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Who replaces the 200 innings that Bassitt provided though? I really don't understand how there is the thought that the Blue Jays suddenly have an excess of depth after the Rodriguez signing as it's far from a given that he will even succeed in a swing man role.

I thought Treliving was generally solid in Calgary until the ill fated Huberdeau long term deal which was signed before he ever played a game for the team. A lot of his free agent signings left something to be desired but he made a lot of pretty decent trades along the way. He had assembled a really solid team that was left in the lurch when Gaudreau left the team at the altar at the last minute and left for nothing in free agency. When Tkachuk asked out that would have been the perfect opportunity to blow things up and start over but that doesn't seem to be something that was allowed under the ownership group who would rather qualify for the playoffs no matter the chance to have success once the playoffs start. It's unfortunate that Sutter went completely off the rails last season as I think the team should have been a lot more competitive than they were given the talent on the roster.

Since you have the last 4 consecutive posts it seems that you are repeating the same thing over and over to yourself. I vote you as most likely to take over for Frenchsoup as resident crazy guy although it appears as though his ban may have ended so the competition will be fierce.

I think it's a bad idea to hand out this type of deal to a reliever in the first place. Hader in particular has been rotating between really good years and relatively poor years since the shortened 2020 season so it's far from a given what he's going to provide year over year. The outstanding quality of contact metrics easily overcame the walk issues in 2023 but given that he has been homer prone in certain seasons that is certainly cause for concern.

Yeah totally awful signing as Hader's expected home runs would go from 4 all the way to 6 playing in Houston.

The entire quote provides a lot more context vs the snippet that you replied to.

Projections aren't concrete and it's simply impossible to know what to expect from Manoah in the 2024 season. He could easily be better than the 2024 projections just as he could easily be worse. Something caused the dramatic loss in command and stuff compared to prior seasons, and whether or not Alek and the team can correct these issues to allow the stuff and command to return to prior levels will directly factor into his future potential. His ZiPS projection calls for a 4.63 FIP/1.3 FWAR in 121 innings His 20th percentile projection is 0.4 WAR His 80th percentile projection is 2.2 WAR He could easily be worse than even the 20th percentile projection if his arm/shoulder are cooked, just as he could handily beat the 80th percentile projection if the stuff and command return to previous levels. It's not like the projection systems have been particularly accurate for Alek in the past either. 2022 Projection 3.87 FIP 2.6 FWAR 2022 Actual 3.35 FIP 4.1 FWAR Quite a bit of the WAR difference is due to the larger number of innings Alek provided compared to the projections, but this doesn't change the fact that he beat his FIP projection by a rather sizable amount. 2023 Projection 3.83 FIP 3.9 FWAR 2023 Actual 6.01 FIP -0.4 FWAR The preseason projection called for Alek to continue providing top of the rotation quality innings, but something went sideways in the offseason and he featured dramatically worse command and stuff compared to his previous seasons. He made some really poor decisions as the season carried on with regards to fighting his demotion to the minor leagues and I can't help but feel this is overwhelmingly behind the opinions on the board that the team should just trade Alek for whatever instead of waiting to see if he can regain his form moving forward.

There is simply nothing concrete from Shapiro with regards to available payroll for this offseason. There is plenty of room for interpretation as well as far as what a "dramatic philosophical shift in payroll" would actually entail as well. Is this 5%, 10%, 20%, moving up to the next tier of the luxury tax, or something else altogether. Much like Atkins left plenty of room for interpretation on his own comments Shapiro has done the same thing as well. Aside from that, even if the team were actually planning to increase it's payroll there would be absolutely no benefit for announcing this to prospective free agents and opposition general managers. https://www.tsn.ca/mlb/mark-shapiro-on-toronto-blue-jays-2024-payroll-i-expect-us-to-stay-in-the-same-area-1.2019966

I think the replay rules need a serious overhaul in the offseason. I absolutely hate the replay challenges on ticky tacky s*** like the "missed stoppages" as there's simply no way to know whether a goal is even going to count any more. On top of that allowing a team to call a timeout and spend several minutes reviewing a potential missed stoppage really grinds my gears as well. Good on Keefe for taking advantage of the ability to do so but I don't like the fact this was allowable in the first place. I much prefer the baseball system where you have a specified time limit to challenge a play, although given the fact that a penalty is assessed on a missed challenge for delay of game perhaps the NHL's time limit could accordingly be a touch longer.

Kim is very similar to Varsho in that the bulk of his value is derived from his glove. Both project in pretty similar fashions as a result as players with great gloves and about league average bats.

The command and 2023 injuries are certainly concerns but the overall results are still off the charts. Despite the inflated BABIP AA opponents only slugged .286 against him as most of the hits were singles.

Just Baseball has a breakdown of Rodriguez's arsenal. https://www.justbaseball.com/mlb/new-blue-jays-pitcher-yariel-rodriguez-an-arsenal-breakdown/

It appears as though the team is nearing the end of their budgetary room, and as such may not have room to add another starter on top of the likely DH addition that's yet to come. I can't say I'd be on board with trading Manoah at this point as it basically forces one of White or Francis into the rotation instead of serving as swing man or depth types. Alek is like a box of chocolates right now in that there's no way to know what you're going to get. Is he baseball's worst starter, does he bounce back to something like mid rotation level, can he gain a few ticks on his fastball and return to being a top of the rotation starter? Something I wonder is whether a partial bounceback to mid rotation level of performance would improve his trade value relative to what it is now. There's always the danger of waiting too long to cut bait for sure but I think it's imperative the club finds out what they actually have before trading him away.

Injury aside I think it's incredibly unlikely that Kikuchi will be pushed out of the rotation to start the season. He was simply too damn good for the bulk of the season to be in any danger of losing his rotation spot.

Wow just saw the same tweet saying Rodriguez had a 75 stuff+ fastball. That's really surprising as it places it firmly in the Ryu category despite sitting mid 90's with 2500 RPM of spin. I came across this as well which implied a 100 stuff+ but of course we can defer to the guy who actually created the metric.

The only tidbit of information I could find regarding overall stuff+ for Rodriguez had him sitting at exactly 100 on the 4 seamer in the WBC, with the slider coming in at 128.

I think Kirk has a similar issue in that the bat to ball skills are so good that he tends to put balls in play he shouldn't have been swinging at to start with. His chase got rate worse while also whiffing less which wasn't exactly a recipe for success.

I can't say I particularly agree with the depth starter options being much better than they were a season ago as most of the guys I listed this season were also primary options last season as well. The biggest issue with last year's group of depth starters was that they all basically suffered from injuries over the winter or during the spring that removed them as possible options to replace Manoah when it became apparent he needed to be sent to the minors. All of Hutchison, Francis, White and Tiedemann suffered from injury which removed them as possible options until mid season at the earliest. Zach Thompson was awful early on in the seaon, and Zulueta forgot how to throw strikes and was moved to the bullpen full time. By the time the injured guys worked their way back fully Ryu was nearly ready for his return and the other options were no longer required to the same degree.

I don't think the depth options are nearly as bad as you claim. The team has the likes of White, Francis, Tiedemann, Parson and Dallas as potential options not including Rodriguez. ZiPS projections for this collection of arms is as follows: White 80 IP 4.34 FIP 0.7 WAR Francis 87 IP 4.57 FIP 1.0 WAR Tiedemann 79 IP 4.24 FIP 1.1 WAR Dallas 104 IP 4.91 FIP 0.9 WAR Parsons 76 IP 5.02 FIP 0.4 WAR

I did some quick scouring of the internet and the the projections I came across were in the 88-93 range for the 2023 season.

The fanbase largely seemed to miss how Varsho turned his season around at exactly the same point Whit's season completely went off the rails.

Whit was a decent low cost pickup for the team but I agree it's simply time to let him sign elsewhere to continue his career. He's a below average player who needed nearly 600 plate appearances to accumulate his 1.5 FWAR last season. He had a very nice first 4 months of the season before the bottom really fell out through August and September as his 44 wRC+ was literally MLB's second worst offensive performer over the final two months of play. The club can easily replace him with the currently available roster options.

The two years of remaining control for Ramirez was the exact reason I was happy that the club scoffed at the Moreno/Martinez rumors as that would have felt like an overpay. Given how badly Ramirez wanted to stay in Cleveland as evidenced by the super club friendly contract it seems he would have been very unhappy to have been traded which very likely would have reduced his desire to sign an extension with the Jays.

I believe the Ramirez/Jays rumors had the Guardians asking for Moreno, Martinez and others in a package. This was before Ramirez signed his contract extension and was prior to the club acquiring Chapman. I believe this immediately after the season where Moreno destroyed AA pitching to the tune of a 192 wRC+ so it's understandable why the team would have been hesitant to trade him at the time

Varsho ended the season on a high note as he produced a 116 wRC+ over his last 50 games, where he was hitting in the lineup at that point is completely immaterial. He more than did his part over the final third of the season, and needs to avoid the deep slumps moving forward.