max silver

Holy s*** dude enough with the constant Rays worship. Rays don't swing at bad pitches like the Jays do, Rays have perfect in game strategy while the Jays are dumb f***s, Rays are right to be ruthless while the Jays management are little bitches that bend over backwards to placate players egos, Rays have the worlds best pitching development while the Jays couldn't develop a pitcher to save their lives, ex-Rays management are the only qualified people do be a team's general manager, teams should trade their best players at peak value like the Rays etc. etc. etc. I agree that we can commend the Rays for what they are able to achieve on a very limited budget, but I really don't think the way that they operate is good for their fans or baseball as a whole. The Blue Jays team isn't perfect and aren't a world series favorite this year, but how many championships have the Rays won in their history? Oh right, they have won a grand total of zero championships. This is far from baseball's model franchise and really aren't deserving of the constant adulation.

This backs up that Bo really isn't swinging at that many more pitches out of the zone save for a small uptick in swinging at pitches way out of the zone. The biggest change seems to be not doing any damage against pitches in the chase area and in the heart of the plate. This should be something that's fixable and indicates something is off with his timing/mechanics rather than being an approach based issue.

Bo has had a weird season. His batted ball metrics aren't really far off from previous seasons, he's not really chasing out of the strike zone more compared to previous years and is still using the whole field so that he's essentially shift proof. It just seems like something is a little bit off, whether it's something in his swing, timing a little off or approach based is hard to pinpoint. Bo had a really strong 6 week stretch from April 30-June 16 where he was the team's second most valuable contributor. He managed a 137 WRC+ with good (for Bo at least) underlying peripherals. BB% was a solid 7.4%, k rate was under control at 20.6% as well. A big surprise is that he was swinging at 41.3% of pitches out of the strike zone during this hot streak. Since the hot streak ended until now he's actually improved his plate discipline a very significant amount as he's only swung at pitches out of the strike zone 35.9% of the time since then. Bo was terrible prior to start the year and has been disappointing since mid June as well, but the talent is still there to be a very productive player. The greatly improved plate discipline numbers over the last few months shows Bo is at least improving his swing decisions as the season goes on. Hopefully he and the coaching staff can find the key to unlocking his offensive potential at some point before the playoffs as having Bo contributing to his talent level can be a real game changer for the team.

The bottom two spots of the lineup could likely be swapped as needed depending on who is playing that particular game. I would personally move Chapman ahead of Bo given how hot Chapman has been for the last few months.

I'm curious to see what Merrifield has to offer with the bat. His April start was amazingly bad at 1 WRC+, but this included a .162 BABIP for a guy with a .323 career BABIP mark. He didn't really catch fire until July though as he had rather pedestrian months of May and June with WRC+ values of 93 and 78. He has hit better on the road vs at home this season with 71 WRC+ at home vs 88 on the road so hopefully he gets a bit of a bump from playing in more favorable offensive environments.

I don't think Edwin is a bad example at all for a late bloomer as he reached new levels of performance and established himself as an offensive force at the age of 29 with a 150 WRC+ season. His previous best was 113 WRC+ as a 28 year old. Jose Bautista is probably a better Jays related example though as he transformed from an MLB journeyman to slugger extraordinaire in September of 2009 in his age 28 season.

Josh Donaldson was at the forefront of the launch angle revolution and during his heyday regularly punished baseballs. Brandon Drury hasn't shown anywhere close to this level of ability, and is a very strong candidate for some serious regression moving forward. He seems like he's had extremely good batted ball fortune this season as he's produced all of a .318 xWOBA compared to his .370 WOBA. This is the 5th highest split between expected result and actual result in MLB this season. For comparison sake Bo Bichette has almost the exact same xWOBA in 2022 at .322. This makes it seem like Drury's 134 WRC+ is going to be very difficult to repeat moving forward.

My issue with signing Bradley at the time was that nothing in his underlying numbers suggested he would be likely to repeat his batted ball success moving forward. He was a largely declining offensive asset, and then BOOM he had very good success for a season on his batted balls without any real changes under the hood to explain the improvement.

Yes Frasso was drafted out of college like Manoah, but unlike Manoah he never really built up to a full starters workload at any point in college or as a professional. As such he is going to likely need several years to get himself built up if he's to fill a starter role in the future.

The writing staff who are worth a damn tend to get poached by MLB organizations.

Up until this season Bo was able to largely get away with the bottom of the barrel plate discipline and still put up 120 WRC+ type results. His swing profile this season hasn't changed a ton this season compared to previous seasons, but this looks like the death by a thousand cuts type of situation as teams are pitching him down and away a bit more compared to previous years while at the same time Bo is offering at these pitches a bit more as well. In previous years he has been able to pick up a decent amount of hits in this zone but that's largely disappeared in 2022. The one thing that stands out the most to me is how much Bo has struggled against fastballs this season. He's never really done a huge amount of damage against fastballs in previous years, but this year he's really struggled against both 4 seamers and sinkers. Could this be an approach related issue? Bo has largely feasted on offspeed and breaking pitches this season, which makes me wonder if he's sitting off-speed most of the time and ending up being late to the fastball. Bo has never really looked locked in for any extended period of the season, so hopefully he can work to improve his swing decision making over time. He's never really displayed great pitch recognition/plate discipline at any point in the past, so unfortunately he may just continue to be his own worst enemy with continued over aggressiveness at the plate. Bo needs to look no further than his teammate Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to see what a dramatic difference dropping your chase rate by a relatively small rate (4% or so in this case) can make to the overall results at the plate.

Sounds like that was just a procedural move as White was in AAA already when he was acquired. All signs point to him taking over Stripling's spot in the rotation over the weekend.

I looked up Frasso's college stats and the highest workload he reached was 60 innings. It just seems exceedingly unlikely he's going to have an available workload anywhere near what is required for an MLB team to reach a rotation spot in 2023. It's not outside the realm of possibility the Dodgers push him into more of a multi inning relief role, but even so that organization tends to have the type of pitching depth that guys with such a relative level of inexperience don't need to be pushed that quickly.

Time will tell if it's repeatable. Drury is 5th place in MLB among hitters for WOBA/xWOBA split so this could easily be a one time batted ball luck phenomenon.

Yeah sounds legit for a guy in A ball with 41 professional innings in his career over his first 2 seasons.

According to Fangraphs down in 28th place. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=0&type=5&season=2022&month=0&season1=2022&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2022-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=10,d

Yeah Sanchez is a guy that the club should be looking into for some rotation depth.

The comment referencing Merrifield not being interested in doing his entire job because he declined to be vaccinated. I guess in a small way it makes sense as Merriweather was unavailable to play for his team during the recent Royals trip to Toronto.

This isn't really a great comparison. 0.6 of White's WAR this season came as a starter and only 0.1 WAR coming in relief.

Somebody else can stick him in their pen.

I guess part of a major league baseball players job entails receiving an optional vaccine?

I give the Jays trade deadline a B+. The team made very smart fair cost acquisitions and strengthen the club in many different areas and kept all the elite prospects in the system. It's a big plus that every one that was brought in will be able to help the team next year as well. I think the bullpen has been strengthened to a very large degree. Bass has had a monster season as he's 7th in FWAR, 89th percentile in xERA, and had a massive month of July where his k rate shot up to 11.2 K/9. It's nice to see a guy brought in who is actually having a very good season compared to the likes of Brad Hand last season. Pop has a top of the line turbo sinker already, so he's a very high floor pitcher. If he can unlock his slider to a greater degree he could be a true weapon in the future. As is he's like a fireballing version of Adam Cimber who adds another effective option for lower leverage situations. Removing the chaff at the bottom of the roster is huge as we won't be subjected to the likes of Banda, Beasley, Thornton and other assorted subreplacement relievers for the rest of the season. White gives the club a much needed swing man/depth starter option. The team literally had nobody who could give them effective spot starts. Perhaps Castillo could be that guy, but the club didn't really seem to trust him enough to start him at the major league level. It hurts a bit to lose Frasso, but I think the club is beginning to turn around their fortunes when it comes to developing power arms. They added a potential front of the rotation starter this draft, so losing Frasso is a little easier to stomach as both guys are likely many years away from being ready to contribute to the major league squad. The Merriweather addition really strengthens the bench to a large degree. I would have preferred a Benintendi addition, but Merrifield is likely to be far more effective defensively in center field. Having another legitimate bench option other than Tapia is very nice, and this very well may spell an end to Zimmer's time with the club as Merrifield offers the same benefits but with a bat that at least provides some level of utility to a major league squad.

He looks like he can play approximately average center field.

Likely depth starter/long man for the rest of the year. Curious to see who is sent out for this acquisition but this looks like a very nice depth pickup.

During Schneider's tenure we have finally seen this team play up to their potential. The offence has really been humming at top 3 in runs scored, and the pitching staff has been very solid as well during this stretch. They haven't been facing the highest quality of competition but the 12-3 record hasn't been undeserved in the slightest. The entire team's offence really went into the tank in early July around the time of the rough west coast road trip. The team's offence dipped to 86 WRC+ and they only scored 2.7 runs per game. This was unfortunate timing for an offensive slip as the Gausman injury and double header really blew up the pitching staff during this period. This looks like it was more of a speed bump as the team has rebounded with 6.5 runs per game in their next 15 games. It's rare to see an entire offence click like the team enjoyed in July, however as guys like Kirk have cooled off a bit in July but Chapman has exploded and picked up the slack. Vlad has been really damn good over his last few months of play, not 2021 levels but given how many great hitters he's surrounded with he doesn't need to carry the offence. Gurriel looks like he may be sacrificing some power in trade for a more contact oriented approach, but this may actually lead to him being a far more consistent performer as a result. The pitching staff completely tanked during this period as well. The Gausman injury and double header completely blew up the bullpen for several weeks, and the team struggled to a 5.23 ERA/5.44 FIP during this period. They have righted the ship during the stretch of better play with a 2.71 ERA/3.50 FIP.