metafour

Chapman also posted a 101 wRC+ in his final season in Oakland. So I don't quite get it - in 2018 Oakland "coached" him to a 139 wRC+, but then two years later they "ruined" him to a 101 wRC+ season? Then the Jays "coached" him to a 118 wRC+ season, but then "ruined" him to a 110 wRC+ season? Its almost as if he is simply an incredibly streaky hitter not only year over year, but also within the season itself. That couldn't be it, could it?

Bonilla is 2 for 4 with a HR today, to go with an outfield assist. I think that is 4 extra base hits in 3 games.

Once you see the pattern its almost comically predictable. One of my favourites has to be how the Lourdes Gurriel fanclub in Canada seems to have tripled as soon as he was traded away. I don't remember anyone giving a s*** about Gurriel while he was a 1-2 fWAR player making idiotic mistakes every other game with the Jays, but as soon as its convenient (Varsho struggling, Gurriel hitting better in the NL) we all of a sudden find a newfound Gurriel fan-club which won't shut up about the mistake we made trading away this "star player" .

Yes, renowned for drafting hard throwing HS pitchers and yet he traded most of them for soft-tossing MLB pitchers LOL. Did you forget that the actual rotation was Dickey, Buehrle, and Estrada in 2015, with Hutchison chewing up the 4th most games started? Stroman also morphed from a high strikeout 4-seam dominant pitching style into a "pitch to contact" sinkerballer under Anthopolous. Who's idea was that? Who knows, but to this day I'm not certain that Stroman ever truly hit his peak. Anthopoulos was learning on the fly, and if you actually evaluate objectively you can easily see that there was little rhyme or reason in the overall "plan". He harped on drafting entirely young HS players, and yet he dumped most of them for some of the oldest players in the MLB. What kind of disconnect is that between the minor league system and MLB team? There was a solid ~2 year period where it seemed like defense wasn't even a consideration, and this is something that he openly admitted was a mistake. But you still haven't even explained what your point is. You seem to be giving him credit for drafting pitchers even though most of them were traded away, but yet you fail to realize that the current front office has done the exact same thing??

This is such a lame and obvious attempt to try to walk yourself back into the "look at me, I'm reasonable" camp, even though you are really poor at hiding your actual thoughts. Everyone already knows where you fall, you aren't tricking anyone. To correct your statement above: there is no "Pro Atkins" camp. There are a select group of posters who observe the team as it is and are optimistic by nature, so they try to see the positive outcome for moves that are made, because they want the team to succeed. This camp trolls the opposite camp (mentioned next), because why wouldn't they? There isn't a single person on here who gives a s*** if Atkins or others in the front office are replaced. Then there is the other camp that spends all offseason/season claiming that every decision that is made is the wrong decision. "Oh you signed Justin Turner? IDIOTS - why didn't they sign JD Martinez instead?", "Oh so and so went 0-4, why is he batting 5th - he should be 8th in the lineup!". Then after the next game when that same player goes 2-4 with a HR but is left out of the lineup the following game: "WTF - why are they sitting him??". This camp isn't actually rooting for the team, they are rooting for their own "predictions" to be accurate. So when Turner and IKF come out performing, it's obviously all because of luck. You can't help but chuckle when you see Biggio chumming away with a 131 wRC+, Varsho at 138 wRC+, etc. Inconceivable, right? This camp also likes to over-exaggerate the success of other players/teams when it is convenient for them to prove their attempted point about how everything that this team is doing is "wrong". For example: pretending that Gabriel Moreno was a superstar who led the D-Backs to the World Series with every seeing-eye single he hit last season (lol), or gassing up the Yankees despite the fact that they've had comparable success/failure to the team that apparently does nothing right (the Jays). I'm not rehashing it again, but of course these are the same people who will default to reminiscing about the glory-days of AA in 2015 - despite the fact that all of them wanted AA fired in 2014 LOL. You see, these clowns behaved the same way back then as they do now - but in retrospect they like to pretend that they were staunch supporters of AA, when in reality they only became supperters after he left and it was time to rag on the new front office. I wasn't even here to post during the offseason, so it's quite amusing to see people squealing after they spent ~2 months playing armchair-expert with their takes on Turner, IKF, and the Rodriguez kid.

What a strange post. 1) The vast majority of those pitchers were drafted over a ~2-3 year stretch where the system was broken and he was able to amass a stupid number of picks at the top of the draft. But even during that stretch, if you actually look at those drafts they were littered with colossal flops too (Deck McGuire, Smoral, Comer, Tyler Gonzalez, Jeremy Gabryszwski, etc, etc). So he hit on a few guys and flopped on several others - about as expected when you have that number of picks within the Top 2-3 rounds of the draft and you throw them all at pitchers. The fact that they didn't even choose the correct pitcher to trade (Syndergaard vs. Sanchez) suggests that they were just throwing s*** against the wall. Name me the pitchers that were 'developed' after that compensation pick loophole was closed and we didn't have a million picks at the top of the draft. In 2015 they drafted 3 straight pitchers: Jon Harris (lol), Brady Singer (didn't sign), Justin Maese (lol). 2) You didn't even challenge his point (that Stroman was really the only homegrown pitcher who made a lasting impression on the actual MLB team), instead you just diverted to stating that they traded pitching prospects for MLB pitchers. Okay, but this current regime has also traded numerous prospects for numerous MLB pitchers. Sean Reid-Foley and Josh Winckowski traded for Steven Matz, Kendall Williams traded for Ross Stripling, uhh...the Jose Berrios trade? Robbie Ray was also acquired in a trade. Not really sure what your point is. AA most certainly did not develop a "homegrown" staff. The entire rotation was essentially acquired from elsewhere.

Ahhh yes, it definitely helps them to "embellish" and make things up, only for those players to go elsewhere because they actually secretly had no intentions of even signing them. Because that definitely drives fan approval and makes fans happy, am I right?. I mean you're on here still bringing up Darsvish who signed in 2011 LMAO. Pray tell, how does this practice of "embellishing" help them at all? Do you know Occam's razor? There are 29 other MLB teams, all scouting and vying for the same players. The Yu Darvish "serious interest" stories being reported from the media actually came because higher-up Jays management was constantly being seen scouting his starts in Japan. Next you're going to tell me that they sent those guys to all his games in Japan so that they could "embellish" their interest and get fans' hopes up for a whopping 1-2 weeks LOL. That makes sense. Or....the interest was real, and the Rangers simply just won the bidding? Crazy theory, I know.

Ok...so we should be upset that he pitched well? What exactly is your point? Someone posted that he had a good outing; nobody said that he was Justin Verlander.

This level of attempted pseudoscience psychology is getting to borderline retarded levels. The fact that Ross Atkins wears glasses does not conclude that he is incapable of taking "risks" lmfao. What is this even backed by, btw? Has Atkins not made more "blockbuster" trades in recent years than most teams in the league? Wasn't most of the complaining last year centered on the risk he took in trading Moreno for Varsho lol? In hindsight signing Springer to that deal was a pretty bad risk. Was it not a "risk" to spend so much time courting Ohtani, knowing that he was most likely just going to go to the Dodgers anyway?

What was spotty about his 2023 apart from his injury? Yeah he had some outings with some wildness, but he was mowing down guys across all levels when he did actually pitch. Then he went to the AFL to conclude the season and won Pitcher of the Year. Tiedemann had a 16.31 K/9 in AA my guy. Worth noting is that hitters had a .415 BABIP against him which is an obvious fluke.

Joke inclusion. All you need as proof is to see BA's 70 grade on his FB. I looked at pretty much all of his starts on Statcast once he hit AAA. He had a very pedestrian whiff rate on his fastball, doesn't hold his velocity at all (ie: he'd routinely drop down to 92-93 after like 30 pitches), and was generally hittable. There is no chance his FB is a 70, otherwise the actual AAA performance makes no sense. This is typical failure to adjust from a prospect-writing perspective as they are cemented to back when he was hitting triple digits as a Blue Jay, so his FB "must" be a 70. Factor in the fact that he's a Dodgers prospect now and poof there is your Top 100 rating despite the fact that Frasso is old, his stuff has clearly declined, and his AAA performance isn't even impressive. I'm not making this up: after Mitch White cleared waivers and was sent back to AAA, he was actually throwing harder than Frasso AND getting more whiffs across the board.

You conveniently left out the fact that the "clients/fanbase" were lied to in terms of the actual facts of what he was being accused of, which means that Bauer was a victim of character assassination. So if I'm a direct client of your employer and I decide to tell them that you stole something from me (which in fact you didn't do), then your employer is free to terminate your employment without due process? I mean, what's the problem? The employer is just protecting its good image and clearly doesn't want to employ a thief. Or do you think that your employer should need to wait for the facts of the case to be determined before taking action? The fact that people are still trying to play stupid over this Bauer case is mind blowing. "Oh sorry, we're just being responsive to our clients and fanbase" is not good enough. As you hopefully just learned by the facts of Bauer's case actually coming to light, it's incredibly easy to make things up in order to harm someone's image. In this case we know without a shadow of a doubt that Bauer was targeted and unfairly penalized by his employer by way of the fact that the MLB already had SEVERAL other cases of precedent wherein other players were actually arrested and charged for crimes similar to or worse than what Bauer was only accused of, but somehow they not only didn't receive the suspension he received, but in several of those cases the player in question is actively still playing.

Funny, as per the definition it actually seems like Bauer is the victim in this case seeing as the other party used "abusive behavior" in order to "gain or maintain power and control" (ie: she made a fake scenario up in order to extort him of his fame and money). Definition of "abusive behavior: "Abusive Behavior includes actions that engender fear and intimidation, or undermine the other person's self-determination. Many controlling behaviors may also be abusive within the context of physical or psychological abuse."

They won't do what it takes to close, except for when they have: 2020: Hyun-Jin Ryu (7th highest total contract in free agent class @ $80 mill) 2021: George Springer (1st highest total contract in free agent class @ $150 mill) 2022: Kevin Gausman (9th highest total contract in free agent class @ $110 mill) I mean, I guess it depends on what your baseline expectation is here. Are they supposed to hand out the highest contract every single year for you to be satisfied? Are the mighty Blue Jays the only MLB team in the league vying for free agents? Toronto sports fans are insufferable. When this regime was brought in, the immediate fan conspiracy theory was that Rogers was bringing in penny-pinchers from the Indians so that they could go cheap and squeeze the payroll. When that turned out to be false (#9 total team payroll in the league last season, which has been increasing every single year over the past ~3 seasons), the barometer has now shifted to the "problem" being that they're now going for too many free agents, but they aren't signing them all! A nice shift from: "oh no we're going to be the Oakland A's" to "I can't believe we let the lowly Dodgers outbid us for Ohtani". In reality, you just described 97% of the teams in the league: "they're in on everyone, up to a point". Another term for that would be: being smart. The counter example is what, the New York Mets lol? Are we back to concluding that free agency spending sprees are the correct way to build a winner or something? I guess I missed that study.

Whit Merrifield had a better offensive season with the Jays this past season than he did in either of his two previous seasons. The guy has also been a below-average hitter for three straight seasons now. So no part of his "criticism" seems rooted in reality, because not only did this allegedly flawed Jays' approach seem to actually improve his offensive output, but even if it didn't - the guy simply isn't a productive enough hitter to be doling out "expert advice". Where does constantly running into absurd outs at third base factor into Whit Merrifield's run-creation philosophy? Did he comment on that at all? Because it happened quite a few times last season.

Exactly. Trout is 230+ pounds, extremely explosive, and has been playing a physically demanding position (CF) for a decade. The guy's body is clearly breaking down. It's incredibly unlikely to carry that much weight with the force he is able to produce and maintain that into your mid to late 30's. Would not surprise me at all if his career trajectory mirrors a guy like Ken Griffey Jr., who was very similar from a physical/athletic perspective. He's really not worth much with his contract and declining health.

Exactly. That was one of the biggest reports yesterday from a "TRUSTED" insider, and yet it's nowhere in his article. But he sure spends a lot of time pointing out how silly it was for anyone to believe an opera singer. Morosi's colossal blunder isn't mentioned at all because he appears on Sportsnet. Davidi's entire article is framed as some sort of "educational piece" on being careful what you should believe, but it's underlying point is to help out his buddies in the industry who were obviously instrumental in fanning the flames.

I read the article. It reads as after-the-fact "holier than thou" damage control for his industry. Notice how he has no problem throwing some random Dodgers writer under the bus, but nowhere in his timeline of events does he name Jon Morosi literally reporting that Ohtani was flying to Toronto? Wasn't that a significant event yesterday? He paints the timeline as some crazy series of wild suggestions that you'd have to be stupid to believe as true (the opera singer storyline), but conveniently omits his own colleagues being balls-deep in the events. Read the article a bit more carefully, Max. Notice this little gem? "Ohtani is thought to be nearing a decision and the Blue Jays very much remain in play, but nothing is set as of yet, an industry source told me and Ben Nicholson-Smith." But wait, Ben Nicholson-Smith was literally active on Twitter yesterday liking and retweeting suggestions of Ohtani's flight to Toronto. So he was in fact at least partly in the group that Davidi is lecturing for "believing silly rumors", but yet here he is now being depicted after the fact as being part of the team that "confirmed through industry sources" that the whole thing wasn't trued at all. No, Shi - neither you nor Ben Nicholson-Smith confirmed anything. Their statements came after Bob Nightengale and others made statements. But again, his colleague got led along, so now Shi is rewriting events to make it sound like it was just some rando Dodgers writers and "cRaZy fAn drIvEn conSpirAcY thEorIes" that created this entire story. It's a spineless article from someone who has zero sources whatsoever. He did nothing to "confirm" anything yesterday, and today he wants to play the journalistic hero by teaching us all not to believe silly rumors - all the while cleverly insulating his journalistic friends who f***ed up. Thanks, Shi.

How cute of Mr. Davidi to play the "voice of reason" after the fact. If he holds such wisdom and journalistic integrity, why didn't he stop some of his colleagues at his own network from partaking yesterday? He's just being spineless and trying to deflect from the s***-show that his colleagues in the industry started and helped enflame yesterday. He's being a good little boy. But he's actually correct, the general public should NOT trust anything that any corporate journalist reports. That includes himself.

These are all weak counters. Anthopolous started in the mailroom, but he didn't jump over any rungs. Go look at his actual resume. He held basically every position up the ladder from the scouting side. This woman has never even been a Manager in the minor leagues, nor has she held an on-field or bench coaching role at the MLB level. So what qualifies her to be one of the few that gets the serious opportunity to interview for literally the biggest role in the profession, at an age that is absurdly below the norm for the position we are talking about? That would be like Anthopolous getting promoted from regional scout to GM - it didn't happen and it doesn't happen. What's funny is that the Giants were below average league wide in base running this past season. So not only does she clearly not possess the qualifications when compared to her peers who normally interview for MLB Manager jobs, but also her primary coaching involvement wasn't even noteworthy. If the Jays were to fire Schneider tomorrow, do you think that nameless Asian guy who's always on the phone in the dugout would get a crack at interviewing for the job? You are trying to come up with a rational answer, but you inherently know what the true motivation is. It's San Francisco, after all. Also, not trying to snarky, but LMAO at the idea of a 33 year old former softball player being the "best communicator" to handle what will be a roster with like 50%+ Latin American players. Did you type that with a straight face?

Huff may be a moron and a s***** person, but is he wrong about this being a "motivated" interview? She is 33 years old and when she was hired as an intern it was in some nutrition role. As best as I can tell, her current role as an assistant coach involves "base running and outfield defense". That's it? That's the resume of an alleged MLB managerial candidate? Fun fact, but she is 4 years younger than Carlos Marmol who is the youngest Manager in the league today. Take a look at Marmol's resume compared to hers. For her to be a candidate at her age would imply that she is some sort of unprecedented prospect, but yet, her actual resume doesn't indicate that at all. So what's going on, and why is it THIS base running assistant that's jumping past multiple rungs on the ladder at an incredibly young age to get this interview opportunity? Do other teams' random 30 year old assistants get to interview for the biggest coaching role in the profession? Is that normal? I'm sure you know the answers to those questions.

The worst is all the pathetic idiots who celebrated his punishment under grounds that "he's an *******" and he openly supports the political team that they don't like. Those people are enemies to the general population because they possess subhuman ethics and morality. They will gladly ruin your life if you don't follow their dogma. Bauer should sue the MLB for ruining his career. Meanwhile Ozuna who choked his wife in front of police and Chapman who fired a f***ing gun at his girlfriend are suiting up for playoff teams LMAO.

White privilege, that's how. Another shining example that EVERY institution is carefully designed around it

MLB Pipeline just released their 2024 Top 50 IFA list. Kennew Blanco ranks at #9 overall and is now listed as 6'2 160 pounds. Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 55 | Arm: 50 | Field: 55 | Overall: 55

1.9 BB% and .391 BABIP for Clement. Dude was just hacking away at every pitch and blooping hits like Merrifield was at his peak during this season (when everything he made contact with in play was falling for a hit). It's very hard to conclude that he's a "better hitter" over what seemed like an unsustainable fluke streak.