glory

Agreed, and on top of that, the team decided to hold on to vets + add at the deadline (which happened to be the biggest seller's market since forever), so they'll lose Semien/Ray for just comp picks, and don't have Martin/SWR to use in trades. Hopefully, Berrios has a big free agent year, but even then, he's essentially replacing Ray who has been excellent this season. Improving next season is still very possible, but they didn't do themselves any favors. The key to competing in the AL East is to be definite in action. If you're a playoff long shot, then turn short term assets into long term assets. If you're legitimately in it, then try to make a real run. The Jays were a playoff long shot (run differential or not, they were behind, what, 4-5 teams?) with the absolute realistic best case scenario being a WC spot. Expecting a 2015 2nd half type of run every time the team greatly underperforms their RD is simply not a smart strategy. This season has been frustrating on so many different levels despite some great individual performances.

Agreed, I think both will have markets, at least for a while. This is not a scenario where technology made something obsolete. It's more of a matter of preference, and there will no doubt still be people who prefer having the traditional card, or possibly both. All bets are off when the Gen Z's and younger are taking up most of the space, since they would have grown up with a different mentality, but I don't think regular cards are in any danger for the next little while. NFT's and cards can both share space in the same bubble. Now, if going away from Topps means MLB is going to double down on the NFT's and not put as much effort into physical cards, then that's a different story. Even the biggest collectors are not going to care if the quality of the cards are not great, so it depends on how this deal with Fanatics impacts how they proceed in both areas.

Montoyo was equally bad in 2019-20 and his contract was still renewed. I think the chances of him coming back, especially with a cupcake schedule towards the end of the season propping up the win total, is at least 70/30 at this point. Time to shove your morals aside from the greater good. (by the way, I was/am clearly being facetious, but if people take my idea and run with it, I'll allow it)

Knowing how Rogers (and society in general) works, it would be better if we took a Charlie quote/action way out of context, pretend to be offended by it, and then go on social media to ask for his job. Why does Montoyo only have white Americans catch Ryu instead of Kirk? Maybe there's a racist angle here. Let's get creative.

From an article in June of this year: "Candy Digital, a new sports non-fungible token (NFT) company backed by some heavy hitters including Galaxy Digital, has teamed with Major League Baseball (MLB). Candy will build an MLB ecosystem to buy, trade and share officially licensed baseball content NFTs. Galaxy Digital set up Candy Digital with entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk and sports merchandiser Fanatics, which will be the majority owner, according to an announcement Tuesday." So sounds like Fanatics is already involved in the NFT market with MLB, and Gary Vaynerchuk is big on card collecting, so him being involved is probably a good thing for the hobby. Fanatics has time to build some type of trading card system if it chooses to. Hell, maybe even buying out Topps is an option down the road (Topps without MLB seems like it would hurt the company a lot).

Hinch is good people after that quote. Keep those types of quotes coming.

I'm almost rooting for a collapse here so that they fire Buntoyo, but I'm not even sure that gets it done. Either way, I'd gladly miss the playoffs by 100 games in 2021 if it meant 2022-25 was managed by someone else.

It's baffling in hindsight. They could have offered him the QO. Absolute worst case he would have accepted it, but then you get an extra year of a really good player who you can trade months later. They could have moved Vlad to 1B a lot sooner (him not lasting at 3B even back then was a pretty safe bet) and you improvise from there. I guess they didn't want to take the risk of having to pay him $18m during a tank year when they were cutting payroll, but still looks awful. As far as Merryweather, at some point they have to decide whether he's worth the 40 man roster spot on a team that wants to contend. He looks amazing when healthy, but he'll never be healthy.

The Jays care about optics. They make decisions based on what fans or media think, not necessarily what makes the team better short or long term. It's why they started rebuilding in July 2018 instead of July 2017, and why they didn't trade Semien or Ray when it was the biggest seller's market in at least 5 years, if not more. The Rays win every year because they don't have any fans so they don't give a s*** what perception is. Seattle hasn't made the playoffs in 2 decades and even they aren't so jaded to bet on a long shot rather than make sensible moves. Hell, the Yankees in 2016 were basically in the same spot as the Jays were at the deadline, probably a little better, and still sold rather than aim for a 2nd WC spot. I like Shatkins, but if you want to find a weakness, this is a big one (aside from Montoyo, which is the biggest weakness).

Grichuk's wRC+ down to 96 with OBP at .288. He is projected to have a 1 WAR over 600+ plate appearances, and that's being generous as far as ROS projections. He's f***ing bad.

Hot take: Ohtani is really, really good.

Hand facing Soto. This should be fun.

For being a minor league manager, Buntoyo hates young players. It makes no sense. A manager who thinks age/service time means more than actual talent/upside is insane. Smith and Lopez will never play on this team unless it is struck by more injuries, unfortunately.

I don't see the players agreeing to this as constructed, but how does it make a strike more likely? A salary floor seems like a nice starting point in negotiations. Owners are treating the current CBT as a soft cap anyway. A bigger issue is in a non salary cap league, teams don't have to spend if they don't want to. A floor changes that. They'd have to bring the $180M figure way up before the MLBPA takes it seriously, though.

Panik > Tellez. Valera > Espinal. McGuire > Kirk. No doubt Buntoyo was an integral part of the Rays success with his eye for talent.

Another reliever used in a close game only to get DFA'd the next day. Excellent.

My first thought when the White Sox traded Madrigal was whether the Jays could have gotten him for Semien (Sox need help at 2B). Maybe they preferred Kimbrel for the pen, but deals where the Jays sent Semien/Ray for players that could help in 2022 and/or beyond (like Madrigal, or PCA from the Mets, etc) while still making moves like the Berrios one that also showed they were looking to acquire vet assets for 2022 as well would have been the better strategy. Of course, as we know, the team lets optics get in the way of baseball decisions, so even if they wanted to sell high they probably couldn't for a number of reasons (returning home, optics of selling right before that, etc).

Montoyo managing this team during Vlad/Bo's primes is such a depressing thought. If he's still employed after this season, then the front office deserves to get heavily criticized for it. In 2019, this job was not attractive. In 2022, it's going to be very attractive. One year of the team's competitive cycle will likely be wasted this season on a minor league manager who coaches like he's managing little league. To double down on that mistake will show a real lack of competitiveness by Atkins. Sure, maybe he can build a team that is dummy proof enough to compensate for Charlie being Charlie, but it would be easier to just get a better mind back there.

If he was doing Elmer Fudd, then he was stupid not to mention it in his apology. Something like "I was trying to do an Elmer Fudd voice but I realize it came off differently, blah, blah" or some variation of that would have at least given him some sort of out. Instead he gave an apology so bad that even Castellanos couldn't have saved it. I mean, I personally don't care about apologies since even sincere ones will come off as "I'm sorry I said it out loud", so the person apologizing really can't win unless they are invaluable to the company they are working for (ex. Stephen A. Smith offended Asians + Nigerians, and mocked Hispanics in a span of 10 minutes on First Take and he's still doing his dumb shtick today). Morris is easily replaceable so he's probably gone either way. Baseball really needs to get younger and/or more modern with its broadcasts anyway, so weeding out the Jack Morris' and Bob Brenly's of the world isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The Yankees have caught the Red Sox and the A's (down 9-0 so assuming a loss) in the standings. I know this will be unpopular, but if the Jays don't make the playoffs (and it's not looking good right now), then I'd be fine with a Yankees/Red Sox WC game. If the WC games this year are Yankees/Red Sox and Dodgers/Padres, it would be pretty damn entertaining.

Having a manager that doesn't know how to manage a bullpen and abuses every half way decent RP he has (until they get hurt) due to lack of knowledge on leverage kind of hurts the bullpen setup as well. Yates was signed when he was injured, so they need to avoid stuff like that (unless it's a minor gamble and not someone they intend to put in the closer role), but they need to find someone capable of using a pen to its strengths. Charlie isn't it.

I don't know, it is already past the super 2 cut off so even if they called him up now they'd still get 6 additional years of control on him and only 3 years of arb. I would hope it's not related to service time manipulation as Smith really isn't the type of prospect that teams would normally be doing that for anyway (the Jays shouldn't be doing that regardless but still). I guess it's also possible the Jays are not believers in Smith's numbers, so keeping him down preserves some level of trade value if they think he'd get exposed in the bigs, but if that were the case then they should have moved him at the deadline. I really don't know what to make of Smith still being in the minors. If Biggio were healthy, then it's understandable, but for the sake of getting Valera more PA's in a contending season, it's bordering ridiculous.

He also has to be added to the 40 man roster at the end of the season or be exposed in the Rule 5. There's really no reason not to have him up with the team. Keeping him down only makes sense if they feel he's not going to help the club, and certainly he's not a lock to be better than Espinal for the rest of the season, but that excuse flies out the window when Valera is getting the bulk of the 3B time instead.

The fact that the team hasn't promoted Smith with Biggio's injury is baffling to me. Valera is a 30 year old minor league journeyman who is getting way too much playing time. If they were not going to give Espinal the everyday 3B spot with Biggio's injury, then they should have absolutely called up Smith weeks ago. The 40 man roster spot is insignificant since they could have just DFA'd Valera to make room.

With Springer hurt, Davis on the Yankees, and Palacios MIA due to injury (unless he's come back recently), they could use the OF depth. Not that it matters though, since Buntoyo getting to play Grichuk everyday again without having to juggle the lineup is like Christmas for him.