Brownie19

With age comes memory loss If you've been a Jays fan that long, you've seen and been through teams that were SIGNIFICANTLY worse. This team has done lots of winning over the past 4 1/2 years. This stretch is one of their best since the 1993 season.

That would be a new approach. Bat Vlad twice. I wonder if they'd notice?

Change is difficult for most as they age. I'm really starting to feel that myself. I'm not sure baseball or the world were actually better 25 years ago, nor am I interested in debating that with you. However, a stable lineup actually could hurt the team further. If it actually provided all kinds of advantages, then everyone would do it. That's the easiest way to look at it.

That seems about right to me.

https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2922351/mlb-hands-marcano-lifetime-ban-for-betting Tucupita Marcano has been banned for life for violating MLB's gambling policy, the league announced Tuesday. Oakland Athletics reliever Michael Kelly and minor leaguers Jay Groome (Padres), José Rodríguez (Philadelphia Phillies), and Andrew Saalfrank (Arizona Diamondbacks) were also handed one-year suspensions for betting. MLB discovered that Marcano placed 387 baseball bets, including 231 MLB-related wagers through a legal sportsbook between 2022-23. The 24-year-old also made 25 bets on the Pittsburgh Pirates while he was a member of the team last year. However, he never played in the games on which he bet after suffering a season-ending ACL injury in July 2023. The league said Marcano bet more than $150,000 on baseball, with $87,319 of that on MLB-related wagers. Most of his MLB bets were parlays, and he won only 4.3% of them. The Padres claimed Marcano off waivers in November, but he hasn't suited up in a game for their organization since being acquired. He also hasn't appeared in a major-league game since his knee injury. Meanwhile, Kelly was a minor leaguer with the Astros when he placed 10 bets involving nine MLB games, including three Houston contests, in October 2021, according to the league's investigation. The 31-year-old bet a total of $99.22 and had a net profit of $28.30 after winning five wagers. He didn't take part in any of the contests he gambled on and didn't bet on any minor-league teams he was assigned to. MLB's inquiry found that Groome made 32 league-related bets while he was a member of the Boston Red Sox organization in 2020-21, that Rodríguez placed 28 major-league wagers between 2021-22 when he was part of the Chicago White Sox minor-league system, and that Saalfrank recorded 28 MLB-related bets during his time in the Diamondbacks' system across 2021-22. All three players gambled on the Red Sox, White Sox, and Diamondbacks. Groome had a net loss of $433.54 out of the $453.74 he bet, Rodríguez bet a total of $724.09 on MLB-related wagers, and Saalfrank put in $444.07 and lost $272.64, according to the league, who added that the minor leaguers didn't appear in any of the contests they bet on and didn't make bets involving their assigned affiliate clubs. --------------------------------------------- 1 year ban for betting <$100 is pretty sad. Sports gambling is obviously way more accessible than it's ever been. I suspect there are lots more players who bet on sports occasionally. You just can't be stupid enough to leave a paper trail connected to yourself. Looks like the league is using this to set and example.

This is 100% false. Good news is teams can still win, even with imperfect managers (because managers don't actually have a huge impact on results). Your claim is a consistent lineup will produce better than one that is constantly changing to suit matchups and to provide certain players with rest. It's interesting you use Cito as an example, give he did implement platoon situations (back when they were a lot less common). Nevertheless, what are you basing this claim on? Is there an article you read that analyzed this? or is this just a gut feeling, based off how managers/teams used to play baseball 25 years ago? I'm not sure I've seen any analysis done on this, but I do believe most MLB teams have moved away from strict/set lineups - which tells me it's not true in most cases. My gut says some players do prefer to consistently hit in the same spot/role on a daily basis and for other players, it doesn't matter one bit to them (and then there's the debate whether how they feel about it actually impacts their results). It's probably up to each manager to understand his players and develop strategies accordingly. I highly doubt a one size fits all approach is the way to go.

Yeah - I'd tend to agree with that.

Still - that plan would have worked some percentage of the time. I believe Fangraphs suggested we had a 50% chance of making the playoffs at the start of the year. Zips had us as an 88 win team, with a 63% chance of making the playoffs. So if you objectively look at this (which is difficult to do these days), even if people complain the FO didn't do enough, the stats suggest they weren't in an awful position to start the year and would have opportunities to make adjustments in season (much like Texas did last year and won the WS). What % of the time do we think this plan would have worked? Nobody can sit here and say it was 0%. It clearly wasn't super low if we were projected chance to make the playoffs was 50%-63%. You know which other teams seemingly failed miserably this year: - Houston - TB - St. Louis - Arizona - SF - Texas Lots of teams, even good organizations fail every year. AA said the other day on the FAN, when asked why his team wasn't hitting HRs at anywhere near the same pace as last year...his response was "if I knew the answer to that, we'd have fixed it by now", which I think goes to illustrate there's a ton of s*** that is outside of their control. I believe Atkins will be gone at the end of the year. I hope we find a better alternative, but I'm not sold we will. However, I didn't have a huge issue with their approach to roll this team back out there this year to see what happens. We were 7th in MLB in wRC+ last year and it's reasonable to expect your young core, who are in their mid 20's will take steps forward. I'm certainly glad we aren't employing Jorge Soler right now in response to our "need for power" (let's put him in there instead of cherry picking Teo). Alas, it isn't working at all for whatever reason. I'm not going to pretend I know what factors (and there will be several) have caused the failure, but unfortunately the Vlad/Bo era didn't work out as well as most had hoped. That's life.

Lots of really stupid players round 3rd and make it to home at a normal angle.

The Dodgers paid Teo $23M who projected for 1.7 WAR and Heyward $9M who projected for 0.8 WAR. Where are you getting that 2 WAR players were signing for $2M? Amed Roserio and Gio Urshela were the only 2 players projected to for 1+ WAR that got less than $4.5M. Also, we've been through this a lot. The FO banked on their top players performing to their abilities and added the FA's they did to supplement those players and improve depth. It failed miserably as Bo, Springer, Kirk, Manoah, Vlad (to an extent) and essentially the entire bullpen s*** the bed. The question is probably, what was the probability this approach succeeded and what success rate was suitable to justify taking this path. I'd suggest this plan may have worked 40% of the time, noting we entered the year with a 50% chance of making the playoffs. I think that probability of making the playoffs was high enough to justify the approach taken. Unfortunately, it didn't work.

I didn't see the whole play - is there a reason he was approaching home plate from that angle? It looked like he just rounded the mound and headed for home.

https://www.fangraphs.com/players/jordan-hicks/19618/graphs?pitchgraphs=true&statArr=&legend=1&split=base&time=daily&start=2022&end=2024&rtype=mult&gt1=15&dStatArray=SI&ymin=&ymax= Sure is. The next plan for Jordan Hicks is probably TJS unfortunately.

There are all kinds of logical reasons why Jansen isn't extended yet. - never played in more than 86 games over the past 4 years - 30+ year old catchers typically don't age that well and would be amplified by his injury history - career 107 wRC+ bat and prior to this year, you'd have a hard time forcing his way into the lineup anywhere else except for catcher (except for 250 PA's in 2022) - he may have no interest in signing an extension and/or has told the team he'd rather bet on himself, knowing his extension would be subdued due to all his partial seasons played (ie, he knew if he could stay healthy for a full season, he'd get more on the open market). - Kirk (and/or Moreno) were previously viewed as the catcher of the future, potentially with more upside. If we have 2022 Kirk, do you want Jansen getting paid to be the backup catcher? I mean take your pick, or combine a few of these together.

We could have signed Ohtani and still sucked balls guys.

It's almost like sometimes, it's out of the GM's control to some extent. Unless you're Baltimore. Those f***ers have unlocked something. In 2 horrible draft classes (2018 & 2020), they walk away with Grayson Rodriquez, Westburg, Heston Kjerstad and Mayo. Kjerstad was essentially injured for 2 years after being drafted and still might be one of the only studs to come out of the 1st round. Then when they do have the #1 overall pick, Rutschman and Holliday are in the draft. How much of that is luck and how much is skill? Anyone want to try and tackle that one?

Sounds like Detriot is going to option Tork to the minors. How s***** is it to have two #1 picks and end up with Tork and Mize. Ouch.

The fanbase for essentially every professional sports team are "suckers". The % of fans who really understand baseball and have an intelligent opinion about the Blue Jays is extremely small - as it is for every team.

It was special to see a couple of Canadian boys at the top of the leaderboard yesterday. B2B Canadian winners would have been incredible, but it wasn't meant to be. If that wasn't going to happen, then I'm sure glad Robert MacIntyre won with his dad carrying his bag for the first time in his career. Pretty magically stuff.

I was at the game on Sunday and I just say the City Connects were hot, hot, hot. There is an entire store dedicated to selling all the connect merch and TONS of people were buying that stuff up. I got my kid the hat and he loves it. What I also noticed is there were as many Varsho and Schneider jerseys being worn as Bo/Vlad.

What's gotten into Jack Flaherty? He's pitching like the ace you thought he'd develop into when he was 22/23

Morosi click bait.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/mlb-city-connect-jerseys-ranked-2024 https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10122634-the-definitive-mlb-city-connect-jersey-power-rankings There are a couple of updated rankings that include Toronto's. We're ranked 15th and 10th. As you can see, the rankings are all over the f***ing place and generally meaningless. The Bleacher Report article shows pictures of all the jerseys, so you can compare yourself (USA today makes you click on twitter links - so it sucks).

Man - Betts is going to go down as one of the best to ever play this game. Such an incredible athlete.

OK man - we get it - you don't like them. But it's disrespectful to suggest this is a lazy and uninspired jersey. They didn't put this together in an afternoon and call it a day. You an tell a ton of effort went into it - even if you don't personally like it. You sound like someone who looks at art and says "pffff, I my kid could paint this, it's garbage?"

100% - its obvious there was a lot of thought put into these, which people should respect whether they like the aesthetics or not.