glory

Yep. No further explanation needed. The guy will miss 6 weeks, give or take, every year with some injury. Just hope Barney starts at short and....ah, who am I kidding.

Again, do you know how hard it is to only win 50 games? That's not even a faint possibility if the team decides to blow it up. Chances are they'll still have enough to win 65-75 games in the lean years. The difference between that range and 81 wins is a lot different than a historically bad team in the history of baseball.

With the last three seasons involving some pretty damn good luck with pitcher injuries (Stroman's freak accident aside) it's weird to see the Jays relying on scrub depth again.

You don't even have to tank in baseball. You can have a good farm system and good big league team at the same time. THe only reason this is a discussion is because AA sacrificed one for the other, which has lead to the reality that the team was going to age before its next group of prospects were ready, forcing a rebuild. The amount of skill it takes to only win 50 games is pretty special. I mean, you'd have to purposely tank and get major injuries to the best scrubs on your team to be that bad, and even then you might win about 55 games.

I agree, I think Vlad alone was worth the penalty. It really depends on what else was out there that was worth throwing millions on.

The Jays aren't tanking though. They are actually trying to win. They have an old veteran team. You can't prevent a bad season from happening in this case. If they were purposely tanking after making the ALCS last year then that's different. In this case, the Jays are bad in spite of trying to field a contender. If attendance, ratings, and revenue drop because of that, then what are you going to do? And yes, this is AA's fault. When you build for one year, that's all you're going to get. Shatkins tried to extend the window for as long as they could and it just wasn't meant to be. At least we can keep track of the minors now and know that Vlad, Bichette, etc, might actually play for the Jays if they pan out, rather than be traded for Joey Votto.

If the Jays can't be good enough to make the playoffs, then they should be bad enough to justify moving pieces at the deadline. .500 is like a nightmare scenario. This roster ain't getting better next year as is.

I think he means if they were going to go over, then they should have just gone crazy and spent huge since they were going to get penalized anyway.

Pearce does well every other year. 2014 good, 2015 bad, 2016 good. He'll recoup his value in 2018. Seriously though, I think it's a confidence thing based on him crying in the dugout. But who knows. He is in his 30's and is coming off surgery. Might be on the decline or maybe the injury will take some time to recover from.

BABIPillar could be an all star with his D.

I'm not saying Kelly is any good, but my god, Goins against Sale? Might as well have Estrada bat.

Ty Kelly on the bench while Ryan Goins starts against Chris Sale. Gibby 1.0. will never die. His 2.0 phase ended after some early losing this season and he has reverted back to the only thing he knows best; derp.

Zeke's gonna play a lot this week now. Great.

Tepera, Goins, Navarro, Zeke. Gibbons loves him some scrubs.

Tepera had options left too though, and he's not good at all. I guess it helps if Gibby can't quit you. Barnes hasn't earned that love yet.

Tulo has a NTC so you're kinda stuck with the teams he would be willing to be traded to, and they may not want/need him. If he demands a trade, that's an easier way to facilitate a move, but even then, he has too many years and dollars in his 30's to be appealing to most teams. I could see him being moved with money eaten up but I wouldn't expect much back.

He also seems like the type who 1) hates being traded, and 2) doesn't mind being in a rebuilding situation (he seemed to like Colorado and helping the younger talent). Even if the Jays are stuck with him in a rebuilding phase, he might help the young players out.

If Tulo and Martin are traded, the value the Jays receive back will be pretty minor, if anything at all. Martin is unmovable with his contract, and Tulo is still a good player but not what he used to be (plus he has a ntc). At this rate the team might be better off keeping them even if they do rebuild since there is no SS or catcher ready to take over for them, and some vetrin leaders around a young team might help in development. The players the jays would have to move are Donaldson, Estrada, Liriano, Happ...and if you want to include young guys, then Pillar and Osuna as well. That's where there will be value coming back to varying degrees. I doubt they will move Sanchez and Stroman yet unless they want to completely bottom out.

Not with this offence.

No it isn't. I made a general statement saying let's not waste Guerrero's prime years by not rebuilding/staying mediocre, which you somehow took as building around an 18 year old in A-ball. No one ever said "trade Donaldson and build around Vlad". That's absurd. My point was trade Donaldson, rebuild, and then by the time Vlad comes up they'll be in a position to have players around the same age as him (from a development standpoint) that they can build around. Whether he actually becomes as good as he's capable of is a totally separate discussion, but that should be the goal. Create the next wave of young talent. You created a strawman based on my Guerrero comment, and then got called out for your absurd notion of "building around Donaldson" (this is not basketball, you can't build around one player to begin with). metafor's point pretty much nails the "window period" argument. That's what got AA in trouble. Let's not revisit that model of team building. Instead of scrambling to make the playoffs in the year JD has left, why not try to create something more sustainable over a longer period of time, even if it means some short-term hiccups? It's common sense.

Agree. Signing Donaldson to an extension now when the 2017 team looks old/bad, and the team's best prospects are still a few years away from reaching the majors is a huge risk with minimal reward. As great as he is, he's only going to get worse and more expensive from here on out, and we don't really know how long he will be elite or stay as injury free as he has prior to this season. On top of that, we don't know how many years it will take for the team's young players to not only reach the Majors but become good mlb players on top of that. It's either trade him for a ransom now and build towards a few years down the road, or try to re-sign him and watch him for another 5-7 years during his declining years on a team that likely won't be good enough around him. If the Jays had a great farm system and the 2017 team looked ready for a WS run, then I'm down for a JD extension. Based on what the team and situation looks like now, it would be better off to move on, and that sucks because I'd love to see JD retire as a Jay. That reality just doesn't jive with where the team is right now.

Yeah, even if Shatkins wanted to rebuild after 2016, there was no way it was going to happen after two straight playoff appearances and a huge increase in revenue + attendance. The only way this was was going to take a step back is if the team on the field forced them to. This year might be that year. And yes, the Mets owe us for the Dickey trade. A year and a half of Donaldson is probably more valuable than a lifetime of Dickey though, so not exactly a comparable situation, but whatever. Get their best prospects.

You're not rebuilding to build around Guerrero, you're rebuilding to actually have a group of young impact players who could come up around the same time to become the next core group. Building around Donaldson for two more years is what Shapiro tried to do. If 2017 is a bust, then you have him for one more year before he either leaves or becomes a $200mm+ contract in his 30's where you don't really know how much longer he will be elite. I'd have no issues re-signing JD if the team was winning and the farm system was booming, but it doesn't look that way. Their best prospects are years away and the MLB roster is old. It will be damn impossible to build around JD under those circumstances.

Blue Jays fans are bandwagon fans. They'll leave when times are rough but clearly will come back when the team is winning. We have seen it. I agree, start the rebuild now so that by the time Vlad comes up they won't waste his prime like they did with so many other players in the 90's/00's/10's by being mediocre when the situation called for a punt.

Yeah I think the chances of climbing out of a 2-10 start are pretty much slim and none, especially with the injuries tacked on. If everyone was healthy, then maybe, but not now. Friggin' Latos and Lawrence will probably be in the rotation for the next little while combined with no JD and a bunch of replacement level scrubs scattered all throughout the lineup. It's bad and I don't think this roster has a 40-19 run (or whatever it was) in them like the post trade deadline 2015 team did. I think the most frustrating thing is we started with 6 games against the O's. They are 5-1 against the Jays are 3-2 against everyone else. They got to pad their win total at our expense.