nmrch

Rays up 1-0

He struggled a bit in his first dozen starts or so, it was very un-Stroman like. I know this is cherry picking numbers but i think his utter dominance in the last dozen starts is closer to his true talent, and the HR/FB% is genuinely bad luck imo. I think he's more likely than Sanchez to give you an utterly dominant 6-7 innings on a given day.

I think i'll take Stroman

Awesome win! Now lets hope Duffy has one hell of a start in Boston tonight

Why is Bautista clowning around in Rf?

And how is that some sort of a relief? Smoak's career offensive numbers combined with his defence is still a very bad player. There is simply no place in baseball for a 95 wRC+ hitter who can't even play first base properly. His career WAR doesn't lie, 0.5 in 805 games, that's less than 1/10 of a WAR per season, he's the textbook definition of a replacement player.

A lot of organizations have a 2 short seasons(which include the Dominican league) policy for IFA's and even high school draftees before putting them in full season A ball, we had that during the AA regime. I don't think its a given at all that Vlad Guerrero will start in the MWL next season.

There's no point in promoting a guy from the NWL to the MWL in the middle of a season. Just let him start in Lansing, he's gonna be fine.

Shapiro has a lot of leeway with Rogers, he is not even close to being at a point where Rogers will care about relatively minor roster moves involving a relatively low amount of money.

Do we know what Atkins' philosophy is on pushing prospects? Some GM's are less aggressive than others but you can justify putting Vlad in the MWL. Looking through this year and previous years, it not that rare, there seem to be about half a dozen 18 year olds in the MWL and the SAL every year.

You don't make a bad decision to justify another bad decision. That horrific extension should have no bearing on whether Smoak should be DFA'd. I'm hoping Shapiro in particular realizes that they f***ed up and just cut Smoak lose, thankfully, he seems to have the right attitude about these things.

Jesus, the things some of you lose your minds over. Its a fantasy baseball article on the less reputable section of the site. Its perfectly fine for what it is.

Rays get on the board and still threatening , 2-1 Red Sox

Osuna's flyball problems were eventually gonna catch up with him and they did

I hope this is sarcasm, Grilli has genuinely pitched well to justify his low ERA, Benoit has been terrible even with that 2 K inning

It won't be long before Gibbons starts using Benoit for set up man duties, that's just the way he thinks

how are you not impressed with 5 BB and 5K in 8 IP?

but he's got a 0.00 ERA in 8 innings with the Jays, that means more than being a bottom 10 reliever in all of baseball this season according to Gibbons' logic

If there's any manager you can count on to bring one of hte worst relievers in baseball out for the 7th inning in a 1 run game its Gibbons.

I still can't believe some people defended that move, i mean teh money involved is practically nothing but its a horrifically bad move nonetheless and Shapiro/Atkins should have known better.

I'm interested in how Hoffman will do. I didn't like the low K numbers he put up with the Jays but he seems to have evolved in his time with the Rockies. The K to BB ratio is now good but not super impressive, its the 0.83 HR/9 that really intrigues me because its actually very impressive given Albequerque seems to be the most HR friendly ballpark in the PCL. He has a chance to be a good pitcher.

Its pretty obvious that Benoit will cost us a couple of games, its unfortunate that Gibbons won't change his mind (about him being a high leverage reliever) until then.

The power not showing up is the bigger problem i think, it was promising at the lower levels but has completely dissapeared. Having said that, hsi overall numbers are actually not bad, a 95+ wRC from a 21 year old catcher, it isn't great but its good enough to still make him a serious prospect.

For a relatively smart guy Law says some incredibly dumb things. The reason to be skpetical of Thames in NH at the time was because of his age and advanced experience, not because of it being friendly to LHH, after all Thames mashed in Vegas and we know the things he's doing in Korea. Tellez OTOH is putting up one of the best age relative hitting seasons ever in the Eastern League. I don't see how a 23 1/2 yo hitter out of college is even remotely comparable to a 21 yo out of high school, statistically or using more subjective measures.

When i use the term "offence" that's intended to refer to position players, you would agree that Pillar is a core position player on this team right? Infact after Donaldson, Travis, and Sanchez(and maybe Stroman), he's probably the most valuable piece for the organization moving forward I think there's a difference between marginal contenders for one of the WC's and a legitimate division contender. I think the Jays in 2017 belong in the latter category. Those kinds of teams should not be looking to gamble away current talent unless something extraordinary comes along. When you're at that level marginal wins are more valuable to you then they would be to a 75 win team. And no one is giving you that kind of talent for guys like Happ and Estrada. I did include Happ when i said we would have teh same rotation next year, he's expected to be a key contributor next year too, how is that debatable. And i agree with you that we should be listening to offers on everyone, that's pretty obvious but i disagree that we should be actively shopping players on teh big league rosters in the hopes of "getting younger" and trying to win trades.