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You simply can't deny you've been stanning hard for all 3 guys so it's not exactly easy to tell you are joking there.

When I pointed out this exact same type of post previously I'm accused of "twisting your words" somehow, yet here we are again. Instead of acquiring Goldschmidt who is still a very productive player, you'd rather sign the team go dumpster diving and sign washed up guys, one of which is suffering from some extreme anxiety that he's barely been able to step onto a major league field for several seasons and his last and only season as a good player was in 2019.

I get the impression you would rather give yourself a swirly in a freshly soiled toilet bowl vs giving Ross Atkins any kind of credit for the successful moves that he's made. These are constantly framed as "lucky", or in this case happened only because Atkins busted out several bags of hundred dollar bills in the free agent meetings instead of being the result of a positive negotiation where a mutually agreeable price was determined.

You're like the poster child for revisionist history. I can only guess you are referencing Stroman and Donaldson, who each had massive egos and simply weren't the type of players the new regime wanted around the young core when it was brought up.

The Edwin and Bautista deals were great timing on the part of AA to strike before either of those guys were able to fully establish themselves as premier sluggers who could command relative fortunes in free agency. Each of these guys was like found money to have them eventually emerge as legitimate middle of the order premier bats after relatively floundering for their respective careers up to that point. The only player I can think of that was maybe comparable that the current front office attained during their tenure was Teoscar. Signing him to the type of extension that they gave Grichuk would have been a tremendous value signing, but who knows if Atkins was gunshy after extending Grichuk too soon or they simply didn't view Teoscar as the type of player they wanted to keep long term.

Thankfully the bigger mistake signings such as Morales and Roark were of the shorter term variety and nothing that greatly hamstrung the organization financially for long term pain.

It would have been great for sure if AA chose to stay. Having the type of budget Shapiro was able to wrangle out of Rogers would have been tremendous, plus having another baseball mind above him may have ultimately been a good thing to avoid some of the more questionable deals that he convinced himself to go ahead with.

Jesus man read what I actually wrote before you start bitching. The current front office has not sold the farm at any point in their tenure unlike Anthopoulos who emptied the cupboards before he left the organization. There's a dramatic difference between trading a handful of prospects per year to supplement the MLB roster vs what happened at the 2015 trade deadline.

It would be great for once if there wasn't an AL East team with a historic type of start to the first half of the season. Both the Yankees and Rays got off to unbelievably good starts the last few years.

Anthopoulos traded 11 minor league players at the 2015 trade deadline, literally purging the system of most of it's better pitching prospects on the way out the door. He nearly completely emptied the cupboard for the group taking over the front office. The Blue Jays under Shapiro have not done anything remotely similar to this type of shopping spree in their time running the ship. This latest trade deadline saw the team move 4 prospects out in trade to bolster the roster. For the most part the correct prospects have been shipped out in trade, with the bulk of these traded players being on the verge of losing their value due to lack of performance or being fringe 40 man roster candidates in a system in need of consolidation due to upcoming offseason roster additions.

The Blue Jays went from being good in 2016, were bad and quietly rebuilding behind the scenes without tanking from 2017-2019, and started paying top free agents after the 2019 off season. They turned the organization around in the span of essentially 3 years. There has been a window of success that's lasted 4 years, with at least 2 more likely years of relative success to come. I think the drafting has been decent for the most part as the team has graduated a lot of prospects over the years and used a lot in trade as well, but the biggest thing that's been lacking is impact players acquired through the draft. You are missing and/or ignoring the fact that the Orioles tanked REALLY hard from 2018-2021, losing well over 100 games in 3 out of 4 seasons. As such were able to draft near the top of the draft for a sustained period of time where the picks are far less to bust. On top of that they also had the benefit of receiving competitive balance picks giving them more picks and more importantly a higher overall pool of money. That doesn't take away from the fact that they've made a lot of great picks during this time, but it definitely helps when you can select close to sure thing stars in the top few spots of the draft. By the time 2026-2028 rolls around we shall see if the player development complex is fully paying dividends and if the more recent drafts churn out more successful MLB reinforcements. I like the chances of more of the draftees reaching their full potential in the future given the inherent advantage of having a top tier development complex.

It's hard to deny there was a definite downturn in draft results after the rather successful 2016 draft, particularly with regards to high profile misses in the first round. I don't know it's is due to a change in drafting philosophy or personnel changes but I am a huge fan of the last 3 drafts in particular. 2021 added Hoglund who was a key piece in the Chapman acquisition as well as potential rotation pieces in Tiedemann and Dallas. 2022 saw the addition of pieces like Barriera and Roden who is moving really quickly up the system, and 2023 saw Nimmala added as a really high ceiling prospect.

The player development complex only fully opened up for use a few years ago. It appears that it is starting to bear fruit given the recent wave of players working their way through the system.

I recall the scouting director at the time was an AA hire that was replaced after the 2016 draft or thereabouts. If Atkins doesn't get credit for drafting Bo then by that same logic he should take none of the blame for the terrible Zeuch selection either. If Atkins wanted somebody other than Bo that badly then he simply would have selected the other player. This is nothing more than a pile of nonsense spouted by Atkins detractors to assign credit for a great draft pick to somebody else instead of Atkins.

The 2016 draft featured Atkins at the helm so I fail to see how he shouldn't get any credit for ultimately selecting Bo. The AA regime should get very close to none of the credit for developing anybody on the current roster as he was long gone by the time most of these guys even made it past rookie ball.

That's not entirely fair given how many home grown players populate the roster along with having several players on the cusp of graduating the system. There have been a lot of high profile first round busts but this has at least been mitigated to a degree as some of these guys have been shipped out to supplement the MLB roster.

Weren't you the guy who was constantly grousing about how the Blue Jays should have signed Gibson instead of Bassitt for much of the second half of the season? Now you are saying he's be fine as a number 5 starter on a pitching starved team like the Cardinals when he was supposed to be better than the Blue Jays number 3 starter in one of baseball's best rotations. Great consistency dude, keep it up.

They can always circle back to Chapman later on if/when his demands come down to earth.

I would hope the team has a better read than we do on whether Manoah's 2023 issues are something that's fixable or if he's ultimately cooked. The recent interview with Gausman strongly suggests that Alek had some sort of shoulder issue in the spring that wasn't fully resolved before the regular season started, and I also recall there was some sort of issue that was behind how heavy Alek got in the offseason. Then there were the PRP injections in his throwing arm which Alek received at his own discretion. It would be nice if we heard a peep from Manoah and/or his agent to hear his side of the story at some point as all we've gotten throughout are various whispers about the messy situation.

I'd really like to see the club give Manoah a shot to rebuild some value if the intention is to eventually trade him. I get the feeling he's going to be ultra motivated this offseason to improve and would hate to see a massively negative value trade made mostly out of spite.

Maybe you aren't aware of this but there is more than 1 time zone in this world, so maybe I'm not posting at 2AM. Besides that, I'm not sure why this is of such concern to you if I'm up late on a weekend. Even my mother wouldn't be so concerned about that so I guess I should be thankful for your concern. I guess I just noticed that you kept railing on for signing primarily s***** hitters to boost the offense lately that I may have gotten confused about what you wanted the team to do. Seriously, the last 3 signings I recall you advocating for were for the likes of the 3 I listed, including a passionate defense about signing Josh Donaldson. I don't know if Atkins can afford to take many if any gambles on unlikely bounceback candidates this offseason given the pressing need to add offense to the lineup. He's done a good job signing short term free agents of this nature but all of the guys he signed had typically experienced only one rough season, including the likes of Semien, Belt and Kiermaier.

I don't know if a baseball related forum is the right place to discuss the weird fantasies that you keep posting on here.

So let's see if I have this right. For a team that was really offensively challenged in 2023 some of your preferred free agent targets include the likes of Josh Donaldson, Joey Votto and Austin Meadows.

If he wasn't the best reliever then why you did you say he was "like" the team's best reliever? I have no qualms with saying Cimber was among the best relievers on the team in those two seasons, but Romano was a guy who was arguably ong MLB's best relievers vs a dude who was second best in a weak bullpen.

Did Jordan Romano not exist or something?