max silver

Pearson is nearly 5 years younger and has 4 years of remaining control so he's not quite Merryweather level lost cause just yet.

Creating more home grown starters is a big key to the Jays future sustainability. If they want to have the available funds to extend both Vlad and Bo long term they can't have this type of money tied up in the rotation long term. Tiedemann at leaves gives the chance of another top of the rotation stud so at least that's a good start. On an unrelated pitching note I feel that the team is making massive strides in developing home grown bullpen relief, I think the current crop of relievers in the minor leagues will start graduating to the majors in 2023.

If Varsho can repeat his defensive results from 2022 he very well may be the team's best defender despite the presence of Kiermaier and Chapman on the roster.

I can certainly see a 5+ WAR season, how much does the defensive adjustment for primarily playing left field likely affect his overall WAR numbers?

A proper father supports the mother by joining in the seefood diet where you see food and eat it.

Yeah totally agree world series titles really suck.

They are both outspoken on Twitter for sure but Manoah isn't nearly as annoying for me as Stroman was. Stroman was constantly self promoting and pumping his own tires, and was a giant hypocrite to boot. When criticized on Twitter he would claim that it didn't bother him in the slightest but then proceed to block people for anything and everything. Manoah has confidence bordering on cockiness, but you can see how he is the ultimate team player in how he interacts with his teammates, celebrates their accomplishments etc. Stroman was reported to have feuded with his teammates on more than one occasion. Manoah is respectful with the media whereas Stroman would blow up at a reporter for asking a perfectly reasonable question. I'm obviously not around these guys personally but Manoah seems confident yet respectful of people in general, whereas Stroman displays a lot of narcissistic traits. Manoah can certainly rub the opposition the wrong way with how he carries himself on the field at times, but I think he's starting to tame that down a bit as he gains more experience and general maturity.

I typically push back against projections that are far too low as projection systems are typically slow to fully recognize when a player unlocks a new level of skill. This seems the opposite of that however in how overly high this projection appears. To Varsho's credit he did have a much stronger second half of the season offensively at it appears as though some mechanical changes have led to improved success at the plate.

Maybe the opportunity to rehab at a world class training facility helped sway Green towards signing with the Jays a bit

Belt's k rate was all of 0.2% higher in 2022 vs 2021 where he was still raking so I'm not overly concerned about that. If the knee is healthy and holds up I expect Belt to mash against RHP again.

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.