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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.

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?