max silver

This roster should be close to Charlie proof as starting out there will hopefully be very little roster filler type players available to him. I exhaled a huge sigh of relief when Villar signed elsewhere as you just knew Charlie would be playing him 6 days a week.

It's only one metric but by Statcast OAA Bryant was actually better in left field than at third base. Doesn't change the fact that this is a batshit insane signing though.

Sure Biggio had more early success which isn't completely surprising given the fact that he's the oldest of the trio, but to make the claim that he was actually better than the other two based on some early MLB success is short sighted at best. Vlad and Bo each had several stops along the way in the minors where they produced WRC+ values exceeding 200, it was just a matter of time before they fully announced their presence in the majors.

I'm calling ******** on this statement. Vlad Jr. has potential hall of fame talent and Bichette has perennial all star levels of talent. Biggio's talent level likely maxes out more at above average regular with complete bounce back.

I had a strong feeling some team would be stupid enough to offer this type of deal to Bryant given the Boras representation. On a reasonable 4 or 5 year deal I could see some value, but for a guy who likely maxes out at 3-3.5 WAR per season this is insanity.

Hopefully this private pitching coach isn't just blowing smoke up his own ass and Borucki turns out to be as locked in as he claims.

Yeah I had Phelps in mind as well but left him off considering we simply don't know what he's going to be able to offer coming off of major surgery.

I would also place the end of season 2021 team in this conversation as well, that team was every bit as good as the 2015 or 2022 team as currently constructed. I would give the edge to the 2022 team as their window of contention is just opening vs the 2015 team which had a very limited window.

I really love this trade, it's huge that Atkins was able to pull this off without shipping out any of the top 3 prospects or anybody important off the expected major league roster. It's nice to think that since mid-season of 2021 the team has added Cimber, Richards, Garcia and Berrios, while also replacing Ray, Matz, and Semien with Gausman, Kikuchi, and Chapman. This team is seriously stacked, I think all that's left is another dependable leverage arm for the bullpen.

If you are worried that top prospects are effectively blocked by good major league players you can just as easily move the major league pieces out to make room for the youngsters as required. Groshans could most likely be moved to second base and would still be a great asset if he's ready during the time that Chapman is still with the club, and with the total lack of quality starting catchers in MLB it would be easy to move Jansen and/or Kirk out as well.

I would certainly tend to think so, there's no way they would be paying this kind of coin to Rizzo only to have one of him or Freeman DH'ing a good chunk of the time. Stanton will likely be receiving the bulk of those at bats already.

I would give serious consideration to signing Trevor Story. There are reports that he turned down a 9 figure contract offer asking that he change positions, but he's historically been very good defensively at short stop. Bo could has his choice of either moving to 2nd or 3rd base, he would likely be fine at either position with time and reps. My only concern is whether this would piss off Bo and crater the chances at him signing an extension in the future.

I think a Jays Freeman signing is still incredibly unlikely to occur given the fact the front office walked away from Semien for what's likely to be similar money and term.

Interestingly the cutter was his most effective pitch in 2020, but it was thrown 2 MPH slower and heat maps show most pitches located towards the edge of the plate. With some tweaks maybe it's worth keeping.

Vlad was working out at third base this spring with Rivera, supposedly to "air out his arm". Perhaps that statement is more of a smokescreen as the Jays are serious about bringing Freeman aboard.

At first I was pretty meh on this deal, as it felt like paying Kikuchi $36 million was completely based on potential rather than a pitcher who had experienced any type of MLB success. When taking a closer look he has produced a decent run of success in MLB over 5 months worth of starts, just split up over the covid shortened 2020 season and the first half of 2021. I chose to include the include his 2020 season stats and up until July 8 of 2021, as after that start is when the wheels really started to fall off for Kikuchi, with over half of his starts with ERA's north of 9 and several starts with ERA's of over 20. During this stretch of games he put up pretty respectable numbers over a period of 24 starts. He produced an ERA of 3.81, FIP of 4.01, K/9 of 8.96, BB/9 of 3.18 and HR/9 of 1.21. Time will tell if the fall off during the second half of 2021 was more a product of fatigue or a result of the sticky stuff crackdown, as Kikuchi's spin rates took a noticeable tumble after the ban was implemented. He looks like he will benefit greatly from a tweak to his pitch selection. According to Statcast he threw his cutter a whopping 35% of the time, but this was a very bad idea as it was hammered to the tune of a .382 WOBA with an ever higher .426 XWOBA. Conversely he threw his changeup (which other systems identify as a splitter) only 10.5% of the time, with a very impressive .192 WOBA/.194 XWOBA against. This pitch was able to garner a 39.6% whiff percentage. Perhaps Kikuchi would benefit from dropping the cutter altogether as the heat maps against show a majority of pitches down the middle of the plate and thigh high.

I'd be very hesitant to move any of the Jays top prospects for Chapman. There is no guarantee whatsoever that Chapman bounces back with the bat as his WRC+ has been declining for the last 3 seasons. I wouldn't move Pearson as he's likely at his lowest possible value at the moment due to all the time lost due to injury. I think he's going to have a very good 2022 season. I have the same feeling about Groshans as well, I think he's going to really explode in 2022. Moreno and Martinez are each potential future cornerstone players, I don't think Chapman is good enough to move this quality of player. Ramirez certainly changes the calculus of the discussion. The only guy I would make off limits to Cleveland would be Moreno. Everybody else would be imminently available including Pearson, Martinez, Groshans, Kirk, etc.

I think the biggest offensive addition the club is likely to make at this point is going to be a midseason addition of Gabriel Moreno. I would love to see an infield addition, but I'm not sure who is available that moves the needle sufficiently to make the acquisition cost worthwhile. The club was rumored to be in both the Semien and Seager sweepstakes so there should be available payroll space for another big ticket acquisition, but aside from Correa who would really be worthwhile as a free agency target for the infield? Story would be nice but he's reportedly not interested in moving off of short stop, Kris Bryant would technically fit but given the fact that he's a Boras client leads me to believe he likely won't be worth the contract he eventually receives. The trade market has some interesting names. Jose Ramirez would be amazing but I have a hard time seeing the front office moving somebody like Moreno or Martinez in return. Ketel Marte would be a great pickup but Arizona reportedly isn't interested in trading him. Matt Chapman would be a good fit, but Oakland is supposedly shooting for the moon in trade talks. Josh Donaldson would be a nice pickup but I suspect the front office isn't interested given cultural fit concerns.

Kelly has become a pretty good reliever during his Dodgers tenure. He would have been a nice leverage piece for the Jays pen that's big on middle and back end relief but a little light on dependable leverage arms.

The rule 5 draft has been cancelled as well, that's great news for the Jays as there was a good possibility of losing several players from the minor league system.

That ended up growing on me over time despite my initial skepticism. I really liked the 7 inning double headers, I found that to be a perfect amount of baseball to view in one day. I find watching two 9 inning games to be simply too much of a drain on my time.

Dude the players weren't the side that initiated a lockout and waited until the last possible moment to finally get serious about negotiating. There's plenty of blame to go around to both sides here.

Jesus dude step away from the ledge, there's no reason to go full hysteria mode on March 1.

Freeman is potentially a few years away from being a full time DH. I think on a similar contract Semien would almost certainly provide far better value given how much better rounded he is.

I just can't see the Jays being willing to hand out the type of money and term Freeman is reportedly looking for. They refused to pay similar money to Semien who is younger, provides more impact on the field and would be filling an actual position of need.