burlingtonbandit

Vegas has the Jays Win total pegged at 76.5 right now. Goes to show you what the expectations are this season. They are probably more of a 78 win team but I'm guessing they have the likely chance of the Jays selling at the deadline baked into the total.

That writer just loves to stir the pot and has always been super negative about everything, he’s an idiot or he is just creating a character. Lots of nonsense but I did find the part about the new FO claiming “this is an entire country” crap funny. Everyone knows Toronto is the only team in Canada so we can drop the annoying BS about playing for the country and blah blah.

That’s more a by-product of expanded postseason than anything. 2020 in shortened season they were 4 games over .500 and the 4th wildcard team so I wouldn’t really be celebrating that. Both regimes were pretty bad at developing young talent but at least AA maximized prospects value.

I highly doubt Atkins gets another GM job after this one honestly. 10 years with a team and not much in the way of results doesn’t look great on a resume. It would be the same feeling if the Jays hired someone like Parry Minasian

Certainly will be lower than last year. Go on Ticketmaster right now and look how many blue dots there are.. pretty sure the home opener isn’t even sold out. Last year you had people thinking Ohtani was coming so at the time a lot of people bought tickets in advance back in Dec. This year you are getting zero hype at all. Maybe they’d get a tiny boost if Vlad signed a deal or a big trade of some sorts but other than that I’d expect April and May to have some sub 20k fan nights.

Basically Dalton Varsho with less defence.

Well yeah they clearly need better player development, but that’s more of having the right coaches/systems in place. And to be honest that’s something that doesn’t just show up in one year it probably takes 3-5 years for it to show up in a meaningful way. They could finally have the proper development coaches in place now, and it’s very likely Atkins is gone before we find out.

I feel like you could put a strong peoples person in Atkins role and he would do a lot better. The Jays like most teams seem to be quite process driven with their systems identifying players values. Yet when it comes to contract negotiations/trades/talking to media he’s so unremarkable. When AA was here right after a trade or signing a lot of the time it felt “wow that was a great trade, or wow the jays signed him for lower $ than I thought it would cost” With Atkins he’s made some good trades/signings that have worked out well but nothing right off the moment it was announced where you went “wow that was a steal” (The Chapman trade I could agree felt like a big win). Not to mention it seems like a lot of players don’t have much respect for him.

Feels like Steamer is much more high on minor leaguers than other projection systems which haven't come out yet. People seem to be complaining about giving up Horowitz because of his projection but no one would be complaining if the Jays game up Davis Schneider, yet rewind a year ago and Schneider was basically this year's Horowitz. Thats why I feel like scouting still is really important, because these tweener type of players often have their weaknesses exploited once they have some film on them. Rowdy coming off of 2020 feels like another similar situation to above.

Feels like Kirk's bowling body type actually helps with his blocking lol. That projection does feel a bit optimistic though, as we've seen how a higher amount of playing time leads to him getting worn down and being less productive. Also him being slow likely means he will underperform his xWOBA and I'd take the over on his baserunning being worse than the current projection.

I’m curious to what Torres gets. It feels like he isn’t going to get a long term deal at a high AAV, so maybe he signs a 1 year prove it deal. If he is willing to sign a short term deal, trading Bo and moving Giminez to SS might make sense.

I'm actually a ticket holder myself, and they had a holiday christmas party for the club ticket holders. I'd say less than half are corporate. The "In the action" seats that are the first 5 rows behind are mostly corporate but the seats behind the dugouts aren't. Most are season ticket holders from pre-reno that just switched to the club seats because that's where they're old seats were.

Beale street is pretty cool/fun. Some good music and they close off the street so you feel pretty safe there. But if you drive a few blocks it can be pretty sketchy. Nashville even has some pretty bad spots, had to drop off a rental car once north east of downtown across the bridge and had a guy run up to me for money and it definitely didn't feel safe lol. And this was middle of the day time. Chattanooga is another cool Tennessee town but it can be rough too.

Oh yeah I don't think it matters much to the players themselves. Their gameday routine is wake up, go to starbucks and then go to the stadium at like noon. There's maybe like 8 off days where they would even do something in the city. For players with families I do think it matters a lot though, not so much the city itself but is it close to their offseason home/extended family. If they have kids in school they likely are keeping them there in the city they live in the offseason, so how far apart is it etc etc.. Memphis is a f***ing warzone yet you don't really hear about it when it comes to Grizzlies players. They all live in gated communities in the wealthy suburbs anyways.

Leafs most of the STH are businesses/corps but Jays I wouldn't say that. Maybe of the club seats specifically more than half are businesses but the rest of the stadium not so much. Obviously you have to run the organization on what the best way forward is and not cater to any fans, but with the unique set up of Rogers owning the team and SN, the TV ratings affect revenue way more than any other club. But if you tear it down the attendance probably craters to like 20-25k a game versus 35k a game so that matters as well.