max silver

Nowhere close. Unless you just started paying attention to the Blue Jays in the last few years I don't know how you could even suggest this to be the case.

Why is it being framed as luck when having success signing value priced bounce back options out of free agency? This front office has had a ton of success on these types of signings, such as Semien, Ray, and now Belt and Kiermaier as well. It's too bad they weren't able to get Semien signed long term but he's the only one of the bunch I would have been interested in anyway.

That sounds suspiciously similar to your tact when it comes to evaluating the offseason moves of the Blue Jays front office. Free agent signings that were massive hits such as Kiermaier and Belt were deemed to be "lucky", but then returning roster players who massively underperformed even the most modest of projections were deemed to be miscalculations by the front office.

You spelt spelled wrong.

Davis Schneider and his 176 WRC+ has entered the chat.

George Springer came into the season with a 134 career WRC+. It you honestly thought he was going to suddenly regress to a league average bat in 2023 then good for you I guess.

There is a bit of a misconception that Moreno is a fast runner, but in reality it seems he is just fast for a catcher. MLB average speed is listed at 27 ft/second, where Moreno was rated at 27.2 ft/second in 2023. Danny Jansen for comparisons sake is 27.1 ft/second.

Why don't you go ahead and find a post where I disregarded a 1500 plate appearance/4 year sample in favor of 70 at bats. I'm waiting.

There is simply no way to frame most of Moreno's rookie season as anything but underwhelming unless you are a member of the cult of batting average for evaluating offensive performane. The question remains what Moreno is moving forward. There is a massive dose of recency bias being applied to Moreno to portray him as a middle of the order monster bat based on a small sample of at bats while choosing to completely ignore the several year stretch where he supplied essentially no power at the plate.

Moreno's performance was actually pretty poor for the better part of the season and was essentially saved by a 6 week hot stretch with the bat to end the season. As late as August 16th Moreno was having a really mediocre season overall as he sported an 83 WRC+ and 0.5 FWAR at that point of the season. He ended the season on a bit of a heater as he produced a 144 WRC+ and 1.2 FWAR over the final 6 weeks of the season. I think it's really too early to tell what the "real" version of Moreno will be at the plate moving forward. You could say the final 6 weeks is sustainable moving forward, but that's far from a given as MLB history is littered with young players (and veterans for that matter) who have hot streaks at the plate that they aren't able to reproduce in the future.

Only 1 out of 3 of these is true, and just barely true at that. Since Varsho became an MLB regular in 2021 he's been a much better defender and baserunner than Kiermaier, and they are only a few percentage points away from each other with the bat. From 2021-2023 Varsho received 1488 plate appearances, produced an overall offensive output of 97 WRC+, 9.2 total FWAR (3.4 FWAR/550 PA), 11.2 BsR (4.14 BsR/550 PA). From 2021-2023 Kiermaier received 1041 plate appearances, produced an overall offensive output of 100 WRC+, 5.7 total FWAR (3.01 FWAR/550 PA) , 2.7 BsR (1.43 BsR/550 PA). Varsho has handily outperformed Kiermaier defensively in center field, and it's actually not particularly close on a rate basis. From 2021-2023 Varsho provided 21 DRS and 19 OAA in center field in 1019 innings. This equates to 20.6 DRS/1000 innings and 18.5 OAA/1000 innings. From 2021-2023 Kiermaier provided 21 DRS and 25 OAA in center field in 2358 innings. This equates to 8.9 DRS/1000 innings and 10.6 OAA/1000 innings. When comparing the two in relative value expected salary also needs to be factored in. I've seen estimates for Varsho to receive a $5.5 million arbitration based salary in 2024, vs Kiermaier who will likely be looking at a similar $9+ million salary for 2024. Moving forward Varsho is almost certainly going to be cheaper, provide more value in the field defensively, more value on the bases, close to the same value offensively, and be much likelier to remain healthy and available to play every day. By keeping Kiermaier the team would essentially be forcing Varsho to a corner outfield spot where he becomes far less valuable, and spending more money that would be far wiser to allocate to other needs vs rostering two elite center field defenders who need to be sheltered a bit vs top left handed pitching.

There are far too many variables that are impossible to account for to make this particular statistic of any use. For instance, did the pitcher shake off the catcher to get the pitch he wanted to throw? Does the catcher still get credited for this if the pitcher has success? Did the pitcher miss his spot and give up hard contact? Does the catcher get penalized for this? Does this statistic account for quality of opposition? Does this statistic compare Moreno to other catchers around baseball, or is it essentially only comparing him against other catchers on his team only?

The return on that investment wasn't exactly stellar to say the least. If I recall correctly the Astros missed the playoffs completely and Clemens was torched in the post season in his final season with the Yankees. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for this strategy.

That would be a little tricky to sign a guy based on what you thought he might be able to do in the playoffs vs the likely expected projections you would receive in a full 162 game season. Prior to signing with the Phillies he mashed in two of his extended playoff outings, was mediocre in 2 others and downright awful in the last remaining post season.

I understand the various defensive metrics just fine thank you very much. On the other hand I can't help it if you are not smart enough to understand my previous post. Baseball Reference's defensive system is so slanted in Moreno's favor that it may as well have been set up by Gabriel Moreno himself. That particular system has massive flaws in that become glaringly apparent as soon as you start to break down their methodology. It's entirely possible to quantify the value of catcher framing in this day and age, and there are multiple systems which do so. These are all in agreement that Moreno is a substandard framer, ranging from nearly worst in baseball from Baseball Prospectus (2nd worst framing rate among regular catchers) , to really bad by DRS (27th out of 38 catchers with minimum 500 innings caught) and bad by Statcast (26th out of 41 catchers with minimum 500 innings caught). At the same time more than half of Moreno's accumulated DRS is due to their catchers ERA adjustment. This is because pitchers on his team had a lower ERA with him behind the plate vs the other catchers that were employed by the Diamondbacks. Moreno caught approximately 60% of the innings for the Diamondbacks. I'm calling straight up ******** to assign 11 DRS to Moreno because his pitchers had a higher ERA in the 40% of the team's innings that other catchers caught. I went back 6 years in Fangraphs to check the leaders in this stat over this time frame. Moreno ranks 4th among catchers with a minimum of 1000 innings caught based on a single season of play. This is a statistic that may as well be random as that would have just as much actual meaning.

Baseball Reference's numbers for Moreno in particular need to be taken with a massive grain of salt. It doesn't include framing but instead directly incorporates catchers ERA into it's calculations. I have a very hard time believing that it is possible in any fashion to break down a catchers ERA component into some sort of meaningful run saving component. There's simply no way to quantify pitch calling without being able to know what the result would have been if a different pitch had been called. By simultaneously ignoring Moreno's framing deficiencies and assigning Moreno the highest catcher ERA component in all of MLB it paints a much different picture than would otherwise be presented. If I am understanding this correctly, Moreno is essentially being credited with 24 DRS by Baseball Prospectus because he isn't penalized for substandard framing. If you add framing back into the equation, he still has an MLB leading 20 DRS behind the plate. Take away the bogus catcher ERA adjustment and this drops by over 50% to 9 DRS. This has a dramatic effect on his overall rWAR for the season, as by adding back in the DRS framing component and removing the voodoo catcher ERA adjustment you are left with about 1.16 DWAR vs the 3.1 he was credited with. This drops the overall season bWAR value from the impressive 4.3 to a much more pedestrian 2.36.

This post is best when imagining it read out loud in Ralph Wiggum's voice.

Kirk and Moreno's seasons largely mirrored each other to a remarkable degree. Each guy had a pretty disappointing start to the season and produced much better at the plate as the season went on. Kirk never really looked fully locked in at the plate all season compared to previous seasons so hopefully he can rediscover his previous form in seasons to come. First Half Kirk 77 WRC+ 0.4 FWAR Moreno 78 WRC+ 0.4 FWAR Second Half Kirk 118 WRC+ 1.3 FWAR Moreno 131 WRC+ 1.3 FWAR

Automated strike zone is likely years away from the sounds of things as Manfred has strongly intimated that a challenge system will likely be implemented at first to avoid making framing irrelevant.

And I hate whiney ****s that do nothing but bitch and whine at every single opportunity. Kirk murdered the minor leagues on his short stint down there and produced one of the finer halves of baseball by a catcher in the organization's history. He's shown the ability to be one of MLB's best hitters (not just for catchers) over several months when he's fully locked in at the plate, and earned himself a gold glove nomination as one of baseball's best overall defenders behind the plate. He produced xWOBa's of .344 in his short stint in 2020, and .373 in 2021. The guy has shown he has tons of ability with the stick at every step along the way, but of course you are going to act like he's baseball's worst player because he had a down year with the bat for the first time since he debuted in rookie ball.

It seems like there's a very good chance that Arenado bounces back with better health next season as he reportedly suffered from several injury related issues this past season. https://theathletic.com/4974733/2023/10/18/mlb-gold-glove-finalists-list/

I'm not overly worried yet with Barriera as he's naturally a super skinny dude, so he is far less likely to be caught in a constant battle against fatness like all of the other dudes you've mentioned. Those guys are all naturally "big boned" and as such are going to need to really work at keeping themselves in shape. It's like the Jays have invented a modern baseball trend that others are soon to emulate and is sure to take over from Moneyball as the next big thing. The Blue Jays are employing the FatBall plan where you target as many overly chunky players as possible. No other MLB organization has as many of these guys permeating their systems, the minors for the team feature dad bod prospects like Rainer Nunez and Peyton Williams. It was a real shocker a few seasons ago when the team pivoted away from fat guy extraordinaire Rowdy Tellez. That guy was so rambunctious as a toddler that his grandmother gave him a nickname that became the thing of legends many years later.

I don't think there were nearly 30-40 pounds of pure fat, it looks like there was plenty of muscle gain as well as his lower half in particular thickened up a lot. I recall reading an interview where his offseason plan was to bulk up/gain strength as the guy was a beanpole coming out of high school. It's all too easy to pack on fat pounds when trying to gain good weight, but he's young enough it should be pretty easy to lose the extra pounds without too much difficulty.

I don't think his gaining a few too many offseason pounds directly correlates to him suffering from a shoulder injury.

The Jays have been fishing in the deep waters of free agency in years past as they were reportedly in on the bidding for the likes of Gerrit Cole, Corey Seager, Boegarts etc. I have a hard time seeing this organization ponying up the $400/500+ million required for the likes of Ohtani though as they have yet to pay truly top dollar for a free agent, settling in more in the slightly lower tier for players like Springer and Gausman.