Brownie19

The real question is when does Ben Shulman join his old man in the broadcast booth?

Randy would be a great fit in LF for us. I wonder what he'd cost the Jays (and if TB would trade within the division)

That was my thought. The Emilio Pagan signing makes Atkins looks like a genius for signing Green.

I suspect Perry's hockey career is over. Guy turned into a motherf***ing pest in the later half of his career. Not a big fan of him, but he played that role well. Perhaps too well.

Originally, fast food restaurants had be BOTH cheaper and faster than a sit down restaurant to succeed. However, in our new society where everyone crams their entire life full of activities, the fast food places have realized that time/speed is the primary focus of their target audience. They no longer need to be cheaper than a sit down restaurant. When you have to (or want to) eat at a restaurant, most people simply don't have time for a lunch or dinner that takes 1 - 1.5 hours. Fast food no longer needs to be cheap to draw in customers. I fall into this trend unfortunately. With 3 boys in rep baseball and rep hockey + a full time job, I'm on the go 24-7 and am often stuck eating on the road more than I'd like to.

The ball may have an impact yes. But I'm not sure the ball was "juiced" back in 1987 when a .260 avg / .800 OPS wasn't very good (in comparison). I do think we're approaching a point where hitters simply can't catch up physically to the high velocity. The body just can't react fast enough.

Players aren't on steroids anymore and advanced training and a better understanding of mechanics has lead to WAY MORE pitchers throwing MUCH harder, which makes hitting a f***ton more difficult. Where have you been?

Someone else suggested we trade for Trevor Larnach a few weeks ago. Not sure who it was.

You keep pushing this narrative. I don't think there's any evidence to support that this happened though, or that waiting it out would have landed us a pot of gold. You can keep "thinking" that's the case, but, IMO, you probably shouldn't be so confident that it's true.

This is true for every team.

I mean if they are really going to take that next step as an organization. You can't take Tork 1st overall in the draft and be happy with a 110-120 wRC+, 2 WAR player. Jays are the same. Once in a lifetime talent Vlad needs to be a 150 wRC+, 4-6 WAR player for the Jays to be serious contenders.

I think the natural thought would be that after an attempted pickoff move, the runner would get a smaller lead and be less likely to steal. I do wonder if that was true when there were unlimited disengagements? You'd think the answer is yes; however, if the pitchers pick off move is s***, then an attempted pickoff might tell that runner that he actually has more time than he thought and thus he takes a bigger lead (and perhaps is then more likely to 'go'). I guess that's where the cat and mouse game came in a bit. Pitchers wouldn't 'show' the runner their good move, in hopes that after a couple of pickoff attempts, the runner was lured into a sense of security that he could increase his leadoff length and then wam - you pick him off. Limiting disengagements certainly reduces the pitchers ability to waste attempts with secondary moves. Under the new rules, runners are probably seeing the 'best move' more often than not and then adjusting their lead based on how much extra 'time' they had after the first pickoff - which is why we see larger leads and success rates after the 1st disengagement. Interesting. I can see how you'd think that's not great, but I generally hate pickoffs and don't enjoy a good game of cat and mouse, so I'm cool with it. Give me more SB's please.

Much like the Jays with Vlad, the Tigers REALLY need Tork to develop into a Paul Goldschmidt type slugger.

I think the numbers are there man. Pickoff attempts seemingly hurt your chances of holding the runner! If you attempt a pickoff, they get a bigger lead, attempt more SBs and succeed more often - which is counterintuitive. Regardless, it appears this proves that pickoffs aren't very effective. Give them a couple token attempts per runner - no more.

This is interesting. Some were suggesting we should allow more disengagements and that we've lost the always entertaining "cat and mouse game". This would suggest that while disengagements seem to impact the size of someone's lead, the advance rate % is relatively unchanged. IMO adding more disengagements would have a negligible impact on the game. They would likely just be abused by pitchers to give them more 'rest' on the mound between pitches.

That's a cup of coffee for Ohtani man. I'd be shocked if he just took the most money offered to him. He's going to go somewhere that's he's comfortable and believes in the FO and the Ownerships vision, both for their use of him and in the future of the team.

That's way too much for Heyward IMO. I suspect there's a 70% chance that he turns back into a pumpkin next year.

I personally don't see a big concern with aging pitchers (neither in St. Louis or TO). Often by then, there's a lot less volatility and it doesn't seem like they are more injury prone (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the opposite). My gut says pitchers are aging better than position players these days.

Seems odd the advance rate decreases after 2 disengagements, even though the lead length increases...probably an anomaly? I guess it could also just be that slower runners attempt more SB's after the 2nd disengagement, but are still too slow and got thrown out, which reduced the advance rate.

It will be interesting to see what he costs. Down year last year. Velo was down over 1 MPH and the xFIP jumped up to over 4, as did his BB/9. Durable guy though. What will 2 years of control cost?

So...they didn't have to overpay while jumping the FA market? Interesting.

Fine. Atkins gets no credit for signing big name free agents. Anyone could do what he did. My how stupid I am.

100%.

C'mon man. There are LOTS of players each year who won't just sign with whomever offers the most money. You think players want to follow Kris Bryant and play in Colorado right now? We know players have turned down Toronto and taken less money to play elsewhere before - and chosen to sign elsewhere when the money is equal. Atkins turned around the team and put them in a position where top FA's wanted to sign here and then he went out and landed some big fish. The FO was able to convince Rogers to spend more and take on more risk - after there were YEARS where we never even considered by top FA's (Beeston had his 5 year max ********). The only big FA that AA ever signed was Martin (who was great). Besides that, his next big FA signing in 6 years as our GM was Melky Cabrera for 2 years at $16M in 2013 and Maicer Izturis for 3 years at $9M in 2013 - let that sink in. AA filled all our payroll by acquiring veteran talent (JJ, Dickey, Buehrle, Reyes/Tulo, etc.) - presumably because nobody would sign in TO. He also did a great job extending Jose and EE, but flopped when he extended Romero, Lind and Morrow.

That would be an incredible NFC championship game.