max silver

It's apparent that outside of 2018 that Semien was more of a good defender rather than great defender at short stop. His metrics, whether DRS, UZR or OAA all suggest that the bulk of his defensive value was derived from being steady defensively and limiting errors. He had to have benefited tremendously from playing next to Matt Chapman for so many years as this would greatly limit the impact limited range would have on his overall results. He made a great career decision agreeing to move to second base as his arm and range are much more suited to this position and allows him to be a true plus defender.

A guy like this is essentially found money. There have been plenty of instances like this where the front office has plucked unpolished gems out of other organizations for spare parts and then helped them to flourish and reach their full potential. Receiving Cimber back for the wilting corpse of Joe Panik was a masterstroke, as was the Teoscar trade. Even Tapia might turn into something useful as he's producing career best rates in barrel percentage, expected batting average, xWOBA, hard hit percentage etc. It remains to be seen whether it's just a hot streak or a sign of actual improvement but he's certainly been squaring up the baseball with far more regularity in the last week or so.

I had a crazy dream last night. I was watching a Jays pregame ceremony on tv and for some odd reason there were a few live bears on the field during the ceremony. All seemed fine and dandy at first, there was even a cute bit where Cavan Biggio appeared to be dancing with one of the bears as the bear was standing on it's back legs and they were hand in paw. Things went seriously awry as something ended up spooking the bear and it ended up mauling Cavan repeatedly. I jolted awake and couldn't manage to drift back off to sleep afterwards. This dream must be an allegory of sorts where the bear in real life is represented by Santiago Espinal. Much like the bear dancing routine in my dream there is a seeming harmony of sorts as Biggio and Espinal are teammates and would be supportive of each other and cheering each other on. But just as Cavan is ravaged in my dream he's also been destroyed on the field as Espinal has taken his job away, both at third base last season and at second base this season.

I try not to make definitive statements especially this early into the season just to cover my own ass later on, but this team's infield looks to be upgraded to a massive degree compared to last season. As amazing as Espinal was last season at third the club just brought aboard a platinum glover and arguably best third base defender in baseball. Semien was nails defensively at second but Espinal may be even better. Bo has looked very good at short stop, especially compared to his earlier season struggles of a year ago. And finally Vladdy is continuing to mature at first base and may end up as a plus defender there.

This was a very fun game overall. Both teams played great defence, I can see why Houston was willing to let Correa leave because Pena is an absolute stud. Huge props to Espinal, he made several great plays and got the team going offensively with the big homerun. He might just be in the midst of a massive offensive breakout as his expected stats are pretty crazy right now. He already has produced 3 barrels in his first 48 plate appearances, he had only produced 4 barrels in his previous 312 plate appearances. His WOBA is a staggering 99 points behind his xWOBA, once his .242 BABIP begins to stabilize his numbers are going to take off. The team's pitching staff is doing a great job keeping them in games right now, since the end of the Rangers series where the pitchers were rocked several times the staff has put up a 2.63 ERA/2.94 FIP. The bullpen in particular has been stellar during this timeframe with a 1.85 ERA/2.42 FIP. Once some injured bodies start returning to the lineup and the bats get going this team should really go on a tear.

Chapman is a great fit on this team, but the team actually received stellar play at third base by Espinal last season, especially defensively. It's great that the front office was able to revamp the infield defence and the club may have improved defensively overall, despite losing a gold glover in Semien from second base.

I recall Vlad received the same treatment from umpires as a rookie, mind you that is still happening on a regular basis.

The organization has a long standing history of intentional obfuscation when it comes to hiding player injuries so it's only natural that we become concerned when injuries magically find themselves moving from one area of a players body to another. I can't help but think back to the immortal words of J.P. Ricciardi when he stated how "it's not a lie if we know the truth" when BJ Ryan's back injury mysteriously morphed into an arm injury.

Not overly surprising given how he can barely stay on his feet after whiffing at the plate. It looks like something in his lower half is bothering him, whether it's his quad or knee either way it's not overly encouraging.

This is a very aggressive assignment for a player with only 138 minor league games under his belt. He's had a bit of an adjustment period at each new step along the way, I agree with the previous sentiment that he will be fine once he hits his stride.

This will obviously be be beyond your limited understanding of baseball but you need to look beyond the results only when it comes to evaluating hitter performance. Collins actually had a good game with the bat, he just wasn't rewarded with the expected results. He hit two liners with exit velocities of 102.6 MPH and 100.4 MPH with respective expected batting averages of .790 and .430. With a little better luck he'd be looking at a 1 for 4 or even 2 for 4 evening.

I recall Horowitz featuring regularly on Maple Leaf Wrestling on Saturday afternoons back in the 80's. That show was terrible as it was wall to wall jobber vs star squash matches. At the time Stampede Wrestling was the bomb as it regularly had quality matches with the likes of Bret and Owen Hart, Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith etc.

Intellectually challenged with delusions of grandeur.

I'm not convinced this is a troll.

I should edit my own post to say plays more like he did in Boston vs the rest of his career.

If he plays more like he did in the Boston series vs the rest of the year he can certainly continue with the swag.

The bolded quote sums up the entirety of why you are so reviled around here. You have a history of poorly thought out hot takes, and when this is pointed out to you instead of reflecting on why you keep on receiving negative responses and trying to make better posts, you instead get your back up and just carry on. You've basically turned into the BJMB version of the 1980's WWF jobber in that you are constantly being pinned for easy 1 2 3 victories. Just like Barry Horowitz you pat yourself on the back and carry on with the constant stream of unnecessary negativity. Newcomers are generally pretty well treated around here until they show that it's undeserved. Respect on this forum is earned, and until you stop acting like a teenage emo girl you aren't going to receive any. Charlie isn't very popular on here but when ranting and raving about how awful he is it might be best to choose decisions which actually warrant it. Collins sitting last night is very easy to defend as he was catching today's game following last nights game. This is a typical managerial decision to give the starting catcher of a day game the previous night's game off as catcher is the most physically demanding position on the diamond. Collins wasn't on track to become the next Barry Bonds, acting like a single game decision is going to make or break his career is just more needless hyperbole.

It's obvious that having Collins sit yesterday has effectively ruined his career. The irrefutable evidence provided of the Gary Sanchez decline after sitting for a game is the smoking gun that proves JennyFritters123 or whatever this idiot calls himself.

I'd disagree as it hurts my brain to read the continuous stream of drivel that flies out of the dudes keyboard.

A more intelligent troll would wait for the save to be blown first and then could revel in getting his shots in. A stupid troll would still open his mouth despite his team largely resembling a minor league outfit in the field and just end up looking pathetic. It's obvious which end of the spectrum this particular poster fits into.

Why are you even here? Your team just lost 2 of 3 and looked like a clown show on defence. Your lineup scored all of 5 runs in a 3 game series, and were effectively shut down by the Jays 5th starter. There is really no reason to be gloating.

The one angle looks like it's out to me. Holy hell Chapman has a cannon.

Yeah absolutely filthy up to this point. His slider looks pretty effective to me so far and the split finger is completely unfair.

I recall the league was contemplating pre-tacked baseballs. There were tons of reports of AAA experimenting with these balls in the last week or two of the season in 2021 but I haven't been able to find any results for how the experiment turned out.

Ryu really didn't show a significant change in his spin rates after the sticky stuff crackdown. I have suspicions he was more of a sunscreen+rosin user instead of something like spider tack.