glory

Maybe Touissant or Gohara would be available for Sanchez. They both come with huge risk (especially Gohara with his shoulder) but AA loves Sanchez and it's about time Shatkins takes a risk with high reward rather than more McKinney's and Thornton's.

I don't know, I have some hope that a team out there will overrate him. Probably wishful thinking. My gut still tells me AA can't help himself and trades some excess mid level SP depth for him but AA post Toronto isn't trading prospects like candy anymore so who the hell knows at this point.

The Yankees have so many injuries but are still a great team. Unreal. It's bad enough competing with the Rays who could turn everyone they acquire into stars at 50 cents on the dollar, but the Yankees can have their entire 25 roster get hurt and still nearly lead the division. Rebuild will be hard.

Shatkins clearly wants to build internally so their legacy will come down to how well they develop players. Their problem so far is that they sell at such a low leveraging position that the returns have not been very good. JD was traded when he was hurt and had like 3 weeks of service time remaining. Osuna was traded after a DV situation (though they did pretty well there considering the circumstances). Happ was traded with 2 months of control left for 2 players Cashman wanted to clear off the 40 man roster. That's three of the best assets they had from the 2016-17 teams and the returns were very disappointing as a whole. The other trades were marginal pieces like Pearce, Grandy, middle relievers, so that won't yield much back regardless. What they get back for Stro, Sanchez, and Giles will be pretty damn important. If it's more 24-25 year old's who other teams want to take off their 40 man roster crunch, then this rebuild is going to take an eternity. Home run won't cut it, they need a walk off grand slam in these three trades. No doubters with bat flip included. If they end up with more McKinney's, then FML.

Yeah don't blame Stroman at all for that response (though not acknowledging Sid would have been better).

They chose Pompey over DSJ, but Pompey got hurt and then Davis got hurt so they had to trade for Brito once they traded Pillar. In hindsight they could have dropped Pompey and kept DSJ, but unfortunately I don't think Shatkins valued Smith at all, and probably would not have played him over McKinney or Teocar. Pompey probably would have played CF after Pillar was moved, but he got hurt again.

Man I wish we had Tim Anderson. None of this "put your head down and run the bases" BS. He hit a bomb and admired it. All the Brian McCann's (and unfortunately Grichuk's) of the baseball world can cry all day.

I'm on Team Shatkins, but even I'm not that impressed with what they've done, especially from 2018-present. Their peak so far was probably 2016 with their small incremental improvements that helped push that team back into contention, although a giant part of that was 'Shacava' (Estrada, Happ). The rebuild is supposed to be the easy part but they are routinely selling low and targeting lower upside players closer to the bigs. I'm trying very, very hard to see upside in some of these players (Drury, Teoscar, McKinney, Thornton, Paulino, Perez, etc), waiting for the player development side to fix some of these guys and turn them into solid big leaguers or fix them in the minors, but I'm just not seeing it. Too early? Maybe. But I need to see something that makes me optimistic about future moves.

The Jays had Ramirez spend all of 2018 in AA despite doing well there. They had no intention of ever calling him up. I never saw him as a prospect but at least promote him to AAA in 2018 and see if maybe there is something there. He was smart to go to Miami.

Start Davis in CF full time. Seriously. I don't want to see Teoscar and McKinney playing at the same time ever again, and Grichuk back in RF will help his defensive value.

I think Dick Pole and BTS are both right. The team is definitely tanking, and Atkins may not be as smart as we all think/hoped he'd be. I am not writing off Atkins by any means, but he needs his results to start mirroring his reputation of being endorsed by Shapiro.

Yup. The Padres being in contention is only going to help the Jays since we have Stroman and Giles who could help contending teams. One of those guys will go to the Padres IMO. Sanchez will go the Braves.

Mariners started the year 13-2 and are now 20-20. That seems like the most Mariners thing ever.

Yeah even if Davis is a long shot, he has skills that might be useful in a bench role (speed, defence, hit LHP in the minors). I'd probably be less surprised if he turned into a 1 WAR player than if Teoscar and McKinney do. McKinney literally does nothing well. Teoscar might have some upside if his power comes back but even then it's probably not a player who can start on a good team.

He’s also drawing more walks than strike outs. Might mean nothing for his big league projections but I think he can be a good 4th OF/platoon guy.

Jonathan Davis needs a call up as well. He's killing it in AAA, is already on the 40 man roster, and is blocked by Socrates f'n Brito.

They may not intentionally be ignoring it, but that seems to be a pretty consistent pattern with them except for Galvis. Even Grichuk is being used at CF this year where his defensive metrics are worse and his overall value will be hurt by it. They signed Pearce (good) but used him almost exclusively in left (stupid). Gave three years to a DH who makes my sprint speed look like Bolt's by comparison. Teoscar has improved this year but still kinda sucks. McKinney sucks. Gurriel is really bad in the infield and he had to go borderline Chuck Knoblauch before Shatkins was willing to try him in the OF in AAA. Solarte sucked defensively. Granderson was best suited as a DH by the time they signed him. Signing Galvis was a good sign, at least they acknowledge they needed a defensive upgrade there, but overall the track record isn't good.

Nah, he'll sign a 7 year, $21 million deal with 3 team options bringing the total value of the deal to $40 mil.

I see a lot of breakout candidates in that lineup. Just watch you guys.

He also has a 5-6% BB% for his career and is in an era where he will increasingly see more and more off speed stuff. I think expecting a huge breakout, beyond the 2.5 WAR type that he has been, is not as likely as I would have thought a year ago. They could have sold at the 2017 deadline (JD and Happ would have had 1.5 years of control left, and Stroman/Osuna 3.5 years each). Regardless, they didn't need to tear down. They could have traded JD in mid 2017 and still tried to win in 2018. Maybe they use that saved money in free agency, or to acquire a player in trade, etc. Not being able to leverage the assets they had while still being able to fake an attempt at contending is definitely on them. Rogers wants to make money, so of course they won't want to rebuild when attendance is high, but that should not have prevented Shatkins from trading certain players in order to maximize the return. What percentage do you give any of those players turning into 2-3 WAR types, especially in this organization? 10%? 5%? It's pretty damn small. At least with Grichuk you can hope on a 3+ WAR path if he puts things together, but the others are huge long shots. As far as development, almost nothing in baseball is linear, but there are indicators to show breakout potential. For me, BB% is huge. If you're a 5% BB type, then I'm not counting on that player turning into much unless he has a Javy Baez type of hitting ability, and that's not very common. Base running is important. Defence (which Shatkins typically ignores) is important. Exit velocity and stat cast performance is important. You can't just look at age and some minor league numbers without context and assume a player has potential to improve.

Grichuk is pretty much the same dude he was in St. Louis with slightly fewer K's. Decent player, 2 WAR type, but he hasn't taken that step forward yet. If it happens, then that would be a point for the front office, but so far it looks like they made a good trade for a good player who simply maintained the level he had previously. It's not like he came to Toronto and took a step forward. That's my point. The Jays have not shown the ability to make players, hitters in particular, take a leap forward in their development aside from Smoak. On top of that, they sold low on a lot of their veteran talent in order to go for a WC spot in 2017-18, so they weren't able to maximize returns there. That puts more pressure on player development to compensate for that lost opportunity. Like I said, I like Shatkins, but I can't sit here and pretend that this is a well oil machine that maximizes the talents of their players. That needs to change. They can't spend like the Yankees/Red Sox, and can't do what the Rays do, so they need to be way more successful at finding the underutilized talents and having them become good under their watch.

I meant bust relative to what he was expected to be, but I'll concede that was too harsh of a word. Maybe not hitting as well as expected would have sufficed. 2017 (AAA): 312 PA, 85 wRC+, 7.7 BB% 2018 (AAA): 179 PA, 100 wRC+, 5.0 BB% 2018 (MLB): 191 PA, 110 wRC+, 5.2 BB% ------Gets traded------- 2018 (AAA): 106 PA, 223 wRC+, 7.5 BB% 2019 (MLB): 83 PA, 189 wRC+, 9.6 BB% Good prospect, but immediately goes to the Rays and becomes ten times better than what he was showing before. There is a trend there. Would he have gotten there anyway had he stayed with the Pirates? Maybe, but I'm just going by what actually happened. It was like a switch turned on immediately after stepping into a Rays facility. If you want to argue that the Jays have never acquired players of that caliber, fine. They could have acquired Yandy Diaz and turned him around, right? Ji-Man Choi was in like 5 different orgs before Tampa got him and he immediately became a good big leaguer. I could go on and on, and I f***ing hate the Rays so hyping them up like this makes me ill. Almost all of TOR's pick ups have flopped. In some cases badly. Making matters worse is that almost all of them suck on defence so they are not even maximizing that aspect of value. The Jays have not shown the ability to take players, whether highly rated or otherwise, and turning them into good MLB'ers. Smoak is the exception in over 3 years. So far their main strength is getting cheapo relievers and turning them into good RP's, which is fine, but not exactly franchise altering. The player development side for this team needs work. Anyone who thinks otherwise is wearing blinders. I like Shatkins and I see this as a major issue. Let's see what they get back for Stroman, Giles, etc, and see how those players develop.

Dude the first thing I said in the post you were quoting is that they were not reclamation projects, so why is reclamation in quotations? I clearly said they were players who the Rays acquired who became better after they were acquired. That's a sign of an org with a strong player development structure. The Jays don't have that.

They weren't reclamation projects, but they were players who the Pirates were either not utilizing properly or gave up on. Meadows looked like a bust from 2016-18, and Glasnow was being used out of the pen by the Pirates. Those weren't Brito types of rec projects, but still players who the Rays acquired and turned into much better players. The Jays need to start doing this. If Paulino was a Ray, he'd be pretty damn good right now in whichever role they had him in. I'm almost sure of that.

The point about taking flyers on players is that how many of them are actually panning out for the Jays? Smoak was already here though I'll give Atkins credit for that one since it was a contract extension, but who else? Tampa gets Yandy and he turns into something. They get Meadows and Glasnow and turn them into stars. They have a reliever carousel every year and somehow have great results with it every year. That's an organization that you can count on to be good for a while. The Jays can't spend more than the Yankees, and they clearly cannot identify/develop underutilized talent better than Tampa, so where's the competitive advantage? If Thornton, Merryweather, Waguespack, Pannone, Paulino, etc, turn into good pitchers, then that would be a good sign. I have more faith in them than I do the Drury/Teoscar/McKinney's of the world, but still a bad sign that Smoak is the only one in three+ years that we acquired and turned around based on adjustment or swing changes. That's not good enough.