glory

Yeah the only team I wouldn't be afraid of as an AL playoff team is the Guardians but otherwise any of the Jays, Tigers, M's, Astros, Red Sox, Yankees, and Rangers could come out of the AL and it wouldn't surprise me. Really wide open field even ignoring the crapshoot nature of baseball.

Fluharty saved the Jays (and Schneider’s) ass there. Wow. What a relief outing from him.

Letting Hoffman walk everyone because you want to save a pitching change for Ohtani is insanity. John Schneider is absolutely clueless.

Fisher reminding me of 2015 Liam Hendriks in the sense that the manager doesn’t seem to realize how good he’s been and is using him way down in the depth chart. Ugly game. Hopefully they can salvage the series tomorrow.

Bassitt on the road is not favorable.

For me personally (started watching baseball in 1991), I'd say Carter and Bautista. One helped shape my love of baseball with the 1992-93 run, and the other brought Blue Jays baseball back from 2 decades of irrelevance. The Halladay/Delgado years were tainted by how irrelevant the teams were. I never saw the peak Fernandez or Stieb years, so never built that nostalgia for them. Alomar didn't spend enough time with the Jays.

The Jays offense was absolutely brutal in April, due to a combination of slumps, slow starts, injuries (Varsho), or fringe big leaguers with no pop getting everyday AB's (Wagner, Roden). From May-onwards, it's been a substantial increase in overall offensive performance. March/April 85 wRC+ (24th in MLB) 104 Runs (26th in MLB) .110 ISO (29th in MLB) 19 Home Runs (29th in MLB) 19.2 K% (t-2nd in MLB) 8.5 BB% (20th in MLB) May-onwards 124 wRC+ (1st in MLB) 472 Runs (1st in MLB) .174 ISO (8th in MLB) 114 Home Runs (9th in MLB) 16.3 K% (1st in MLB) 8.7 BB% (t-6th) As mentioned, a healthy Santander and a healthier Varsho probably reduce the team's contact rates over that span while increasing the power, but when you consider the main beneficiaries of the playing time in place of Tony and Varsho were guys like Straw, Clement, etc, I think I would have preferred the added pop. Or at least I'd prefer it in a playoff setting.

The Yankees were +22 after the first 3 games of the season (surprisingly against the Brewers). Run differential has value but I think people can go overboard with it. There are a lot of ebbs and flows during a long season.

Since May 1, the Jays have a MLB leading team wRC+ of 124. The 2nd best team over that span is at 111. “Low hanging fruit” was laughed at, but Boss Atkins found a way to mix the best contact rate in the league with actual damage at the same time.

Ty DeJong morphing into Ty Pearce (circa 2018).

The only area where the Jays had expendable prospect depth with value was on the pitching side, so that's what they used in trades (Rojas, JWB, Stephen). I'm not sure trading their best prospects for a reliever (which was really the only position they could have done that for in this past deadline) was a logical move to make. They got likely the highest upside SP in the market, and while we can debate the Varland trade, he's a RP with a 1 WAR (and climbing) with lots of team control. The system is clearly improved from where it was a year ago. Maybe that means it's closer to middle of the package rather than bottom 5-10, but that's still a significant bump in a year where the big league team has a chance to win the division. I don't think it would have been wise to torpedo that momentum for one season when you could argue they increased the team's 2025 ceiling with the moves they actually did make. I have no clue if this is a sustainable run or whether 2025 is the best shot they'll have in a while. it's baseball you just never know sometimes, but this wasn't a "Whit Merrfield and Anthony Bass" deadline. Bieber if he's right could start Game 1 of a playoff series, and they added significant velocity and talent to the back end of their bullpen. The one area they didn't do enough was the offense, but if Ty France is Ty DeJong just occupying space until others are healthy, then they may have felt they are fine there as is (we will see if that ends up looking smart or not).

I feel like a vomit emoji wouldn’t do the above lineup justice.

My guess is it will either be: CA Heineman, 1B Vlad, 2B Schneider, SS Bichette, 3B Clement, LF Straw, CF Varsho, RF Barger, DH Kirk or same lineup except Ty DeJong at DH (or 1B with Vlad at DH) if they want to give Kirk a full day off. Loperfido likely out, Lukes never plays against LHP, and Buddy forgot-his-last-name should never be in a MLB lineup, so choices are limited to the above.

Yeah that pitcher could aim for a pitch right down the middle and it could go 10 feet in either direction. No command at all. Bad teams will have these types of pitchers. Just beat the crap out of the Rockies pitching and hope to get out of Denver with no more HBP.

Yeah 98 mph to the knee is going to hurt for a bit. Hopefully Joey is ok by Friday. We need him if only to keep France off the team once Springer/Gimenez are back, so he's pretty important now (the 177 wRC+ helps too).

Nice to have Varsho back.

On the plus side, Loperfido and DS have performed so well that there's no shot either one is optioned in favor of keeping France once Springer and Gimenez are back. So this is just JS spoon feeding undeserved playing time to the vetrin.

Yeah if that's the case, combined with the fact that there's no guarantee he's even going to be 'Tony Taters' in time for the playoffs/stretch run if he does come back given the type of injury he has, then it might be best for him as a long term investment to just sit out the year. Let him heal up and be the starting RF in 2026. The sad thing is a healthy Santander in this lineup would be exactly what it needs.

A Gimenez/Clement platoon would be very good. The Jays actually using Clement as a platoon player seems unlikely to me, though. Maybe Loperfido's hot streak has changed things. I thought for sure that Clement would start at 3B and Barger in RF once Gimenez came back, but don't think they want to bench Joey while he's performing this well. Everyone has to be healthy first, which hasn't happened often with the position players on this team over the last few months. Agreed completely with Santander making the lineup way better. I just don't think we will see him again this season but I hope I'm wrong.

Berrios in Colorado sounds terrifying. Hopefully the bats don’t cool down.

Interesting (and a good thing) looking at the Jays pen right now, there isn't a Chad Green type who you don't want pitching in leverage innings that they can throw out there. Maybe Fluharty. Most likely the RP's used tonight will be Flu, Rodriguez (hasn't thrown in a while for some reason), Fisher, and Nance.

Yeah it's possible Santander is not coming back this season, so they absolutely cannot afford to lose Springer for much longer considering he's one of the few guys on the team with power. Hopefully he's healthy soon with no lingering effects.

Usually I'd be against converting a "failed" starter turned good reliever back into a starter, but Varland's profile isn't the sexiest for a reliever, at least this season. Maybe next season they can work on generating more K's/swing and miss as a reliever, assuming they want to keep him in that role, but if they view him as a SP option long-term then it wouldn't be the worst option to try it out. If he had Brendan Little's profile as a RP where he was striking everyone out with lots of swing/miss then I'd be temped to leave him in the pen, but that hasn't been the case. That's where the 5 years of control is beneficial. They have time to figure it out. Based on everything i've read about Rojas, I think he would have helped the 2025 bullpen. Him panning out as a SP given his injuries and lack of innings might be a bit of a long shot, but the profile seems there for a high leverage reliever. Of course it wouldn't have been a lock for him to come in and succeed right away, and the Jays wanted to maximize 2025, as they should, so this swap likely made sense for that reason. Will be interesting to see how this trade looks over the years. The Twins have done a good job developing RP's (as witnessed by the trade deadline) so Rojas is probably in a good spot if that's his best role.

The only overpay was the Varland trade, and that depends entirely on what you think of Rojas. Based on what I was reading about Rojas before he was dealt, I thought they’d use him as the 2nd lefty in the pen down the stretch but obviously the 2025 window was very important so Varland already being a successful big league RP made him the safer 2025 play. One thing Atkins is good at typically is picking the right prospects to trade so we will see what this trade looks like down the road. The other deals seem fine value-wise.

I’m watching a feed that’s a little behind. Gameday said “in play out(s)”, so I expected to see an out, and instead it was Bo messing up that Witt ground ball. Clean it up Gameday.