max silver

No different than how people are dreaming on Frasso.

I've had enough of the team taking flyers on players having terrible seasons around the trade deadline. We've been subjected to the likes of Brad Hand, Jonathan Villar, Jackie Bradely Jr. etc. For once I'd like to see players brought in who are in the midst of a solid season instead of rolling the dice on guys hoping for a bounce back. It worked out fine with Merrifield last season but this has been more the exception.

I'm guessing the premise here is that Chapman would be the lower cost acquisition compared to Arenado or something of that nature.

A huge portion of the fanbase simply isn't aware there are good things happening in the minor leagues this season. I really think that the injuries to key guys has overshadowed the success stories, particularly on the pitching side. When everyone is back healthy the AA staff is stacked with interesting rotation prospects. The highest ceiling guy is obviously Tiedemann who flashes the makings of a front of the rotation stud, but there are other interesting names like Chad Dallas and Trenton Wallace up from High A Vancouver after very successful first halves. Kloffenstein has been a very nice bounceback story as he's found new levels of success early on, and Robberse is said to be the smartest pitcher in the organization.

Who would be on the major league roster instead of White? Pop hasn't found his form yet after injury, and aside from his there's a load of AAAA types including Hatch, Thornton, Jay Jackson etc. It's not like the team is swimming in more deserving roster candidates at the moment. Had Bass not gotten himself cancelled the White decision would have been a lot harder to make and may have forced the organization to trade or release him, but for now White has actually done a decent enough job in the role he currently finds himself in.

What does the calculation look like for calculating base stealing runs? Is it something really simple like =/- 0.25 runs based on failure or success?

So the baserunning metric will only be measuring baserunning effects during balls in play and not during steal attempts?

Wow those are both great bits of news, I am very much looking forward to checking out these new metrics tomorrow morning.

Will there be a Statcast based outfield throwing metric introduced at some point in the future? The range only metric is nice, but unfortunately it doesn't portray a complete measure of outfield defence when throwing isn't part of the equation. On a similar note, do you envision a Statcast based WAR metric eventually being introduced? Perhaps a baserunning metric as well?

I wasn't aware it was possible to review plays in this fashion, this is incredibly cool stuff. Does the OAA system directly account for fielder positioning? This particular play is rated as a 99% probability catch, but based on how far Varsho had to run this seems like a far more difficult play in reality. It appears that this particular play would have required a diving catch to be made. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=9a0e28b5-d93c-4286-879a-86585c7af65e This particular play is assigned a 70% difficulty rating, which also makes me question whether fielder positioning is a factor in breaking down these plays. A line drive which hits this high up the wall appears to be a very difficult play to my eyes. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=9f6510c8-aea4-40a2-8e3f-6c48e507124d

I have a question pertaining OAA as well. This season Daulton Varsho has excellent defensive metrics across the board save for an anomalous -2 OAA in left field. There is a massive discrepancy between his DRS and OAA in left field this season where he has accumulated 7 DRS in 509 innings vs the -2 OAA. Do you have any inkling why there is such a large discrepancy? How are events such as balls lost in the sun treated by OAA? I recall Varsho has lost a few balls in the sun this season and wonder if this could be factoring into his results up to this point.

Yeah nothing surprising there. Given the amount of holes on that team they'd likely be wise to at least consider trading Robert given the king's ransom they could demand in return. I'd sell the farm for that dude without a second thought.

In the biggest news of the day a team announces they want to keep their young/cheap/promising players while trading their old expensive underperforming veterans.

Goldschmidt definitely wouldn't be the guy primarily manning the DH position given he's a great defender at first. It would likely be harder convincing Vlad that he should be spending a very big chunk of his playing time at DH. That's certainty not the position on the team with the biggest need for an upgrade given how there are already two key 1B/Dh types on the team in Vlad and Belt.

It's hard to imagine the Cardinals would be particularly interested in moving either of Goldy or Arenado unless they decide a retooling is in order after this season's disappointment. Arenado is two years older than Chapman and under control for another 4 years, so it's debatable whether it would be more prudent to make a run at re-signing Chapman in free agency vs trading for Arenado who may be on the precipice of the declining phase of his career. If it takes a ludicrous 8 year deal for a Chapman deal then Arenado looks all the more appealing for sure though.

I think a small tweak that could really help is to add a pitch timer. Instead of having to throw the pitch within a specified time limit, this would limit how soon the next pitch could be delivered. I don't know how fast the pitches were coming in last night, but slowing down the proceedings just a little bit would allow things to breathe a little bit and give the viewers a chance to actually watch the home runs leave the park.

Holy s*** J Rod is a machine. We shall see how he bounces back after that type of all out sprint.

The current regime has definitely been better than AA when it comes to developing position player prospects, but has been extremely lacking when it comes to developing pitching. I think the key to the type of sustained contention envisioned is finally developing some of their own starting pitching instead of needing to pay free agency prices to fill out 4/5 of the major league rotation. Berrios was technically acquired by leveraging the minor league system but actually retaining him long term required a free agent type of contract. What would you view as being a reasonable level of minor league development? The last 4 years has seen a pile of prospects either graduating to the big league team, or being used in trades to acquire impact talent at the major league level. I think using minor league assets to acquire good major league talent should also count as a win if sensible trades are made, but I certainly think the team needs to develop and keep more of these players to be able to supplement the roster with cost effective talent. These last few seasons have felt a little lean in terms of graduations, but there are a few potential impact prospects nearing major league readiness in Tiedemann and Orelvis so the cupboards aren't completely bare by any means. At the very least this front office has generally been adept at identifying which minor league players to keep vs which ones to ship out, so we haven't been forced to watch the likes of Noah Syndergaard bust onto the scene as top of the rotation monsters under this regime.

Moreno graduated last season so he can be included. I think Tiedemann and Barger each had good shots to graduate this season before injuries slowed both of them down.

Varsho has historically been a much stronger second half performer with a 118 WRC+ vs the first half 78 WRC+. The team absolutely needs to obtain another right handed bat so that it's possible to shelter both Kiermaier and Varsho against tough left handed starters when necessary, but it seems unlikely we've seen the best of Varsho offensively up to this point of the season as he's had success in the past.

It seems like it would be awfully hard to ship Kiermaier out and receive a return that makes the team better in the short term. I agree that it's suboptimal having both Kiermaier and Varsho as two of the three primary outfield options, but I think that's an issue that's best addressed in the offseason by simply not re-signing Kiermaier.

Who is making excuses? I simply stated there is a high probability the Jays would have played at a 100+ win pace if they were situated in the AL Central this season. A 100 win pace would have required for the Jays to have accumulated all of 6 more wins up to this point, which they would have had a really good shot at if they played a larger chunk of their games against the lesser level of competition provided by the Central division. Aside from the disastrous month of May the team has been pretty consistent win percentage wise. Monthly records are as follows: Mar/Apr 18-10 .643 May 11-17 .393 (6-10 to start the month, followed by disastrous 2-9 stretch against AL East opponents, ending on better note at 3-2) June 16-11 .592 July 5-3 .600 The May swoon seemed to have kicked off with the Seattle meltdown at the end of April. Leading up to that game the team was in cruise control with an 18-9 record. This followed a tailspin where the team sputtered to an 8-16 record. Since that poor string of play ended the team has a record of 24-16. I think part of what makes this team look so disappointing is that they have failed to go on any kind of sustained winning streak, something like 9 or 10 wins in a row, or a stretch of 9-1, 10-2 or whatever.

That Bo Bichette guy has been pretty decent as well.

The Jays are 16-6 vs the central division so far. They haven't played Cleveland yet but it's entirely possible if not downright likely that a team on pace for 90 or so wins in the meatgrinder AL East that has a 7-20 record in it's own division would be pacing for 100+ wins if it played in the central.

There is definitely a bit of credit to be given for knowing when to cut bait and get decent value on some of these guys, but the drafting has been a real issue for awhile now. Max Pentecost is another recent first rounder that ended up flaming out, but that may not necessarily been a bad pick at the time and more of a case of s*** happening that caused him to retire at an early age. I suspect amateur talent acquisition should be one key area for James Click to overhaul as there has been a lull of several years prior to last year's draft and IFA signing period where there really wasn't much impact talent added to the organization. Last year saw the likes of Bonilla and Barriera added to the organization but each of these guys are a lot of years away.