max silver

It sounds like his shoulder is improving to the point where he may be able to throw off of a mound soon. https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/blue-jays-notebook-manoah-says-cranky-shoulder-improving-gradually/

I'm not a huge fan of the idea of reducing the available roster spots for pitchers as I have suspicions that the pitch clock may eventually lead to an increase in pitcher injuries. Forcing the pitchers on the roster to both increase workload while reducing in game recovery feels like a bit of a recipe for disaster.

The Blue Jays hit a ton of home runs when they had the home run jacket. They hit way less home runs when they didn't have the jacket therefore it's scientifically proven that the home run jacket leads to more home runs.

Kloffenstein and Robberse were moved in the Hicks trade. It was Matt Svanson who was dealt for DeJong.

Macko has also been assigned to AAA to start the season as well so he's also going to be interesting to follow. I would guess that Chad Dallas will also be pitching in the rotation for the Bisons. For the first time in forever the team may actually be able to field a full rotation in Buffalo instead of a patchwork group of multi inning relievers.

You'll never catch me saying the Blue Jays depth is somehow amazing, but I do think it's sufficient to start the season with potential to actually improve over time as Tiedemann gains experience and Rodriguez builds stamina.

FFS that's really not any better.

WTF? It appears as if the dude is feeling up his grandma or something.

There's no need to panic at this point. Gausman himself expects to be ready to start the regular season as scheduled. If he misses time the team actually has plenty of depth to weather a short term absence. Manoah provided essentially no value out of the rotation last season so even the team's the least desirable depth options like Parsons could actually be more effective rotation options in his absence. If the team has a rough April it's not the end of the world in a 6 month season. They had an awful May last season and still qualified for the post season, a single rough month in not something to panic about.

Not to mention the fact that the Yankees traded a good chunk of their depth starters for Soto.

It seems pretty unlikely that both guys will make the team seeing as they would fill the same role.

One of these dudes put up a 128 wRC+ in September and 124 wRC+ in the second half so maybe he doesn't really compare to the 25 wRC+ September and 77 wRC+ second half numbers the other dude produced.

Seems like they are skirting the rules as Davis had a 232 wRC+ in spring play as of this morning.

Clement looks to be a really capable defender to my eyes in the small sample of innings I've seen him play. His third base metrics for his career are actually comparable to IKF on a pure rate basis as well.

Unless it's an opposition ace level starter of course.

Huh? White is projected for a BB/9 ranging from 3.07 BB/9 to a high of 3.54 BB/9. I hardly think that's somehow terrible unless you somehow think the average MLB pitcher has command like Greg Maddux. For what it's worth the MLB average walk rate for 2023 was 3.3, which places White's projections in the firmly average range.

If you look past the bloated ERA only of 2022 (this seems like it's hard for you to look beneath the surface) you see a lot of solid underlying numbers. Last season the guy simply wasn't ready to compete when he was called up and the club was forced to either call him up and attempt to shelter him or they likely would have lost him for nothing. Have you not heard how he added several ticks of velocity at the end of the season and how this has carried over to this season? It could be a blessing in disguise that he eventually struggled to the degree he did as he made it through waivers and morphed into a high octane fireballer to end the season in Buffalo. He has potential to be a solid contributor to this year's pen as he has a solid mix of pitches and displayed the ability to miss a ton of bats to end the season.

So you just admitted only the results in a Blue Jays uniform count when evaluating a player. That's honestly not surprising. White's ERA's are terrible as a Blue Jay. Last season he was downright bad with the team but he was essentially forced onto the roster before he was ready to compete. White was brought up to replace Bass when he got himself cancelled as around this time he was running out of time on his rehab assignment and hadn't been having any success against minor league hitters so it was no surprise that he struggled in the majors. In 2022 he didn't deserve the inflated ERA as he fell victim to a .368 BABIP despite largely keeping the ball on the ground and limiting hard contact with an average exit velocity of 87.8 MPH. I suspect that some of this may have been due to the extreme shifting the club deployed that season but that's just a bit of a guess. I recall Gausman was victim to the overshift causing a lot of weakly hit ground balls to find their way through the infield so it's possible White was victim to this as well. I can agree that he's going to need to produce results as a Blue Jay this season if he's to stick around as he's out of options. I think he's going to get a lot of rope given the fact that Manoah isn't going to be ready to start the regular season on time and the club is going to need a long man/swingman type on top of the open rotation spot that Manoa's absence is going to create.

Wow that's just tremendously clever.

The one time in his career where White couldn't throw strikes was the short 12 inning sample in 2023 where he was coming off of combined shoulder and elbow issues. But of course you are going to focus on that sample of innings only and completely ignore the other 149 innings where this simply wasn't an issue for him. Since you state that you "watched the games" I can only assume that you also watched every game that he appeared in for the Dodgers as well when formulating your opinion of how useless he is. It's way too early to make any type of statements on the White/Frasso trade. In fact White is now featuring very similar stuff to Frasso after the mid season tweaks in Buffalo and now Frasso has undergone combined shoulder and hip surgeries.

Pitcher A 161 innings 3.92 FIP Pitcher B 36 innings 3.86 FIP Put a mark on your bingo card if you guessed that pitcher A is Mitch White and pitcher B is Bowden Francis. How is Francis somehow more proven than White with nearly identical career FIP values but something like 20% of the total innings? Believe it or not White has had major league success in his career, we just haven't seen the best of him in a Blue Jays uniform. The 2022 ERA is inflated due to the spike in BABIP, but his batted balls metrics between the Dodgers and Blue Jays that season were essentially identical. He posted essentially the same FIP for both teams but had incredibly poor batted ball fortune as more hits fell in when in a Blue Jays uniform.

What in the world do you expect out of a team's depth options? Francis, White, Tiedemann, Rodriguez and even Parsons are all decent bets to at the very least soak up some innings for the team as needed. Some of them might even prove to be average if not better major league starters so I fail to understand the reason for so much consternation.

I suspect we are going to be seeing more and more of these types of stories as more minor league pitchers choose to spend their entire offseasons working out of the player development complex.

Yeah this dude's post contain all of the self promotion of vintage Trollminator but without any attempts at levity.

I predict 88 wins, but with a lot of variability with this team depending on health, bounce back seasons and relative improvements at the plate sticking. I think if the offense continues to struggle again and the pitching takes a step back the team would settle into the low 80's range, and if the offense improves a fair bit and the pitching staff remains as effective the team would win in the low to mid 90's range. With continued good health I think the pitching has a shot to be even better. Kikuchi has added a new changeup to his repertoire, Berrios added a cutter, Manoah is better conditioned and the stuff has improved as well. The shoulder issues for Manoah and Gausman are semi concerning but each is reportedly mild in nature. This could affect the availability for these guys to start the season if they don't have time to fully build up their workloads. I think the rotation depth looks better as Francis added a splitter to his arsenal, White has carried over the stuff improvements from the end of the AAA season, Tiedemann may debut this season, and even Parsons may have improved his stuff a bit from the season prior. The pen should once again be very good with a shot to be even better as the team will enjoy potential full seasons from Chad Green and Genesis Cabrera. The upper minors has a lot of flamethrowing depth options in case of underperformance and/or injury. The biggest key for the club will be improvements from the offense. There were so many underperformances from a season ago that the team will require closer to expected performances from most of these guys if the offense is to be a strength. There are a lot of reasons to hope for improvements: Vlad - literal best shape of his life, tweaked his swing to quiet his hands Bo - noticeably slimmer, hopefully helps improve his mobility and ability to avoid injury Springer - weird season where April was awful due to combination of bad luck and viral illness that left lingering symptoms. Hit really deep slump in July. Manager comments about wanting to return to pulling the ball more which was missing a season ago. Kirk - maybe slimmed down a touch but already has two home runs in the spring, hopefully he squares up more baseballs at the plate as this has been missing Varsho - better to end season after adding toe tap, reworked swing in offseason to avoid popups by trying to impact top of ball more. Hopefully launch angle not overly negative leading to more ground balls Biggio - had nice 4 month run to end season after leveling out swing. Behind others due to spring shoulder issue, needs to get off to better start at the plate as a notorious slow starter that really struggles in March/April historically Jansen - needs to avoid injury bug, playing for new contract so should be extra motivated to have a big season at the plate Turner - getting old but had a 5 month stretch where he was a 128 wRC+ bat before tanking at end of season, possibly due to deep heel bruise. Hopefully stays healthy and productive for one more season. IKF - had best 4 month stretch of career as a 750 OPS/110-115 wRC+ bat before massive spike in k rate to end season. Made notable improvements to quality of contact metrics, likely primary reason why his services were in demand. Schneider - still needs to show that he can be a full time major leaguer. Faces questions about ability to adjust back at the plate after late season barrage of breaking pitches down and away.