metafour

Its Nate Pearson night. Struck out the side in the 1st inning so far. 14 pitches, 10 strikes.

Anyone else notice that McGregory Contreras (I refuse to put the space in his name) is raking of late and is hitting .288/.344/.432 as an 18 year old heading into tonight's game in which he is 1-1 already? They skipped him straight over the GCL as well.

Then you aren't following closely enough, as several reports have noted that there is nothing special at all about his defense. He received poor grades in the AFL last fall. Why do you think he keeps getting ranked so low on these updated lists? If he had "strong receiving skills and throwing arm" on top of his offensive season this year you would expect a Top 5-10 ranking in our system, no? Instead Pentecost still gets ranked higher...because he profiles better on both sides of the plate, even with the million injuries.

Ahahaha, look at this dumbass referencing Fangraph's broken ass projections. Wow you really got me, you are so smart! I've been tracking Fangraph's projections for months and I'm still waiting for this mystical Blue Jays positive regression to becoming the best team in the AL East over night (yes, idiot, very often their projections spit out a number which gives us a higher projected rest of season winning percentage than even the Red Sox). Considering that their projection has been wrong all year long, maybe you should look at another projection system? Did your big brain think of that? How about PECOTA which projected the Rays as being better than us before the season even began (whoops, Fangraphs missed here as well)? PECOTA projects 75.3 wins to 86.7 losses, a far cry from Fangraphs' projection wherein one of the worst teams in the league is magically going to start playing like one of the best. Because that makes total sense. I don't want to waste any more of your valuable time. You can continue spending hours fisting yourself and jerking off to 2015 playoff highlights.

What do you expect from a legitimately terrible offense?

I highly doubt that considering that he can't even throw a strike out there.

Just LOL at this team's baserunning.

He was in complete control as per people actually at the game. I love how you automatically assume "BABIP luck" when I'm sure you've seen pitchers dominate games on weak contact.

Dude swings at a pitch about a foot outside the zone and barely pokes it out for a hit. Wow, what a run producer!

I said that they were average, in fact I said average multiple times. Try reading next time. The difference ass-hat is that we aren't even average this year. Not by any measure. Average to good is a hell of a lot easier to fluke than bad to good is, which is actually exactly what the 2013 Red Sox did as we can see from 2014 when Shane f***ing Victorino stopped being one of the best players in baseball.

You are taking a hilariously simple approach to what needs to be individual analysis. For instance 2016 Pillar and Tulowitzki were elite defenders, which means that they still posted a combined 6 WAR while largely being forgettable hitters. 2017 has seen both of them decline defensively, and since both are well within the age of defensive decline, expecting them to go back to being elite defenders in 2018 is nothing short of wishful thinking. How many defensively elite 33+ year old injury riddled shortstops can you name? Probably not many, and since there is no reason to expect that either Pillar or Tulowitzki will improve enough offensively to offset this defensive decline, you are more or less looking at the same thing next season as you are seeing this season. So while Tulo can certainly go back to being a ~100 wRC+ hitter, the fact is that he is more likely to be even worse defensively than he is today than he is of replicating his 2016 defense. Russell Martin has actually been better this season than he was last season, the scary thought is what happens if he takes a big step back next year...which again is entirely plausible as he is 35 next season and is therefore a ticking time-bomb. 2016 Donaldson was a 7.6 WAR player, what you need to understand is that even if he bounces back next year, it likely means a bounce back to a ~5 WAR season versus him going back to being a super-elite player (these days are likely gone). So there is another 2-3 WAR you have to find elsewhere. When you look at individual analysis, you quickly find that you are stretching into pure wishful thinking when fantasizing scenarios wherein everything somehow goes right for us next season. 2016 also featured an unlikely season wherein we went the entire year without experiencing any significant pitching issues. As you can see from this season, expecting this type of luck on a yearly basis is foolish. What are we predicting for JA Happ next season BTW? Is his FIP-beater magic going to wear off like it did for Estrada this year?

Did I break your rationalism? 2012 Red Sox 11-11 in April (+3 run differential) 15-14 in May (+15 run differential) 15-12 in June (+36 run differential) 12-14 in July (-19 run differential) 2017 Blue Jays 8-17 in April (-21 run differential) 18-10 in May (+29 run differential) 11-15 in June (-33 run differential) 7-12 in July (-65 run differential) If you want to play rationalist, you can start by using comparisons that actually make sense. So what we have here is actually a Red Sox team that was nowhere near as bad as the final 69-93 record indicates, and on top of that you want to further your rationalism by using one of the single most fluky free agent signing classes in MLB history to dictate that "anything can happen". Yes, anything can happen. You know what else can happen? We can actually get even worse next year than we are right now, and in fact this is much more likely than expecting us to find the 2018 equivalents of Victorino/Napoli/Drew/Uehara in free agency. Those four players alone made a combined $32 million in 2013 and yet produced 16.3 WAR, which means that they produced somewhere around ~$100 million in value depending on what figure you want to use as the value of 1 WAR. You will find that MLB free agency doesn't often grant you upwards of $70 million in excess value on your investments. That isn't even counting Jonny Gomes or David Ross who produced pretty good value as well for them (1.1 WAR for Gomes at $5 million, 0.8 WAR for Ross at $3.1 million).

That 2012 Red Sox team was sitting at .500 at the All-Star break and didn't turn into your "69-93" team until literally August/September when injuries decimated them. In fact, going into August they sat at 53-51, which means that for 4 of the 6 months of that season they were actually a fairly average team. How does it relate with our Blue Jays team this season? Well, if you have been paying any attention, you'd understand that this team has spent a grand total of 0 days at .500 or better this season, and that apart from one stretch wherein we beat up on an equally injured Seattle team and Cincinnati, we have been a BAD team for virtually the entire season. So to begin, we need to clarify that you are actually comparing what was an average-ish 2012 Red Sox team who just so happened to have a horrible end to their season to a bad 2017 Blue Jays team that has been bad for the majority of games played to date. As you can hopefully imagine, it is a lot easier to take an average team and improve them enough in one offseason to get a good team the following season than it is to do the same with what is a bad team the year prior. So in reality, the starting points aren't even remotely comparable. You then need to analyze their free agent signings from that offseason and understand that expecting that type of reproduction or luck is beyond silly. Yes, baseball is random, but if you operate your franchise under the premise that you will replicate that 2013 Red Sox free agent class you are going to have a bad time. They got 5.9 WAR from Shane Victorino who hasn't done a thing since that 2013 season. They signed Koji Uehara for $4.5 mill and he proceeded to produce a 3 WAR season in relief, at the time one of the most dominant single season relief performances in history. They signed Napoli for $5 mill and he produced a 3.9 WAR season. They signed Stephen Drew for $9.5 mill and he produced a 3.4 WAR season. Throw in Saltalamacchia having a fluke 3.5 WAR season himself and it is easy to see how they fluked their way from average to very good in one offseason. Sounds simple, right? You just need all your pedestrian free agent signings to put up elite seasons at the same time. Not just good, but elite. This was of course a complete fluke as most of those same players went on to fall back to reality in 2014 which led to a 71-91 season.

By that measure, every team in the league can contend for the playoffs next year. Why stop there? Maybe Conner Greene comes up like 2016 Sanchez? Maybe Pompey puts up a star season? Maybe Tellez is next year's Cody Bellinger? Or, maybe JA Happ turns into next year's version of the 2017 Estrada?

This team has far too many holes to seriously think that you can just go into free agency and find the missing pieces. Its a pipe dream.

Yeah bro; you are going to get a top player who is still 27 years old for a straight salary dump. Ain't happening.

You will find that in the case of really old teams that "projections" very often lag behind reality, ie: they rely too much on past performance that isn't coming back versus taking into account that the actual "true skill" of these players may have shifted permanently. Fangraphs has been projecting positive regression for the better part of the past 3+ months, where is it? This team has actually been getting worse after what was a hot-stretch at one point this season (when we went ~26-16 in one stretch and almost climbed back to .500). This team just isn't very good by any objective measure, and if you want to be a "rationalist", then understand that there is a higher chance that the only actually good part of this team (the bullpen) regresses next season than there is of an old and decrepit lineup all of a sudden learning how to run, field, and hit again. Why? We have actually been extremely fortunate in getting top-tier production from a bunch of no-names, the fickleness of relieving suggests that many of these guys could look completely different next year. You see the problem stretches far past just offensive regression; this team is among the worst fielding and base running teams in baseball. Your only "good" defenders (Pillar, Tulo, Donaldson) are actually declining in this regard as all of them are obviously out of their defensive prime. So what if Tulo makes some positive growth offensively next year when his defense (ie: his only carrying skill the past ~2 years) is likely to shift even further to average if not below average next year?

Going for it again next year is a joke. We are 9 games below .500 and have holes all over the roster that need to be addressed on top of no reason to expect that any of these old scrubs are going to improve enough to actually make any sort of difference in a playoff race. By the way; we were making the playoffs with Donaldson playing at an ~8 WAR level. Even if he turns it around next year, understand that his days of playing at that level are likely long gone, so while a 5 WAR season would still be very good, its 3 less wins on a roster that already has zero wiggle room.

And in the end, it doesn't even matter.

This Naswell Paulino kid is roasting the DSL. No idea what his stuff is like, but he was one of our more expensive signings in last year's capped class.

Yes, so we can pick lower in next year's draft. Duh.

Kevin Smith: 2 for 4 with his 3rd HR (steal alert?) Ryan Noda: 3 for 4, 2B Chavez Young: 2 for 4

The Reds eat $10 mill a year and get absolutely nothing of value for a guy who is still one of the best players in the league. Brilliant. Maybe we can get them to throw in Nick Senzel too?

Gil Kim said he's got some of the loudest tools in the system. He's worth more than just "keeping tabs on".

Chris King is at the GCL game today. PK Morris is making his pro debut. Should also get some reports on 18 year old Jol Concepcion who was brought up from the DSL and has been posting strong numbers as an 18 year old.