glory

Probably pre-game plan to have Lauer-Fisher-Turnbull get through 7 and then go to Little and Rodriguez in the 8th and 9th if it was a save situation.

Nevermind. Little in. Schneider needed that pitching change for his own health. His hands were shaking.

My guess is Turnbull starts the inning and then Little comes in for the lefty. That seems to be Schneider's pattern.

Wonder how long they plan to use Turnbull here. They obviously want him to be a little stretched out, so 2 innings isn't much work, but they also want to win this game, plus Schneider is going to be scratching himself from withdrawal symptoms if he doesn't make a pitching change soon.

Yeah I have a bad feeling about this. Hope I'm wrong.

It would but need someone to eat up innings.

With Lauer eating up 4.1 innings, I think saving Turnbull for Saturday makes more sense. Francis stinks and isn't likely to go long in that game so they'll need a mop up guy.

It's going to be interesting what the Jays do with the relievers once Garcia and Sandlin come back. Green is awful (last good season with any meaningful sample size was 2021), and Swanson hasn't been good since 2023. Fisher has options but is clearly better than both of them. I don't think $3M (Swanson's salary) is enough of a deterrent for a DFA, but they might wait until he blows a game before doing it. Green is going to be harder to work around with his salary, but sunk cost is sunk cost. Fisher needs to stay on.

Gimenez is significantly underperforming his xwOBA and has a .233 BABIP (even after tonight's game). Not sure he has enough time to get a 4+ WAR this season after missing time due to injury, but I think he's going to be improve as long as he's healthy. What that looks like remains to be seen.

Yeah the Jays caught a huge break with Barger turning into a good 3B and Rodriguez/Little/etc turning into leverage relievers, because that significantly narrows down their deadline needs. They absolutely have to add a starter, preferably closer to a #1-2 than a 4-5. Obviously some other cosmetic changes would be helpful (another bench bat, etc), but adding a SP that could realistically start a playoff game (and not just someone to soak up regular season innings) would be a huge add.

John Schneider is really, really bad at managing a bullpen. The one bright spot here is that he had Hoffman warm up the pen leading up to the 9th anyway, so using him here was probably better than letting him get hot, not using him, and then pitching him tomorrow as well. Now he's definitely out for tomorrow (barring JS losing his mind), another off day Thursday, and then he won't pitch Saturday either with Francis starting (no chance that's a save situation unless the Baseball God's are smiling on us that day), so maybe he can rest up a bit.

4 run lead. Just keep Chad Green in at this point. He will give up 2 solo shots but Jays would still lead in that scenario,

2003 Roy Halladay would have thrown 170 innings if John Schneider managed.

Kirk is back. What a season he’s having.

Vlad not in the lineup tonight.

I know "Donnie was a great hitting coach, it was the hitters that sucked" is the hill you want to die on and you have been consistent with that for years, but if you truly believe nothing has changed from a philosophy standpoint this season (on the hitting side) then we can just agree to disagree because I don't think you're ever changing your opinion on that. And I'm sure you'll bring it up again in 2027 or whenever the Jays aren't hitting as a team again, but not one person has said a hitting coach can turn bad hitters into good ones, simply that a good hitting coach/philosophy can point players with talent into a direction that could get them in better position to maximize that talent. The hitter still has to do the job, but if he's "fighting against his natural muscle memory" (quote about Barger from March 2025) due to adjustments suggested by the org, then you're probably not maximizing his chances of panning out. Mattingly was not that guy, and again if you believe he was, then we can agree to disagree on that. Also, whether the Jays continue to hit this well moving forward also remains to be seen.

In the same way the 2022 Wild Card series forced a drastic change in the FO's thinking (arguably not in a good way), it's possible the 2024 season had the same type of impact. The worst bullpen in the history of the sport combined with a slap hitting singles offense guided by Donnie Baseball led to 2024's abysmal season, but it forced them to bring in a completely different hitting philosophy, and something has to have changed with the pitching development because the Jays haven't developed relievers in like 10 years. Now suddenly every AAA no name RP they call up is having success. Of course, SSS and all, but man things look so much better now than they did 6 weeks ago.

Yeah the offensive bar isn’t high. Even an 80 wRC+ with that defense is going to be a high WAR player. Hoping he’s at least passable offensively because he’s a highlight reel defensive player every night.

Massive win.

That hurts. Hoffman with a 1 run lead given his gopher-itis this season is not fun.

Kirk's wRC+ up to 122 now.

Usain Bolt couldn’t have run faster than John Schneider just did to take the ball from Berrios’ hand.

I'd be pretty shocked if Vlad isn't voted in as the starting 1B. As far as Clement, super utility IF that can hit LHP (hopefully that part of his offensive game is sustainable) is fine. The Jays are going to twist themselves into a pretzel to get him everyday AB's this season, so he will get a lot of PA's, but ultimately he's someone you'd want on the bench to cover all the IF positions.

I remember reading that Cherington was apparently trying to trade for Horwitz for a while. So just demote Roden, let him have a 1.100 OPS in AAA by hitting nothing but 89 mph line drives, and then trade him to Pittsburgh.

There’s definitely some necessity involved here, but Francis has a -1.0 WAR. Easton Lucas had 2 good starts followed by 2 bad starts and was immediately demoted. He came up and pitched really well as a long man and was demoted again. Lauer actually has a MLB track record as a serviceable back end #5 SP, and they are using him in a bulk role rather than trying to get him to eat up as many innings as possible. I’m not saying Lauer and Lucas would be any good but better than a -1.0 WAR and 19 HR in 60 IP? It would be difficult to be as bad as that, much less worse than that. Either way maybe you get lucky and someone surprises for a few weeks/months. That’s really all they need. They’ll definitely make a trade closer to the deadline so they just need to keep throwing s*** at the wall and hope something sticks until then. You can’t keep throwing Francis out there and expecting different results when nothing indicates that what he’s doing now is a fluke. Would they be giving him this much rope if those 9 starts last year didn’t happen? Maybe but I doubt it. Either way, as others have said, they really need to make a trade soon rather than closer to the end of July, Margin for error isn’t very big for this team, and they won’t last with 3 SPs and 2 bullpen games a week. I agree Alcantara is a great target as a buy low and the Marlins are beyond cheap. Don’t think the Marlins would sell low like that but who knows.