glory

According to MLBTR, the Orioles are open to trading Mullins and Mountcastle. A team in 1st place in the division looking to trade vets in their 20’s due to internal depth while the last place Jays holding on to 36 year old Bassitt for dear life.

Sure, the most sensible direction would be to not care about wins in 2025 and retool for 2026-27. I'm just saying if Rogers is against that and just wants a path to get 2.5-3 million asses in the stadium, then figure out a logical way to balance putting the team in a better position long term with keeping your boss happy. With that said, fans see through BS. The Jays drew 3.2 million fans in 2017, opted to go for it in 2018 despite common sense dictating otherwise, and then by the 2nd series of the season they averaged 17k in a 3 game set at home against the White Sox, after drawing only 29k on a Sunday against the Yankees. In other words, the fans saw right through it by the first week of that season. There's no guarantee that running it back again, except with Paul Goldschmidt at DH, or whatever other band aid fixes Shapiro has in mind, is going to do anything meaningful to attendance, especially now that the novelty of the stadium renovations may have worn out. Also, even if the Jays by some chance actually make the playoffs in 2025, then what? More than half the roster is a FA in either 2025-26, and they only have one controllable young player who looks like he might be starting caliber in the bigs right now (and he's a 26 year old 1B playing 2B!). Maybe DS can be a good player, maybe Jimenez, but if you're running it back, then there's a good chance you'll have to retool/rebuild anyway the year after.

Couldn’t they trade Vlad, Bassitt, and others while reallocating the saved money this winter to try for 80 wins? They’d have money to spend plus prospects in that scenario. Rogers as you said probably just wants to stay reasonably competitive for tickets and don’t care about the actual baseball stuff but this is the 2nd time under Shapiro that the Jays will be operating like this. It’s not a good look for him at this point. Shows a lack of foresight and creativity.

Passan is spot on here, as many of us have been saying. Unfortunately what he suggests is not happening with the ownership and front office in place. The fact that fans and media can see it but the Jays can’t is baffling.

If they keep Vlad this deadline (they will), then it better be to extend him this winter, even if it's an overpay (it will be). Keeping Vlad and then letting him test free agency because you want to compete in 2025 is borderline incompetent. Keeping him because you want to extend him is fine, just get it done before the 2025 season. Bo is probably more reminiscent of JD, right down to the lower body injuries. Unfortunately he sucked and got hurt. Would the Jays have traded him this week if he were healthy and productive? I have my doubts on that, but we will never know. Bo sucking ass and getting hurt might have saved the front office from having to explain why the hell they are keeping him.

Or a player with 1-3 years of service time that another team is not valuing or is giving up on (ex. Drury).

Yeah seems like he wanted to be drafted by the Jays and thought highly of their player development at the time (which seems laughable in hindsight given what we've seen the last few years). He seems to have lost his admiration for the org since then, though who knows when that started. I think he definitely has one foot out the door right now, but he has every incentive in the world to have a big 2025 to 1) hit free agency at a high, and 2) get the hell out of TO in a trade if they are out of it next July.

I would be surprised if the 2024 trade deadline wasn't a full on attempt to fill as many 2025 holes as possible, even at the expense of upside. If they traded Kikuchi for 2 guys in A ball with high ceilings/low floors, then I'd be legit shocked (though pleased since the Jays badly need some upside in the system). The 2025 trade deadline if they are out of it is a different story, as I can't imagine anyone in the org would be delusional enough to think the 2026 team would be any good if the 2025 team stunk too.

I don’t think it would have been an egregious move to walk Judge in that spot. Like imagine if you had to face 2021 Vlad when 2024 Kirk was on deck. It wouldn’t be a move I’d make in a general sense but a MVP vs a .600 OPS guy on deck is a no brainer. If it fails then it fails.

The Jays going for it in 2025 and finally coming to terms with a rebuild by July 2025 seems like a very real possibility. The one benefit to 2025 vs 2018 when they did the exact same thing is that the 2025 roster should have a position player core mostly in their 20’s, but obviously development has been an issue with this team so age hasn’t helped them recently in that sense. At least it’s better than banking on a bunch of vets on their last legs like 2018. I’m curious to see if Shapiro has his AA 2015 “I won’t be here to clean this s*** up” moment in the winter. Something like a 7 year deal for Bregman, or something.

I wonder if Rogers intervenes here. The Jays aren't deep into the tax like the Mets are, but I would imagine getting under the tax would still be a priority for ownership when the team is this bad. There's very little chance they can do that if they are just selling off the rentals since KK and Turner are basically negative value at their remaining money. Out of all the players signed through 2025, I think Green is the one they'd dump if they had to move someone, though it's hard to see a team valuing him at $10.5m next season. No chance they move Bassitt.

Soto is going to get the highest AAV ever (when you factor deferrals in Ohtani’s deal). It’s going to be Cohen, the Yankees, or Dodgers. If the Jays want to make a splash in free agency then it will probably be Bregman.

Even if the Jays volunteered to pay the remainder of Turner's contract, would any contending team actually have a use for him? He can't hit RHP and can't field. At least KK plays a premium position really well.

We will never know, but I'm kinda curious whether the Jays would have traded him this trade deadline even if he were healthy and putting up a normal Bo season. If anything it feels like the injury and bad performance gives Shatkins a good excuse to hold on to him in order to try to compete in 2025.

The luxury tax issue is going to be interesting to watch. Paying the tax and dealing with the penalties for a team as bad as the 2024 team would be foolish. However, no one is taking Turner and KK's salaries, and the Jays want to repeat 2018 by pretending to contend next season so they won't be dealing anyone who is controllable beyond this season. I can't see how they get under the tax just by trading Kooch, Garcia, Richards, and Jansen. They won't be trading Bassitt no matter how much sense that makes. The only other option is probably Chad Green but I don't see his $10.5m salary in 2025 being an asset right now. He seems like a 2025 trade deadline piece. This team paid an obese DH $2m to play once a week, so maybe they deserve whatever the get. Sad that the two biggest FA pickups this season are players other teams wouldn't take for free (Turner/KK). Maybe some team would have taken IKF if he was healthy, but will be harder to trade him when he's hurt. If a team is willing to take him though, make the damn deal.

I am completely on the "trade Bo" bandwagon, but if there's any player on the 2025 team that will bust his ass next season, it's him. Dude has been waiting for free agency for years it feels like. He'll put in the work. Whether he's any good remains to be seen.

Agreed, I think selling high on Bassitt would be a great idea, but the Jays (under Shapiro at least) do not operate like that. It’s one of the reasons they need to invest so heavily in free agency in the first place.

No chance the Jays trade Bassitt. They are going to try to contend in 2025, for better or worse.

I tend to agree. DS should absolutely be playing everyday on this sad sack team, but by no means is he a lock to be a 2-3 WAR long term. For me, the players with the best chance of sticking as good non-star MLB starters are Horwitz at 2B and Jimenez at SS. Horwitz loses a lot of his shine at 1B. I'm conflicted on Barger. If he still had his 2022 skill set, then I'd be a lot more intrigued by him as he seems to have good exit velo. He needs to trade approaches with DS or something. There's also a question of which position he should be playing long term.

Horwitz's future value changes a lot if he's primarily a 2B. I haven't watched much of the games this season, but he currently has a +2 OAA at 2B. If he's even average defensively there for a few years, then I think he has a chance to be a pretty good player. The issue with the farm system as others have said is lack of impact talent. Tiedemann is obviously one but he's barely thrown any innings in years and is hurt again. The Buffalo Boys look like they could be big league contributors, which is helpful, but looking at A- to AAA aside from those guys, and it's hard to even squint and see a future big league contributor based on current data. If they finally decide to get rid of Atkins, then hopefully a complete overhaul of their current player development team follows.

The only downside to Joc was he’d have to be platooned. Otherwise it was a no brainer if he was willing to sign here. Power, LHB, and as mentioned the expected numbers pointed to 2023 being an unlucky year for him. Ideal bounce back guy, which Atkins is typically good at identifying but not this off season for some reason. Turner is 39 and showed signs of decline last season, especially against RHP. There was no reason to expect a big year from him. Joc at least had the potential to have one, and he’s showing it.

Yeah, by KK's own admission he was surprised at the lack of interest in him. The Jays already got the best case scenario out of him in 2023. Signing him again and expecting anything resembling the 2023 season was not wise. Aside from that, the Jays trading a top prospect in baseball for an elite defensive CF with an xwOBA below .300 even his best seasons and then proceeding to play that player in LF for 2 consecutive seasons is crazy. I don't care if you think KK is better defensively at CF, it makes no sense from a roster construction standpoint, and certainly didn't help the Jays fix their biggest issues (power/offense). If the Jays never traded for Varsho, then sure bring KK back as many times as you want until a better CF option presented itself. I thought IKF was an awful signing, but from a positional standpoint, his signing was the only one that made sense.

Wow. The narrative was Joc preferred the West Coast. If he actually was interested in the Jays and Atkins decided that 67 year old Justin Turner was the better option, then holy s***.

Shapiro’s run as GM of the Indians was ass. Drafting wasn’t good. They made the playoffs once in 9 years. Average attendance dropped nearly 2 million from the time he started as GM (3.2m) until his final season in that role (1.4m). He got bumped to team president after that, and the team didn’t really take off until after he left the org entirely. Looking back, Jays fans (myself included) were a little too optimistic about this guy based on his track record. He has done some good things here but almost all of the good has been unrelated to baseball decisions. I think Shapiro is the guy to get rid of here. Rogers could definitely hire someone worse, so there’s risk there, but I don’t think things will truly change until he’s gone.