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Ultimately the team would still have been in great shape behind the plate no matter which of the three catchers they ended up moving. Even with Kirk's struggles with the bat and Jansen missing half of the season the team still received the 6th most WAR in MLB from the trio of Jansen, Kirk and Heinemann, and 2nd in WAR for the last two seasons combined. It's too bad Kirk is built like the MLB equivalent of Danny Devito, Jansen is made of glass and Moreno turned into a slap hitter for several consecutive seasons as it really limited the return each of these players was able to provide in trade.

Roden started flashing a little more home run power in his AA stint where he hit 6 home runs in 209 plate appearances. The ISO only jumped 11 points up to .149 as his overall extra base production dropped a lot as the doubles largely dried up. I recall the home ballpark in New Hampshire is hitter friendly for left handed power so it remains to be seen if this home run spike is something that carries over to Buffalo once he works his way up. I get the feeling that his ceiling is a Michael Brantley lite type of hitter if everything clicks for him in the future.

The Blue Jays already project to be a solid team before making any off season additions. I'd argue they would benefit as much as anyone in baseball by adding an elite talent as a means to instantly elevate the roster to true contender status. My only concern with an Ohtani addition would be what level of funding would remain to fill the other holes in the roster (left field and third base).

Jiminez has suffered from so many lower half injuries that he doesn't seem like a guy you'd want spending very much time in the outfield. He's like a younger version of Giancarlo Stanton when it comes to the leg injuries.

Most of these sound pretty reasonable, but I think if Varsho plays primarily in center field next season he should beat his projection pretty handily. The projection systems don't buy him as an elite defender as of yet, however the on the field results paint a decidedly different picture. Over the last two seasons of play he leads MLB in combined OAA at 28, with the next closest player coming in at 21 OAA. DRS gives him an even bigger lead as it rates his left field defence much higher than OAA, where he leads the pack with 48 DRS. The next closest player has 31 DRS for comparison.

I wonder if this is the same scenario for all of the bidding teams with regards to having extra funds for Ohtani.

It might not be a playoff team without bouncebacks from some of the underperformers like Vlad, Kirk, Springer, Varsho, Manoah, Epsinal etc. (holy s*** that's a long list) No matter who is brought in the team likely needs better seasons from a lot of those guys if they are to have a shot to compete given how many wins are heading out the door in free agency.

If you haven't watched this already check out the Baseball Doesn't Exist breakdown of the kind of revenue Ohtani generated for the Angels.

You totally missed that I was joking.

I can't say I disagree with any of this. The time for this to be a sustainable winning organization is running short, so it's imperative for the farm system to begin producing high quality inexpensive replacements within the next few years. The expensive rotation is one of the primary reasons I'd be very hesitant to trade Tiedemann and even Manoah, given the fact that the team simply can't sustain paying $100 million per season on the rotation alone, especially with the upcoming decisions to be made with regards to long term contracts pertaining to Bo and Vlad. I think with the upcoming emergence of the likes of Barger, Rodon, Martinez and Tiedemann, who each have a shot to be above average MLB regulars in my view, that sustainable winning is still a possibility but far from a given.

Not buying it man, likely taken out of context and specifically designed to make it look like you want the team to acquire dudes who are actually still good baseball players.

I specifically recall that it was reported years after the fact that Dalton Pompey was bullied by one of the Blue Jays veteran players when he was first called up. I don't have any specific information with regards to who the culprit was but it's not a giant leap of logic to place suspicions on a certain MVP level third baseman as the primary suspect.

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.