max silver

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.

WTF now slap hitter Whit Merrifield is somehow an alpha player in your view? JFC.

IKF reported that there was actually a ton of competition for his services, so in essence the Blue Jays paid market rate for this specific player based on market conditions at the time. If they didn't give him the type of contract he received there were plenty of other teams lined up to sign him other than just the Blue Jays.

I don't think Jansen is going to be playing every day though. The team is likely to run Turner as the primary DH option most of the time, and Jansen will be splitting catching duties with Kirk as well so that limits his overall availability. And that's assuming he actually manages to avoid spending a bunch of time on the injured list in the first place.

Step away from the ledge man. You act like the team is the Colorado Rockies instead of a good team that's been unable to take the next step to become a great team. FFS.

This dude is possibly the biggest crybaby in the history of the forum.

I've simply been busy with other s*** lately. I'm not sure when I ever said I was particularly happy with how this offseason has unfolded but unlike you I don't spend 24 hours of every day bitching and moaning and generally acting like a teenage girl.

LMAO that's super rich from the dude who announced his permanent board departure only to come crawling back shortly afterwards. What a f***ing joke.

Varho's center field metrics took a dramatic leap forward in 2022 so I don't think the previous numbers are terribly informative of his present abilities. His OAA rates are very similar in the 2022 and 2023 seasons, and it stands to reason that he was still learning to play the position based on how little time he spent in the outfield prior to 2022 (only 155 innings in 2020 and only 338 innings in 2021.) Varsho's last two seasons in center field show the following: 841 innings 23 DRS 18 OAA. Extrapolate this to 981 innings and you are left with 27 DRS and 21 OAA. So not double of Kiermaier but still 50% higher in DRS and 62% higher in OAA. It stands to reason that the team is deferring to the more experienced player to man center field which very well could be a key to getting Kiermaier to sign with them in the first place. The left field OAA is a puzzling phenomenon and could very well be a single year statistical anomaly. Varsho himself mentioned that left field was the hardest outfield position for him and he could very well still have been adjusting to the position for the bulk of the season. I don't recall ever seeing this dramatic of a gap between DRS and OAA so it will be fascinating to follow his metrics as the season unfolds.

I guess that would be true if they were 3 day benders.

The advanced metrics suggest that Varsho is a much better center fielder than Kiermaier as he accumulates both DRS and OAA at approximately twice the rate. The only reason there's any doubt remaining is because Varsho hasn't played a full season in center field yet so we are left needing to extrapolate his numbers to a full season to compare.

Why do I do what exactly? Turner was really solid for most of the season. I share the same concern as everyone else about his age as he'll drop off eventually but that hasn't happened yet. Check out his monthly splits. April 101 wRC+ May 111 wRC+ June 128 wRC+ July 161 wRC+ August 139 wRC+ September 56 wRC+ He played through a good chunk of the second half with a deep bone bruise in his heel and he reportedly could barely walk towards the end. I suspect this is largely to blame for the swoon at the end of the season as Turner refused to shut things down early. He had a bit of a slow start to the season as he was reportedly hit in the head in spring training which may or may not have factored into the slow start. Once he heated up he had a terrific 5 month stretch where he produced a 128 wRC+ over a 532 PA sample of playing time. If he remains healthy I think this is the type of offensive ceiling he possesses.

What exactly is wrong with Turner? He produced a 139 wRC+ with men on base last season. This improved to 150 wRC+ with men on base. It's not like that's an isolated performance from last season either as he's produced similar clutch numbers over his entire career. This feels an awful lot like complaining just for the sake of complaining.

Maybe it's a good thing that Tiedemann wasn't traded for Soto after all. There aren't a lot of silver linings to the lousy spring debut but at least the velocity was up a bit compared to last spring's first start. The velo numbers are right in line with his numbers from the 2022 regular season. Of course none of that will matter if he doesn't get the command squared away. 2023 First Spring Start Sinker Max 93.6 Ave 92.1 Slider Max 82.6 Ave 81.1 4 Seam Max 94.4 Ave 93.1 2024 First Spring Start Sinker Max 94.4 Ave 93.1 Slider Max 83.4 Ave 81.5 4 Seam Max 95.5 Ave 93.7 2022 Regular Season Sinker 93.3 Ave Slider 81.5 Ave 4 Seam 93.9 Ave

I quickly looked into this and according to various articles Atkins said that the team would miss all of Chapman, Merrifield and Kiermaier but he later clarified that the team was interested in potentially bringing these guys back. He left the door open for all of these guys to return and Kiermaier came back despite this so called concrete statement that he would be missed. It seems to be a bit of a long shot at this point that Chapman is brought back but he still makes a lot of sense for the team to push IKF into more of a utility role.