glory

Jansen is the only one out of that group who is a core piece though. Maybe Tellez too if his power is suddenly for real, but Drury/Teoscar/McKinney are basically throw s*** at a wall and hope it sticks type of players. Them struggling doesn’t real mean much. Would be nice if they turned into something but if they flame out it is not really a big deal. Jansen struggling is a problem but it’s still early. Gurriel is kind of in between.

Montoyo is a great tank commander, I'll give him that.

Yeah seriously. He hasn't made an analytical move since the season started.

That Happ trade was so trash. Ugh.

Holy s***, call up Alford to replace this scrub.

Drury should have bunted.

Damn, Galvis has been amazing so far.

His other options are Hudson, Luciano, Guerra, and Gaviglio. I'm not faulting Montoyo for this.

Great throw from Grichuk, and nice derp move by Devers to run on that.

Trade Giles at the deadline and move Sanchez to the closer role in August, assuming he's not holding up as a SP. Relievers have more trade value than SP's nowadays anyway.

Time to take Sanchez out but Montoyo seems more old school than Gibby, so he'll probably keep him in until he gives up the lead in order to be in line for the win if he escapes with the lead in tact.

I never saw Tellez in the minors but if he can maintain his minor league BB/K rates but have legit big league power on top of that, maybe there is some potential there.

The sad thing is, this might help in avoiding a strike because the players are getting guaranteed money early in their careers, which is pretty much the biggest problem with the current system. No one is forcing the players to sign these extensions, they are choosing to. At the end of the day, these extensions are pocket change to owners, and the teams are still getting surplus value despite the higher guarantees.

Keith Law liking Warmoth explains why LW sucks so much. At least there's confirmation.

That's how I feel. I don't know if this is AA taking advantage of young kids who have never seen this type of money before (don't know what their childhood situations were) or if these players just have really, really bad agents. This is not life altering money by MLB standards, certainly not over a 9 year period. It's just a bad look all around.

Ok maybe no sympathy for all players is harsh but still it’s setting a bad tone. This and the Acuna deal are hurting the players. I could understand giving up a year or two of your free agent years to get guaranteed money in your first six years but when the good young players are signing for peanuts, it’s just going to hurt the rest of the league. If a player’s 20’s is projected to be worth over $200 mil (for example) and he signs for $35 mil over the life of it, that’s pretty darn stupid and you can bet other teams will use it as a base line when dealing with their players.

Albies gave away his prime for a sandwich. Damn. If he kept on this path he may have gotten more than $35 mil in three years of arbitration, or at least close to it. Between this and the Acuna deal, the players will no longer get sympathy from me. I know there’s a possible lockout and you want to cover yourself, but giving away your entire 20’s for $40 mil means you can’t complain when you’re being lowballed as a free agent in your 30’s.

Yup. Jays can't out-Ray the Rays. They scare me more than Boston and New York.

100% agree with the 2nd paragraph. The Jays haven't been trading much value in getting the players they got. I'm not knocking Shatkins for those trades in particular, just that getting potential 1 war big leaguers isn't really going to speed up this process. They need players who can realistically be core pieces with Vlad, Bo, etc, and we can't just rely on the draft since the timelines will be hard to match up. That's why people are upset about not trading players sooner (JD, Happ, etc) because maybe you get a core piece in a trade if you trade them in mid 2017 rather than mid 2018 (Flaherty was rumored for JD before). There's still trade pieces on the team to move for help, so hopefully that yields better results (Giles in particular.....contending teams love relievers at the deadline).

McKinney: top 100 prospect when he was in A+ Wall: top 100 prospects when he was in A Hernandez: Never on a top 100 list (at least not any BBRef tracks) Hanson: top 100 prospect in A+ McKinney and Wall were rated top 100 prospects shortly after they were drafted in the 1st round. As they climbed through the minors, their production and status plummeted. They were never really top prospects at any point. Hanson was an international prospect who was ranked highly in the lower minors but then saw his production fall as he moved up. I'd say Hernandez is more likely to suddenly breakout than the other three (better track record in the high minors and stat cast numbers were great last year) but again not something I'm going to bank on. Encarnacion was a good MLB player in his early 20's but was playing the wrong position. He became a great MLB player in his late 20's. You can't just assume that any former prospect given everyday AB's has a chance to breakout. It can happen, and that's the beauty of baseball, but there has to be performance indicators that are interesting enough to show whether it's likely. Grichuk might be the only player on the team I could see becoming a late blooming star, but the BB% is the killer. The only reason I have some hope for Drury is because I want to internally rationalize the s***** Happ trade by pretending Drury is better than he actually is.

Encarnacion was a top 50 prospect in baseball before he came up, and then spent years drawing walks and not striking out (pre breakout) before things finally came together with his power. It's not like he was striking out 30% of the time with a 6% walk rate and suddenly became really good. He was also ass as a 3b, and once he moved to 1b/DH, he probably relaxed a bit more. Bautista was a rule 5 pick that bounced around a lot but even before his breakout he at least had the makings of a good player (similar to Edwin, drew walks and had a low K% but wasn't showing the power potential he eventually had). In his case he changed his swing and became elite, but again, it wasn't taking a fringe talent and getting lucky. There were some aspects of his game that looked appealing before he broke out. Obviously giving flawed players playing time in a lost year and trying to make adjustments to hopefully help them take a step forward can lead to good results. If Teoscar can maintain his stat cast numbers from last year but reduce K's and increase BB's, then you might have a good hitter there. But these are long shots. The Jays can't rely on them panning out. If it happens then it should be an added bonus. Where the Jays need to score big is their own prospects panning out, and also acquiring players from outside the org that pan out. If they keep focusing on McKinney and Forrest Wall types, I'm not liking the chances of an impact player coming out of it. That's why we better be focusing on the Padres when we trade guys at the deadline.

How many infielders have to pass Warmoth on the depth chart before they cut bait? i know it's too early now but this guy is already 23 and between last year and the SSS of this year hasn't been able to hit A+ pitching at all. Time to work some magic Atkins and flip him into something useful like you did with Woodman.

Half the team's home runs over the past few years only cleared the fence because Buck was screaming "get up ball, get up, get up".

Building a team through the draft and international pipeline only would take an eternity to pull off. There needs to be trades, lucky breaks with player development (ex. Jose, Edwin types), etc. So far the team has been so risk averse that they have targeted older players with questionable upside (McKinney types). Those types will have value but they'll need to aim a lot higher to compete in this division, especially since the Rays can do the drafting/international stuff as good or better and the Jays can't spend as much as the Yankees and Red Sox.

Ned Yost won a WS title. Atkins did this intentionally. Speed, contact, and BABIP. Let's do this.