max silver

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.

Orelvis had a 2 for 4 night at the plate with 2 singles. He's had an interesting season as he has more extra base hits (37) than singles (32).

Another shift has been drafting more athletic pitchers who can fully take advantage of the new pitching lab and strength facilities. These are the types of guy who can really benefit the most from the new facilities.

Dietrich was busted for a stimulant of the like that can be commonly found in over the counter preworkout products and not for steroids. I certainly wouldn't place any bets against him using some sort of undetectable steroid but he hasn't been caught using anything of this sort.

There really wasn't a concrete indication that Gaudreau wasn't going to resign with the club. He certainly wouldn't have commanded the type of return the Tkachuk did given the down season(s) leading up to 2021 and far more advanced age.

Merrifield in on record stating that he has bene vaccinated. It seems remarkably unlikely that the Canadian federal government would hand out an exemption for a professional athlete given how stringently the vaccine requirements have been handled. https://theathletic.com/3479953/2022/08/05/with-his-vaccinated-status-confirmed-whit-merrifield-excited-to-contribute-to-blue-jays/

Oh thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's great to see that there's still so much good in the world, it's really needed in these dark times.

It's not my fault if you are too dense to understand why a member of a different team's message board would get sick and tired of somebody constantly cheerleading about how awesome one of their main competitors is. If this finally gets you to shut the f*** up once and for all about how awesome the Rays are I'll happily take the win.

You honestly have some of the worst self awareness I think I've been witness to by having the gall to call anybody else a cheerleader or fanboy. Look in a mirror, the posts I quoted above are exactly the type of posts that a true fanboy makes. I don't know if you noticed but this is the BLUE JAYS message board, not the Rays message board. The constant fawning and cheerleading for the Rays is getting seriously f***ing old. We all get it by now, you absolutely adore the Rays and think that no other team in the universe is as worth of your adoration. We don't need to hear about how great the Rays are every time a Blue Jays hitter swings at a bad pitch. We don't need to hear about how awesome the Rays are every time they trade a player before they get paid in arbitration. We don't need to hear you fawning over Rays management every time you don't like a trade the front office makes. We don't need to hear you slobbering over the Rays pitching development every time a Blue Jays bullpen member allows a run or two. WE ALREADY GET THE MESSAGE! Do you honestly think anyone on the BLUE JAYS message board appreciates somebody primping and preening over the Rays every time a Blue Jays player makes some sort of mistake in the field? The Jays aren't a perfect team, and are made up of real world individuals who sometimes make poor decisions in the heat of the moment. Guess what, despite your constant proclamations to the contrary the Rays make mistakes on the field too.

I can't help but wonder if Dante Bichette's let the ball travel philosophy may have done more harm than good when it comes to Bo's (and possibly Vlad as well) results at the plate. For such young hitters they may be better off to sit fastball and adjust to offspeed as needed.

I posted a similar theory in a different thread that Bo seems to be sitting off speed instead of hunting fastballs. He has been rather abysmal doing damage on fastballs this season in particular. Aside from his loud debut season he never really did a ton of damage on fastballs anyway, but it's turned into a rather pronounced weakness in 2022. There's far too many times he's been fouling back fastballs in the middle of the plate which indicates he's late getting to these pitches. For a guy with a bat as quick as his this just shouldn't be happening so frequently.

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.