max silver

Your entire spiel has nothing to do with my original comment. I simply stated it's lazy to point to the walk year narrative to denigrate an athlete's performance. I'll leave it to you to point to anywhere in my original response that states I believe the front office should be paying whatever it takes to bring Ray back. There in nothing in his body of work from 2021 that suggests that he's suddenly going to lose all of the newfound effectiveness going forward. There's no guarantee he will be able to repeat the type of success he experienced in 2021, but his contract offers are going to reflect this fact as he's not going to be paid like a truly elite starter, he's going to be paid on the obvious second tier contract wise due to the lack of track record with this type of performance. There are plenty of red flags that suggest that his true talent is more in the 3.5 ERA/FIP/xERA etc. range vs the sub 3 ERA that he was able to produce, and the contract offers he receives are going to reflect this. The two pitch thing is overblown. It would obviously be in Ray's best interests to work on improving either his curveball or changeup moving forward so that he's less vulnerable to the third time through the order drop in performance, but ultimately if the two most utilized pitches are elite and allow him to turn a lineup over two times successfully then it really doesn't matter what his pitch mix looks like. There is no law set in stone stating that pitchers have to use 3 or 4 pitches to be effective as starters, and Ray is a perfect example of how a pitcher can make it work if his two primary pitches are effective enough.

We can just agree to disagree here. The Jays historically have to overpay for free agents, especially when shopping in the premium aisle of free agency. This has been the case with every major free agent signing dating back several decades. Ray re-signing or not likely won't be any different, whether he's smiling with his eyes during a television interview or not. If the team wants to pivot to a different top pitching target in free agency they are still going to need to overpay relative to everybody else in that scenario as well. Hopefully with the team being in a competitive phase the degree of overpay will become less but I suspect it will still continue.

I choose to pay more attention to past history than to attempt to analyze small perceived tells. The man re-signed immediately with the team last off-season when he could have went anywhere that he wanted. The Jays have every bit as much of a chance to sign the guy as anybody else, as he obviously works very well with the coaching staff given how he was able to resurrect his career and win a Cy Young. If he moves on then so be it, there are plenty of available starters available in trade and in free agency, but I see no reason to make grand assumptions that there is no chance the man returns based on a Tim and Sid interview.

I don't necessarily get the same type of feel from his comments, to me it simply sounds like the man is fully exploring his available options.

The whole contract year narrative is incredibly stupid. The man made obvious changes to his delivery and training regimen and was able to reap the well earned rewards. He isn't going to suddenly start eating potato chips and drinking beer all offseason instead of continuing to bust his ass to maximize his performance, this is a highly motivated individual we are talking about here. Heading into the pandemic shortened 2020 season Ray was already in a contract year as well, and proceeded to have the worst season of his career by far. Contract year or not has no relevance here.

Back loading the deal allows the team to add more expensive deals in the front part of the deal while making it a harder decision for Berrios when the time comes to decide on the opt out.

With Semien in tow I have no issue with rolling with some combination of Espinal/Smith/Moreno to man third base.

I think Semien is a perfect fit for this roster. He would most likely provide similar impact to Ramirez without necessitating sending out top prospects in return. There are enough decent quality starters available in trade that I would prefer the Jays go this route to obtain another starter along with signing a mid tier starter of the Matz ilk in free agency.

Guys like this don't grow on trees and likely wouldn't find themselves on the trading block very often. One guy that almost fits the bill and might be available is Matt Olsen, he fits the bill on plus defence and elite bat but plays first base. Perhaps if he were acquired moving Vlad back to third could be an option.

All the articles I've read on the Chapman regarding his hip injury state that his hip surgery was completely successful and that the tear was no longer a concern. It seems possible that he can retrain his swing with enough repa to get away from the bad habits he likely developed due to the initial hip injury.

That player doesn't exist in free agency this season unless you can convince Corey Seager to move off of short stop, and even then the defence might not be plus.

Chapman would be a nice pickup for sure as it would allow the club to move Espinal into more of a backup role, which would be perfect for him as he should be able to provide very good defence all over the infield. (this is assuming Espinal isn't one of the pieces heading back to Oakland in trade) To me it looks like Chapman is what he is at this point, as the extreme swing and miss issues date back over several seasons now. You would think he is a guy that should have his vvision thoroughly examined as the whiff and k issues popped up seemingly out of nowhere after not really being an issue to start his career.

With Berrios and Manoah already locks for the 2022 rotation there are no worries about Rodriguez being the Jay's best starter.

Rodriguez is an interesting case study in trying determine what went wrong for him. His peripherals are all very solid, and the expected stats paint a much different picture than the end result on the field. I dug a little further and discovered that he really suffered terrible results on his fastball and cut fastball, as each of these had spreads of nearly 70 points when comparing WOBA and xWOBA. Given that these two pitches comprise nearly 60% of his total pitches thrown it's easy to see how the ERA ended up so much higher compared to xERA and FIP values, but it still doesn't explain why it happened. Boston's defence wasn't very good this season, yet Chris Sale was able to produce an ERA of a run and a half less despite having very similar peripherals across the board. Maybe Rodriguez is merely a victim of bad luck this season and his results are bound to improve.

His max EV isn't really that bad, in 2021 he managed a 109.6 MPH which is 66th percentile. That's 4MPH above his previous best so for all we know he actually spent the offseason after 2020 working on improving his strength.

For me it would be Semien and it's not even close. Semien provides Gold glove defence at second vs merely adequate defence for Bryant, can cover short stop if Bo needs a day off or misses time, and has provided MVP caliber seasons in the last two full MLB seasons while playing every single day. Bryant could be a fallback option if Semien signs elsewhere but he's a secondary target at best.

Biggio has decent power, he just lacks the contact ability to regularly tap into it.

It's sad that a front office would attempt to pander to the mouth breathers in their fanbase like this. While not nearly as bad I get shades of the Oakland ultimate lowball offer to Semien after the pandemic shortened 2020 season where they offered him 12.5 million with 10 million of it deferred over 10 years worth of $1 million installments. I prefer how our front office works, they didn't bother offering Price a contract after 2015 because they knew they wouldn't even be in the same area code as the offers he would be receiving in free agency.

That's a pretty insulting offer for a player the caliber of Correa, he very well may end up with twice the total contract in free agency. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Houston goes hard after Semien instead if that's their actual budget.

I don't think Biggio has fully honed in his approach yet. He is likely better served to return to his more selective ways of his first few seasons and leverage his strength which is the elite plate discipline. I don't think his attempt to be more aggressive and use the whole field really suits him very well, as the hit tool isn't one of his better attributes, and that would likely lead to him being on base less and providing a lot less power output.

I'm not really a fan of that narrative. Jansen still only had a .233 BABIP for 2021. The key difference is that he started hitting the ball much harder on average than previously and looked to do damage at the plate. He added nearly a full 5MPH to his average exit velocity as well as over 4 degrees to his average launch angle. There was an obvious change to his approach as well, as he stopped any attempts to use the whole field and sold out for power on the pull side. I think Gausman will be the team's fallback if they miss out on Ray, but I have a hard time seeing San Francisco letting Gausman leave after the successful run he's had there.

A Kyle Seager signing would almost certainly be better than nothing, but I would prefer the front office aim higher in upgrading the infield than Seager. The club is almost certain to be better with him on board rather than without as counting on a full bounceback from Biggio and continued success at the plate from Espinal are each risky propositions, but as you mentioned the cost needs to be low enough to make the signing worthwhile.

Seager's overall numbers don't look to be suppressed by an unexpectedly low BABIP, as his expected stats are all reasonably close with his actual on field results. His XBA of .220 is only slightly higher than his actual of .212. His XWOBA of .318 is only a little higher than the actual of .308, which looks to be a pretty typical spread for his career. As a predominantly left handed pull hitter with poor foot speed it's not surprising that Seager ran a very low BABIP, especially when you factor in the 13.4% IFFB rate. Seager's league average WRC+ is backed up by the worst k rates of his entire career, along with a career high popup rate as well. There are also plenty of other concerning signs, as he swung at a career worst 29.1% of pitches off of the plate, while also suffering from a career worst 29.6% whiff percentage. In 2022 he had success against fastballs only, while struggling against all other pitch types. This coincided with a decrease in the fastballs thrown his way which will continue to be the case in the future unless he can either show the ability to lay off of breaking and off speed pitches or have more success against them. Seager is at the age where it's entirely possible he's starting to suffer from a skill decline, and I don't think he's likely to be an upgrade over what Espinal is able to provide, even when you factor in an expected drop in WRC+ for Espinal compared to what he brought in 2021.

It's certainly looking like it's a matter of when Moreno joins the MLB squad in 2022, not a matter of if he joins the team. When would he likely be up with the big club? After the super two cutoff date perhaps? The new CBA may factor into this as well with regards to service time manipulation.

PETA probably loved this particular scene from the classic Weird Al comedy UHF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=063wANsIjmE