glory

For Griffin Canning.

This was a fun post season. Congrats to Teoscar for getting a ring. Now time for some Blue Jays news.

Looks like Game 5 tomorrow night. At least push this to Game 6 so we could have a few more days of baseball this season.

Morosi still getting air time on Canadian TV/media is insane given the Ohtani situation.

I've heard baseball talked about more in the last week than I have in many years, whether it be in the national media or from the guys at the gym, at work, etc. Even if this ends up being a sweep, it was no where near the worst WS. Manfred still got what he wanted, just not the long series that everyone expected it to be. I'd take this over last year's snooze fest any day of the week. Hopefully the Yankees can at least extend this to go back to LA. I'm looking forward to Jays transactions but give me some good baseball for a few more days.

Game 1 was an all timer, but this would be really disappointing if it ends in 4 or 5. It's a bullpen game tomorrow for the Dodgers, and then if the Yankees can survive that then it's Cole in Game 5, so maybe there's an outside chance of this at least going 6, but I'd be shocked at this point if it doesn't end by Wednesday. Sucks.

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).