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It's been basically two full calendar years now since the injury occurred. Perhaps the thumb ligaments may have been damaged or something of that sort. I think Moreno's lack of power may be more due to his batted ball profile vs lack of juice though. Average/max exit velocities are both mid 50's percentile, but he's a drastically ground ball oriented in his batted ball tendencies. He has like a 60/15 ground ball to fly ball split so with middling raw power it would be pretty hard to do any damage at the plate.

Moreno has been swinging a noodle bat since the thumb injury in June of 2021. In the 145 combined games since the injury in AA, AAA and MLB he's hit all of 6 home runs and 26 doubles in 145 total games. I really don't think the organization would have entertained trading him if there weren't very real concerns about whether his previously shown levels of power were going to eventually return.

He's been remarkably healthy so far this season. It's possible the much maligned high performance department may actually be helping to keep him healthy and on the field with the load management scheme they've been employing. Kiermaier specifically mentioned needing to play smarter at times (less head first slides in particular) but given his high impact style of play I certainly wouldn't bet against an IL stint later this season.

I made the pitcher/catcher joke in the first place doofus. If anyone is playing off of the other person's joke it's obviously you.

Sometimes the catcher has no say in how the relationship plays out, but I get the feeling that you are perfectly happy to be on the receiving end.

I was also hoping Barger could follow up on his 2022 breakout and continue to knock on the door for a major league job.

Rivalry implies more of a back and forth type of exchange, whereas the bulk of these seem to be more of the pitcher/catcher variety.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to paint the drafting and development as having been terrible throughout this front office's tenure. After all if you examine how the current roster was built they've drafted(or acquired through international amateur signing) and/or developed the likes of Vlad, Bo, Manoah, Romano, Kirk, Moreno, Biggio, Gurriel, and used minor/major league assets they developed to acquire the likes of Berrios, Chapman, Varsho and others. There has been a definite lull over the last few years with so many of the minor league prospects eventually flaming out, but there are still a few blue chippers in the system in Orelvis and Tiedemann, and there are a lot of interesting prospects in the lower levels of the minors working their way up through the system. There are other potential impact prospects such as Barger still in the system as well. The team is going to need to start developing more of their own pitching if they are to remain sustainably competitive as you can't go on handing out free agent contracts to fill out your rotation forever.

He's basically the only available backup shortstop on the roster.

Pulling Ray wasn't really an issue in my view, the problem was the mediocre reliever that was brought in to follow Ray. The team received a solid performance from both Shoemaker and Ray so that part of their plan worked great. Going to AJ Cole as first man out of the pen in the playoffs was where things went off the rails.

The 2020 team wasn't really a very good team to start with though. The Robbie Ray that was pulled from his playoff start wasn't the same level of pitcher who won a CY Young award a season later and was still more of an unfinished reclamation project.

The dude is legitimately raking right now. I get that you can't stand to give him even the slightest iota of credit when he's going good but he is barreling up baseballs with surprising regularity. With Belt out right now it's the perfect time for the team to take advantage of the current hot streak, and when he cools off he can go back to his typical bench role.

I think the second half 2021 team was a juggernaut poised to do serious damage in the playoffs. It will always sting that they missed by a single game because that team was really firing on all cylinders after returning home to Toronto. Chances are the pen wouldn't have been good enough for the playoffs (recurring theme with this team) but the team as a whole was hot at exactly the right time.

Nice post drama queen. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. You won't be missed.

WRC+ is park adjusted so it's showing exactly what it should: Vlad has been borderline MVP worthy on the road and absolutely awful at home. More traditional statistics paint the same picture, such as .610 OPS at home vs .965 on the road.

Vlad was actually pretty damn good for the first six weeks of the season so the offseason "home run derby" you like to keep referencing seemed to have worked just fine to get him ready for the season. Vlad's numbers took an absolute nosedive for about 2 weeks or so where he was swinging at way too many pitches out of the strike zone and largely getting himself out at the plate. He's been showing signs of turning things around for about the last week so hopefully he can get back to being more productive. The most puzzling thing for me about Vlad is the massive gulf between his home and away splits. He's rocking 168 WRC+ on the road vs a putrid 72 WRC+ at home. Based on the comments I've recently read on here the only possible conclusion I can come to is that Vlad is fat at home, while he's fully committed to fitness on the road. He needs to figure out a way to get into better shape while playing at home and it will be his numbers exploding instead of his waistline.

My cousin was rocking a full on Tom Selleck stache in high school, I recall being insanely jealous at the time.

There are plenty of ways this can all play out. Each of Vlad and Bo may be extended, it's possible (highly unlikely for sure) that Chapman is extended, Jansen very well may be extended, Merrifeld may be re-signed even without his option being picked up, Manoah will likely find his form again, Belt and KK may be re-signed moving forward etc. The sky isn't falling by any means and with the money coming off of the books there will be funds available to replace the talent due to leave if necessary.

Ah that makes more sense. I thought this system only showed actual home runs which were allowed, and not fly balls with potential to leave various ballparks.

If Green comes back fully healthy and effective this pen can become really good in a hurry. Add one more leverage arm before the trade deadline and it could be a dynamite pen. The lower end guys have really hurt the team so each quality addition also improves the pen through subtraction of the dudes who are terrible.

I suspect he also has some character related issues as well given the various on the field and off the field incidents he's been involved in. He might just not be worth the potential headaches given how poorly he's pitched.

This appears to show that the Jays relievers have been victimized by quite a few home runs which barely left the park. I do find it a little confusing though. With Swanson in particular, he's shown to have given up 4 home runs in total. This system classifies 4 of them as doubters, as they would have only left in 1-7 parks. The part where I'm not following is that he's also classified as having 3 home runs that were mostly gone, as they would have left 8-29 parks. Then at the same time 1 of them was classified as a no doubter. I don't understand how a player can have allowed 4 home runs, all of which were classified as doubters, 3 of which as mostly gone, and 1 of which as a no doubter. Each home should only be classified once right?

He's been a bad baseball player over the course of a full season once in his entire career. Is he a great player who should play every day? Absolutely not. Can he still be a useful utility player off of the bench? That seems to be a good role for him. If an obvious upgrade presents itself then he can certainly be shipped off, but until then he can help a team win with the skills that he possesses.

I think the offense has been just as much of an issue as the pitching. There have been a lot of potential wins that have not been seized because of the offense's inability to plate runners in scoring position. If the offense plates even a small portion of these potential runs when they are available there would be more wins in the bank at this point.

I suspect you could scrape the entire internet from the dawn of it's existence and wouldn't be able to find 5000 total mentions of how Biggio needs more AB's. The guy is the fanbases favorite whipping boy, and it doesn't matter if he's playing well or actually having a bad season. For what it's worth he's been hitting really well for the last 3 weeks with quality of contact metrics which back it up.