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What are you even trying to say here? Sale has reportedly suffered meltdowns with nearly every professional team he has played for.

The recent change in drafting philosophy is becoming increasingly apparent. It appears as though the days of burning high draft picks on "polished" but low ceiling college pitchers thankfully become a thing of the past. We've seen the organization waste far too many picks on the likes of Deck McGuire, Chad Jenkins, Jon Harris, etc. instead of taking the upside play and attempting to draft and develop actual impact pitchers. I liked that they appear to be targeting bullpen help through the draft more as the organization has largely failed to develop their own bullpen talent in the past.

Does that really serve to lower the eventual asking price from the Nationals though? Blowing up a farm system for a few years of a player is just too risky in my opinion, no matter how good the player is. I really wish that the front office could have made a Ramirez trade happen in the offseason as he would likely been a reasonable costing superstar compared to Soto who is asking for the moon. It's obviously with the benefit of hindsight but seeing how Moreno has yet to regain any of the power he displayed in AA, and Martinez has been largely exposed at AA sending both of these guys out in a Ramirez trade as was reportedly the ask for Cleveland may have been totally worth it. Had the team known Kirk was about to explode with the bat it would have been easier to stomach moving out Moreno, but that's another hindsight scenario.

Soto would be a helluva consolation prize. Short term downgrade for a much younger player with similar upside in a peak season. How high the Mets are willing to above the luxury tax remains to be seen, but all indications are that Cohen is willing to splash nearly unlimited cash on his team.

I assume if the Yankees traded for Soto that would mean Judge would likely leave in free agency.

I just find I have a hard time determining what is a reasonable offer in a prospective Soto trade. The guy is a potential hall of famer, but he still has a few questions marks when it comes to overall performance. The bat alone is top 3 in MLB since he debuted, but his defence looks to have taken a large step backwards this season. Maybe this is just a one year blip, but when it comes to handing out a potential $500 million contract to a player this doesn't feel particularly wise if he maxes out as a 6 or 7 win player during his prime.

This is definitely a nice potential haul of talent for the team given their relatively low draft position for the first and second round picks. Hopefully they can manage to get all of these guys under contract. This regime has a good track record of signing their picks up to this point so I'm hopeful they can get this done.

I guess this all depends on whether the front office determines it's time to give a middle finger to sustainable winning and decides to push all the chips in to maximize winning for the next few seasons. This really goes against what they have stated they are trying to accomplish long term but it would certainly be exciting in the short term.

My bad, I thought Martin was being discussed.

It's 63 games, not 60 plate appearances.

Jays seem to prefer neck strains for phantom injury list stints.

That's really not being fair to the brown stains in the toilet bowl though. They didn't do anything to deserve such treatment.

Made a small change to your original post. I think Horwitz is most likely dangled as trade bait to bring in some much needed pitching help.

This is easily the most excited about a Jays pitching prospect since Noah Syndergaard. This time around we shouldn't have to worry about him being traded away for a 40 year old knuckleball pitcher.

I have a hard time seeing this front office making a move of this sort in which they weaken the MLB roster in a competitive season. Jansen is a no-brainer trade candidate eventually given the emergence of Kirk and reasonable debut of Moreno, but my money is on the front office eventually sending Moreno back to AAA for more regular playing time so that he's not sitting so regularly. Why is there very little chance the team can pay Teoscar? It's not like they are operating on a shoe-string budget, and it's been stated that as the team has more success and brings in more fans to the stadium payroll will continue to increase. I get that the Rays do a good job in remaining competitive given the financial challenges that they face, but I don't particularly find myself wanting to see the team I cheer for being run like it's full of nothing but mercenaries. The Rays don't have any fans that actually go to their games, so it's easy for them to point the middle finger at the fanbase with the constant churning of players as soon as they are on the verge of getting paid, but in a large market like Toronto it's simply not necessary to operate this way.

The dude isn't human. The Mets rotation with him at the top is pretty scary, but who knows if he can remain healthy enough for it to matter in the post season.

Chill the f*** out man. When did I ever state the bullpen wasn't an issue? I simply said the pen really wasn't the primary reason the club lost the 3 games in the Tampa series. Starting pitching injury/lack of effectiveness and lack of offence was largely to blame for the way the series went. If Gausman didn't get hit with a comebacker who knows how that game turns out. As soon as he was out of the game in the second inning it was effectively over against a true ace such as McClanahan. If Hatch didn't get crushed in the second game who knows how that turns out. The pen was actually good in game 2 in the doubleheader as they only allowed 1 run in 4-1/3 innings. I've already stated that Stripling gave up 4 runs all on his own and the offence only provided 3 runs. The bullpen had no effect on that loss. Perhaps the team would have had a better chance to come back with a more effective outing from Thornton but the bullpen giving up a s*** ton of runs ultimately didn't affect the final outcome.

Yes you can. Gausman went down early against one of baseball's best starters. That's not the pen's fault. In game two of the doubleheader Hatch absolutely got his teeth kicked in, that's not on the pen either. And in today's game the offence left a million runners on base against Baz and Stripling allowed 4 runs to score. The team only scored 3 runs, that's not on the pen either.

No need for the constant doom and gloom. If Rogers continues to put up the bucks the team should have plenty of chances to continue to compete. It's not like all of the key players are going to leave at once, and there are plenty of prospects in the pipeline working their way up as we speak. The team doesn't have a barren minor league system lacking in talent, the system is very healthy in the lower levels of the minors.

The bullpen as assembled to start the season in 2021 seemed like it was just fine. More AAA depth would have been nice, as is the case this season as well, but to suggest that the general manager should be axed because of bullpen injuries and previously effective relievers becoming ineffective out of the blue seems like a bit of a stretch. Do you think it's fair or reasonable to blame Ross Atkins for the sticky stuff ban rendering several of his bullpen members to be completely ineffective?

It appears as though he will have to remain down for 10 days unless somebody goes onto the injured list.

I'm not the one who brought that up in the first place. It's great ammunition so of course I'm going to take full advantage.

Well duh, it's obviously because they didn't win enough games. There's plenty of reasons for this, the offence and starting staff was s*** in the early going and the team was largely kept afloat by a stellar performance by the pen. The pen started to suffer from injuries and tanked soon afterwards as the remaining dependable options were overworked. The sudden in season sticky stuff ban made the club's primary setup man completely ineffective from that point forward. It would have been nice to see some help brought in a little sooner, but aside from massively overpaying it didn't seem like there were trades to be made early in June or so when the pen became an issue. There's also the not so insignificant fact that for the first 4 months of the season the team basically played as the road team in their "home" games and faced hostile crowds, while also facing the prospect of moving in season several times. This team faced far more adversity than any other team due to the covid pandemic. It's unfortunate that they missed the post season by a single game, but given that they played in a murder's row division where there were 4 teams that won over 90 games I'll give the GM a bit of a pass.

Why don't you spend some more time ranting like a senile geriatric imbecile about how Russel Martin's significant other being called his partner is somehow destroying society. This is the same team that most of the major prognosticators labelled as a legitimate world series contender in the offseason. There have been serious underperformance and injury issues which have largely sunk the pen up to this point. The trade deadline has not passed yet, and there will be ample opportunity to bring in much needed help. This same general manager assembled a team which may have been baseball's best team in the second half of 2021, but unfortunately just missed the post season. There are 3 months left to this season, so maybe we can let things play out before labelling the general manager as a "clown".

Go ahead and look in the mirror bro.