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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.

It's kind of hard to blame the dude who received something like 5 plate appearances for the team's lack of playoff success.

That is certainly one possibility depending on how a certain heavyset starter performs in spring training.

Seems like he is a swingman type and is basically a high end depth starter at worst and really good setup man at best.

Rodriguez sat out the entire 2023 season so he likely won't have much of an innings base to take over as a starter straight away.

Manoah was a legitimately very good starting pitcher in his first 1.5 seasons. He may not have been a true top of the rotation ace type but he was absolutely still a good top of the rotation pitcher, just more realistically a good number 2 starter. The ERA numbers, particularly were very unlikely to be recreated as the FIP/xERA numbers trailed by a full run, but even after this correction he was still a great contributor to the rotation. His 2022 3.30 xERA result placed him 16th in MLB among qualified starters, the 3.35 FIP placed him 19th, the 2.23 BB/9 placed him 24th etc. The stuff numbers suggested some level of correction to the results moving forward as he's never really featured anything other than average stuff across the board, and as more of a pitch to contact type who relied on inducing soft contact there was also the possibility that the shift ban was going to further compound his issues against left handed hitters. Having said that I just don't think there is anything analytically that would have suggested the complete implosion that Alek suffered in 2023.

Yesh I don't know how the team will carry on without a 1.7 war catcher and 2 win corner outfielder.

Manoah also needs to regain some of the lost pep on his fastball as he's basically turned into a soft tosser that relied on command for the handful of good starts he provided.

Yeah that's always an option. The club would need to be ready to make a quick pivot if the alternative 5th starter gets lit up at the start of the season no matter who in manning the position.

And trailed him by 40 points in xwOBA. Methinks this isn't quite an apples to apples comparison here.

I think there is something to the arm/shoulder troubles that led to a lot of the downturn he experienced this season. I would hope that he was receiving bad advise from his agent or some other influence regarding the refusal to report to AAA, but ultimately he's going to need to atone for his sin. This starts with his teammates as they are the ultimate arbiters of whether he's fully welcomed back into the fold. After the giant slap to the face to his teammates and the organization as a whole Alek is going to have to earn his way back into the good graces.

I expect a bounceback season from Manoah but it remains to be seen what his future ceiling represents. It could be tough to fully recreate the levels of success that he enjoyed in his first few seasons, but even becoming a mid rotation level of starter would still provide a nice benefit to the club. I recall a rumor awhile ago that Alek suffered some sort of offseason injury that affected his ability to maintain his conditioning, but this is obviously suspect as a shoulder issue wouldn't have prevented Alek from keeping hitting the treadmill as that primarily involves the lower half of the body. I think the offseason shoulder issue messed up his mechanics and he never fully rediscovered his delivery. The command should be cleaned up once he squares away the mechanical issues, but the issue of drastically reduced stuff remains a huge concern. There is the ever present low hanging fruit explanation that he got too fat to pitch, but a shoulder issue is a far bigger indicator of the huge massive in stuff. I hope we finally hear his side of the story as it seems he very well may be convinced he was suffering from some sort of injury related issue.