max silver

He features a different arsenal than Fisher but there are certainly similarities in that each features a fastball with substandard shape and several effective non fastball whiff generating pitches. The club has enjoyed success in players like this such as Fisher/Little/Nance so hopefully history repeats itself.

It appears this guy has an excellent changeup to go with an effective slider but very little command of his arsenal. I don't know if my heart could take a right handed version of Brendan Little at this point.

His changeup generated a crazy 68% whiff rate in AAA this season.

I just hope Arighetti can manage to keep the ball in the park as the home run has been a massive issue for him as a Blue Jay. I do like the swing and miss stuff he's displayed but the command needs to improve if he's to provide any value out of the rotation.

I'm pretty lukewarm on the idea of bringing Scherzer back for another season. If anything I'd like the guy to recognize that he's accomplished plenty in his career and is likely a surefire hall of famer and he has nothing left to prove to anyone. If I recall correctly he underwent something like 4 injections in his thumb during his latest IL stint and this isn't sustainable long term and eventually there will be a price to be paid. My main concern is that Max just doesn't offer any kind of reliability to know that he would be healthy enough to pitch effectively when you need him. The club is all but certain to be searching for rotation upgrades for next season and with better rotation health the team would likely have a hard time finding a spot for him to pitch. At the end of the day there's little guarantee that he would be able to keep his body healthy enough for another kick at the can next season given the ever growing laundry list of injury issues he's been faced with.

That's a very good point that it would be easy to understand why a front office would not be interested in bringing in a highly injury prone player in a season where the team has already largely seen their roster decimated by injury.

In the last two seasons combined Straw has provided 85 wRC+/2.4 FWAR in 572 PA, vs Robert Jr. who has provided 88 wRC+/1.8 FWAR in 649 PA. This isn't exactly a battle of David vs Goliath. Robert Jr. is in the midst of a bit of a hot streak but his offensive season was essentially as bad as Straw's approximately 3 weeks ago.

That's a little presumptive to assume that Guerra will be able to succeed in longer outings in MLB before throwing a single pitch at the level. I don't believe Miles would have thrown so many innings this season had the rotation not been in shambles.

I'm curious to see how the club views Guerra moving forward. I believe he likely possesses the stuff to succeed out of the rotation but the stuff has ticked up several notches in shorter relief outings to the point where he might be a monster bullpen arm.

Scherzer has found a way to turn back the clock since his latest return from the injured list. This current level of good health feels like it's probably built like a house of cards awaiting an imminent implosion but it's impossible to deny how damn well Max has been pitching in the second half of the season. Date Team Opp GS Stf+ FA Stf+ SI Stf+ FC Stf+ FS Stf+ SL Stf+ CU Stf+ CH Stf+ KC Stf+ FO Stuff+ Location+ Pitching+ Total - - - - - - 13 90 99 106 100 85 94 105 98 Date Team Opp GS Stf+ FA Stf+ SI Stf+ FC Stf+ FS Stf+ SL Stf+ CU Stf+ CH Stf+ KC Stf+ FO Stuff+ Location+ Pitching+ 2026-08-30 TOR SEA 1 103 109 110 113 83 103 113 107 2026-08-25 TOR KCR 1 93 93 98 88 75 90 97 93 2026-08-19 TOR @TBR 1 99 85 110 102 90 99 96 100 2026-08-13 TOR BOS 1 88 107 104 89 95 121 113 2026-08-08 TOR @PHI 1 93 108 113 99 101 118 114 2026-08-02 TOR STL 1 97 110 100 95 101 105 102 Total - - - - - - 6 95 98 107 103 87 98 109 105

I would expect that a small sample size player with a massive gulf between his expected statistics and on field results could expect the results and expected statistics to slowly even out more over time. I did look at the expected statistics on ground balls for Bateman and they paint exactly the same picture as you are doing. Ground Balls wOBA .347 xWOBA .251 Bateman's contract profile is largely ground ball based as he places the ball on the ground 64% of the time. I see little chance of him continuing to enjoy his current level of success particularly once opposition khacki's start to accumulate sufficient data to appropriately place their infield defenders to guard against Bateman's tendencies.

That's an interesting thought. I did a bit of reading up on expected statistics and found conflicting opinions online. It's generally stated that expected statistics weren't meant to be predictive in nature and that results tend to be more predictive by comparison. At the same time I've also seen it suggested that in a short sample such as with Bateman that the expected statistics may be more predictive in nature as they more directly outline true player skill vs the on field results. I do think this is an interesting topic of discussion and hopefully someone more versed on statistical analysis will eventually chime in.

I think George was held back by the broken toe initially coming off of the injured list but he's been producing closer to something resembling a normal age based regression from last season for over 3 months now. The first few weeks back post broken toe were rough but he's largely found his footing since then. Apr. 29-May 17 53 PA 32 wRC+/-0.4 FWAR 86.5 MPH EV May 18-present 317 PA 127 wRC+/1.4 FWAR 88.5 MPH EV

125 MPH piss rocket ground balls incoming.

I hope the team works with Bateman to add a little more juice to his bat. He's pretty dramatically overproducing compared to his expected numbers and is a prime candidate for regression over the longer term. His .260 xwOBA is horrific and correlates to something resembling 65-75 wRC+ or thereabouts and that won't play to any degree other than a role like a 5th outfielder at best.

Oh FFS the injury cursed season from hell continues.

Did you bother to read what I read? Lopez is in the midst of a slump that's bad enough that decreasing his overall seasonal numbers back to any random starting point that you choose. Lopez hasn't been "bad" since June 10th as that's a completely illogical starting point and it's obvious that you did little to no research before choosing this date. Lopez actually experienced an excellent stretch of games from June 10th until July 9th when he actually started to fall off, as he produced a stellar 168 wRC+ in this period. But you are trying to make a bogus case that Lopez was somehow "bad" for that stretch of games when he managed to provide 1.8 FWAR to his team. Unlike your dates mine aren't arbitrary as I examined the game logs to find the period when the results fell off of the table and hence my declaration that Lopez has been slumping badly for approximately 6 weeks. I'm not going to make any declarations of what Lopez is going to produce for the rest of the season as I don't have a crystal ball in my possession, but he did produce excellent results at the plate for over 3 months of the season before falling on hard times.

I think that Lopez has a very good shot to be a far better hitter than Gimenez with Gimenez ultimately being a better defender. Perhaps they could largely produce similar overall WAR results but would likely go about it differently.

I think this is largely the result of a 6 week slump or so. Lopez's month by month wRC+ values are as follows and this current slump is protracted/severe enough to drag down his season numbers back to any date you care to choose. Mar/Apr 133 wRC+ May 115 wRC+ June 150 wRC+ July 110 wRC+ August 43 wRC+ You can see instantly that it's a bogus framing to suggest that Lopez has somehow been struggling since a point in May or June as each month saw an overall offensive contribution that was solidly above league average. If you dig down a little further you can see that Lopez was in the midst of what appeared to be a breakout season as he was sitting at a stellar 144 wRC+ on July 9, and the wheels have completely fallen off essentially from that point moving forward. You could certainly argue that Lopez was the beneficiary of a bit of good fortune offensively as he had enjoyed a .387/.344 wOBA/xwOBA split (.043) up until that point. That's still a solid offensive contributor as in this season a .344 wOBA correlates to a range of 105-120 wRC+ or thereabouts as I don't believe there's a direct conversion factor between the two systems. Much as it largely seems to be the case that hitters on a run of extended good results often enjoy a bit of good fortune it conversely seems to be true that struggling hitters often underperform compared to their expected statistics. During Lopez's extended run of futility from July 10-present of a godawful 35 wRC+ his wOBA/xwOBA split of .223/.279 (-.056) suggests there's quite a bit of bad fortune present during the slump.

This is easily one of the worst organizations to accept a GM job as the meddling owner would make it next to impossible to do your job properly and there would be severely limited autonomy.

Two of this exact type of player have been on the injured list for essentially the entire season so getting those guys back healthy is a good start. I'd like to see Keys given a legitimate shot to make the team next season as well as he's continued to mash in Buffalo.

This would have been a solid Soriano start if he were simply pulled at an appropriate time.

I thinks it's a bit of a mixed bag. He's done a fine job managing bullpen games the last few seasons with the team running a skeleton rotation at times, but then there are times when the team has a decently stocked pitching staff and there are head scratching decisions that contribute to losses.

That felt a lot like how Schneider would leave Hoffman in the game far too long and leave an essentially impossible mess for the rest of the bullpen to clean up.