max silver

Kirk swings a much faster bat on average and at maximum than Bateman so they aren't a great comparison. I examined Gimenez's swing speed plot and it appears as though he's capable of producing the occasional 80+ MPH swing when he lets it rip vs Bateman who appears to max out at closer to 78 MPH so that likely explains the difference in top end exit velocities. Popkins and the Blue Jays offensive coaching group have been pretty effective at unleashing higher top end swing speeds in their hitters so fingers crossed they can do something similar with Bateman. Bateman does appear to be a high end athlete in every aspect aside from raw swing speed (sprint speed/outfield burst/hit tool/throwing arm) but I think this is teachable to a degree through maximized biomechanical efficiency, and I and others have stated that Bateman is a prime candidate to spend an offseason working out in the PDC weight room to improve his raw strength. It sucks that there is an impending lockout as this will lead to the Blue Jays losing the massive advantage that the best in MLB PDC offers to their players.

Yeah these are fair enough points. Bateman only managed about 73 MPH swing speed on today's home run, but that's plenty if you manage to find the barrel with an optimized swing path. I could see him hitting 10 home runs in a good year, but for Bateman I expect more of his power production would come in the form of a few extra doubles and triples over time vs launching balls over the fence. I think he possesses similar physical tools to Andres Gimenez as they are within a few ticks of each other in terms of average swing speed, and with Gimenez he did manage to smack 15 and 17 home runs at points of his career so it is possible to produce solid power output with lesser swing speed if you can unload on the baseball with your best swing and sufficiently find the barrel. In the early going Bateman has been showcasing an excellent hit tool which should allow for a high floor given his speed. I don't know if he necessarily "needs" to add a ton of swing speed to his game as he's been producing a ton offensive impact with the toolset he currently possesses, albeit with regression sure to come at some point.

I think with Bateman there might be a bit more juice in the bat than we were initially led to believe. He's not an exit velocity monster by any means but he's been squaring up a ton of pitches in the majors and his primary issue regarding power output was the ground ball heavy profile. He produced decent enough average exit velocities in the minors and he's shown that he can launch the ball with authority in recent games with the appropriate swing path. I'm encouraged that he's cleaned up the plate discipline in recent weeks as his chase rate has improved to very close to the 20% rate he was producing in AAA, and the quality of contact has been improving as a direct result.

He's certainly no Schwarber but he hit each of these homes 403 feet which isn't something I'd characterize as a wall scraper.

I don't think the Guardians would have enjoyed a chance to sign Ramirez long term had he not been willing to accept a well below market value extension contract. Contrast that with Vlad who essentially held the organization hostage through bad faith "negotiating" through the media, set a ridiculous contract demand value and refused to budge an inch before Edward Rogers blinked.

That's tough since there is a bullpen game tomorrow and the team needs their few rotation arms to soak up some innings.

I like the stuff that Arrighetti features but he's just too prone to falling behind and then making mistakes with his fastballs in hitter counts.

There was a recent Sportsnet piece that outlined how Lorenzen and the club had optimized his mechanics and unearthed an improvement of his stuff. His most recent outing saw him average nearly 96 MPH on the 4 seamer which is up a few ticks based on his season average so there might be enough in the tank to provide the club some solid bulk innings.

If the decisions worked out why would you characterize them as being "dumb"?

Yeah I think as long as the team continues winning series they'll put themselves in a good spot.

While I can give Sanchez a tiny bit of leeway for not being fully familiar with left field he was also one of MLB's worst right field defenders this season as well so he's awful in both corners. He's up near the top of the "leaderboard" in negative run value by Statcast in right field despite playing a fraction of the innings of most of the players at the top, and he's been so bad his -9% success rate added in right field is right in line with Kyle Schwarber's -8% success rate added in left field in 2023. You can sort the Statcast metrics over time now but unfortunately it hasn't been added to Fangraphs yet. Sanchez has been very poor in the field for the entire season well before the ankle injury took place. Sanchez Defensive Futility Month to Month Mar/Apr 0 FRV RF/-1 FRV LF May -4 FRV RF/0 FRV LF June -1 FRV RF/0 FRV LF July 0 FRV LF only (only 7 innings) Aug-today -2 FRV LF (only 92 innings)

Yeah it's definitely a combination of lowered athleticism plus confidence/judgement at this point. The jumps are down significantly with slower reaction and a lesser burst and his foot speed is down this season as well.

Sanchez also appears as though he's scared of the ball this season. I'm reminded of Derek Fisher who completely lost his confidence and started to shy away from fly balls after taking a ball to the face and wonder if Sanchez had some sort of incidence that shattered his confidence in the outfield. It's wild that he managed to produce above average metrics in both corners as recently as last season as he resembles a guy that just started converting to the outfield this year.

Keeping the ball in the park would be a good start. I like the stuff he's been featuring as there are whiffs for days but he needs to avoid the steady stream of meatballs he's been serving up.

Max owes Vlad a booklet of Swiss Chalet coupons after that play.

Vlad possesses a fantastic slide game around home plate. I thought he was going to be out by a ton on that play but the great slide allowed him to avoid the tag.

I do suspect he may be close to MLB ready if the need were to arise, but I don't know how many bullets he has remaining for the season as he's coming off of Tommy John and has already established a new innings high for his career.

I found that the complaining about the Mantiply move in the recent Cleveland game was a little over the top. It's true that this led to the Blue Jays trailing by a larger amount than prior to his entering the game, but it didn't directly factor into the loss to any great degree as the team only scored a single run in that game. I thought it worked out later in the series in that it left all of the better leverage arms available if the game were close in the late innings.

Dude what's with the ultra nitpicky response? I think Atkins did a fine job threading the needle of buying and selling in and around the trade deadline and deserves a lot of credit for his acquisitions helping the team to surge up the standings. He also managed to add some nice minor league talent as well so the plaudits are well deserved. I was concerned that the team was short a leverage arm after shipping out Hoffman at the deadline but the acquisition of Sewald along with Miles covering more leverage innings has helped to bridge the gap. Both of Bateman and Smith have been very steady contributors up to this point and as such the GM deserves credit despite your consternation for reasons I don't really comprehend. Up until this point I believe you can easily declare the deadline to have been a massive success and I don't see why you feel the need to declare that you can't say it was successful because we don't have the ability to travel forward in time in order to know how the next month unfolds. It's just a bad look to pick a fight based on what may or may not happen in the future when I was simply stating my opinion on what the new acquisitions have provided up until the present. What's with the "cherry picking" accusation with Straw? I made a point of mentioning his offensive futility up until the current hot streak so your derision is not appreciated or even remotely necessary unless you are looking to start a stupid pointless argument. He's going to cool off eventually as he has a long term history of well below average offensive contributions, but at the same time I still believe he deserves a lot of credit for stepping up offensively at the most important time of the season. I hope that Schneider learned his lesson about giving Straw far too many plate appearances in the post season given the fact that post season level pitching chews him up and spits him out, but for now it's a welcome development that he's been one of the club's more important contributors when their backs were up against the wall. Bateman is going to need to improve his underlying numbers if he is to continue to enjoy anywhere close to this level of success. He's reliant on well placed ground balls finding their way past gloves up until this point, and unless he finds a way to cut down on the strikeouts, stop the excessive chasing on pitches out of the zone and/or add a little loft/impact to his batted balls he's all but sure to eventually start seeing his results regress to a great degree. For now I can appreciate the spark that he's been able to provide at the top of the lineup.

Parker is producing nicely in high A as a 19 year old. Biggio by comparison was 22 years old by comparison so this isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison.

Something that's not shown in the Statcast dashboard is that Bateman has actually produced a better quality of contact than Kwan this season. When you examine xwOBAcon Bateman actually comes out ahead at .306 to .296. Kwan comes out so far ahead in most of the expected statistics because he possesses far better bat to ball skills and plate discipline and subsequently strikes out a lot less while taking more walks. I do hope that Bateman can tame down the chase a bit over time as he displayed far better plate discipline in the minor leagues.

Smith has proven to be a sneaky good pickup by Atkins as he's infused some much needed power off of the bench. My primary complaint about Atkins previous trade deadlines has been the lack of effective offensive support and Atkins killed it this time around with both Smith and Bateman proving to be offensive catalysts as the team has run up the standings. Straw does deserve a lot of credit for turning his season around. I believe the Sanchez disaster class game in left field in the Trop was a bit of a starting point for seeing more and more of Straw in the lineup but he's been earning his keep and then some. His last 35 games/98 PA have seen him produce 117 wRC+/0.7 FWAR which is a pretty dramatic turnaround for his first 4 months of the season where he was sitting at 62 wRC+/0 FWAR.

I think the team can still make the playoffs with Vlad's offensive woes as they've been winning a ton of games recently with little offensive contributions from Vlad. I believe Vlad needs to heat up if they are going to accomplish anything in the playoffs however.

I performed a minor league Statcast search and Keys has continued to whiff excessively against breaking pitches, upon his return to AAA at 40%. Having said that he has been crushing the breaking pitches he's able to make contact with as his recent hot streak since early August features extremely robust numbers against breakers including a 94 MPH average exit velocity and 9.1 barrel/PA percentage.

I'd like to see if Keys has been able to shore up some of the weaknesses against breaking pitches. I'm sure the team gave him some key areas to work on in order to earn another callup.