glory

His last name and the fact that JS managed him in the minors. I can’t think of any other reason why he’s playing over DS and Clement.

Is there any other (well run) team that would have Davis Schneider fall on their laps and bench him as much as the Jays have?

Yeah, this org promoted Don Mattingly this season. No chance they are on par with the top orgs in baseball in this category. I'm sure they have their own internal analytics and all that, but clearly whatever they have been doing since 2023 hasn't worked, and I wouldn't hold my breath on a team who intentionally gave Donnie Baseball more say in offensive strategy to be cutting edge on anything.

It will be Mattingly. It should be Hale if anyone already on the bench as he's worked under Francona and Gibby, so maybe there's a decent manager in there, but Atkins seems like the type who needs knee pads and chapstick every time he's in the same room with Donnie Baseball. It's only a matter of time.

As others have said it’s definitely the Dodgers. Not sure what the Jays could get for him though especially with him struggling like this. Vlad’s market is probably the Mariners and Padres. Can’t really think of anyone else.

JS being snippy to the media means he knows he's f***ed.

Corbin about to put up a quality start. Not quite sure this is rock bottom but feels that way. This offense is dog s***.

This was Barger's first taste of big league pitching, and 3 of the 5 games he started were at a position he had never played before. Not sure I'd read anything into that at all. Maybe he does suck defensively but I wouldn't use his big league time in LF as a barometer for that. I don't think "sustained contention" is possible with this group anymore so it really doesn't matter at this point, but if sustained contention is the goal, then you kinda have to incorporate prospects onto the team during competitive windows. Davis Schneider hit like prime Barry Bonds last season and they were salivating for his first cold streak so they could bench him for Biggio. I can't imagine Barger and Orelvis will be given much of a shot while the team is desperate to make the playoffs. If things start to fall off and 2024 becomes a wash, then maybe we will see more sustained playing time.

Agreed completely. The 2023-24 Jays are not only not fun, but they are also incredibly frustrating to watch even when they win. I actually enjoyed 2022 for the most part (the Raimel Tapia man crush by management aside). A team that can mash is far more enjoyable to watch, and it helped that the team had far more personality. The 2023-24 teams are like devoid of any personality at all. A team full of Randal Grichuk's and Whit Merrifield's. I believe it was opening day 2022 where the Jays went down like 7-0 and came back and won. Not only did they win, but you got the sense early on that they were never out of the game. If the 2023-24 Jays go down 2-0 in the 1st, it feels like the game is out of reach. Basically, if the 2023-24 teams were more fun to watch, with players that we would long associate as Jays, then maybe people would not be as hard on the FO. But boring and frustrating? Ugh.

This season might end up resembling 2017 in a lot of ways if things continue to go south. Everyone saw the end of a competitive window, except the GM/president/owner who saw 3 million asses in the seats the year before and didn't want to mess with that. The Jays should have started the rebuild at the trade deadline in 2017 but decided to start it a year later, and it destroyed the trade returns they got because of it. I wouldn't be surprised if history repeats itself here with the Jays giving it "one last shot" in 2025 and only selling if that fails. For the sake of the Jays org short and long term, I hope they turn things around this season, because if they don't and they go into 2025 the same way they went into 2018, then it's going to set them back big time.

The thing with Bichette is that his profile is so risky that he’s a player I could easily seeing falling off a cliff with no warning. Not saying I expect it to happen this season but it also wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

Yeah it’s hard to see why he’d stay unless he’s determined to win a World Series here and is willing to wait a while to go through the building process again. Seems unlikely. The farm system isn’t in good shape and the big league team doesn’t look like a real playoff contender, and if Shapiro were to stay for a rebuild, then he’d have to eat the criticism of declining attendance right after an expensive stadium renovation. I just don’t see the upside for him, especially since he will have options if he were to leave. I don’t know if I trust Rogers to hire a competent replacement (Kenny Williams is available now which is terrifying) but we might be headed down that road.

It depends on how much influence, if any, Shapiro has on baseball decisions. I don't think it's 100%, but it's not 0% either, so hard to say. Shapiro's Cleveland run as a GM was pretty trash aside from 2007. The year before he became CLE GM, they drew 3.4m in attendance. His final year as CLE GM they were at 1.4m. It was pretty much a decade of dog s*** (again aside from 2007 where they made it to Game 7 of the ALCS). He was promoted in 2011-15, but much like the current situation, it's hard to say how much influence he still had on their baseball decisions by that point. I think it's fair to question Shapiro's track record. He's done some good things in Toronto, but as far as we know, none of that has been on the field. It's been other things (payroll, Dunedin, etc).

If Atkins is going to be the one to rebuild/retool, then I'd rather they try to go for it. His strength is not acquiring young players in trades. Other than Teoscar, he's had an awful track record with acquiring prospects and turning them into anything useful. A big reason why the 2021-24 core isn't a lot better is because of the failed trades of 2017-19. Combine that with the poor drafting/player development, and it's actually a testament to how good Atkins is with free agent signings that the team was able to have a three year run at 90ish wins per season. I don't know if Shapiro will fire Atkins. That seems like a very tight friendship. Shapiro even signed Atkins to an extension one year beyond Shapiro's contract. I feel like they might be a package deal, and if that's the case, then Shapiro needs to go.

Yeah it’s hard to see this given how he looks, but Atkins is a former player. That might explain why he thinks Don Mattingly is a solution to anything coaching related in 2024 rather than using a more analytical approach/hire. The Jays aren’t cutting edge in anything. Atkins is good at what he’s good at but what he’s good at isn’t a sustainable model (signing 1 year vetrins) without a better player development pipeline in place. If the Jays were developing talent at a high rate, then Atkins would be fine since he could surround them adequately at the big league level. I’m typically fine with Shapiro but I’d be ok if he left. He’s the one who hired Atkins and refuses to make changes there, so what exactly are we holding on to? Maybe another prez wouldn’t be able to talk Rogers into paying the CBT, but maybe that person would create a better infrastructure that wouldn’t require the team to pay the tax in order to be competitive.

According to MLB.com's standings, the Jays expected record is 12-20. Honestly that record seems more reasonable to how they have looked all season. They really are lucky to be 15-17. As far as the "who could the Jays have gotten" argument, I think people are missing one important one: they could have moved on from the Vlad/Bo core. This isn't hindsight, I said at the time (and others may have as well) that trading Bichette was a very logical decision if they decided to go that route. Trading Vlad less so, since it would have been selling low, but the best FA SS was a washed Tim Anderson, and Bichette came with 2 cost certain years of control. You also knew/know that he's salivating to test free agency. Very reasonable player to trade in that scenario, especially when you saw how 2023 played out. If you wanted to keep Vlad and Bo and then go for it (AA 2015 style), then it wouldn't have been that smart but at least it would have been grounded in some logic. Keeping both and doing what they did has/had very limited upside. Of course, it's early, so no one should be giving up. I think what makes things worse is that the 2024 team, much like 2023, is one of the most boring, frustrating, vanilla, cookie cutter teams in the league from an entertainment standpoint. It sucks to watch them. At least entertain us if you're going to frustrate us.

Neither JS or Buntoyo resembled anything close to managers at the highest level. I think it speaks more to Atkins for hiring them than it does about them specifically. A high end decision maker hiring two managers that look like they have no business being in the dugout isn't a good sign. I'm not sure firing JS will accomplish anything. They'll just hire another guy just like him/Charlie who will follow orders. If the "run prevention" is going to regress, then this team is in trouble. They basically needed a repeat of the 2023 pitching (SP and bullpen), and it doesn't appear either one is going to repeat that. The offense doesn't have much upside either, especially if Springer is closer to washed than he is to being productive. The best hitters on the team (now and likely by the end of the season barring injury) are both FA's after this season. It's hard to look at 2024-25 with any sort of optimism.

Vogelbach batting clean up and Jansen batting 6th is ridiculous. Just do Jansen-Varsho-DS-Fatty-IKF-Barger to break up the lefties. They don’t even use Vogelbach as a late game pinch hitter and he starts like once a week at best. He has no defensive or base running value. Like, what’s the point of his existence on this roster?

His pull % is way down this season (even worse than last season) and his power is practically non existent. In his last 115 PA prior to tonight he has a 78 wRC+ and .069 ISO (which is not counting tonight's 0-4 with 3 K's). Washed compared to what he was? Absolutely. Washed in terms of sub 100 wRC+ player? Tough to say. His numbers should improve based on his luck so far but I'm not expecting much better than a 2 WAR/105 wRC+ type of season regardless. Father time gets everyone.

Of course Biggio is up in this spot.

Manoah is going to walk 5 tonight and be deemed ready for the big leagues.

It's baffling that this team (especially this team given its weaknesses) didn't view him as an everyday player. Maybe now they do, or at least now they view him as someone who should be playing most of the time, but seeing him benched for Biggio, IKF, KK, etc, early in the season was just demoralizing. Biggio hit a HR on opening day that would have only been a HR in 11 parks, and since then, he's hitting .221/.338/.279 with a 31% K% and .349 BABIP (5 HBP helping the OBP). The underlying numbers don't suggest anything positive for him. Once KK comes back, just start DS at 2B everyday against RHP, and then against LHP have DS in LF. Only way that works is if they concede that Biggio shouldn't be playing regularly, which from this front office and manager combination would be like telling them to sit their own son. Hopefully logic eventually prevails.

Jansen and DS in the lineup at the same time changes the dynamic significantly. Two guys who pull the ball and try to hit it in the air versus the alternative of a bunch of guys trying to hit hard singles the other way. Those two should be in the lineup as much as possible. Unfortunately you have to enjoy Jansen when you can because you don’t know how long he will hold up.

Man it's good to have Jansen back.

Yeah, starting him in LF was awful considering he never played there before. Starting him at 3B is fine. Unfortunately it's possible he's not good defensively at 3B, but at least he's had experience there before.