JoeCarter

I'l go ahead and say it: the Yankee fan base has to be among the absolute worst in the majors. You've got: - The largest city population in North America by a country mile, double that of #2, LA. - Most storied franchise in all of sports - Brand new stadium - A bunch of really exciting young prospects starting for you every day and Sanchez doing things literally unprecedented in baseball history - In the thick of a playoff hunt (fine, on the periphery, but I'd be pretty excited to be a yankee fan right now) And your stadium's 60% empty in September. You should honestly be f***ing embarrassed.

I've made peace with the fact that there will simply NEVER be any reasonable discussion to be had between Dickey-haters and Dickey-defenders. The problem is that to some, he will simply ALWAYS be the guy for whom we traded away Synd + D'Arnaud. They might as well emblazon the back of his jersey with Not Noah Syndergaard. Think of it this way: had we signed him as a free agent after 2013 for the $41M / 4 years that we're paying him, fans would be far more willing to see him for what he actually is: a great bargain cost-wise and one of the most valuable #5 starters in all of baseball. Even if you don't understand the FIP vs RA-9 debate (and it's obvious that most don't), go ahead and use the LESS-favorable-to-Dickey Fangraphs/FIP WAR calcs: he'll still end up delivering about 6.3 WAR over 4yrs/$41M. That's ~$6.5M / WAR, well below the approx going rate of of $8M / WAR. I've found that "What do you think of Dickey?" is the quickest and most reliable route to uncovering whether a person has any idea what he's talking about. There's nothing to even debate. Which is why Dickey-haters are so quick to ramp up the DICKEY SUCKS SO HARD AND UR A RETARD FOR SAYING OTHERWISE! rhetoric. I think some part of their brain realizes that the statistics the've tried so hard to resist learning make minced meat of their argument, so their only chance at saving face is to try and win with condescension + volume.

Lol at everyone creaming over 2 decent Liriano innings. The guy's been among the worst starters in baseball this year, and it's not even close. Worse than 2:1 K:BB. Below replacement value. This isn't 2010.

You're entitled to any opinion you wish, but you've got 100% of respondents in this thread telling you you're way wrong on this one, so just check your pride and admit to the goof. It's easier, I promise. We traded a 26-year old reliever coming off a terrific season with 4 more years of cheap team-control for ONE YEAR of a 32-year old swing man who'd compiled a total of 3.1 WAR over his entire 8 year career. We could have had 4 years of Hendriks for close to the same as the $4M we paid for ONE year of Chavez. Hendriks had a terrible first half but has been incredible since returning from the DL in June. It made no sense whatsoever. It's making me even angrier writing this now.

I have no idea why the market for Puig is as tepid as reports suggest, i.e. Dodgers willing to trade him for a middling lottery ticket prospect. He's under team control for 3 more years: (2 @ $7M + 1 yr of arb). His contract is somewhere between fair value and a bargain: yeah, he's been like a 1 to 1.5 WAR player over the last season and a half, but with 1 WAR = ~$8.5M, that's already quite good value. Factor in a non-negligible chance that he returns to being the 5 - 6 WAR player he was in 2013-14, and he could be a massive steal. He's only 25 damn years old. So fine, he's got an attitude problem and not a great clubhouse guy. Whatever. Again, he's 25. And he'll likely have been chastened by his recent demotion and eager to prove himself. I'd gladly take him in RF for 2017-2019 at $27M over an aging Bautista at $80M. Don't know what the Dodgers asking price is, but if it's as low as some say, I hope Shatkins are at least mulling it over.

I know it's trendy around here to assume we're gonna win the division going away. (Fangraphs and BP's models give us a 56% chance of doing just that.) That being said, the WC is obv a rather distinct possibility. Set aside the issue of how a WC game would set the staff up for a 5-game ALDS series - only Q here is who starts for you in a 1-game WC game where you need a win. Dickey not an option because baseball.

Lol, you're right: why don't we just replace every single thread on this message board with one single thread entitled "TEECH ME HOW TO WIN TEH WORLD SERIEZZZZZ!!!!" Sometimes individual topics merit a discussion. If you don't want to be part of it, you can show yourself out.

Thx for playing, but pitching has nothing to do with this topic. Maybe you should start a thread.

For a little perspective, from Red Sox current starting lineup: Benintendi - 2015 1ˢᵗ round (7ᵗʰ pick) by the Boston Red Sox Pedroia - 2004 2ⁿᵈ round by the Boston Red Sox Bogaerts - 2009 int'l free agent, signed by Boston Red Sox Betts - 2011 5ᵗʰ round by the Boston Red Sox Shaw - 2011 9ᵗʰ round by the Boston Red Sox Bradley Jr. - 2011, Suppl 1st rd (40th overall) by the Boston Red Sox Meanwhile, we're left to reminisce about 4 good years Vernon Wells gave us over a decade ago. Let's not pretend that you need a top-10 overall pick in order to nab a productive major league hitter, or that a slight preference for drafting pitchers over positional players is responsible for this drought. Is there an element of chance involved? Of course. But it's not random, and recent history suggests that the Jays haven't been very good at it.

K, so let's add Aaron Hill to the list: Wells, Rios, Lind, Hill. 4 guys in 15 years ending up as proficient, everyday major league hitters (with only 1 producing high-end #'s over several seasons) still feels like a paltry turnout. No doubt we've prioritized pitching with higher round picks, and there are certainly more names on that side of the ledger. But still seems that -- esp with the MLB draft being as much of a crapshoot as it is -- we'd have graduated some more hitting talent to the big league club. Heck, as pointed out above, Snider's one of the only guys we even got up to the mashing-at-AAA-but-never-panned-out-in-majors level. Shrug.

Got into this debate the other day: do the Jays do a crummy job of developing young hitters? A friend and I tried to name the good hitters who were drafted by Jays since ~2000 or so, or who we may have traded for but who got most of their development in our farm system. We ran out of names pretty quick. 1. Vernon wells - big gap - 2/3 Alex Rios & Adam Lind Then it was a pupu platter of Arencibia-types. What gives? That seems like a pretty weak crop over 15 years. Esp given our bad teams and relatively high drafting positions (crap-shoot and all). Hard to remember the last time we got excited about a young slugger who was just biding his time in the minors / clobbering AAA. Is there something deficient about our drafting and/or development process?

Totally reasonable. The one element that is going un-acknowledged in the analysis is the small matter of $18 Million that would be used on a front of rotation guy (or elsewhere). It's a convenient strawman to assume that OP was saying merely ZOMG GOINS > TULO TROLLOLOLOL but that's just silly. Tulo is obv better than Goins and barring an injury, I'd bet on Tulo's WAR to be higher than Goins' in every year through 2020. The only argument worth considering is whether the Jays are better with [Goins+Travis+$18M] or with [Tulo+Goins/Travis]. And if you believe in WAR and cost-per-win calcs, I'm not even sure it's all that close. Market price prior to 2014 season was ~$6M/win. For Tulo's 0.5 win > Goins, we're paying $18M (or $36M / win), 6x above market.

Terms of Tulo:Reyes trade completely irrelevant to this discussion. There's nothing at all irrational about believing both: 1) The trade was a good one (I agree), and 2) Going forward, I'd rather have Goins + $19M to spend elsewhere than Tulo and his contract.

Not even sure this is debatable in fact, except by those who perhaps remember Tulo in a Rockies uniform killing it for their 2009 fantasy team. Tulo Age: 30.9 Contract: Under contract for 5 more years @ avg of $18.8M/yr with $15M team option for year 6 (or $4M buyout) 2015 WAR (126 games, 526 plate appearances): 2.1 Goins Age: 27.6 Contract: $513,000, not Arb eligible until 2018, under team control through 2020. 2015 WAR (113 games, 373 PAs): 1.2 First, adjust for the fact that Goins had been inserted games as a late-inning defensive replacement, so let's standardize WAR for 600 plate appearances instead of 162 games: Tulo 2015 WAR / 600 PA's: 2.4 Goins 2015 WAR / 600 PA's: 1.9 (Nevermind the fact that penciling in Tulo for 600 PA's for any season going forward is borderline ridiculous, but let's go with that since it won't matter) Granted, Tulo's historically been a ~5-6 WAR / season player. Maybe he'll return to that. History and math suggest that injury-prone 31-year olds don't work that way, but anything's possible. And who knows: maybe Goins' suddenly-respectable hitting is just a fluke. Bottom line: at present, making reasonable assumptions about what Goins might cost the Jays through a contract extension or arbitration, we're paying about $16 Million per year more for the 0.5 WAR that Tulo provides over Goins. I would literally give Tulo away to anyone who would eat that contract and use the $19M / yr on a top-of-rotation guy. I'm glad Tulo's a Blue Jay in 2015. If he returns to health and can give us 500+ PA's in 2016, I'll be thrilled to have him then too. He's better than Goins. But that contract is going to look horrible in a couple years when we're just hoping that Tulo can play 115 games for us, and team payroll -- irrespective of Rogers' deep pockets -- is an exhaustible resource. TLDR: Goins + Travis + $18M spent elsewhere >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tulo + anything.