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You'll have to ask him yourself why he didn't talk about reduced velocity. A bigger red flag for me was the sizeable decrease in spin rates following the sticky stuff crackdown. Kikuchi's exit velocities and hard hit rates all skyrocketed. XWOBA values also spiked in August in September so the BABIP very well may have been earned and not an indication of bad luck. Kikuchi had a pretty nice 6 month run during the covid shortened 2020 season and the first four months of 2021, hopefully he returns closer to being that guy vs the second half pitcher who was regularly shellacked by the opposition.

The difference defensively between Bo to start last season vs Bo to start this season is like night and day different. Bo still struggles with his mechanics occasionally on routine plays but that should continue to improve over time.

Zips creator Dan Szymborski has a 2022 breakout candidate list up at Fangraphs, and Kikuchi makes his list. Kikuchi only appears to have made a few starts at Yankee stadium up to this point but each of them was very good, even one coming in August of last season when he was really struggling.

Thanks to the world class meltdown on last night's game thread I can't comment there so I'll just move it here I guess. Alec Manoah looks to be moving to another level as even when his command is off he totally shuts down the opposition. Having a 96 MPH heater to go with a newfound plus changeup adds to his already superb two seamer and slider combination. If he can iron out the command issues this guy is an ace in the making. Unsurprisingly it was yet another garbage umpiring "performance", you just gotta hope that the continuous barrage of terribly called games is just speeding up the implementation of the electronic strike zone. It has to be very frustrating for batter's not to know on a pitch to pitch basis how the strike zone is going to be applied. I am very encouraged by the defence the team showed in this game. Bo just continues to get better and better, the calls to move him off of short stop should be coming to a close soon.

LMAO that's exactly what I was thinking, just with the discussion topic being the Jays starting rotation.

I just looked up some stats and Tapia has received twice the plate appearances of Biggio at this point. Biggio is seemingly part of a strict platoon but Tapia gets starts in the outfield and plays the entire game. Just more examples of Charlie being Charlie I guess.

I'm not the one using these terms in casual conversation, you seem to be the expert here so explain away since you seem to be so knowledgeable on the subject. BTW I like Trevor Bauer just fine and think most of what he does on social media is largely to the benefit of baseball as a whole. However I also recognize that he is a highly flawed individual who is largely his own worst enemy and not somebody fit to be placed on a pedestal.

Careful man or else the BJMB anti internet bullying crusade will be up in arms. That is of course contingent on whether they can pull themselves away from their Trevor Bauer shrines long enough to read through the forums. Come to think of it chastising others for insulting dumbasses while simultaneously worshiping a dude who's at least partly famous for bullying others over the internet strikes me as being at least a little bit ironic.

I'm definitely not stating that the overall ump performance was worse on Saturday, simply remarking how the called strike accuracy managed to be worse than the paltry 81% accuracy on Sunday. With a proper umpiring performance who knows how Sunday's game ends up.

Holy s*** 81% called strike accuracy, that's absolutely brutal. But somehow Fletcher was even worse on Saturday.

Yeah I noticed straight away this was for Saturday which wasn't nearly as big an issue as the s*** umpiring from yesterday.

Yay more stupid s*** from JimboFelix666. Ryu had one good season before signing? Just wondering what your criteria is for a good season as Ryu had WARS of 4.9, 4.0, 3.9, and another which would have averaged out to about 4 WAR over a full season of starts. Over his Blue Jays tenure he's obviously been trending in the wrong direction but still has decent overall numbers with a FIP of 3.77 and 4.3 WAR over 44 starts. I know this goes beyond your obviously limited level of understanding but a few bad months does not mean the entire time he's been a Jay has been bad. What makes you so sure Semien doesn't have more good years in him? He had a monster near MVP season in 2019, followed by an injury plagued 2020 and another near MVP level season in 2021. I know you're big on narrative without using logic or any kind of numbers to back up your hot takes but I still figured I would challenge you to actually discuss your opinions like somebody with an ounce of baseball acumen rather than somebody who forms your opinions based on Steve Simmons articles. I fully expect you to simply puff out your chest about how you speak the truth rather than a coherent debate though.

It's all about the potential upside here. Zimmer has tools for days, elite speed, elite defence, plus baserunning and a bat with a lot of thunder in it. The chase rate is very good as well at 75% percentile. His problem has been making contact often enough to fully leverage his 91st percentile max exit velocity and 75th percentile average exit velocity. If he can manage to improve his stikeout issues and simply put the bat on the ball more he'll benefit tremendously as he has the legs to run out a lot of infield hits. Tapia is an interesting case in that he manages to put the bat on the ball most of the time but his contact is so weak that it almost completely saps his power potential. I don't know if there enough at bats available for either of these guys to really work things out at the major league level though.

Seeing the size of the deficit I started in I'm making good progress here. I've chipped away with obscure Weird Al references, BJMB troll curb stompings and even received the rarely seen John Havoc thank you following one of my recent posts so everything is coming up Millhouse.

Awesome followup post, more than happy to pull tag team take-down on Felix Junior 6483 or whatever the hell it is he calls himself.

I agree that Ray will most likely continue be a legitimate front of the rotation starter, I just don't see how you can fake that level of improved control for almost an entire season. He should be helped out by playing a good chunk of games in the more pitcher friendly AL West Ballparks. Gausman has a little longer track record at this level of performance than Ray as he was great in 2020 as well. I don't know if either guy will prove to be a legitimate ace but in any case this Jay's offence is stacked enough that the club will win a ton of games even without one of these types of pitchers.

I have no issues with people saying Berrios is a number 2 starter or even going so far as to state that he's not an ideal number 2 starter, those are perfectly reasonable baseball opinions. This isn't remotely close to what was actually said though. I took issue with the proclamation that he has a pattern of one good game and two bad games for his career, that's just ridiculous hyperbole. A guy like that would quickly find himself out of MLB and sure as hell wouldn't be signing a 7 year $100+ million deal. This is a front office doesn't throw around money without scrutinizing it in every possible way, if they feel good about committing this kind of money then so be it. In case you missed it I tore a strip out of Felix or whatever the hell his name is because he has a history of making posts which seem directly designed to pour salt into the wounds when things go badly but has no interest in posting when times are good, who the f*** wants to have to deal with that kind of garbage? Remember last season when the Jays were running out of the season and he proclaimed the season to be over a week before the end date, or how about when he started ranting about how bad Robbie Ray was because he struggled in a handful of starts against the Yankees? If you want to go out of your way and encourage this kind of posting then have at it I guess, but I'm personally not a huge fan of people that want to try to kick you while your down to validate their own negativity. Misery doesn't love company, it's more like the miserable bastards of the world want to force you to accompany them in their wallowing and self pity.

I'm a little late to the party as I just finished the game on PVR (late starting as my kid fell in the tub tonight). I thought this whole game was amazing, including the entire pre-game show which was absolutely fire. I usually skip past the pomp and ceremony but I'm glad I watched as it was the best I've seen to date, I thought that both anthems were amazing in particular. This is going to be a very fun season as the offence shows early that they can club out the victories on nights when the pitching staff struggles to a large degree.

I'm seriously jealous dude. I've never been to a Jay game in person but this seemed like a big game atmosphere approaching playoff levels of intensity.

So far they have done a bang up job of identifying which of the prospect chips are the keepers and which ones should ultimately be cashed in for major league help.

There is the old expression that even a stopped clock is right once per day, but that is still being too generous to the likes of you. Let's check out Berrios after a sample size of more than one game and then we can reassess. Maybe he even follows your two bad start one bad start pattern one time this season, this still will do nothing to validate your faulty thought processes after such a small sample size. At some point if you continue to blather on I intend to go through his historical results and see what kind of ratio between bad starts and good starts he has actually maintained, hopefully that will shut you up for good on this topic.

I'll be happy it Charlie doesn't feel the need to bunt.

Especially given the fact that Castro is no longer a member of the organization. But jokes aside Zimmer definitely fits the organizational needs to a much larger degree than Castro would have as a depth reliever. I liked the potential that Castro displayed last season as he had a very nice slider but a legitimate backup center fielder is a perfect fit. Zimmer produced a 99 WRC+ against right handers last season so if he's mostly limited to facing righties that's a very nice piece to add to the roster when you consider the entire package.

The other glaring issue with Zimmer is the 33% career k rate. The guy has serious swing and miss issues as he actually has very good plate discipline. Zimmer's kind of like a bizarro world version of Tapia as there is a lot of juice in the bat and plus defence whereas Tapia is a no pop weak defence guy despite his own physical tools. It's too bad Zimmer doesn't have any options remaining because he would be a prime candidate to go to Buffalo and work with the swing doctors on the Bison's training staff. They've had a lot of success working with guys like Teoscar, Gurriel and Jansen in the past to iron out their deficiencies in a lower pressure environment.

I don't care about your man-crush on Trevor Bauer, feel free to fantasize about him slapping you silly and then sodomizing you all you want. You're free to defend the resident troll all you want as well if that's your cup of tea, knock yourself out.