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The results of the bullpen games have generally been fine but the extra strain this placed on the pen wasn't something that could continue forever. If the club trusted Francis to throw more than a few innings at a time some of the extra innings on the rest of the pen could have been mitigated somewhat, but Francis has been giving up a ton of really hard contact so I can understand the hesitance.

Manoah had consecutive good starts before this clunker. Sure the quality of competition wasn't great but his command was much better and the stuff played up to a lot of strike outs. If it's another week or whatever until Ryu is ready they can give Manoah another start before sending him packing back to the minor league complex. If the alternative to another Manoah start is a bullpen day where the pen is blown up anyway I don't see a lot of risk in throwing Manoah out there again to see how he fares.

Kirk may have been able to get Manoah that low strike in the Soto at bat but he certainly wasn't going to coax Manoah into the strike zone more frequently.

The difference to my eyes was command this time around. It's not like the Padres hit Alek especially hard in this start, and with a little better luck he may not have allowed any runs. In the first inning he was shafted in the Soto at bat on a clear strike 3 call. Fast forward to the other inning where he allowed 2 runs a ground ball took a big hop off of third base and turned into a double, and Springer lost a ball in the lights that turned into another double.

Right now Fangraphs gives the Jays MLB's 4th highest odds to win the world series. The one hole I see on this team is a right handed slugging outfielder/DH type, that's a pretty damn solid team in my view.

You would prefer to utilize a AAA depth option instead of Kirk? Then what happens when Jansen gets hurt? Now you are running two AAA depth catchers at the major league level. All so you can trade Kirk at his lowest possible level. Hard pass to that one.

Donaldson is like the MLB version of April Orelvis Martinez this season.

Last year's bullpen was a decent enough pen that had one bad game at a really inopportune moment. This year's bullpen is much better across the board right now. This team has a tremendous bullpen, and you could easily make a case that it's an elite pen. It ranks 4th by ERA, 6th by FIP, 4th by K/9, 3rd by BB/9 etc. The pen was brought down a lot by weak performances by the likes of Cimber and Bass and a slow start from Garcia, but has improved a lot as the season has progressed. The impending addition of Chad Green is going to improve this pen further, as if Green is anywhere close to as good as he has been historically it adds one of MLB's best firemen to a pen, adds another trustworthy high leverage reliever, and removes the weakest link from bullpen at the same time. I hate this type of defeatist attitude that the current iteration of the Jays is only good because the opposition has faced injuries. There is a certain subset of the fanbase that absolutely refuses to give any credit to a Blue Jays team when it succeeds. It can't be because the team is good, it can only be because the opposition has dealt with more injuries than the Blue Jays.

The offense has scored a grand total of 6 runs less than the offense from a season ago. The biggest concern has been weak situation hitting with runners in scoring position, just as was the case a season ago. There are signs the tides are starting to turn with this particular issue. The team's run differential is +44 at this point, vs +24 after 93 games a season ago. This run differential is largely on the back of an elite defence and really good pitching staff. The bullpen in particular is a strength of this club right now. The team has a very solid 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation as well, but the pitching isn't good enough somehow? This team has the 6th best record in all of MLB. They have absolutely clobbered weak teams the way they are expected to. They have obliterated MLB as a whole save for struggling against against the Red Sox and Orioles. The team has dominated the National League, dismantling a lot of hot teams and division leaders along the way. This is a really damn good team that deserves more respect than they are receiving.

Hey now Calgary is a perfectly nice city and typically has nice summer weather. The biggest concern recently is the bombardment of wild fire smoke from the northern half of the province during the spring, and now from BC as their wild fire season is in full swing.

Sounds similar to my setup. I have an LG 77" C1 and Samsung Q950a sound bar. I've really enjoyed 4K Netflix, the shows with Atmos Audio sound absolutely fantastic. I've also found my set has really nice upscaling so even 1080p content looks a let better. Sports are a dream to watch. I made the jump to 4K once Shaw finally offered a 4K Sportsnet package in Calgary so I could watch Jays and Flames games (when available) in 4K. PS5 gaming is a real treat, as VRR does a nice job of smoothing out any framerate variations.

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.