Sparda

That back leg collapse is kinda eh, but otherwise Hoffman's got a pretty nice delivery. Hadn't seen him before.

In case you weren't pissed off enough, here's some arbitrary endpoint theater from some dickhead: He was really good, except when he wasn't. #Analysis

What he failed to mention was that he's probably somewhere around #14 on that list.

That's not a good excuse. You could have offered him something like 3/$42 and a team option for a fourth year with a $3 million buyout and he would have taken it.

So we've still got a chance.

If Anthopoulos signs Santana to anything even remotely similar he deserves a kick in the ass. I'm hopeful that it won't have to come to that.

All that waiting... for this. Holy s***. I'm willing to cut the front office more slack than others, but f*** that noise.

I guess it depends on how good you think Goins. Even if Goins can't hit, I think he plays good enough defense to where he can realistically be worth between 1.0 and 1.5 wins. Below average, undoubtedly, but not going to kill you. Phillips was worth 2.6 fWAR (1.6 bWAR) and Infante 3.1 (2.4) with a BABIP spike. So you're realistlcally looking at something in the neighborhood of a 1 win upgrade. That's huge for a team like the Jays, but I think it's questionable whether the cost justifies it. It sounds like they lost out on Ubaldo though, so my perception now is a little different now than it was 10 minutes ago.

If you want to look at the decision in a vacuum, sure. But in the real world, it comes down to what their alternatives are. Do you really want an aging/decling Brandon Phillips on a big contract, who was merely average himself last season? Or Omar Infante on a contract even the Yankees weren't willing to commit to? The alternatives to Goins aren't all that appealing. The upgrades that were available don't make sense from a value added vs. cost perspective. The one thing I will say is that I'm a little pissed the front office didn't make a run at Mark Ellis (although it's hardly a guarantee he'd sign here over STL even if we offered him more money) or bring in a platoon candidate on a minor league deal who isn't named Izturis. But I'm not going to say things "went horribly wrong" when they didn't commit big dollars to a modest upgrade. You're certainly entitled to that opinion though.

Fair enough. If Goins is a below-average player (which is the likely outcome) and you're classifying that as "something that went wrong," yeah, you probably need to adjust your expectations.

If Goins doesn't hit (which, depending on your definition of "hit," he most likely won't), he's still going to play stellar defense. JP did absolutely nothing well aside from hit homers and had nothing to fall back on, unless you're going to put stock into a year's worth of rudimentary pitch framing data. I'm not happy about going into the season with Goins as the starter, but I don't think those situations are the same.

Why can't we judge his delivery? We already know that it a) increases the likelihood of a shoulder injury (something he had this season and something Taijuan Walker, who made similar changes to his delivery, also had this spring), and negatively impacts his release distance, which makes his stuff play down across the board. He could succeed in spite of those things, but it's still a negative change and not helping him. The only hope for me is that the Jays were just working on him getting a specific part of his delivery down and will go back to an extended stride this season. If this is what they want to go with long-term, I'm still not even close to writing him off, but I'm worried.

They've made the playoffs 4 out of the last 6 seasons with a laughable payroll in baseball's toughest division?

I agree, which is why I think bringing in Redmond as the 5th starter if he's not your 5th best option isn't a good idea. You can't sacrifice wins for a little future value if you're trying to win now. Right now I think the Jays are fringe contenders (82-84 win team with average luck and average health) and even a single win is important to teams like that. Some fringy prospects you might get back for Redmond aren't worth that.

The Jays aren't contending this year? That's news to me. I don't think they're a powerhouse, but they're a good team. Certainly good enough to where they shouldn't have below average starters crack the opening day rotation for the sole purpose of showcasing them and maybe bringing back a marginal return later in the season. That's something a rebuilding team would do... are you suggesting they blow up the entire team and start building for 5 years down the road again?