max silver

It simply isn't believable. It's very uncommon for a third baseman to have 6 or 7 fielding plays in one game to start with. I realize that MLB and Milb batted balls tendencies would be different, but lets utilize an elite third baseman known for good range in Matt Chapman. His range would allow him to get to a ton of batted balls and hence would receive a lot of fielding opportunities. In a typical season Statcast has him credited for around 530 attempts at the ball. Assuming he started 150 games this is 3.5 attempts per game. To imagine that a third baseman that you are talking s*** about just so happened to receive 6 or 7 fielding (or maybe even more) fielding chances in a game you just happened to be watching, and then proceeded to spike 6 or 7 throws across the diamond is really hard to believe. If you had kept things more reasonable and said you saw him spike several throws across the diamond this would be reasonable and hence much easier to believe.

This could easily change if Bo catches a case of the yips again, but I still maintain that he looks like he's improved a massive amount defensively so far this season. Earlier in the year he was sitting -2 OAA, and through steady play over the last few weeks he's managed to bring this up to an even 0 OAA. The last two years he's ended up at -5 and -7 OAA respectively, so if he can manage to bring this to around even that's a very big change. Last season he ended up at -16 DRS, and he's sitting at +2 right now. I do wonder how much of his poor metrics were affected by the amount of shifting the team employed last season, as a good chunk of the time he was starting on the second base side of the diamond.

I gotta call shenanigans on this post, this has the feel of you trying to save face and basically making s*** up to support your point. I seriously doubt you watched a game where Barger spiked 6 or 7 throws from third base.

Yeah I was also thinking the same thing as Varsho has also needed a recent hot spring to bring his overall numbers back to respectability. On May 1 he was siting with a 65 WRC+ and 0.1 FWAR. Varsho was still providing more value on the bases and in the field, so he has a profile that can provide a bit more value even when the bat is cold. Gurriel is almost completely dependent on his offensive contributions in comparison. If both players were to have an entire season offensively the way they started Varsho likely ends up with something like 1.5 more WAR for the entire season.

Gurriel's has gone on one of his patented super hot streaks recently which make his season look like it's been more consistent. If you go back to May 2 he produced all of an 85 WRC+ and was worth -0.2 FWAR. I was always hoping the guy could find a way to limit the funks he went into as he would tend to run white hot and completely cold after the hot streak ended.

I've seen zero reports that suggest Barger has been a butcher at short stop and third base. If he's that bad at those positions then he has no business at second base either. I have seen reports that suggest he's a bit challenged to remain at short stop though.

Barger has the strongest infield arm in the Blue Jays organization, and the team really has no other available replacements for Chapman if he leaves. It would be a bit of a waste of his toolset to park him at second base.

Chase Field has actually been slightly pitcher friendly over the last few seasons.

Any idea what he's changed for this season? It seems that his batted ball issues have only become worse, with an extremely high flyball ratio with little line drive contact and far too may popups. He's at least cut down on some of the strikeouts though.

I'd like to see Nate receive a little more regular work. He's barely been used since his callup as he's only appeared in 4 games in the roughly two weeks since he's been called up. It would have to be a bit difficult to show pinpoint command with such infrequent work.

I think Bo has improved tremendously defensively up to this point. He'll likely never be an above average defender but he's been very steady for the most part this season and making the plays he's supposed to.

The icing on the cake of misery is the likely Tiedemann injury.

I recall Schneider's explanation for bringing in Mayza was something along the likes of Santana being less likely to hit a home run from the right side, and Mayza was likely to coax a ground ball out of him to alleviate a lot of the pressure. I'll never understand that decision as nearly every other reliever in the bullpen was far more suited to face Santana from the left side than Mayza was to face him from the right side.

Yeah I'd probably flip Kirk and Varsho in the order but that's a relatively minor gripe.

Marcus Semien received a 7 year $175 million contract from the Rangers. I would expect this would make a good starting point for prospective Chapman bids in free agency.

For what it's worth he basically played a full season in 2020's covid shortened season. His contract is a warning sign for the potential downside of signing long term deals with 30+ year old players. You can never tell how a guy's body is going to hold up over time.

It seems to me that Schneider outlines exactly what his thought process was after every game when moves don't work out. I don't always fully agree with his reasoning but there is always a certain amount of logic behind them. It's early in the season, and the team is still trying to establish a pecking order for the bullpen, and determine which players are going to be contributors and which ultimately aren't going to get the job done. It seems that a lot of the moves are taking the long view on a six month season instead of applying the type of pressure that would apply to a post season game. I can get behind trying to save certain relievers for different parts of the lineup, not using relievers when they are in the yellow zone/use only in case of emergency instead of green zone and fully available, and placing a certain amount of trust in players until they show they aren't to be trusted. A manager that manages every single game like it's game 7 of the world series is going to leave a good chunk of his players mostly rotting on the bench and burn out his most trusted relievers by the end of May. Ultimately a team that is on a 100 win pace despite a tough early schedule and not having yet clicked on all cylinders is in a really good place.

The Red Sox and Mariners aren't necessarily basement teams though. The Mariners were a playoff team last season, and aside from against the Jays the Red Sox were better than a .500 team last season. The Rays and Orioles have had very easy schedules compared to the Jays up to this point as well, once they start playing tougher competition on a regular basis we will get a better idea where each team stands.

The team has played at a 100 win pace since Schneider took over. If that is indicative to you of a manager that is hurting his team I would suggest you don't have very realistic expectations.

From what I can gather this front office has always been cognizant of leaving available funds to add at the trade deadline to shore up any obvious weaknesses. Aside from that it appears as though Shapiro has much better support from Rogers higher ups than was previously the case under other regimes. The days of going around in the clubhouse with a hat for salary donations is a thing of the past.

There is also other extenuating factors to consider such as umpires who are having a rough game calling balls and strikes, and the seemingly random luck related factors that can directly contribute to extra runs being scored. Bassit was f***ed over hard by the home plate umpire in last night's game for instance, and instead of being out of the inning with zero runs scored allowed a grand slam later in the inning. Garcia for instance made a great pitch in the 9th last night that led to a weak grounder to second, but it was so softly hit that the runner was able to advance to second, scoring on a base hit later on. A little harder hit ball may have led to a force out or even a double play and then the game ends before extra innings. The manager putting his relievers in a position to succeed matters a lot as well. Using Bass in a leverage situation against a left handed batter late in the game despite his struggles instead of Mayza, who's only use is retiring left handed batters was asking for trouble.

Darryl Sutter was fired today. This was well earned as I can't recall a more disappointing Flames season in all my years of fandom.

Right on, I look forward to seeing the results. I recall an interesting Chris Black Twitter thread which outlined how Kirk had a better ERA in 2022 with quite a few key members of the Jays pitching staff vs Jansen. I think he was outlining the difference was more due to Kirk's better framing vs Jansen vs a pitch calling issue though. It seems odd that they would call a dramatically different game though given how each player is using the same scouting reports and the information is readily available in their wristband cheat sheets, but it certainly seems reasonable to think that Jansen is better at this given how much more experience he has vs Kirk.

Is there a tab or something to click for this, or did you need to crunch some of the numbers on your own? I think the reliever information may be more useful if you were to compare individual relievers with Jansen calling vs Kirk calling to make it more of an apples to apples comparison. Let's hypothetically surmise that Kirk has been saddled with a bunch of Cimber and Bass appearances for instance, where Jansen has seen appearances with more effective relievers like Swanson and Romano (not saying this is the case, just wondering what the splits look like).