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Yay time to strap in for another trip on Kooches wild ride. Hopefully the bullpen is in good shape going into this game as there will most likely be a lot of innings to cover.

A lot of the lustre has been coming off of the Yankees lately as the inevitable injuries and rotation correction to the mean has been occurring. I fully expect them to make notable additions at the trade deadline to reinforce their pen in particular.

That's surprising that the Tigers would entertain moving Skubal, he would seem to be more of a long term rotation building block that you would want to build around. Plus they made several expensive win now type moves in the offseason so this doesn't seem to fit the direction they appeared to be moving in.

Espinal could likely contend for a gold glove at any of the infield positions, he's just that good with the glove. It remains to be seen whether he can continue to provide enough with the bat to continue being a full time regular. He has interesting splits this season, where he's mashed LHP to the tune of a 159 WRC+, but struggled against RHP with a 77 WRC+. When you break down his RHP splits a little further an interesting picture emerges, where he's perfectly passable at home with a 97 WRC+, but he's been terrible on the road at 60 WRC+. This is pretty odd as his splits vs LHP are basically even between home and away. Is this a bit of a random fluke? Has he faced better quality RHP opposition on the road vs at home?

Robertson would likely be a fine pickup. It looks like his stuff still really plays at this point of his career, the only real cause for concern in the high walk rate.

I'm not sure why you keep beating this dead horse. The endless proclamations about how Bo is being "babied" or "coddled" aren't painting you in a very favorable light. Bo has been handed the shortstop reins for this season, and has been accordingly spending all of his defensive developmental time working to improve his play at the short stop position. Do you honestly think it would be beneficial for him or the team to start spending crucial early career defensive developmental time learning how to play second base instead in the middle of the season? Outside of a stretch of a few weeks of play where Bo made a lot of errors in the field has his short stop play been a cause for concern? He ended 2021 on a nice run of mostly error free play in the field, and started 2022 in a similar fashion. He had a rough stretch where he mishandled a lot of balls and made some throwing errors, but has pretty much eliminated that issue as the season has continued. There is no need to panic here or keep harping on about moving Bo off of shortstop until he proves that he can't play it. The club has largely been playing stellar infield defense with Bo manning short stop. There is no need to fix something that isn't broken.

The 2019 Nationals had an elite starting rotation so their pen didn't need to be as good/cover as many innings as most other recent World Series winners.

I would likely pencil in Syndergaard as 5th starter given how good Stripling has been in the rotation. I wonder what a package of Syndergaard and Iglesias would cost in return? Those two would check off a good chunk of the Jays pitching needs in one fell swoop.

By shutdown I basically meant someone at least in the same vein as Garcia who can pitch late game high leverage innings on a regular basis. If the club doesn't add several relievers who at least project to be slightly above average taking a chance on somebody like Trivino has serious potential to blow up in the Atkins' face. I recall the club was in negotiation with Liam Hendriks when he was a free agent, so Atkins has shopped in the premium aisle at the bullpen supermarket previously. It looks to be a real sellers market this season so bullpen help is likely to be pretty expensive this year.

This seems like a potential recipe for disaster. If Kikuchi can't improve his command to the point where he can reliably throw strikes he provides no more utility out of the pen than he does as a starter.

If two shutdown relievers are added I really don't see any relievers already on the MLB roster deserve to be removed from the roster to make way for a Trivino addition. There will still be a need for a long man on the roster, and the club has 4 relievers who have been quite good for the season as a whole. The team can't afford another Brad Hand type situation where a reliever with serious performance related question marks is brought in an ends up pissing away several potential victories during his time with the club.

I don't think the club should be rolling the dice on reclamation type relievers this trade deadline as the stakes are too high this season. If the team misses the playoffs again despite being in the middle of their playoff window Atkins very well may find himself on the hot seat in the offseason. While Trivino's ERA is unsustainably high this season xERA and FIP still paint a picture of a decidedly mediocre bullpen arm bordering on replacement level.

Why would the club need add 4 bullpen arms? With the 13 man pitching roster limit that limits the bullpen to 8 arms total assuming you are running a 5 man rotation. The club has 4 effective/dependable arms who should be in no risk of demotion off of the roster in Romano, Garcia, Cimber, and Phelps. Mayza has been a little up and down this season but barring total collapse he should be a lock for another one of the spots. I would assume the club wants to leave a potential spot open for Pearson if he's able to return this season. That leaves two remaining open spots for outside additions.

What does the club really need pitching wise that necessitates moving pieces off of the MLB roster? I see the need for some bullpen reinforcements and a back of the rotation pitcher/swingman. The team has plenty of prospect capital to make these types of acquisitions. Swapping Gurriel for Laureano looks to be more of a sideways move in my view. If I'm not mistaken, Gurriel only has one remaining year of control so he wouldn't likely be of great interest to weaker/rebuilding clubs who are willing to move pitching out at the deadline.

Go back and read my post again, I stated that Robles would provide a sizeable upgrade on the bases. If and when Tapia is to turn back into a pumpkin or one of the regular outfielders misses time due to injury having a 5th outfielder who isn't a sub replacement player suddenly becomes much more important. Zimmer was forced to play a lot more than was desirable earlier in the season due to Springers schedule days off and Teo's oblique injury. Tapia was really struggling at the time as well which compounded the issue further. With Springer's spotty injury history it would be very easy to see Zimmer forced into action more frequently. Neither of Zimmer or Robles has exactly been lighting the world on fire at the plate this season, but at the very least Robles puts the ball in play sufficiently to at least give himself a chance to get on base.

Baseballtradevalues lists Laureano's value at 45.5 million, which seems kind of crazy for me given how Laureano hasn't had a really good season since 2019. The guy has a hard time staying on the field due to a steady stream of injuries. The recent PED suspension isn't a great look either. For a guy with a stellar defensive reputation he's having a really rough season defensively in center field with -7 DRS/-3 OAA. Expending legitimate assets for a dude who may be experiencing a severe defensive decline is a risky proposition to say the least. I can maybe get on board a bit with him as a Tapia replacement, but the club is already very heavy in right handed outfielders as it is.

Bo is playing beneath his talent level this season, and simply appears to be having a bad season. The constant whinging about Bo is getting old in a hurry. We don't know the Jays clubhouse dynamic, but by all accounts Bo is a fiercely driven/competitive guy. We really don't know how he would react to a demotion. He seems to be in the same mold as Marcus Semien where he busts his ass in order to condition himself to play every single day, and wants to play essentially every inning of every game. It may be in his best interest to back off a bit, but he's displayed a strong ability to remain healthy, and until this season was on an upward trajectory performance wise as well. Cavan Biggio started the season with a -10 WRC+, and found himself out of a job. Despite Bo's struggles, he's still on pace for a 3 win season. Do you really think the club is going to be helped in any way by sending Bo down to AAA? Bo started the season slowly at the plate and in the field, but since May 1st he's been playing at over a 4 win pace when prorated to an entire season. For a player that's not been at his best that's still well above average. It's really up for debate whether Semien was a better shortstop defender than Bo was last season. When you examine the metrics on a rate basis Bo was actually better by OAA than Semien was. Semien makes less errors at the position, but that's the only advantage he has over Bo. Bo has more range, a stronger arm, and has more ability to make tough plays than Semien. I wish I knew of a method for parsing defensive statistics over time, as I have a feeling that having the ability to examine Bo's OAA numbers of the course of this season would paint a very interesting picture. If I recall correctly he was in the range of -7 OAA at one point this season, and due to a very steady run of play over the last several months has managed to work his way up to exactly even at 0 OAA.

That's a really interesting potential trade target. I took a gander at baseballtradevalues and that site lists Robles's value at essentially nothing at 0.5 million. He would be a sizeable upgrade over Zimmer on the bases and provide a similar level of defense while also not being a complete black hole at the plate despite his deficiencies.

Conversely Bo's xWOBA is easily the worst of his career at .324. Actual WOBA is .314 so it's not like he's been massively unlucky this season. He has produced one good month worth of at bats surrounded by two average/mediocre months and 1 downright terrible month. Monthly WRC+ values are as follows: April 45 May 143 June 102 July 99 Hopefully he can turn his season around in the second half, but his first half has been pretty underwhelming outside of the month of May.

I was hopeful the bat could come around eventually, but the surprising thing to me is that his defensive metrics are rather pedestrian so far. I suspected if he were playing more to his floor that it would be his bat that was holding him back and not the defense.

Giving up 27 runs in a single game certainly doesn't help, although I imagine at least a chunk of those were unearned due to shoddy defence. Thinking back the Tapia inside the park grand slam play wouldn't have been an error as the fielder lost the ball, and the popup that dropped in wouldn't have been ruled an error either as nobody touched it.

From examining his defensive metrics for the season he's passable in left field (0 DRS/-1 OAA/216 innings) and center field (-1 DRS/0 OAA/149 innings), but an abomination in right field (-5 DRS/-3 OAA/199 innings). A little better optimization of his deployment into the field might mitigate a fair bit of the damage he's able to cause defensively.

I have the feeling trading Hoglund could end up hurting a bit eventually. He already possessed top notch command as an amateur, and seems like the type of guy that would have really benefitted from the Jays pitching development system given how the club has had a lot of recent success in helping their pitchers improve upon their overall stuff.

That's pretty cool having a facility like that to tap into. Giving Tiedemann a chance to tweak his arsenal as needed should help him have an easier adjustment against better competition in AA.

I don't think that kind of behaviour every really flew, it's more like it flew under the radar/was kept under wraps. The recent spade of abuse victims speaking out could very well be giving Bichette Jr. the courage to finally speak out.