max silver

I think Belt has a good shot to be even better than that. In his last two healthy seasons of 2020 and 2021 he posted WRC+ values of 196 and 164 against RHP. He is going to face minimal if any left handed pitching as a Blue Jay. I don't see how a projection system could be this enthusiastic about Varsho however given his batted ball profile even when factoring in the upcoming shift restrictions.

If Green comes back in 2023 and immediately returns to full effectiveness the club will more than likely exercise the 3 year/$27 million option. Green will be paid more like an elite reliever in that scenario.

The way I read the contract is that the 3 year/27 million dollar option is a club option. If the team declines then it moves onto the next step. Green gets a nice bit of security here, he can blow out his elbow again and have the team decline the 3 year option, and Green can trigger the 2 year contract option and still get paid for 2024 while he rehabs.

Brown missed a year of development due to the 2020 covid shutdown so it's not quite an apples to apples comparison. For a player as raw as Brown was at time of draft that's a pretty big deal to miss a season like that.

I've seen semi serious suggestions that the Jays should trade for Randal Grichuk. He could potentially be a decent addition to the bench to play primarily against left handed starters and the Jays are already paying half of his salary. He has weird splits vs left handed pitching for 2023 though as he produced a 224 WRC+ vs LHP at home vs only 56 WRC+ vs LHP away from Coors Field. He's had odd splits like this over his career alternating between being effective vs LHP at home and away depending on the season. Perhaps this is a common occurrence depending on actual quality of pitching faced at home and away as I've never looked too deeply into this type of split previously.

Marcum starts were always a treat to watch as he had great command and sequencing of his pitches.

I think the team might as well hang onto Pearson for at least another season. He still has potential to be a back end of the bullpen weapon, and he can't have much in the way of trade value at this point anyway, There's not likely much to be gained trading him right now other than a roster spot.

It's crazy how many parallels there were between Dustin McGowan and Brandon Morrow. Both right handed starters, nasty stuff, ace potential, terrible injury issues, diabetic, etc.

Who is this picture supposed to be showing? Can't see a number, can't see a face, etc.

I firmly believe Jansen has reached a new level of performance at the plate as well. He's been mashing across 2 seasons now and it's become more than a short hot streak. He's also had something like 3 trips to the disabled list during this time and after each of these he's returned to the lineup and eventually resumed mashing home runs.

That's just the thing. Even though the overall season numbers are really bad it's entirely due to the high number of meltdown style starts Berrios suffered from. Something like 1/3 of his starts were very good, another third or so were decent/solid, and the other third were downright horrible. Reducing the disasters would largely allow him to return to his typical career numbers.

Chris Black had an interesting twitter thread about how the key to Vlad unlocking his full potential largely hinges on laying off of low pitches. That will enable the launch angle issues/ground ball problems to be largely mitigated as he has difficulty in elevating those pitches.

I voted the offence should be about the same, but I think it has a decent chance to be even better than in 2022. The team has loaded up on left handed batters just in time for the shift ban. If Vlad gets back to the 2021 version and Bo continues the improvement he showed in the second half of last season this offence could be pretty scary. Varsho made some swing changes last year that enabled him to improve his results at the plate rather significantly in the second half so he has a shot to have his best season to date. He won't likely ever make up for the loss of Teo's bat fully but between him and Belt that loss should be largely mitigated.

Golly gee maybe a Statcast page isn't the be all end all for determining a baseball player's value to his team. Daulton Varsho had a .298 xWOBA in 2023, so I guess you can start preaching to everyone how bad he is with the bat as well. Biggio isn't and will never be a Statcast darling when it comes to quality of contact, but that's not necessarily how he has typically provided value to his team. It's easy to rant and rave about how bad a player is if you only focus on their weakness and ignore all of their strengths. Biggio's greatest asset has been elite plate discipline, and he continues to get on base at a decent clip despite the low batting averages. The WAR per 550 plate appearances are for 2022 only, and nothing to do with his early career numbers so you can stop harping on about 2019 like it's somehow relevant. Biggio got off to a very rough start in 2022, however after returning from Buffalo he managed to produce at a higher than league average rate with the bat with a 109 WRC+. That's pretty good for a player with no talent like you are claiming. After returning in late May he produced at a 3.2 FWAR/550 rate. Here's a newsflash for you, that's really damn good for a utility player. Statcast ranked him as a well above average defender at second base and even or better at all of the other positions he manned as well so he has displayed a lot of defensive utility as well.

It's obvious you have nothing of substance to add to this discussion so you might as well continue to troll away and pat yourself on the back. Biggio (2.4 FWAR/550 PA) was far more productive on a rate basis than Merrifield in 2023 (1.5 FWAR/550PA) and produced similar value when factoring in playing time to Espinal (2.5 FWAR/550 PA).

He produces at a rate of about 2-2.5 WAR/550 plate appearances off of the bench. He did this in 2020 and 2022 with deadened baseballs compared to the launching pad balls of 2019. The one time in his career where he was legitimately bad was 2021 when he dealt with a multitude of injuries and largely played in a position he's not suited for. He's still cheap salary wise and will most likely continue to be as he doesn't excel in categories that are largely valued in the MLB salary arbitration system. The over the top hate just isn't warranted here. For the relative peanuts he is paid he provides plenty of value to his team. If another team deems to be a desirable trade target then Biggio can be moved to improve the team in another area, but if he's kept he's a nice bench piece who can still provide plenty of value to the Jays. He may potentially be helped out by the upcoming shift ban, and if/when MLB implements an automatic strike zone he stands to benefit as much as anyone in MLB.

Only about half of his WAR came with juiced balls in 2019. MLB has been progressively deadening the baseball starting in 2020. Gregorius has produced WRC+ values of 69 and 58 in the last two seasons, surely even you can recognize that Biggio isn't THAT bad.

Varsho and Belt both offer very high potential upsides. Varsho has 5+ win potential and Belt is one season removed from a 157 WRC+. Swanson is coming off of a season where he produced 1.7 FWAR so he shows a very high ceiling as well.

Atkins and Shapiro did emphatically state that reaching the CBT tax wouldn't be a limitation on their spending, but does that include jumping past the first tier of spending? Time will tell. At any rate I think this was a great offseason to spend given the upcoming Rogers Center upgrades as the team's revenue stream should be improved quite a bit once the updates are finished.

Damnit I caught that mistake the first time around but missed it in the follow-up post. I definitely don't think the NHL is any less susceptible to cancel culture than other leagues given how relatively niche the league is.

For the record I was just pulling your leg there. I don't think this is by design and is more of a coincidence than anything.

Wait your cheering for the Jays to become whiter?

The NHL is pretty damn close to immune to cancel culture though. That league and it's players receive infinitely more latitude than every other entertainment related business in this continent.

I'd still like to see a lefty masher added for the outfield as well.

Football is akin to religion south of the border. Accordingly the NFL is nearly exempt from the types of pressure faced by the rest of industry in North America.