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I get serious Chris Sale vibes from Conley. Tall lanky lefty with a funky delivery.

Maybe they can front load the Ray/Semien contracts or offer signing bonuses to keep some money in reserve for Vladdy/Bo extensions when the time comes. I just hope they can find a way to keep both as this team should be a powerhouse for years if both are re-signed.

f*** yes Ray! Between him and Manoah I feel the Jays could actually compete with the Rays in the playoffs.

I say back up the Rogers money truck for both Ray and Semien.

That three pitch strikeout makes it look like he's still feeling fine.

I'm not fully confident in this bullpen's ability to get more than 6 outs given what we've had to deal with this season.

Nice to see Cy Young Ray again today. It's weird how the Orioles of all teams seem to have his number while he dominates against everyone else.

I really don't mind him in the 7 spot, he's acting like a second cleanup hitter there. Just so long as good hitters like Kirk are ahead of him and not struggling hitters like Dickerson.

So many of the rockets are finding gloves so you gotta take what you can get.

Bo 5 Rays 1.

Damn Walls plays a nice short stop.

Nice start so far, bats already awoken from yesterday and Ray looks to have his good fastball today.

WTF dude

I think the Rays pitching staff for the most part just made better pitches in last night's game. I recall a bunch of very well placed fastballs on the corners of the plate and well placed sliders and cutters as well. Some of the hitters (Bo in particular) had rough nights chasing pitches off of the plate which also factored in. Whether this was some sort of grand strategical masterplan or simply a case of pitchers with great stuff making better quality pitches is likely up for debate.

I missed that he had previous MLB experience at a quick glance, but even so that only adds an extra 15 innings to his totals. In 2020 he was torched by lefties to the tune of a .475 wOBA vs only .230 for righties, but that hasn't been the case up to this point in 2021. Either was Jays are in tough tonight and I still stand by my original point that they should be playing the hot hands instead of playing matchups here.

Fangraphs splits page shows identical .267 wOBA vs lefties and righties. https://www.fangraphs.com/players/drew-rasmussen/25385/splits?position=P&season=2021

Rasmusssen has no discernible platoon splits so there really isn't any reason one of Jansen or Kirk should be in the lineup.

Yeah can't say I like that either. With Grichuk hitting well lately I really don't see any reason to be playing Dickerson in center field either with the lack of familiarity with position he has displayed and factoring in that he's been struggling a bit at the plate lately.

Too bad you just bumped it up to the top though by complaining about it being bumped to the top of the forum. Which led to me bumping it to the top of the forum by responding to your complaints about it being bumped to the top of the forum.

It is absurd how hot this lineup is right now top to bottom. For the month of September the only regular that isn't raking is Springer which is understandable since he's playing on one good leg at the moment. The clubs WRC values for the month are as follows: Gurriel 267 Jansen 266 Teoscar 265 Semien 198 Guerrero 197 Kirk 192 Grichuk 192 Valera 189 Bichette 159 Lamb 100 Springer 77 Dyson 40 Dickerson 19

I like this current pen as well. The overall effectiveness obviously depends on all of Merryweather, Pearson and Borucki managing to pitch up to their capabilities, but thankfully all of the dead weights have been removed from the roster. We don't have to suffer through any Dolis, Thornton, Chatwood or Hand outings at this point.

Bo has great contact skills to there's no concern with his k rates, but I have a hard time thinking that he wouldn't be well served to develop a little better plate discipline. He's constantly behind 0-2 due to his extremely aggressive tendencies, and despite a good two strike approach he would be far better off if he were able to lay off of more bad pitches and him himself in more hitters counts. It's a true testament that he's able to still produce a 118 WRC+ despite being in the top 10 in swinging at pitches off the plate, but I'd love to see what he could do with any kind of improvement in selectivity. I really think the key for him to fully unlock his potential at the plate is going to be forcing pitchers to give him more pitches on the plate that he can do damage with. I'd rather see him have hit his ceiling which is more like MVP caliber player rather than being capped at 4 or 5 win player he likely will continue to be if he continues hacking away. I looked up Gurriel's plate discipline numbers for the first two months of the season vs from June 1 and onward, and he's made a dramatic improvement in swinging at pitches off of the plate. He's improved from swinging at 41% of pitches off the plate earlier on to a more manageable 34% during his hot streak. During this period he's basically doubled with WRC+ for the later period compared to earlier, as the first two months his WRC+ was only 78, vs 143 for June 1 and onward. That's a rather powerful suggestion of how much it can improve a players outcomes at the plate when they stop swinging at everything that comes their way.

Now we just need Bo to do the same thing. It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of his plate discipline metrics over this timeframe as well. Overall for the season his chase percentages aren't really much different compared to previous years, but I bet the chase rates have improved markedly during his sustained hot streak.

Reese's second half WRC+ of 78 vs 294 for Jansen and 139 for Kirk might have something to do with his reduced playing time as well.

Who cares what his swing looks like? As long as he's squaring up baseballs like he is lately the results are going to show accordingly. When Jansen is at his worst he hits a ton of lazy fly balls with nothing behind them, but for this season he's producing career high hard hit rates, average exit velocities, and barrel percentage. There looks to have been a change to approach as walk rate is down and k rate + popup rate is up, while he's also pulling the ball more as well. His results have typically lagged behind expected results, but at the moment WOBA and xWOBA are pretty much identical, so he's finally being rewarded whereas most seasons he's typically seemed to be pretty unlucky.