glory

Kinda had the feeling the Yankees were going to lay an egg out there tonight after watching that. Ice Cube's performance was great. Joe sucked the life out of that stadium.

Hoping the Yankees win 2 of the next 3 to extend the series back to LA. A 4 or 5 game series would be pretty disappointing.

Wow what a game. Horrendous move by Boone to go with Cortes in that spot.

I don't know anything about that guy, and it remains to be seen what kind of impact (if any) he will provide the Jays young hitters, but last year at this time the Jays were promoting Donnie Baseball to have a more prominent role with the offense. Regardless of what happens next season, this hire is a breath of fresh air compared to that.

I’m actually looking forward to Yankees/Dodgers. Should be a fun series. Their regular season series at Yankee Stadium felt like a playoff atmosphere. Same two teams for the World Series should have a crazy atmosphere.

Pitching to a red hot Stanton with 1st base open and Jazz on deck was certainly a decision.

Arenado has a full NTC I believe so might not be an easy trade to pull off, but yeah if it’s between trading for him or overpaying Bregman, then I’d easily take Arenado. Definitely think the Jays are going to trade prospects this winter. They have Bo for one more year, Clement on the bench, and their wet dream as far as prospects go in AAA (Kasevich - high contact, low K’s, no power, good defense). I could see Jimenez with no options remaining being moved. They can’t fill all their holes from free agency.

This post season has been cinema. Great games, big moments, epic crowd reactions, lots of big home runs. Good stuff.

Honestly the best thing they could do is probably try to take advantage of teams shedding payroll due to the Bally/Diamond bankruptcy and try to get talent that way. Other than Nimmala and Yesavage, there isn't a prospect they could move that anyone would be upset to lose, so really it could be open season on the farm and I don't think it would make much difference short or long term. Rooker is an obvious one due to the A's trading everybody, but I'm sure there are other teams that will be looking to move some arb eligible players who cost real money. Luis Robert who is coming off an awful year and is no longer cheap (15-20-20 left with the last 2 years being team options) so maybe you can get him at a discounted rate. Stuff like that. Otherwise it is hard to see an avenue to add enough talent on only $40-50m. They gave that much to IKF/KK/Turner/Green/Vogelbach last winter, and that was when the market was dead. If the market is more lively this time around then being able to spread that amount of money around with the amount of holes they have to fix will be impossible.

Rogers is allowing a lame duck team president (and since they are an extension of each other, a lame duck GM as well) to handle the 2025 roster. Those two have absolutely zero reason to care about payroll flexibility, maximizing assets, or farm system for 2026-beyond. Their only priority is going to be to add as many wins in 2025 as they can within their assigned payroll. Front offices with their backs against the wall may not operate in good faith or with any sort of long term vision. There's potential for things to get pretty ugly depending on what type of contracts or trades (or both) that are made this winter. If they give Alex Bregman a 7 or 8 year deal, and get a 4.8 WAR in 2025 out of it, then are they going to care what the contract looks like in 2026-32? They may not even be around to have to deal with it, and if they are, then it means the signing worked and they'd likely have gotten extensions out of it. There's going to be at least one big/bad contract handed out this winter. If it's for Soto, then great, but it won't be, so just have to hope it gives the team a short term boost (and a memorable one ala 2015-16) and/or hope whoever the FA is ages like Adrian Beltre.

Yeah, Atkins essentially messed up every step of the way from 2017-19 (every trade/MLB signing he made during that span aside from Teoscar was dog s***), but still had Vlad/Bo, so that combined with increasing payroll was able to create the 2021-23 window. We can still dream on the payroll part, Rogers has been pretty good there, but the lack of talent in the minors is making it hard to see when the light at the end of the tunnel might actually be visible. The margin for error during the transition years this time around won't be the same as last time.

Ownership, payroll, and the fact that the one thing Atkins has done at a solid-good level (until last off season) is MLB signings/trades is what keeps the Jays from being in the bottom tier. Otherwise the player development side alone would drag them down big time. They aren't Rockies/Angels bad in that area, but closer to them than to the middle. The fact that they've been able to spend to compensate for the lack of player development is huge, and to their credit they've done reasonably well in that area prior to KK/JT/IKF/Vogelbach/Green. The issue is sustainability. As we saw in 2024, being able to outspend your mistakes/limitations doesn't have a long shelf life.

Last year they dumped $50m into KK, IKF, Turner, Green, Rodriguez, and Vogelbach. I wouldn't assume a wild card contender is going to come out of spending money.

Even the big leaguers who might be high impact performers are not locked up beyond 2026. So even if 2025 ends up being successful and even if they extend Vlad, there’s still a question of how sustainable any sort of contention really is. It’s pretty bleak but a great off season might change our perspective (hopefully).

Yeah I think the Jays have trapped themselves here. Losing Vlad for nothing (or for 50 cents on the dollar at the deadline) for a Hail Mary attempt for 2025 is completely illogical, and the farm system isn’t producing another star any time soon. At least when Shatkins fumbled 2017-18, there was a light at the end of the tunnel (Vlad/Bo). That light doesn’t exist today. They really can’t afford to lose Vlad at this point unless they want to have a boring rebuilding team that can’t get a top 10 pick again while trying to fill premium seats at a renovated stadium. I mean maybe Shatkins is looking forward to the next chapter where they can have a lineup of Horwitz, Roden, Kasevich, Wagner, Shreck, and whoever else they can find that will hit 10-12 home runs with a sub 20 K%, but that’s neither marketable to casuals or a recipe for an actual winning team. Give Vlad $350m or whatever it is, and then try to buy your way to more impact talent. At least they have a surplus of what looks like potential average big league talent making the minimum that they could use to fill other holes. It would have been nice if the Jays were the type of org that could lose Vlad and Bo to free agency and not skip a beat, but they aren’t even close to that level of an organization.

I'm all in on Yankees/Dodgers. You have a once in a century player (Ohtani) and a player coming off arguably the best clean offensive season ever (Judge). That's not even factoring future HOF'ers like Soto and Betts, plus Freeman, Cole, etc. Would have preferred the Padres making it on the NL side, but now that we're left with what we are left with, then give me as much greatness/entertainment as possible. I can't imagine anyone outside of Cleveland (and the Jays FO) actually enjoys watching the Guardians play, so have to root for the Yankees by default.

The logical answer with more playoff teams in the fold is to shorten the regular season and make the playoffs longer, but they'd never do that due to the revenue that 162 generates. Maybe shorten ST by a week, and then expand the DS to last 7 games instead of 5. The Wild Card round can be 3 games, it is what it is, but the actual playoff rounds should all be 7.

I’ll go with 11/350 if it’s an extension signed this winter. Although I think he ends up going to free agency, so that price could rise or fall depending on how he does in 2025.

Watching the Padres team and their fans is making me root for them to come out of the NL. Would be fine with a Yankees/Padres World Series. I have no interest seeing an AL Central team play for any longer than necessary.

This got me thinking how different this competitive window would have looked had the Jays succeeded in trading for Lindor. This was 2021, so chances are trading for Lindor would have meant no Semien, and Bichette likely never plays SS again for this team from 2021-present. Of course it would help to know what the trade actually looked like in terms of which players the Jays were losing.

It's only been a week, but these playoffs have already made up for last year's snooze fest. Almost every game has been high drama and highly entertaining.