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I certainly wouldn't have projected Varsho as a 5-6 win player, but I don't think there should have been a lot of issues with projecting him in the 4-5 win range where he had settled in as a regular in Arizona. I fully agree that ultimately it's Atkins that should hold the most level of accountability for the collective underperformance of so much of the team's supposed core. Some of this could be fitness related in the case of the heavier set of players in Manoah, Kirk and Vlad, but then some of this is also a baffling inability for the team to hit as a collective in Rogers Center in 2023. The home numbers really sunk the overall offensive season for the likes of Varsho and Vlad in particular as they were much better hitters on the road. The organization needs to determine how to help these players perform up to the level that their inherent talent levels should allow. The overwhelming majority of these players more than likely return in 2024 and will be key to whether the team can compete in the remaining few years in the current window.

Can't say I agree with you here. I don't think it's all all unreasonable to have expected at least semi similar production from established players compared to prior seasons. The combination of Vlad, Springer, Kirk, Espinal, Manoah and Varsho combined for a drop of approximately 14-15 WAR compared to 2022. Springer is the only guy who is old enough to have expected a chance for his production to have completely fallen off at this point, and perhaps Espinal won't ever recreate his previous success but the rest of these guys should be in the the prime of their careers. If the team has any kind of shot whatsoever to compete in 2024-2025 they need to have bounceback seasons from at least some of these players.

Oh don't worry the sense of grandeur hasn't gone unnoticed.

The key moving forward for the team to reach it's potential for the existing players to play up to their capabilities. Atkins assembled what could have reasonably been expected to challenge for a division title.

From what I can gather long distance running is becoming far less common for starting pitchers in place of training with more emphasis on explosiveness.

It looks to me like he may have been employing more of a power lifter type of fitness routine with the diet to match.

I don't think Manoah's weight issues were due to necessarily slacking off in the gym. He posted plenty of videos of him hitting the weights hard in the last offseason and that's likely why he took so much offence to criticisms about him not working hard.

That's assuming he's even from this planet to start with.

Technically you are correct that Belt primarily faced right handed pitching, but given how right handed dominant the top of the Jays lineup was other teams didn't deploy left handed pitching very much against the Jays so this wasn't a huge factor. Belt appeared in 103 games in 2023. He missed time due to various ailments including separate injured list stints for a hamstring issue (11 days) and back issue (approx. 23 days). He also missed time due to a few stomach bugs and shorter term ailments, to a total of about 40 games or so. The rest of the games he missed were load management and/or lefty starter related. Let's surmise that Belt didn't miss time due to health related issues, and he would have appeared in approximately 140 games for the team if you assume the same ratio of appearances when he was healthy. In the games he appeared in he averaged 3.92 plate appearances per game, just a half plate appearance per game below regular full time starters for the team such as Bo (4.45 plate appearances per game). In other words you would expect Belt to lose 1 plate appearance every two games he appeared in based on being the strong part of a platoon. Go back to the theoretical 140 game appearance for Belt, and at 3.92 plate appearances per game he would have received 548 plate appearances total vs 683 for Springer and 684 for Vlad, not a dramatic difference for a platoon bat all things considered. Belt faced left handed pitching in 39 out of his 404 plate appearances, or 9.7% of his total. Compare that to the guys who typically hit around Belt in the lineup like Bo (17.6%) and Vlad (18.1%) and you can easily deduce that Belt was nearly a full time player when he was healthy and available to play. As previously mentioned the Blue Jays top of the lineup was very righty heavy most of the season with the likes of Springer, Bo and Vlad hitting in the top 3-4 spots most of the season so there really weren't many opportunities for opposing managers to deploy left handed relievers against Belt, really limiting the potential impact of his lefty/righty splits. In 90% of Belt's plate appearances he had the platoon advantage, and he excelled in this split to the tune of a 146 WRC+. Keep in mind that he had a tremendously bad start to the season, and didn't really get his bat going until early May. From May 1 until the end of the season Belt was a 160 WRC+ bat against right handed pitching. So for 5/6 of the season Belt was 60% more effective offensively against right handed pitching in a split where he had the platoon advantage 90% of the time and was typically deployed in 86% of the games when he was healthy and available. In the small amount of plate appearances against left handed pitching during this same 5 month time frame Belt more than held his own as well as he was able to produce a 111 WRC+.

Any type of analysis related to the Blue Jays is obviously held to different standards vs the rest of baseball with this guy .

Belt was a 138 WRC+ bat over the season and hit 19 home runs in about 400 plate appearances. You have very high standards for what constitutes a difference maker.

For one season that could work, but he's one of the best short stop defenders in all of baseball so it would be tough to not keep him at short stop.

I certainly like the idea of signing Hoskins and he perfectly fits the bounce back/short term type of deal this front office has had a lot of success with. I'd be down with trading for the likes of Adames (the casuals of the fanbase would absolutely hate him as he's the infield version of Varsho) and Fraley but those theoretical trade offers feel pretty light on the Blue Jays end.

Bo hit .500 in the two game playoff sample this season. Some extra base hits would have been nice but he certainly held up his end of the bargain.

The Jays came to the playoffs with high end bats in Bo, Vlad and Belt. They had one of MLB's stronger top 3's in their rotation, and one of MLB's deepest bullpens. They perfectly fit your criteria for a team with a chance to succeed.

This is a bit of an unfair way to frame this as this particular player also served time as a DH this season and the 0.4 doesn't measure his entire contribution. It's not like his actual season WAR total of 1.0 is anything to get excited about either but it's not like he only received plate appearances while playing first base. This same player is two seasons removed from an MVP caliber 6.3 FWAR season and a single season removed from a 2.9 FWAR season. His underlying metrics for the 2023 season much more closely resemble the MVP type season vs the 2022 season as well. Imagine if he were DFA'd/traded for pennies on the dollar and made a few minor swing tweaks (this is likely all he needs to do to return to being a monster at the plate) and then returned to producing 150 WRC+ seasons for a different team. How would you feel about that?

The thing you seem to be ignoring is that Moreno barely provided a league average bat in 2023 as he ended up at 103 WRC+. It took a 6 week hot streak to even get him to that point, so his future offensive potential is far from guaranteed.

Moreno spent several seasons slapping singles as his primary offensive contribution. There was no guarantee he was ever going to produce reasonable power numbers at the plate in the future as he had an overwhelmingly ground ball heavy profile, middling exit velocity numbers and very few of his fly balls left the park. Each team in this trade was seemingly making a respective gamble on whether the power would eventually return to his game which would ultimately determine his long term offensive upside. I would love to go back in time and see Moreno avoid the hand injury he suffered in his AA breakout season as this may have been what sapped his power for several calendar years afterwards, but I still have no issue with the Varsho/Moreno trade as it occurred. The Blue Jays were acquiring an elite defender with a league average bat who would likely provide 4 or more wins in center field while trading a prospect who was one of three MLB ready catchers where they only had spots for two. The team enjoyed MLB's most valuable catching tandem in 2022 so it would be perfectly defensible to trade any of the three. I think the greatest error was acquiring one of baseball's best outfield defenders and sticking him in left field as that seems to be his least effective outfield position defensively which was bore out by the numbers.

The people that complaining about "buying high" act like its a bad thing to trade for players who are coming off successful seasons.

I'm not the gambling type so I'll pass on that offer. If you remember this 10 years from now feel free to come here to gloat about it.

Get out of here with this nonsense about "buying high". Varsho was only a regular for 1.5 seasons in MLB, and was on average well over a 4+ win player in each of these. This was a player that displayed himself to be a well above average major league contributor and also produced great numbers as a minor league player so there was also hope he could improve at the plate.

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.