees. Also, the stadium renovations better be done this season and 2025 better start at home.

I can’t comprehend how a team with playoff aspirations and who otherwise has been pretty good at finding value with short term vets thought IKF starting at 3B was a good idea. Dude is a career 80 wRC+ player. Clement, Barger, anyone would be more logical in that spot. Hopefully we see Clement there tomorrow.

Keep it at 4-1. The umpire is treating Civale like Greg Maddux, but he's beatable. Just keep it close.

Bassitt not getting the same strike zone as Civale.

Bassitt better get that same strike zone.

Same lineup as yesterday. Would have liked to see Clement in there given how great of a spring he had.

The issue with keeping Zulu on the 40 man would have been that he is unlikely to contribute to the 2024 team. It’s possible he develops and turns things around this season but if the Jays truly felt that he would then they probably would have protected him over a fringey guy like Pop. Would have been nice to trade Zulu for a non 40 man lottery ticket but I can’t imagine he had enough value around the league for that.

Home runs, hits with RISP, great pitching. Can't ask for much more.

After the way Mayza looked in ST (velocity), this is a good spot to use him.

Looks like Richards is coming in for the 7th, so probably Richards, Jimi, and Green.

Berrios looked really good today. Great sign. A little scary needing 3 innings from a depleted pen though.

This ain’t 2023 no more folks.

3 runs on 3 home runs. It would have taken 8 hits to score 3 runs last year.

Craig’s son having a game.

George Springer pulling a HR is a great sight to see.

I'm not sold on Schneider being as good as projections say he'll be, but there's a good chance that the best 2B/3B options on the team right now are on the bench. I'm guessing that's going to change as the season progresses.

Seeing the rest of the cities pumped for opening day, and then you see the Rays fans (not sure a plural is required there). It's sad.

The 2024 position player group will include Vlad, Bichette, Biggio, and Kirk in starting spots, with Jansen and Schneider on the bench. They moved two other homegrown players for Varsho so maybe you could include him in that group as an extension of the previous players. That's doesn't seem terrible. The pitching side is obviously more of a concern from a development standpoint. The "next wave" of talent should definitely be here though. I've said before, the way they acted this winter only makes sense if they plan to use their prospects during the season, as I don't think KK/Turner/IKF raise the ceiling of this team much and it's debatable how much they raise the floor, so ultimately I think that's what we end up seeing, and that's going to go a long way to determine just how feasible sustainable contention is. The fact that they got rid of Espinal and are completely fine heading into the season with Schneider/Clement in prominent bench roles is probably a good sign for that. They really need a couple of Orelvis, Tiedemann, Roden, Barger, Jimenez, etc, to turn into something within the next 2 seasons. The fact that none of them have been traded for vetrins (yet) might suggest the Jays are hoping for that. Factoring projected arb costs, the Jays could have over $100m coming off the books after 2025 (Vlad, Bo, Biggio, IKF, Bassitt, Romano, Green, Swanson). That's a lot of players to replace, but also a lot of money to play with.

Yeah whether Atkins is here or not, the team is going to try to contend. There won’t be a rebuild. The team has established that they will go after expensive free agents and they have a lot of money coming off the books in the next two years. With or without Vlad/Bo, they will try to compete. Of course they will need internal development to happen so it would be a lot easier to accomplish that if by 2026 Orelvis looks like a 3 WAR 2B, Roden is a starting caliber OF, and so on. The next two seasons will be big for the farm system as well.

I wouldn't mind if it's Pop, but I think it's likely Zulu. Pop has had a marginal amount of big league success so they probably value that more than Zulu who doesn't look like he will help the 2024 team much (barring some major development in AAA).

It’s ridiculous that the Cardinals didn’t trade one of Walker or Arenado. Instead they keep both and have Walker be the worst defensive OF in the league. Maybe they’ll put him at 1B when Goldy leaves.

Yeah, the Jays clearly wanted a LHH bat who is good enough offensively to both DH occasionally against RHP and pinch hit late in games for IKF, so while Lukes made sense from a 40 man roster standpoint, I guess the team had a specific skill set in mind that they wanted for that last spot. If Votto had been willing to "settle" for a minor league deal in February, then the Vogelbach signing probably doesn't happen. This seems to be hedging in case Votto is toast. Vogelbach/Votto on the roster only make sense if Turner is going to play the field at least a couple of times a week, so curious to see how the Jays play it. Aside from Turner, I'm sure they'll want to DH Vlad and Springer occasionally as well, which makes Vogelbach's lack of defensive ability/versatility even more glaring.

Mayza with decreased velocity is terrifying mainly because Schneider is going to use him in high leverage spots as long as he’s on the roster, so hopefully he’s either sorted out by the end of this week or if he needs an IL stint then do it now rather than later.

I would have just had Horowitz in that Vogelbach spot/role and used that time to 1) see if Horowitz was any good in a bench/platoon role, and 2) kill some time before Votto is ready.

It's only ST but he was giving up a lot of hard contact even last season when he was good, so given his pre-2023 track record, it's hard to get too confident about what to expect from him. But too early to get worried at this point. Hopefully KK is okay, but the lack of OF depth is going to be very apparent if he has to miss time. I guess Schneider would be the starting LF in that scenario, with Lukes as the backup.