glory

Damn, Romano got hit hard and then ump saves him in the end. I’ll take it.

Jansen's OPS is now almost identical to Grichuk's (.703 versus .704). Not sure Dickerson in CF is a smart move if done too much, but with Gurriel on a hot streak (pretty much since June), he shouldn't be sitting. Find a way to platoon Dick and Grich somehow.

Agreed. Every team is going to have an injury or bad luck here and there. Way more went right for the Jays than wrong, and the things that went right went VERY right. Rotation was healthy all year aside from minor time missed. The team's best starters (rotation and lineup) stayed healthy all year for the most part. I mean, we can look at things like Kirk's injury, or Biggio's regression, but that's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. If Vlad, Bo, and others missed time, then we could have played the injury card. The good news is the Jays are a very young team, so there's still a chance that the roster is ascending. Maybe we look back on this season as a 2016 Astros type of season where it was the calm before the explosion (although whether the Jays decide to cheat or not in 2022 is up to them).

Honestly, if the Jays aren't going to make it (spoiler: they won't), then I'm more than fine with a Yankees/Red Sox Wild Card game. Two historic franchises, winner take all, and will generate a lot of buzz. Obviously I'd prefer the Jays being there over the Red Sox, but run differential doesn't guarantee playoff spots unfortunately.

You don't want him to play while injured and risk either re-injury to the same body part or hurt something else while compensating. Yes, he'll have an entire off season to rest, but that doesn't mean another injury/re-injury wouldn't negatively impact him in some way. For a hail mary run at a 2nd WC spot where the winning team gets Gerrit Cole at Yankee Stadium, you really have to weigh the pro's and con's carefully on a long term investment like this.

Glad to see the Jays throwing caution to the wind with a guy they are paying big money to for the next five years, who is already in his 30's. Not asking for trouble at all.

The Jays had the best case scenario type of off season where practically every acquisition they made greatly exceeded expectations, and they'll still finish 4th place in the division and anywhere from 7th to 8th in the AL (depending on what happens to Seattle down the stretch....don't see the Jays overtaking Oakland or Boston). Semien is a top 3 WAR player this year and Ray is a legit Cy Young candidate. Matz has been a very solid bottom of the rotation option. Springer has mashed when healthy. Yates got hurt in spring training but the Jays signed him knowing he was hurt to begin with. I don't think you can dream about having an off season this good most years, and it amounted to nothing despite the fact that Vlad broke out, Teoscar has been better than expected, Bo is Bo, McGuire was actually more than serviceable when injuries hit the starting C's, etc. A lot went right. In fact, too much went right for the Jays not to have made a playoff spot. The sad thing is if Manfred's vision of expanded playoffs were a reality right now (7 teams in each league), the Jays would still miss the playoffs as of today. One of the more frustrating seasons in recent memory. The last time I remember being this annoyed by a season was 2014, when the Jays were literally in a playoff spot (2nd WC) on July 31 but didn't do a damn thing at the deadline to improve the roster.

Boston down 7-1 (unfortunately A's up 6-1). Better not f*** this game/series up.

Worst trade? No. Bad one? Yes. And I say that as someone who thinks Riley Adams won't amount to much.

Matz would accept the qualifying offer as soon as it was offered to him, so unless the Jays want him back on a 1/18 type of deal, I don't think they'll offer it to him. Bringing him back on a longer term deal is probably something they'll consider, but they really need to aim higher with the rotation, especially if they are losing Ray. With that said, safe to say the Matz trade with the Mets was a really good one. Bought low, and got good value.

Thank goodness 2019 me did not like this deal. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I knew that I showed any type of enthusiasm for this signing at the time.

Yes. Will finish with about a ~3 WAR, currently has a 130 wRC+, and has a great skillset for today's game (doesn't K, high BA/OBP, hits the ball hard at an above average level). As long as he wasn't going to prevent the Jays from signing Semien, he would have been an amazing add. Too bad it didn't happen. Could have opened up a trade for Gurriel as well (who likely had more value coming off 2019-20 than he does now). Oh well.

Dyson has something that Montoyo values more than anything else in a baseball player, and that's service time. He's going to play a lot. With that said, since June 1, Grich has a 68 wRC+ and .250 OBP in 268 plate appearances. Dyson might actually be an improvement at this rate.

5.5 games back with 3 teams to pass and 33 games to go is a huge long shot. The one positive is that over 50% of their remaining games are against Baltimore and Minnesota, but this team just laid an egg and went 5-9 in a stretch against LAA, Seattle, Washington, and Detroit this past month. Can't assume anything. They'd have go something like 14-3 against BAL/MIN the rest of the way and then 8-8 against everyone else. That would get them to 90 wins, and even then, there's no guarantee that the other teams (Boston/Oakland specifically) won't surpass that total anyway. As conflicted as I am with this team right now (wanting them to win but also not against a collapse so Buntoyo is gone), would be nice to at least have meaningful games in late September.

This question is actually a lot tougher than it appears to be. I don't see them making either move. The team is going to win around 85-86 games this year, and Shatkins doesn't give me the Masai Ujiri vibe where they'd make a move with a manager after a season like that. I think 70/30 Buntoyo stays unless the team absolutely chokes down the stretch. With Bichette, unless they re-sign Semien, I don't see them spending big bucks on a FA infielder, and no one internally is going to knock Bo off SS. I think he's the answer here, as I don't see them moving him off short. Only way is if they re-sign Semien and there is some sort of mutual agreement that Bo is moving to 2B, but that's a long shot as well.

To be fair, Springer and Semien signed with the Jays in a market where literally only like 2 other teams were willing to spend any money at all. This winter, most MLB teams would have recovered a decent amount of revenue while the Jays were playing in a spring training/minor league facility for 4 months so they were screwed there. The general point is correct, if you overpay then you will get the player more often than not, but in a market where a lot more teams are going to spend in all likelihood, I wouldn’t expect a similar success rate as this past winter.

True, but signing Lindor for that long when there were going to be 5 other legit SS's on the free agent market (Correa, Seager, Story, Semien, Baez) was definitely unnecessary and could be really bad long term. Not Hosmer bad, but really damn bad.

Was a fan of Dyson in the mid 2010’s. Could have racked up nice WAR as a starting CF in his prime (defense and BsR alone, and wouldn’t kill you with the bat) but was used mostly as a 4th OF. He’s clearly beyond washed now but given the amount of service time he’s accrued in his career, Charlie will play him a lot.

Grichuk not only coming through in the clutch but also drawing a walk is astonishing.

Forgot about him. Jays apparently offered 3/40 to him in the winter, which he was smart to turn down. That price is going to be much higher this winter. Curious to see if they like him enough to pay that price. I doubt it, but Atkins has shown he's willing to dive deep in free agency (Springer/Ryu), so who knows.

Looking a bit deeper into the FA SP market: Noah Syndergaard (29) -> probably signing a short term deal to recoup value, maybe if the Jays gave him a huge AAV on a one year deal they'd have a chance Justin Verlander (39) -> not signing here Max Scherzer (37) -> not signing here Clayton Kershaw (34) -> not signing here Eduardo Rodriguez (29) -> Might be the most realistic name no one has talked about, depends on what his ask would be Jon Gray (30) -> Realistic target Marcus Stroman (30) -> No chance Carlos Rodon (29) -> lack of established track record, but probably would be pricey either way Whether Ray is more or less of a risk signing than any of the realistic ones above is anyone's guess. I'm not even going to try to predict pitching health/performance YOY.

Ideally you don't want to sign Semien or Ray for more than four years. That's how many years Vlad and Bo have left on their current years of control, so you don't want to be left paying big money to a declined Springer, plus Semien and Ray past 2025. I don't think either one will get more than 4 years, but Ray is only going to be 30, so a deal that covers 30-34 (a five year deal) for a LH SP coming off the year he's had isn't impossible. I think Semien at 4 years is probably the max he'll get, but at a higher AAV. Honestly, as discussed earlier about selling versus non-selling at the deadline, once the Jays decided to keep both players to make a run, I feel like they might as well try to keep them. Comp picks in the 70's or wherever the hell those picks will fall are not very desirable for a team with a 4 year window, so if they didn't turn those two into assets at the deadline, then offer them both big 4 year deals (along with a big one year offer to Noah, dammit!), hope they take it, and go for it next year. Of course, if MLB implements the soft cap stuff they were talking about then having Springer, Semien, and Ray on FA deals, plus big arb numbers for Vlad and Bo (and possibly an extension for Berrios) would put them at a pretty high number. If you had to choose one to re-sign, I'd probably go with Semien as well (top 10 WAR talent versus SP), but hard to say without knowing how much it will cost.

Nah, he's going to Oakland in a package for Matt Chapman.

Yeah the team definitely got the best case scenario with Semien and Ray. Not sure they can expect that type of success with future one year deals. Taking a quick glimpse at the upcoming FA market, the only FA's who I think could be had for one year deals and possess enough upside to possibly be significant surplus value next season are Syndergaard and maybe Conforto. The Mets would be foolish not to qualify both, so losing picks for one year deals would be risky, but they would be getting picks back for Semien/Ray, so there's a trade off. I don't see any of the top SS's taking one year deals.

A QO is only leverage when the FA has enough warts to cause other teams to pause. Semien is going to be a top 10 WAR player for two consecutive full seasons after this year, and Ray is a LHP having an amazing season at age 29 after a good track record pre-2020. I don't think either one has to worry about a team not wanting to sign them due to the QO (barring a major collapse by one/both players the rest of the way or injury).