max silver

He's likely a real terror on the bases. It would be quite the improvement being able to upgrade Alejandro Kirk into Billy Hamilton in a big moment late in the game.

Lol love the Bronx cheer.

The front office is busy playing a pointless game of s***** outfielder merry go round. Shuffling from Zimmer to Bradley Jr. to Hamilton is just so pointless. Maybe the prognosis of Springer playing more than semi occasional outfield is looking bleak and Hamilton may provide some injury backup for in case Bradley Jr. goes down with injury.

Jays pitching staff is almost completely shutting down the Yankees offence this series. Assuming Roman gets the job done and if White gets it done tomorrow a sweep won't be out of the question.

AAV seems very reasonable but the length of the contract is a bit long as he'll be pretty old in the tooth the last few years.

The guy was absolutely ruined by injuries. He's had a lot of surgeries over the years including several hip surgeries and a wrist surgery as well. He was never particularly quick/fleet of foot and the hip surgeries made him too slow to keep up, and the wrist problems largely robbed him of his best asset, which was a top notch quick fire wrist shot in the slot.

When Gaudreau walked and Tkachuk indicated he wasn't resigning in Calgary I thought a rebuild was likely imminent. Fast forward several weeks later and the team might actually be improved compared to last season, that's quite the turn of events.

Go check out Kikuchi's statcast results for his cutter for last year and this year and then you'll see why the team took the cutter away.

It seems very unlikely Severino is going to be sufficiently stretched out to start in the playoffs as he was recently placed on the 60 day IL. He still has elite stuff and will be a weapon out of the pen if he makes it back in time.

This sounds a lot like complaining just for the sake of complaining. The Toronto Blue Jays are a big market team who don't need to intentionally game the arbitration system to artificially deflate their players salaries. They pride themselves as being a player centric organization and not one looking to pinch pennies around the fringes. If Jordan Romano ends up making a few extra million dollars a season in his later arbitration years because he largely got the job done in the closer position this isn't going to hold the team back from making necessary improvements to the rest of the roster. The team does their utmost to keep their players happy, and splitting save opportunities in order to save a few bucks is far out of character for this organization compared to everything Mark Shapiro has shown up to this point.

I had a quick gander various bullpens in the top 15 in saves, and really only came up with a small assortment of contending teams that split the closer duties in this fashion. Nearly every contending team has a definitive closer who has vastly more saves than the rest of the bullpen options. There have been several teams who switched closers mid season due to health and/or underperformance (Dodgers, Yankees and Braves are all examples of this) but for the most part a team chooses the reliever who is best suited to pitch the 9th inning and sticks with this option as much as possible, changing as needed due to availability on any given day.

I really don't think bullpen upgrades were available in June as there were next to no trades made at all for the entire month. Prices were already stupidly high at the deadline, I shudder to think what the cost for relief upgrades would have been prior to the deadline this season. I actually like the bench quite a bit right now. Having Biggio, Tapia, Merrifield, and Kirk when he's not catching/DH that day is actually pretty decent, especially compared to previous years. When everyone is healthy the rotation is 6 deep. Of course this depends on Kikuchi actually contributing something, but his first few starts after returning from the IL have been pretty encouraging.

Jackie Bradley Jr. is the complete antithesis of an impact bat. His bat is so weak that he's subreplacement for the last few seasons. The Jays already have a no bat defensive replacement available off the bench in Bradley Zimmer.

I imagine the front office wants Thornton in case the need to cover multiple innings arises. The pen has really been taxed over the last few games of this series.

It looks like fastballs aren't a huge issue for him as he produced an xWOBA of .352 against fastballs. Breaking pitches are a much bigger issue, he stuggles to even make contact with them as he has a 55% whiff rate. It seems as though the league has noticed this and really been feeding him a steady dose of breaking stuff.

I'll go ahead and assume you mean Merrifield. I caught one of my earlier posts using Merryweather instead. It seems as though the front office has been trying to address the lack of left handed balance in the lineup over the last few offseasons but have come up empty handed. A deal with Michael Brantley was all but finished until he changed his mind at the last minute. The team was a reported finalist for Corey Seager but the Rangers ended up paying him $325 million, hard pass to signing Seager to that kind of boat anchor contract. They were also linked to Schwarber who ended up taking big dollars to sign with the Phillies. They were also linked to Jose Ramirez as well this offseason, that's the missed opportunity that stings the most.

Sadly this is what happens when the inmates are allowed to run the asylum.

Laureano would have been an interesting pickup but there are reasons to argue for and against picking him up. Cons include the fact that Laureano bats right handed and his defensive metrics in center field have really plummeted this season. He was busted for PED's as well so that's another strike against him. Acquisition cost likely would have been more painful as well. Pros include the fact that he likely a better player for the rest of this season and moving forward compared to Merrifield and is cheaper/has more remaining years of control. It's hard to say whether Oakland was interested in moving him or not though given the cheap remaining years of control.

Given how close to the deadline the Merrifield acquisition was made I'm sure this was far from the first choice for the front office. It was definitely a headscratcher to move out Castillo given the lack of starting depth in the organization, but Taylor isn't likely somebody to lose any sleep over. The team didn't even protect him ahead of the rule 5 draft, and given the large number of prospects needing to be added to the 40 man roster this offseason it made a lot of sense to consolidate some of the more extraneous prospects into help for the big league roster. There was a pronounced need to attain outfield help given the tenuous Springer injury situation, so if moving out Castillo ended up being the only way to get this done then so be it. You can certainly choose to call me a homer, optimist or whatever other descriptor you choose but I am a firm believer in both Teoscar and Gurriel offensively. If I recall correctly the only time Teo has really struggled since his breakout was this season after his IL stint. He's been one of baseballs best hitting outfielders dating back several seasons now and has several silver slugger awards to back this up. Gurriel is certainly hot and cold, however the hit tool is top notch and he appears to have settled into a new lower power high batting average approach. I don't see either of these guys presence in the lineup as an issue in the slightest. Benintendi may have been a decent pickup, but it doesn't appear he can play center field anymore. It's a small sample size but he's struggled tremendously so far as a Yankee. Ian Happ wasn't moved at the deadline despite this being a true sellers market bringing back big returns, so the ask from the Cubs must have been pretty outlandish. The front office wasn't interested in moving out handful of elite prospects in the minor leagues this trade deadline, and without knowing what the asks were from other teams for more impactful lineup help it's hard to get terribly upset about the players who were brought in.

We've only seen him for a few games, but Merrifield should be able to cover for Springer just fine for the next week and a bit. Stripling's IL stint is expected to be very short, and White looked ok in his debut so I don't really feel the need to push the panic button right now. Of course another injury to a member of the rotation would change that in a hurry though.

He's getting a ton of attention all over the baseball stratosphere and very deservedly so. Future Jays is very excited as well. https://futurebluejays.com/2022/08/06/tiedemann-sizzling-in-aa-debut/

The Twins seem to have the Jays number this season, hopefully we don't end up playing them in the playoffs as their pen is largely murder against the Jays mostly right handed lineup. Bundy should have been lit up based on the stuff he was featuring today, he's likely very lucky it was pouring rain early in the game as that might have saved him from allowing a bushel load of runs. White was decent in his first start, if Gurriel hadn't lost the ball in the lights he only would have allowed 2 runs over 5 innings of work, that will work just fine for a swing man/back end of the rotation starter spot. The Mayza injury was pretty scary, only saving grace is that it's not his pitching shoulder. Hopefully he'll be able to come back at some point this season. I'm only guessing but that looks like some sort of shoulder separation. Maybe this means Matt Gage gets a longer look out of the pen, although Saucedo has been throwing well in AAA also.

I guess it all boils down to whether it's death with a covid shot or death from a covid shot.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has had a bit of an up and down season, but aside from a 5 week stretch early on where he really struggled he's largely been excellent with the bat. Vlad started out hot in the first few weeks of the season. He was squaring up baseballs regularly and ground balls were kept well in check. April 8 to April 23 .333/.393/.648, OPS of 1.042, WRC+ 185 Average exit velocity 94.2 MPH, barrel rate 19.5%, launch angle 10.5 degrees ground ball rate 36.6% Vlad hit the skids in the 5 or so weeks to follow. Average exit velocity dropped but was still very solid, hard hit rate was still very good as well, but his ground ball rate skyrocketed and he stopped barreling up baseballs. April 24 to May 31 .209/.319/.339, OPS of .658, WRC+ 83 Average exit velocity 92.6 MPH, barrel rate 6.2%, launch angle 2.7 degrees ground ball rate 56.7% Vlad has been really caught fire since the All Star Break, but going back further to the start of June he has been on a very nice run at the plate. Average exit velocity and hard hit rates have remained pretty constant from the period where he struggled, however barrel rate has jumped as he's hitting the ball hard in the air more frequently. Ground ball rate is improved but still a bit high while average launch angle has crept up a bit. May 31 to Aug. 5 .318/.377/.57, OPS of .948, WRC+ 165 Average exit velocity 92.7 MPH, barrel rate 12.2%, launch angle 4.4 degrees ground ball rate 48.1% Hopefully Vlad can hit another gear to end the season to help carry the club into the playoffs. He can provide elite offence in many different ways, whether it's when he goes on home run tears, or is producing tons of line drive base hits. We haven't seen a stretch where everything comes together for him as he's been a bit swing happy at times and looked a bit in between in his approach at times as well.

Wouldn't the contraction of MiLB mean that the average talent level in the minor leagues is actually higher? Less spots available should lead to the lesser talented players needing to play in independent ball instead of being able to ply their trade in affiliated ball.