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That's exactly why it's such a massive stretch to suggest that Parsons will be starting games in May. The team would need to suffer catastrophic levels of injuries to the rotation and depth options for this to even be a possibility.

In place of who exactly? Despite Manoah being baseball's worst starter last season the club waited until the final day of the season to give Parsons a major league start so he can't be particularly high up on the totem pole of depth starter options.

And options as well so he could be shuffled back and forth as needed.

The initial accuser made the s*** up about Bauer but there will still other accusers interviewed by MLB. Bauer was never completely exonerated as his suspension was reduced rather than completely thrown out, so while he appears to have been not guilty of the accusations from the primary accuser there were others who testified against him as well with very similar accusations. This is far from a black and white case at this point and given the sealed nature of the investigation we very well may never discover the full truth of the reasoning behind his suspension being upheld.

With performances in line with expectations with the power on the 2023 roster I think the Blue Jays should have hit 15-20 more home runs than they did if not more. I have suspicions the team approach was off last season which led to some of the power outage compared to projections. The 6 consecutive post season losses are comprised on 3 completely different teams which lost due to different reasons. I'd view these as more of the 3 separate series losses in 2 games a piece vs viewing this as a singular entity. For instance the 2020 likely wouldn't have made the playoffs in the first place over a full 162 game season so it really shouldn't be lumped in with the losses in later seasons.

It sounds like arbitration hearings still largely rely on traditional stats and Vlad's were still decent last season.

Yeah given the constant thorn he was in the commissioner's backside (admittedly largely deserved) it's not terribly surprising he's not receiving any favors from MLB.

What do you think should have been done differently with the Bass situation? It appears to me that the organization went out of their way in trying to save the guy's job, but then Bass signed his own death warrant when he doubled down on the type of comments that got him in trouble in the first place. If other players want to respect a player's right to openly promote bigotry I really don't know what you would expect for a team's management to do to smooth this over. The fact that nobody else in baseball was willing to sign him for the rest of the season shows how much of a headache Bass created for the team all of his own accord. Manoah reportedly refused to report to AAA later in the season, and I can't see how that's any fault of the general manager. Maybe you can explain that to me what should have been done differently. Should Manoah have been suspended without pay or something? That certainly would have sent a definitive message to the player and his management but with talk of an already fractured relationship that would have been throwing gasoline onto the fire. To my eyes the timing of the early Berrios pull was entirely in the hands of John Schneider. Both Atkins and Schneider have been saying essentially the same thing in the media so I don't particularly understand the outrage placed at the feet of Atkins for this. There seemed to be a general organizational strategy put in place to pull Berrios at an opportune moment to get the Twins left handed bats out of the game, and Schneider implemented the switch very early in the game. I can agree that there should have been better communication with the players with regards to this scheme, but I'm not sure who the responsibility for this particular bit of communication should fall upon. I'd expect this is more of a responsibility of the coaching staff vs front office but I'm not that familiar with the inner workings of a professional baseball team with this particular issue.

Because they saved a few million bucks? Given your obsession over budgetary matters I guess that checks out fully.

I don't think Atkins really actually receives a ton of praise on here, it's more that he's defended against some of the criticism that he receives for s*** that's ultimately out of his control. Like how half of the team simultaneously had bad offensive seasons in 2023, that s***'s bad luck beyond his control. Or that his team was bad offensively but primarily only at Roger's Center. It's pretty hard to blame the GM for an almost random occurrence of his team not being able to perform with RISP at home. Or the criticism that he didn't add an offensive difference maker at last season's trade deadline, except the issue with that particular bit of criticism is that no difference makers were even traded or seemingly available in the first place beyond massive overpays. He's made his share of mistakes along the way particularly in his early years when the team was being torn down, but for the most part he's been a solid GM who makes good trades and free agent signings during the team's competitive phase. There is criticism over the team trading prospects when there was a statement that the team wanted "waves of prospects", but for the most part the right players have been traded as very view of the higher rated prospects who were traded have amounted to anything anyway, and for the most part the players who were brought back in trade for higher ranked prospects have been key contributors and the trades have been easily worth the price that was paid (Berrios, Chapman etc.). The organization needs to do a better job attaining above average amateur talent as the lack of potential impact players is the primary issue with the farm system at present. The lack of home grown starting pitching is a primary concern and is largely why I would have no interest in seeing the team trade away the likes of Tiedemann and Manoah as seeing each of them become regular rotation members is key to sustained contention as the rotation is eating up a huge chunk of the available payroll.

I think the 2021 was very comparable to the 2015 team in terms of overall talent. It will forever haunt me that team missed the playoffs by a single game as it was an offensive juggernaut with solid defense and pitching.

Do you actually think Bo would agree to a clause that stipulates he's going to be forced to move to second base in the future? The club has zero leverage with Bo given how close he is to free agency at this point.

This deal basically looks fair for both sides to me. I'm just not seeing this as being particularly team friendly especially given how many opt outs Witt has after 2030.

Witt's deal might end up with him earning $378 million over his career so it's not exactly the most team friendly deal in the history of the sport. On the low end he's guaranteed $289 million so is this even very team friendly to start with?

They'll need to avoid signing sons of ex major leaguers if they are to have a chance to lock them up to team friendly deals.

I have strong suspicions that Manoah's season was derailed by an offseason shoulder issue so the rotation essentially lost a key member for most of the season as a result. Of the other rotation members I'm most concerned about regression from Bassitt but this is more due to his advancing age as he's going to be 35 years old this season. As has been mentioned by Terminator in a different thread the team has better depth options this season compared to a year ago so hopefully they can weather the storm if any rotation members miss large chunks of time. I'm cautiously optimistic about Mitch White and want to see if he can build on the strong finish to his AAA season. I think Tiedemann likely debuts this season if the need arises and he's anything but AAA fodder. I simply don't think it's reasonable to assume that all of the members of the offense that had disappointing seasons are going to do the same thing in 2024 as most of these guys are young/in their primes. They all have enough of a track record to indicate that they are capable of more than what they did in 2023 based on previous levels of success.

Hopefully he can handle the outfield without resembling a deer in headlights ala early career Gurriel.

I didn't personally see anything to indicate that Schneider was below average at second base last season. The metrics back up my eye test as well with an even 0 DRS, 5.0 UZR/150 and 3 OAA in 182 innings of work. His arm strength is rather low but plays just fine at second base.

The team basically needs to figure out why the team didn't perform in the clutch at home in the Rogers Centre. The team was a good offense on the road but had a puzzling lack of hitting at home and were negatively affected by the renovation much more than the opposition. I don't know why there is this assumption that the rotation is suddenly going to suck. Sure they might suffer from several injuries but all of the returning starters have essentially spotless injury histories so it's not outside the realm of possibility that the rotation continues to be a strength for the club. I think the offseason has been largely underwhelming up to this point. I wouldn't necessarily paint it as "horrible" but I certainly wouldn't complain if another bat were to be added.

So I take it you have essentially zero faith that the underperformers from 2023 are going to experience any sort of bounceback. The only above average offensive contributor that's been lost is Matt Chapman, but I think a the very least some of what is lost from his likely departure will be countered by a full season from Davis Schneider.

I think Vlad's wrist had a sizeable effect on his overall results last season. He was on fire for the first 5-6 weeks before the wrist issue popped up and the results from that point forward took a nosedive. He very well may have some mechanical issues that require ironing out but I think the talent still remains for consistent 140-150 wRC+ seasons. It's interesting that you mention Mookie Betts as a comparable player. We can directly compare their early career numbers. Betts Age/wRC+/Comparison to Vlad at same age 21 129 +19 22 120 -46 23 136 +3 24 107 -11 Vlad Age/wRC+/Comparison to Betts at same age 21 110 -19 22 166 +46 23 133 -3 24 118 +11 Vlad's numbers up to his age 24 season compare very nicely to Bett's early career numbers. Betts obviously had the sizeable overall value advantage due to the elite defensive and baserunning contributions but offensively Vlad has held up nicely in this comparison in his early career. Betts exploded for a career best 185 wRC+ in his age 25 season so Vlad is certainly going to be hard pressed to keep up at this point.

The guy still has generational natural talent but it's up to Vlad and the coaching staff to determine how to fully unlock the talent to produce more consistent results. It appears as though his wrist and knees have caused issues at times so hopefully he can alleviate some of this with his offseason training.

He's more of a haterade aficionado.

He pretty much leads the brigade in all of the overly reactionary whining sessions around here with the barrage of surface level evaluations.