metafour

His drafting record was elite because we had a couple year run wherein we could horde picks, thus we had drafts wherein we had 3-4-5 first round picks. Almost all of his top prospects came during that period wherein we were enjoying ~7 picks within the Top 100. After the MLB closed that loophole, our drafting record became much more average (just look at the last draft or two which were nothing special). Don't get me wrong, his high-upside approach coupled with a ton of picks produced a lot of good talent, but any time you have that many HIGH picks shouldn't you already expect that to produce results? Its not like every pick we made panned out either, as for every Syndergaard we had a Tyler Gonzalez or other uber-flop.

That trade single-handily destroyed our payroll flexibility, so much so that we were forced to start the 2015 season relying on several rookies who had no business being asked to start on a team that was supposed to "compete" (Pompey, Osuna, Castro, Norris). Osuna worked out, the rest flopped and we were in an absolutely terrible situation depth wise. You clearly have no idea how to evaluate trades because there is much more to consider than simply who was sent and who was acquired. We got old and expensive after that trade, and the premier player we acquired (Reyes) had to be shipped out just a few seasons later just to get rid of his terrible contract (bringing back a new terrible contract in Tulo) because surprise-surprise a player who's value was dependent on speed ended up collapsing after his legs went (this should have surprised no one). Even Buehrle, the "saving grace" of that trade was performing on a contract that was paying him ~$15 million a year. He was a pretty good ~#4 starter here, but lets not pretend like we were getting any sort of great value out of him considering that the Marlins payed out the ass to sign him. As a team with obvious payroll parameters, he got the chance to infuse a s***-ton of salary onto the payroll and he did so by adding a slew of declining and over-paid "past stars" on long-term deals that basically prevented us from adding further difference-making talent unless Rogers opened up the pocket-book a second time, which they obviously weren't going to do.

Sure, except the post I was quoting seemed to be chastising the guy to not do what he did. Why? "*******s" serve a vital role when it comes to counterbalancing sugarcoated responses.

He's not abusing anything; he has the job because his shtick works. If you don't like it, then don't pay him any attention. There is no societal law that requires him to be "thoughtful", nor should there be.

You mean just like every other top international prospect?

Why would that get it done? Yoenis Cespedes, a vastly inferior player, just signed for 4 years $110 million a year ago. Donaldson isn't signing for a discount. Please don't get David Price'd here (remember that? "Oh I totally wanna stay with the Jays!!").

Everyone's fav. writer had a question about this today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpr_KaaRjW0

You can't go above your bonus pool anymore, this was introduced in the new CBA. Again, if Otani only cared about the most money, he wouldn't be coming over now when his expected bonus revolves around measly pennies handed out to 16 year olds. Whoever signs him will be doing so under the gesture that they have a future deal in place which compensates him to his worth. $1 or $2 million more "IFA money" isn't going to be the difference between signing him or not.

Responsible how? If you go back to the departure of John Farrell, he was extremely vocal about the lack of attention to player development in our system, which may have been the reason why we failed with so many position prospects during that tenure. One of the key early additions under this new regime has been a drastic increase in this department with the additions of Ben Cherington and Gil Kim. The point I'm making is this: who gets "credit" for Danny Jansen? Virtually all of his newfound development has happened during the past year or so under this new regime. He was just an oft-injured middling prospect with some upside under the previous regime. Yes, he was drafted under the previous regime, but that doesn't mean that his development would have happened in the same way had there been no switch made. The same could even be argued with regards to Vlad Jr. Does he pan out the same way? Maybe he is just "good" instead of "elite" under the care of the previous regime? The point is; this is a very complex question that doesn't boil down to simply who drafted who and attributing credit based off that.

No, he really didn't. Go back and actually do some research. The vast majority of the players who came up during this supposed "restocking period" were drafted or signed BEFORE any of those two major trades were made (the Marlins and Dickey trades). There is this giant myth circulating which suggests that we made those trades and depleted our farm, and then went out and "restocked it". Wrong. Pretty much all of the prospects which replaced the guys we traded as top prospects, including Alford and Osuna, were ALREADY IN THE SYSTEM at the time of those trades. They were simply in the low minors. That entire pool of prospects was acquired during the period wherein heavy exploitation of the amateur systems (draft and IFA) were possible. What you see is that once those avenues of exploitation were tightened, our ability to produce prospects drastically declined. There is a false narrative constantly propagated which suggests that it didn't matter that AA kept trading prospects because he proved that he could "restock the system" with the proof being our resurgence of prospects after those two major trades. Again, the majority of those prospects weren't acquired after those trades, they were already in the system. Anthony Alford was drafted just two years after Noah Syndergaard. They came during the SAME WAVE.

The Northwest League is a big power suppressing league. Look at the league leaders and you'll see that only two hitters slugged above .500 this season. Pavin Smith who went 7th overall slugged .415. Drew Ellis slugged .403 and Riley Adams slugged .438. Warmoth has pop.

So Nate Pearson has 9 strikeouts through 3 innings......

How is that rushing him? Zeuch started in Dunedin in his first full season and he was nowhere near as dominant in his Vancouver assignment. Pearson just turned 21, he's really not that young despite being a JUCO.

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?