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I can't make it through full games recently.

When on earth did you see literally anyone anywhere making this claim? I'm calling shenanigans on another generic weaksauce strawman argument. I saw plenty of fans online stating how this was one of the worst trades of franchise history based on the Diamondbacks making it to the world series in season one but don't recall anyone anywhere ever claiming this trade was some sort of steal for the Blue Jays.

There are actual advanced metrics to judge defense on vs relying on eye test only which you are obviously utilizing. Straw's arm value by Statcast is worse than Varsho this season as well as Varsho is 31st percentile in arm value vs 28th percentile for Straw. There isn't a single metric that suggests Straw is anything other than a defensive downgrade compared to Varsho in center field but go ahead and continue to make these bogus claims if that makes you feel better. Infield / Outfield Catching Innings By Position Rk. Player Team Fielding Run Value INF/OF Runs Range Arm Inf. DP Catching Runs Framing Throwing Blocking Total Innings C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF 1 Varsho, Daulton 2 2 3 -1 -- -- -- -- -- 649 -- -- -- -- -- -- 649 -- 2 Lukes, Nathan 1 1 0 0 -- -- -- -- -- 59 -- -- -- -- -- -- 59 -- 3 Straw, Myles 0 0 1 -1 -- -- -- -- -- 140 -- -- -- -- -- -- 140 --

By DRS Varsho has been far better in center field than Straw and they are approximately even by OAA. I was hoping Varsho could maintain the power gains from last season but it's like he made a conscious choice to be a more "complete" hitter and subsequently reduced his power output far too much.

If the team doesn't sell at the deadline I'd extend a qualifying offer. It wouldn't be a bad outcome for him to accept it to man center field for a single season and would buy the team an opportunity to find a long term replacement.

Because it's not that cut and dry and is a lot more complicated topic than simply pointing to the inning he's pitching in. It's not a coincidence that he's changed his pitch mix to something closer to what he was using with the Phillies and found more success.

Oh come on man. The Blue Jays traded for an A ball catcher who has started all of 35 games at catcher in the minors since beginning a conversion last season. Trading Kirk has literally nothing to do with this situation with a player who is so far away from reaching the majors if he even makes it in the first place. You're apparently as confused about wokeism as you are about baseball if you think the board being woke has anything to do with calling you out over a foolish post.

To be fair Atkins has only sold at the deadline once in the last 6 seasons so we don't have much in the way of recent history to go off of.

I tend to agree. Atkins and co. produced a nice haul of prospects from the 2024 trade deadline and I would expect more of the same this season. This may well be more of a sellers market given how many teams are in contention and if the Jays end up selling they have a chance to make a bit of lemonade out of a lemon of a season.

I see parallels to both 2023 and 2024 but with the added bonus of a crapload of injuries. I think the 2023 should have been a lot better than it was but that team had trouble scoring at home primarily due to all of Vlad, Kirk and Springer having down seasons at the plate. I though the 2024 team had a shot to at least compete for a wildcard spot but it ended up being short on overall talent. This year's club is weird in that it doesn't have that much less talent than the 2025 squad but the execution is awful in all phases of the game. Just like 2023 all of Springer, Vlad and Kirk are having disappointing seasons with the bat and this is holding the offense back. The rotation has been in tatters for most of the season due to injury and this has had a knockoff effect on the pen pitching far too many innings to be sustainable. Who knows what to expect in future seasons given the worst to first to potentially worst trajectory the team is on at the moment.

Ultimately unless this team starts showing signs of life in short order the inning where Hoffman is pitching isn't going to matter to any degree. If the front office does a firesale at the deadilne I do wonder if they would consider moving Hoffman if they get any decent offers in return. I find myself wondering if it would be possible to dip under the first luxury tax threshold if all of the expiring contracts are shipped out and moving Hoffman could help to reach this level.

We can only hope Vlad can rest up his body a bit during the All Star break and come back similar to last season's bye before the post season. The team's ceiling depends on Vlad providing superstar impact with the bat and the team has shown it has a very low offensive floor without him hitting closer to what he's capable of. Atkins showed a few seasons ago that he's completely willing to sell at the deadline if his team doesn't have what it takes to succeed. I think if the club falls further back at the deadline we'll see all of the expiring contracts moved out and maybe even a few surprises with more control with a view of reloading for future seasons. If they just continue to hang around the wildcard spot a few games out I could see a bit of a mixed bag of buying and selling with an eye on controllable assets, and only if they go on an unlikely tear do I foresee an aggressive buying posture being taken.

You are creating a strawman counter argument based on an opinion that I didn't even state in the first place. I never once stated that I think Hoffman should be pitching in the 9th inning so there's no need to spend so many paragraphs on a statement I didn't even make. My argument hinges on the opinion where I believe Hoffman likely would have enjoyed similar success if he had been pitching in the 9th inning during this recent stretch of dominance. He's largely been bringing his best stuff into games, commanding his pitches more effectively, and avoiding mistake pitches that end up in seats. Having said that I'm firmly on board with the current setup of Varland typically pitching the 9th inning as he's one of MLB's most dominant relievers and can pitch more than a single inning at a time if the situation warrants it. I like the current arrangement of the 3 headed monster of Hoffman and Rogers in setup roles with Varland closing as it's a very potent trio that should allow the team to successfully close out most games where they have a late lead. You seem to be confusing correlation with causation a bit. We can absolutely correlate Hoffman having success when not pitching the 9th inning during this recent stretch, but what we can't do with any level of certainty is assign causation to Hoffman's success due to the inning he's pitching in. At the end of the day you are crafting a theory in exactly the same fashion as I am and neither of us can prove or disprove our theories due to the other confounding factors. As I previously mentioned I surmise that Hoffman's recent success is largely due to utilizing a more effective pitch mix and evening out of his historically inflated BABIP over the first few months of the season. Hoffman was the victim of a comically high .500 BABIP over the first two months of the season and this was something that was bound to regress to the mean in time, and reducing usage of a pitch that was being hammered on the regular in favor of his best pitch was a tweak that probably should have been made sooner. Once again Hoffman has experienced extended runs of several months of consecutive success in the 9th inning in the closer role, so a 4 week sample of success in a non 9th inning role isn't any kind of silver bullet towards proving causation of him being unable to succeed in the 9th inning.

This is an interesting take as Mattingly was largely blamed for the team's offensive struggles in 2023 and 2024.

Hoffman had pretty damn similar success to the last month of the season in the post season last year as he only allowed 2 earned runs over the entire month. He was pitching the 9th inning so it's not like that success was driven by pitching in the 7th or 8th innings so there's history of success in the 9th inning in a closer role. He's shown that he can go a month or more at a time between meltdowns in prior seasons in the 9th inning so it's far from proven to any degree at this point that the success is a function of inning as it's still a very small sample size. For instance he had a 5 week period in between meltdowns this season while primarily pitching in the 9th inning so it's not as if he hasn't experienced stretches of success in this role. I don't have the ability to pick what inning Hoffman is pitching in so I don't see any value in your argument that I somehow have to put Hoffman back in the 9th inning to prove my theory. You've made this point several times for reasons I don't understand as I'm not the Blue Jays manager and can't pick and choose who pitches what innings. If/when Hoffman has a meltdown appearance in a lower inning we'll finally be able to put this silly narrative of him pitching better because of the inning he's pitching in to bed. I believe there's bound to eventually be an appearance where Hoffman shows up with poor stuff and even worse command even while pitching in the 7th or 8th inning as he's prone to occasional appearances of this nature. On these days I just hope the manager doesn't hang him out to dry and allow 4 or 5 runs to cross the plate before finally making a switch.

Part of this is pitch mix, and part of it is normalizing of his historically inflated BABIP. He's throwing his best pitch more (slider) and reduced the usage of his worst pitch (4 seamer). I'm guessing you are trying to point to the inning he's pitching but I think he would be killing it in any inning presently based on how well he's pitching.

I just don't get the feeling the club wants Miles shouldering anything close to a typical starters workload this season. I expect he'll continue being used in a similar fashion to what we've seen with a blend of longer bulk outings and shorter burst leverage outings as required.

Small silver lining that it wasn't his arm or shoulder.

This dude may have top of the rotation stuff. Just because he was acquired essentially for free this doesn't erase his potential future value such that the team should ruin him.

I believe Sanchez could give him a run for his money. It appears as though Pinango is a lot more comfortable in right field vs being horrible in left, and it's the reverse for Sanchez as he's been a lot better in left field with right field being disaster level.

Wow color me surprised a certain somebody is doing his typical surface level evaluation. Lauer has produced a 4.41 xERA/5.22 FIP/4.97 xFIP/0.0 FWAR to go along with a .165 BABIP and 95% strand rate. The ERA is nice but it's far from earned, and Lauer has been enjoying incredibly good fortune on batted balls in play and he's a prime candidate for regression in time.

Terminator is capable of actual humor and unlike your posts it's easy to tell when he's being serious and when he's joking. Nearly every post you make ends in a pointless LOL whether it's supposed to be a serious post or not.

It's astounding how you continuously display your total lack of basic baseball acumen on a daily basis. I'm not policing anything, you have the right to make a continuous stream of brain dead posts and I have the right to call you out for them. If you don't want to be called out for your dumb posts then the incredibly easy solution is to stop making dumb posts.

Jays24 directly stated that the Blue Jays front office was stupid for DFA'ing SWR instead of Hoffman so give me a break. In fact two posters directly stated that Hoffman survived being DFA'd over SWR. This is yet another disingenuous post on your part in an act of white knighting for morons.