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I think the far and away biggest concern with Snell is they typical lack of innings he provides. He has only averaged about 125 innings per season for his career so it's lunacy that he expects to receive ace level dollars.

The weirdest thing is they basically have the same personality, where Frenchonionsoup posts a steady stream of nonsense, gets told to politely go f*** himself, and then Magoo or whatever his name is white knights for his alter ego.

It's obvious why the two of you are a package deal so the bolded part is certainly correct.

Albert Pujols probably used the same supplier for his own fake birth certificate.

And the team played him away from his most valuable defensive position the majority of the time.

That's exactly how you would want them to operate. It's worth it to splash maximum cash on the true premium free agents but then reach a sensible limit on the mid range guys.

I like Kim a lot too. He was one of my preferred targets the offseason where he chose to sign with San Diego and it sounds like he would have signed with the Jays had they been willing to allow him to refuse minor league assignments. I think he would be a perfect Bo replacement should Bo leave in free agency as Kim could be extended for a lot more reasonable amount compared to Bo. I have no idea what he would cost in trade but I don't think he would come cheap given how the Padres are trying to compete and he's a massive bargain at only $8 million for his final season. Maybe something like Schneider and Barger could get a deal done. MLBTraderumors has a recent post about this as well. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/01/trade-candidate-ha-seong-kim.html

BJMB rules are a lot different than those you would expect to see followed in general society. Although general decorum in society as a whole has gone down the shitter in recent years as well.

Hopefully he enjoyed his time with the team enough that just matching the other offers is sufficient to bring him back into the fold.

Vlad just posted the second lowest ground ball percentage of his career so that's not so much of an issue at this point. Vlad and the team need to determine how to turn the 95th percentile expected statistics into actual production and he can return to being a much better offensive performer. I recall reading that his barreled baseballs were travelling something like 20 feet less through the air compared to previous seasons, so perhaps his batted balls had too much topspin for optimal distance. His expected statistics support something in the range of 140 wRC+ even with the relative struggles of last season. I think the team and Vlad are likely stuck with each other for the next season at the very least. I see no way that the team would be able to extract appropriate value in trade for Vlad given the inconsistency of his career and the salary he's been commanding through arbitration. I am very hopeful of a huge incoming season given the offseason spent training in Florida but it's up to Vlad to finally prove he can be the type of hitter his natural talent suggests. He has hundreds of millions of potential future earnings on the line at this point so it's up to him to finally prove he's going to be worth it.

That's a load of s***. Vlad has typically been a very good to great offensive performer while in the DH position. Even ignoring his scintillating 2021 season Vlad has averaged 125 wRC+ over the last two seasons. He's one of the few players that doesn't seem to have his numbers crater offensively when sitting on the bench all game in between at bats either. DH Production 2020 137 wRC+ 2021 146 wRC+ 2022 116 wRC+ 2023 131 wRC+ He is projected for a 144 wRC+ in 2024. Compare this to the better available DH bats: Soler 119 wRC+ Pederson 118 wRC+ Hoskins 116 wRC+ Martinez 106 wRC+ Go back the last two years and here are the wRC+ leaders at DH with a minimum of 500 plate appearances (this should capture guys who mostly man the DH position: Alvarez 172 Ohtani 159 Harper 139 JD Martinez 126 That's a grand total of 4 primary DH players in all of MLB who produced an average wRC+ value higher than Vlad the last two seasons. He's absolutely strong enough with the bat to be a primary DH, I just don't necessarily think that would be wise to make a full time position switch at this point of his career.

He has a career 105 wRC+ as a DH in 652 plate appearances. That's not awful by any means but on a team with an obvious opening to add more offense they can do a lot better than that. https://www.fangraphs.com/players/george-springer/12856/splits-tool?splitArr=41&splitArrPitch=&position=B&autoPt=false&splitTeams=false&statType=player&statgroup=2&startDate=2002-01-01&endDate=2023-11-01&players=&filter=&groupBy=career&wxTemperature=&wxPressure=&wxAirDensity=&wxElevation=&wxWindSpeed=&sort=-1,1

This is certainly an interesting discussion. I looked up each of these dudes splits in their latest good offensive seasons, and it seems like the total offensive value was essentially a wash. Pederson provided approximately equal offensive value in approximately 75% of the plate appearances so it's possible the team would be better off with Pederson and maybe Vlad in at DH vs lefties and come out ahead offensively. I'm not sure if my methodology for comparison holds up as these occurred in different seasons but the values are weighted so hopefully it's at least semi legitimate. 2022 Pederson vs RHP 21.1 wRAA vs LHP 0.7 wRAA total 21.8 wRAA 433 plate appearances 2023 Soler vs RHP 6.6 wRAA vs LHP 13.8 wRAA total 20.4 wRAA 580 plate appearances Soler absolutely clobbered lefties in his 135 plate appearances as he produced a 181 wRC+. Hitting in the top of the Blue Jays lineup he could still reasonably expect a similar level of playing time against left handed pitching when compared to top of the order Blue Jays hitters such as Vlad (124 PA) and Springer (144 PA) although adding him to an already right handed dominant lineup could limit the willingness of opposition managers to deploy left handed pitching against the team.

Don't get me wrong I have no qualms with trading either of these guys but each of them provides enough value commensurate to their respective salaries and are rather inexpensive such that removing them just opens up new holes that the minor league system might not be able to fill right away.

It's actually a 447 plate appearance sample as DH as a Blue Jay so the sample size is a lot bigger than you are implying.

It feels like you are maybe placing a little too much emphasis on a single season for Vlad as a first base defender. He had improved to the point where he was about -4OAA per season at first base in 2021/2022 and managed to post positive DRS values in both of those seasons. 2023 aside Hoskins really hasn't been any better than Vlad and his defensive metrics are arguably worse than Vlad's. Vlad's defensive metrics cratered in 2023 and I can't help but suspect that he was dealing with some sort of physical issue (aside from the low hanging fruit fatness explanation) that was affecting his mobility. He missed time for a few separate stints due to some knee issues so it's possible this had an effect on his defense. Hopefully with an effective offseason to slim down he can avoid the knee issues while improving his mobility around the base.

That's part of why I like the idea of Hoskins, although it wouldn't be wise to play him too frequently in the field coming off of knee surgery. He could certainly split time with Vlad however as 2023 aside each of them have typically posted similar defensive metrics.

I do like the idea of running Schneider as a potential 2B/LF Merrifield replacement but it remains to be seen if it's going to be a defensive side show when he plays the outfield with any regularity.

That might be an eventuality in his later years to become more of a full time DH but he has to prove he can produce in that spot first. The team doesn't have a lot of dudes who could successfully hit out of the DH spot the last few seasons. Teoscar seemed to have quite a bit of success (122 wRC+) but he has moved on, so that leaves Vlad (130 wRC+) as the only guy with any amount of plate appearances who has proven the ability to produce out of the DH spot.

I think Garcia offers fair value for his salary as basically a 1 win reliever the last few seasons so moving him out likely makes the pen noticeably worse. Maybe Barger can take over for Biggio mid season if he proves he's ready but that's a bit of a gamble.

Only issue with this is that Springer hasn't hit much at the DH spot during his time as a Blue Jay. He's managed a 98 wRC+ at DH vs 131 wRC+ in the field so even using someone like Horwitz against right handed pitching would likely garner better results.

We shall see how it all plays out. If Chapman is added that makes someone like Espinal largely redundant so that frees up a tiny bit of cash for instance.

More depth options would be nice but I don't know if the club would want to necessarily block Manoah in AAA either. Yariel Rodriguez is still out there and the team apparently liked him as a multi inning reliever/swing man type so that would be nice insurance against the scenario where Manoah continues to struggle.

We really don't have any way to definitively know what type of budget remains. If Chapman ends up signing for $20 million and a DH for $10 million that doesn't sound like it's out of the realm of possibility by any means.

Yeah I think each offers similar offensive upside with the bat except Teo has been more consistent and can actually play the outfield regularly.