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I like to split the Jays pen into three distinct phases. In April the pen was fantastic, as it ranked 3rd in ERA, 8th in FIP, and 13th by SIERA. There were far too many innings to cover as the rotation struggled a ton to start the season, and once injuries became an issue the pen proceeded to perform very poorly for the months of May and June. ERA dropped to 20th in MLB, FIP down to 21st, SIERA to 21st. The Cimber and Richards acquisition definitely helped to solidify the pen as it gave Montoyo two more relievers that he could actually trust in a tight game. Prior to these trades it was basically just two guys that could be depended on to hold leads in Romano and Mayza. Surprisingly enough though the Jays bullpen numbers for the season as a whole are actually better than what the team produced after the trade deadline. The front office had a swing and a miss in a few of the deadline acquisitions as both Hand and Soria really struggled in Jays uniforms. Just how good or bad the Jays bullpen was after the trade deadline depends largely on which set of numbers you examine. When you look at ERA the Jays pen ranked 17th, so pretty much middle of the pack. FIP looks pretty bad as the team ranked 25th, which looks to be largely due to an excessive amount of home runs allowed, where the team ranked as 4th worst in MLB. The amount of damage the bullpen struggles could cause was largely mitigated due to the starters really rolling in the second half as the bullpen only needed to cover 255 innings, lowest in MLB. I do still like this pen's chance to be at least solid, but much of this will depend on the performance of the starters. This shouldn't be a huge issue given the expected quality of the rotation but as we saw in 2021 a solid bullpen can quickly become well below average with overuse and when the inevitable injuries start to occur.

Whoa man looks like it's time to chill out and go get laid if a post where I'm mostly refuting statements which I view to be largely false gets you so hot and bothered. There's plenty of shade thrown around on here every single day when there are disagreements on opinions, you must be completely ignorant of reality to pretend that this isn't the case. Feel free to spend a second refuting anything that you are responding to, I just see a bunch of hot air with zero substance coming from you here. And if we are going to talk about weird/creepy vibes lets start talking about your Trevor Bauer hero worship. It's time to look in the mirror if you want to start throwing out accusations of weird/creepy behavior. It's easy to come to the conclusion that you fantasize over the man with the way that you defend his every action at every single opportunity which arises.

Thanks for the lecture grandma, but you can take the white knight fluffery elsewhere where it's wanted. The poster in question has a history of troll level nonsense and I've yet to see a single post that adds anything of value to any discussion. This site has no tolerance for dumbass opinions so I'm not sure why you are so quick to jump to the defence of this particular poster unless you've also been a regular receiver of ass whippings because of your own poorly thought out opinions. Berrios is a good number 2 starter and one of baseball's most consistent starters year in and year out. This poor opinion is so off base that it almost immediately labels anything else that is said as not worth even responding to. The guy potentially has another level of performance he can reach but even if he doesn't he's still a very valuable member of the rotation. Blaming Ryu for individually causing the team to miss the playoffs is equally as asinine. The last I checked baseball was a team sport, and one individual's performance doesn't make or break a season. Despite Ryu's second half struggles he still provided 2.5 WAR for the season, and in 2020 on a per inning basis he was nearly as valuable for the Jays as he was for the Dodgers in his walk year. I can go ahead and blame Joe Panik or TJ Zeuch for the team missing the playoffs since each guy was a sub replacement "contributor", but that's not exactly a reasonable take is it? Ryu and Kikuchi certainly each struggled in the second half, but given how short 2020 was and the sudden crack down on any sort of grip enhancing substances I think guys can receive a bit of a pass. it's likely that a combination of fatigue and lack of ability to grip the baseball to the degree to which they were previously used to each became issues. Kikuchi had a very nice 5 month run in 2020 and the first half of 2021 where he performed like a number 3 starter, and if he can put everything together he has potential for that type of performance again given how good his stuff is. If he flounders a little and is a bit inconsistent (like basically every other fifth starter out there) he's only being paid 5th starter money, so this isn't a super risky deal that should immediately be panned as a bad signing before he's even taken the mound for the Jays in a regular season game.

It's not a "realistic assessment", you simply don't know what the f*** you are talking about. Berrios pitches one good game then two bad games? Since he became a regular starter in 2017 he's been the 14th most valuable starter in all of baseball. And you are complaining about guys like Gausman and Kikuchi before they've made a single regular season start in a Jays uniform. If you want to be taken seriously and not viewed as an annoying assclown with garbage opinions you need to smarten up and stop spouting nonsense in every goddamn post you make.

It's interesting that Katoh put up the same AAA WRC+ that Bird did last season and was within 8 points of OPS for the spring as well. Hopefully this success translates at least a little bit to MLB. I haven't seen the guy play much so have no idea what his range is like but his 2021 minor league defensive stats show he's at least sure handed as he committed only a single error across the various positions he manned.

Certainly an exaggeration but he was on track for something like 11 WAR over the course of a full season. Numbers like that don't come around very often. Going back the last three decades the only starters to have single season output in this range are Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens.

Yeah I'm totally missing the point here. It is impossible to overrstate how important an addition like Price was to the roster. Missed in all of this is that it was David Price pitching instead of a depth level starter whoever that would have been at the time. Instead we would have been seeing starters the likes of Drew Hutchison, Matthew Boyd and Daniel Norris. It's pretty hard to see the team only losing a few more games with these types of starters throwing every fifth game instead of an ace like Price. Price provided with a massive amount of innings as well which greatly reduced the overall load on the bullpen. Think if these inferior pitchers were getting their teeth knocked in, there would have been far more innings thrown by the middle relief and long relief options.

I can't believe that you are arguing against the merits of acquiring an ace starter for a team expected to go on a deep playoff run. Sure Price struggled a bit in the playoffs but it was still easily worth what was paid to bring him aboard. It's not like a top prospect such as Noah Syndergaard was moved out, it was more guys that had ceilings of mid rotation arms if everything panned out for them. This is the type of trade a true contending ballclub should make in their sleep.

Price was by far the most productive starter on the roster that season in a grand total of 11 starts or 74 innings he was worth a tidy 2.6 WAR. The next best full sesaon WAR on the roster was Buehrle with 2.0 WAR. Price gave them an undisputable ace in the rotation. Stroman coming back late and Price entering the rotation both game the club a massive boost that turned them from a middling team into a true powerhouse.

I'm super excited to follow Martinez and Moreno rocket their way through the upper reaches of the minor league system. I think Martinez may end up forcing the front office's hands with a huge AAA performance as soon as next year, whereas Moreno will likely be doing the same by the end of the summer.

This is shades of Grichuk. At their face neither of these trades are very appealing, but when you look between the lines you see two instances where the club obtained assets back for guys that were ultimately completely expendable to the team.

The return in this trade certainly isn't exciting but it's an addition through subtraction type of improvement. It helps to further Charlie proof the roster by removing a weak hitter from the roster that he would almost certainly overplay. It shows that the team has confidence in Kirk's ability to effectively lead the pitching staff when he's in the game as well. I do wonder how much DH time Kirk will see though as the club was pretty hesitant to do so when there were only two catchers on the big league roster.

Key difference is that Collins appears to be optionable whereas McGuire was not. Collins looks like he's pretty weak defensively so if Jansen were to go down with injury that would leave Kirk and Collins as the primary catching options, that would be a pretty big step down defensively.

Real men are immune to viruses right?

I don't think Vlad's placement in the lineup had anything to do with his slump at the time, it's purely coincidental. As previously mentioned he fatigued in August and subsequently ended up dialing back the pregame training routines to allow his energy levels to recover.

Teoscar is fine to fill take over center field for a week or two at a time if necessary.

Definitely interested to check out Tapia in action, just gotta hope he never bats this high in the lineup regular season.

Nate Pearson avoids the injured list for the entire season. George Springer plays in 150 games. Bo Bichette posts a 7 WAR season.

Real barnburner of a game between the Flames and Oilers last night. Oilers defence and goaltending both on full display as they surrendered 9 goals.

Gurriel isn't ever likely to be a legitimate gold glove candidate due to the misreads but you can't deny he improved leaps and bounds over the course of last season to the point where he isn't a liability in the outfield any more. Given better health and more reps Biggio certainly would have been able to do the same at third.

This administration has shown willingness to forgive relatively minor infractions such as the homophobic slur and McGuire parking lot incident (not attempting to downplay the dangers of drunk driving here). I think as long as Walker displays appropriate levels of remorse and agrees to make amends all will be forgiven.

Fisher had legit potential with the bat but he might be the worst Blue Jays outfielder I can recall, especially after he took the ball to the face.

Gurriel dropped a ball hit out to left center field. He and Mallex Smith got their signals crossed and almost collided, this one is likely more on the center fielder for not taking charge in the first place.

Little bit of bad luck mixed in with a pitch he grooved to Gallo. There was a miscommunication between the outfielders that was dropped that was called a hit, then a seeing eye single off the glove of a diving Bichette preceding the homerun.