max silver

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

If you only watched the last few months of the season started to resemble a competent outfielder instead of a little leaguer playing outfield for the first time. Somehow Gurriel actually managed 7 DRS and was nearly even by UZR. Statcast OAA paints a completely different picture at -7 OAA though.

Wonky projections like these are why I really don't place much faith in projection systems. Since his breakout Teoscar has produced a 135 WRC+ in 260 games, over portions of 3 seasons dating back to 2019. Yet Steamer still projects him as a 110 WRC+ bat. Similarly Semien experienced an offensive breakout in 2019, and over his last 377 games he's produced a 128 WRC+. Yet he is projected for a 112 WRC+.

I'm super excited about Moreno's imminent arrival. This kid feels like he's on par with Bo Bichette, and I think he's going to make a similarly loud debut in MLB this season.

I'm seriously pissed off about the Rogers/Shaw merger. I get a fantastic deal on my cellphone plans as an existing upper tier Shaw internet customer and only pay $25 per month per device. I see zero chance of that continuing if the Rogers/Shaw merger is to go through.

I took a look at Gray's statcast page, and one of the first thing that stands out is that his fastball command appears to be pretty bad. The heatmap for his fastball shows that he leaves too many fastballs middle middle, and the batted ball statistics back this up as well. WOBA against fastballs was a whopping .396 with an XWOBA of .358. I suspect a simple pitch mix tweak could make a difference, as it appears that historically his curveball has been quite effective, garnering swing and miss in the 30% range, whereas his fastball has been his worst pitch results wise. Perhaps dialing back the fastball usage a bit in favor of more curveballs could work in his favor. In 2021 he threw more sliders and less fastballs and accordingly had better results.

I'm not sure I'm super interested in Gray. Perhaps as a reclamation project acquiring him could hold merit, but it seems unlikely simply getting him away from Coors alone is going to lead to much if any improvement, as his career home and away splits are actually very similar across the board.

Gotta hope there's money for a few high leverage bullpen arms and an impact bat as well on top of these pitchers. I'd be happy enough with 2 of those starter options if going the one year route for each. With Pearson, Stripling, Hatch, Kay, Allgeyer, Logue, etc. depth hopefully for once the Jays would have semi decent depth starting options available.

If payroll parameters would allow for it I would qualify Matz with hopes of him signing a slightly cheaper AAV multi year deal (something like 3 years/$40 million), sign Semien and go hard after one of Syndergaard or Verlander.

I certainly wouldn't do it. I would rather the club spend the necessary dollars to resign Semien, and then midseason have the ability to add another potential impact bat to the lineup once Moreno is deemed ready for his shot. Semien+Moreno would be a far stronger combination than Ramirez alone. This certainly would have a negative effect on future financial flexibility, but in a lot of ways I think Semien is a perfect fit due to being a little older, in that he won't require an 8-10 year mega contract that would be required to bring in a player with comparable impact such as Correa or Corey Seager.

It very well might. If he doesn't have a qualifying offer tying him down I suspect he'll have no issues with landing a 2 or even 3 year deal. It remains to be seen if he decides to bet on himself and take the qualifying offer in hopes of solidifying his value after a good 2022 season. Of course there's risk in this if he sucks in 2022 or ends up getting hurt as he loses out on the multiple year security.

Wasn't something like this tested in the Atlantic League at some point recently?

Why are you even arguing here? What you are suggesting is completely irrelevant to what happened in the game, and you are really coming across as a moron here. This pitch was far too low and outside to swing at, it absolutely positively 100% is a pitch that a batter should NOT be swinging at. The batter correctly identified it as such and was able to check his swing in time. The home plate umpire correctly called it a ball. The only issue here is the blown check swing call by the first base umpire, everybody else in this instance correctly did their job, and if not for the blown call the game would have continued.

Are you semi blind or something? That pitch is 5 or 6 inches low and outside by a similar amount. Might be time to check your prescription.

It was obviously a ball in real time. You are so wrong here it's laughable dude.

If he would have swung at the pitch he likely would have missed and struck out anyway. That wasn't close enough to the strike zone to necessitate swinging, this protect the plate business is nonsense.

I don't have a lot of concern over this not getting done. The front office would have been in contact with his agent to get a feeling for what kind of contract would be required to get Berrios inked to an extension before making this trade in the first place.

I seriously think a balance needs to be achieved. Going all in and emptying out the farm system leads to a boom/bust cycle that really goes against the stated goal of sustained competitiveness year in and year out. The club really only has 2 remaining elite prospects in the minor league system at this point. This isn't to say that nobody else in the organization will be able to reach the same type of heights eventually, but shipping out these prospects in exchange for a short term competitive window is very short sighted and reeks of desperation. This team is going to become very expensive pretty soon as Teoscar is going to get expensive through arbitration, Vlad has a chance to break arbitration records as he goes through the system, Berrios only has one year of remaining control and will be in line for a big raise etc. etc. If there are no inexpensive replacements available to replace aging expensive veterans eventually this will catch up to the organization and the on field results will predictably suffer. The Dodgers are the model to follow in my view, you can see that they make their truly elite prospects off limits in trade talks, but despite this have had no issues with putting together an elite team with a healthy farm system. Rogers allowing for a similar payroll is most likely not going to happen, but with the size of the Jays market they should easily be able to spend up to the luxury tax once full crowds return and the club morphs into the yearly contender it is expected to be.