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Cease threw a 77 MPH changeup last season so you might be onto something. 😁

I do tend to believe Bo when he says he wants to win a world series with Vlad, and with how painfully close the team came to winning it all I'd hope he puts his money where his mouth is and be willing to come back on a fair market value deal. Hopefully there isn't a team willing to blow away the rest of the market on a dramatic overpay as this front office has been pretty unwilling to dramatically overshoot their valuations aside from tacking on an extra year/adding a bit of extra deferred cash.

Cease did have a rarely used changeup last season that garnered elite results so perhaps it could be a useful pitch for him if used more frequently. He had crazy 20 MPH separation between his 4 seamer and changeup but he threw all of 34 of them exclusively against left handed hitters.

I wonder if we could potentially see a Bieber extension mid season if the command bounces back sufficiently. The long term pitching outlook has changed dramatically compared to last offseason.

Yeah it's still going to matter a lot. Kirk is elite at converting borderline pitches into strikes and this isn't going away with the challenge system. Given the low number of available challenges per game I only expect the egregious calls are going to be challenged.

I think the front office has been more than willing to splash this kind of cash going all the way back to the 2020 offseason, they've just had a bit of difficulty in convincing the cream of the crop/upper tier free agents to take their money most years.

That's probably a stretch given Berrios' downward trajectory but I think if the Jays ate a bit of salary the deal in movable.

This is exciting news as Cease was my preferred rotation target with Imai coming in 2nd. Hopefully this gives Tucker a little more motivation to sign with the Jays to create a bit of a super team heading into 2026.

Stop trying to gaslight everyone else here by pretending you didn't write what you actually wrote. Just own the mistake and move on, it's really that easy. This is quickly turning into a Grant kind of situation where he says something foolish, gets slammed for it, refuses to budge and doubles/triples/quadruples down on the silly statement and loses what little remaining respect he still had. Don't be a Grant, one of them is more than enough.

I think the bolded part is the only reason people have been giving you grief. I'm guessing it more or less dawned on you that Bo could actually be lost in free agency or something of that sort, but the front office can't just assume that they are going to retain Bo in free agency and need to work on contingencies until they actually acquire some targets.

Just take your loss and move on. You've jumped to conclusions stating that the Blue Jays front office simply acquiring about Ketel Marte means that they think Bo is gone, and that's not remotely true. It would be borderline negligence for a front office on a competitive team not to at least check in on the status of an elite player on a budget contract at an area of need if this player were actually available. This front office is nothing if not thorough and they tend to kick the tires on every available player when formulating their offseason plan and this is a good thing. They tend to be very flexible in their offseason plan making as well and pursue multiple angles to improve the team such that the entire plan isn't contingent on a singular acquisition. This is no different with Bo Bichette, they will continue to negotiate with Bo until the time that he's signed as a Blue Jay or elsewhere and a simple check in with the Diamondbacks about Ketel Marte's availability/lack of availability does nothing to change this.

Scherzer wasn't dominant by any means but he was generally effective at producing outs. I didn't care for the assessment that it was pure dumb luck but a closer look at his Statcast metrics has certainly changed my mind a bit as he allowed a ton of very hard contact. I think that the only saving grace was likely that the average launch angle may have been so high that it kept the ball in a park a bit more than could have otherwise been expected. We can examine Scherzer's playoff totals and compare them to Bieber. Neither guy was outright dominant but each of them was generally effective at keeping runs off of the board and allowing the Blue Jays to win. Scherzer 3.77 ERA 5.23 xERA 5.58 FIP Bieber 3.86 ERA 5.28 xERA 4.26 FIP Based on runs allowed and expected ERA allowed Scherzer actually outperformed Bieber in the playoffs, albeit with a higher FIP primarily due to a higher walk rate+home run rate. I don't see anyone proclaiming how Bieber's playoff performance was pure dumb luck, although in his case he had a few very effective starts and some clunkers mixed in, whereas Scherzer was a little more consistent in largely wiggling out of trouble when he had runners on base.

Why do you keep referring to Scherzer's playoff success as "random dumb luck"? He finally managed to get the thumb issue under control in time for the post season and he proved that he was still able to be an effective starter, there was nothing random about it.

Hopefully Bloss is one of those guys who comes back from Tommy John with increased velocity and isn't a shadow of his former self ala Alek Manoah. I was excited to watch some of his starts during spring training when he had his good stuff and was sitting mid to upper 90's with the heater, but he looked awfully ordinary on the days where he was sitting in the low 90's.

For me it's Tucker all day long vs Bellinger. I think Tucker's best full season is yet to come but he needs to avoid the injury bug over a full season of play. I believe there's enough real upside in his bat to be the Blue Jays best hitter next season if acquired as his peak production the last few seasons is top notch. I really like the idea of Tucker working with Popkins as well. Tucker was in the midst of an MVP caliber season in 2024 before a fractured shin caused him to miss 3 months. He was largely following up that season with similar production before a fractured hand sapped his power. Put the two seasons together prior to the hand injury taking him out of his groove and he produced a 160 game stretch of 168 wRC+/8.0 FWAR with 40 HR and 30 SB. Give me that type of potential offensive impact hitting next to Vlad all day long vs whatever Bellinger can manage to produce without the benefit of playing half of his games at Yankee Stadium.

He has pretty remarkable home/away splits to the degree where I believe a 2-3 win season is most likely away from Yankee Stadium.

The Blue Jays suffered a lot of injuries to their starting pitching. All of Berrios, Bassitt, Francis and Scherzer missed time due to injury. If you are trying to suggest that the Blue Jays didn't suffer a lot of injury to their rotation this season you simply weren't paying attention.

Varsho and Gimenez both missed major amounts of time due to injury as well. I think the team actually had pretty rotten injury luck last season but was able to weather the storm due to very effective minor league depth and well managed bullpen games when required.

Grisham actually hit overwhelmingly better on the road (151 wRC+) vs Yankee Stadium (104 wRC+).

Steamer's projection is based on Ernie losing most of his surplus defensive value which is absurd. The projection systems are terrible at projecting elite defenders as Varsho was another player who constantly receives ridiculous defensive projections. You can easily tack on another WAR+ to his projection based on him likely matching his previous baserunning and defensive value.

At this point Ernie Clement is a solid 2.5-3 win player, and Alcantara likely falls in the same bucket as a 2.5-3 win starter. This is likely a sideways move especially if Alcantara doesn't rediscover his pre injury performance level, and it's not some kind of massive upgrade as it's robbing one side of the team to supplement the other.

I see no reason why the Marlins would have any interest in taking a bad Berrios contract in trade even if the Jays eat salary.

And a 3.46 xERA/3.56 FIP.

Ernie produced a robust .382 xwOBA in the post season. The high BABIP was largely earned and not a fluke.

That's the kind of decision you make after seeing if Ricky is throwing 93 with no command.