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I'd say setup at best, likely below Cimber/Mayza but ahead of Richards. Not sure to feel about this signing, that will mostly depend on term and AAV.

He'll likely be waiting until Spring to sign if he's dead set on that kind of contract. This is likely posturing just like the 100+ million contract that his agent was looking for following the 2020 season.

Are you this dense on purpose? The organization had a lot of pitching success stories in 2021 beyond Ray alone. Almost the entire rotation made successful adjustments under the tutelage of Walker, including Ray who redid his mechanics, Matz who tweaked his sinker release point mid season and went on a tear afterwards, Berrios who initially struggled and tweaked his delivery before an end of season run, and Stripling who completely remade his delivery early in the season and had sustained success before missing time due to injury. It's not Walker alone who is responsible for the success stories, as the organization prides itself on it's collaborative nature. The analytics department, scouting department, pitching coaches and front office staff all work together in formulating plans on who to target based on potential tweaks to unlock unrealized potential. Despite this Walker is the primary guy working with these pitchers and helping them to make the necessary adjustments in order to allow them to have a chance to succeed. It's really dumb for you to assert that he shouldn't receive any credit whatsoever for the obvious success cases, especially in instances where pitchers had failed to the degree that their previous longtime organizations had completely given up on them. Ray and Matz both had some of the best seasons in their careers after having the worst seasons of their careers the season prior, and Walker and the Jays deserve a lot of credit for helping this to occur. Semien had a similar offensive performance in 2019 so this wasn't completely out of the norm for him. The Jays made a calculated gamble that the 2019 version of Semien was the guy they would be bringing aboard in 2021 and were handsomely rewarded.

MLBPA can f*** right off if they are pressuring their members to not sign extensions with their current clubs. It's understandable they wouldn't want their members to get bent over backwards like Acuna and Albies but there's no way Bo would even consider signing a contract like those in the first place.

The pitching coaches job is to put his pupils in the best possible position to succeed. This can be through mechanical tweaks such as altering delivery, windup or release points, or can be through helping to improve pitch sequencing and selection, can be assisting psychologically, etc. The key requirement from the pitcher is that he actually needs to possess the ability to reliably retire major league hitters. Are you seriously going to argue that washed up mediocre pitchers such as Garcia, Roark and Anderson had what it takes to succeed in a major league starting rotation during their Jays tenure? No pitching coach on the planet could have turned those guys around.

Let's give credit where credit is due. If Matz can recreate his 2021 numbers he's more like a mid rotation pitcher on a good team.

I don't know that we have somebody of that nature as a past comparable when it boils down to it. If you have one to show I'd love to see it as it appears you are making a wild assumption of the value without past precedent to back it up. The most similar recent player signing I can come up with off the top of my head is Zack Wheeler. He signed as a 29 year old for 5 years/$118 million. He took longer to put things together however his stuff is a clear step above that of Berrios and in my view his potential upside was higher as a result. Does Berrios as a 27 year old somehow manage to snag an extra $82 million in free agency simply because he would be 2 years younger at time of signing? I really don't think so.

That's a huge stretch. Berrios has never had a season where he produced legitimate number 1 starter numbers, so there is no chance he would garner a contract in the $200 million range. If he were to pitch like he did for the final 7 starts of 2021 for a full season maybe that would be a different conversation, but this is a guy who has maxed out as a 4 win starter up to this point, not a bonafide ace starter.

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.