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Garcia (and Schneider for that matter) owes Swanson and nice case of scotch.

Elders success looks to have been built atop a house of cards so hopefully the bats can put a beating on him.

Jays and Tigers should be in the same division as well. You basically drive across a bridge for series with these teams.

I'd infinitely prefer the Jays play in the Central division vs the meat grinder East Division.

I don't think there is a stronger argument to be made than this for why divisional realignment is needed in MLB.

Hopefully these guys can continue to find success once they move up the ladder. In particular the AAA rotation/depth options have all been positively awful so far.

When Morrow had his good stuff/command he was as enjoyable to watch as any Jays pitcher I can remember. He could carve up hitters with a devastating two pitch mix of upper 90's fastball and wipeout slider.

I do recall the organization sets goals/milestones for the players in the minor league system for them to reach before being promoted to the next level. This includes things like overall routine, strength and conditioning, diet etc. and goes well beyond just the results being posted. Hopefully sooner or later Wallace can make his way up to AA. The AA rotation is pretty full as currently Robberse, Kloffenstein, Robbins, Schultz and an injured Tiedemann populate the rotation. I could see Kloffenstein earning a promotion to AAA to help out a struggling Bisons rotation at some point. Another guy that could earn himself a promotion to AA at some point is Chad Dallas as he's been overmatching High A hitters early on this season as well. Aside from one bad start where he appeared to struggle with command he's been filthy. Over 4 starts he's at 22 IP with only 10H, 6BB and 32 SO.

He's exactly the type of starter I was hoping Nate Pearson would eventually develop into. Several injuries and lost seasons later now I just hope Pearson can at least provide some effective innings out of the pen moving forward.

Trenton Wallace has been enjoying a nice run of success in Vancouver as well. After a nice start yesterday he's sitting 1.80 ERA/2.57 FIP with great peripherals as well, 10.8 K/9, 1.44 BB/9, 0.36 HR/9. https://bluejaysnation.com/news/blue-jays-nations-2023-preseason-top-50-prospects-35-31

He's only managed a 9.4% line drive rate which is the most likely contact type to fall in for a hit. I can't help but wonder if spending how ever much time it takes in the hitting lab to flatten out his swing/approach angle a bit would be a prudent course of action. The guy obviously has crazy power but his contact profile seems to lead to the type of boom/bust types of seasons for several years now.

I was just hoping that Bassitt could at least keep the game close so the boys would have a chance for a win. I certainly didn't expect an absolute gem like this one, let's hope he can display this kind of improved command moving forward.

I just tend to think that with the advent of the data driven Statcast based performance indicators FIP and especially xFIP have become somewhat irrelevant. XFIP was an odd choice of performance indicator for Bassitt in the first place given that all of his other sabermetric performance indicators are actually worse than his current xFIP value of 5.13 (FIP of 5.33, xERA of 5.17, SIERA of 5.15 etc.)

Rays seem to be all about the high risk high reward breed of pitcher so this doesn't come as a huge surprise.

I could see Kiermaier being resigned for a couple of years if he manages to stay mostly healthy this season. He's bounced back fully defensively and has managed to chip in offensively as well.

I guess even though most individual starts don't have massive gulfs between expected and actual stats it could be a bit of a death by 1000 cuts scenario where by the time the results are tabulated there is a pretty large gulf by the end. I still don't like xFIP as it has no way to account for quality of contact. A guy could be allowing line drives all over the diamond and still look like a star as long as the smashes are constantly finding their way into gloves. Perhaps comparing wOBACON vs xwOBACON could be a good indicator of Bassitt being overly lucky on balls in play. I was able to eventually create a custom chart with Statcast to compare these values, and the results really don't help to back up my theory that Bassitt hasn't been overly lucky on balls in play after all. His actual weighted on base average on contact (wOBACON) is .315, vs his expected weighted on base average on contact which is a lot higher at .381. Sadly enough Bassitt leads among Jays starters in this particular statistic. Others Jays starters contact numbers as follows: wOBACON/xwOBACON Gausman .413/.418 Manoah .364/403 Kikuchi .395/.409 Berrios .390/.440

I place approximately zero value on XFIP as a method of evaluating pitcher performance. I think aside from the issue with walks Bassitt has pitched pretty well for the most part. He was f***ed over by the umpire in the Seattle game, but settled down very nicely after the early home run. He's been inducing a ton of soft contact so far. I had a look at his XBA values from start to start, and that seems to back up the low'ish batting average on balls in play to a degree. Batting average vs XBA start to start is as follows: Batting Average/Expected Batting Average For Each Start .556/.491 .143/.199 .2/.197 .13/.314 .13/.201 .125/.15 .182/.214 There's really only 1 start in there where it appears as though Bassitt was extraordinarily lucky on batted balls, with a few starts where he was a little bit lucky at least as far as batting average is concerned. I think a more useful comparison would be WOBA vs XWOBA on a start to start basis. WOBA/XWOBA Per Start 0.728/0.694 0.281/0.327 0.3/0.323 0.156/0.315 0.217/0.271 0.307/0.294 0.259/0.306 This paints a pretty similar picture to batting average vs expected batting average, in that there is really only one game where Bassitt looked to have been blessed by above when it comes to expected results vs actual results, which a few other games where he appeared to be a little bit lucky.

Playing Varsho at catcher just opens up another hole in the outfield. The team can cover some outfield innings with Merrifield at present, however using Varsho at catcher would necessitate playing the ice cold bats of Biggio and/or Espinal at second base more frequently. Maybe you're still better off going this route vs using a AAA catcher on a regular basis though.

From looking at rolling XWOBA values it appears as though Kirk has both a higher ceiling and a higher floor as he's provided peak output of over .500 xWOBA while also largely avoiding the dips below league average expected offense. Having said that it also appears as though Jansen has managed to hit peak output more overall times than Kirk has.

That's where the team's strength at catcher takes a real nosedive as it necessitates running a depth player from AAA at catcher a good chunk of the time.

The numbers I referenced from Jansen ran from early May of 2021 until the end of 2022, that's nearly two full MLB seasons. I also referenced the fact that Jansen only played about a full season's worth of games for a typical starting catcher during this time due to injuries. It's certainly possible he would experience cold stretches if he were to remain healthy more often and experience the typical accumulation of fatigue of a typical MLB regular, however he managed to maintain this type of production over several seasons, despite a ton of stops and starts due to trips to the injured list. He maintained excellent peripherals, barrel rate, plate discipline etc. which to me suggests this wasn't entirely an unsustainable fluke run of success. I was curious what's lead to the lack of success this season, and one thing that stands out is inability to get balls into the air to the pull side. He has hit a larger percentage of pull side fly balls out of the park compared to 2022, however far too frequently his batted balls to the pull side have been on the ground. Another change is that Jansen has been hitting the ball more frequently to right field with awful results to show for it. Hopefully this isn't a conscious choice as he was easily at his most productive when pulling the ball in the air. Kirk managed to stay healthy for the entire season of 2022, but it's not out of the question that he wore down as the season progressed due to how much his overall production reduced as the season went on. I'm not one to rag on the guy at all as I think he's almost the perfect backup catcher who's bat is so good that he can regularly DH on days when he's not catching, and while he is catching he is a great defender. I just won't ignore the fact that his build greatly limits how frequently he is available to catch.

I guess some of this depends on what you would ultimately qualify as a small sample, but Jansen was a legitimate offensive force for most of two seasons. He offered a tantalizing glimpse of power potential over early May 2021 until the end of season in 2022. After a return from the injured list (if I recall correctly) he mashed for the following 121 game appearances. It's really too bad he found himself on the injured list so frequently, but he managed a 148 WRC+ over nearly two full seasons, just without a ton of actual game appearances during this time. 4.8 FWAR/148 WRC+ is a lot more than Kirk has shown at any point of his own career up to this point.

Statcast has a blocking leaderboard. According to their methodology Kirk is one of MLB's best blocking catchers since the start of 2022. He leads in blocks above average per game at 0.21. Interestingly enough Jansen shows up in third place in the same metric, so each of these guys are great in this skill.

Perhaps part of this could be due to primarily playing a less familiar position in left field.

Acceleration is something that I wish Statcast directly measured, as well as directly displaying top overall sprint speeds as well. Average sprint speed is really only showing a small part of the overall picture.