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Even Charlie would have a hard time hitting any of McGuire, Lamb or Dyson ahead of Gurriel.

Definitely an odd game for Manoah, but despite the 6 walks and 5 hits in his 6 innings of work he still had only a 4.33 FIP for the game.

There is plenty that went wrong, so much so that it took a miraculous September run for the club to have any shot at a playoff spot. For much of the season injuries and underperformance caused serious problems. Heading into the season this looked to be one of the most talented and complete Jays rosters in recent memory, but despite that this club floundered through much of the season. You can basically look at this season as two separate parts, there are the first 5 months of the season where the team was only a few games above the .500 mark for the most part, and September where they caught fire and look like the best team in baseball. Prior to the trade deadline in particular the club had a ton of issues that led to a lot of lost games. For the longest period of time they received basically nothing out of the third base position. People seem to want to argue that Biggio being hurt most of the season is insignificant, but heading into 2021 he had almost been a 4 win player in his first full season's worth of games. Receiving a sub replacement performance out of a player like this is not a small deal. Espinal ended up stepping up for a period, but then he ended up getting hurt as well. Panik was played by the manager almost every day despite being sub replacement. Biggio's lost season and Tellez's lack of production ended leading to the team having no good left handed options in the lineup. The club has a lot of very good/elite right handed hitters, but a little more balance in the lineup would have likely helped the team receive a little more offence against the parade of righty relievers that the opposition has been able to shut down the Jays late in games for most of the season. For the start of the season the club received very little out of the catcher's position, and when Kirk came up and started playing well he ended up injured and missed a good chunk of time as well. Jansen missed a bunch of time on the injured list also, although that may actually end up being a blessing in disguise as he may have turned things around a bit during his AAA stint. For the first two months of the season Gurriel looked like one of baseball's worst players, and was still at replacement level at the start of August. It has taken a remarkable hot streak for him to start looking like a player who was actually worth rostering. The rotation has also had it's share of issues. Roark was given a roster spot and ended up being cut from the roster. Pearson ended up with a chronic injury and missed another year of development necessitating trading for Berrios. Ryu has looked to hit the decline phase of his career in a serious way, Stripling started the season looking completely lost, finally found it but then ended up missing time due to injury. The rotation has ultimately ended up as somewhat of a surprise strength as the season went on but this wasn't the case early on in the season in particular, when the club received terrible performances from the likes of Roark, Zeuch and Kay. It's impossible to gloss over how much of an issue the bullpen was in the first half of the season prior to the additions of Cimber and Richards. If the team ultimately ends up missing the playoffs this is going to be the major reason given how many leads were coughed up earlier in the season.

Are you arguing that because players have sustained injuries in previous seasons that this somehow means their injuries had no effect on this season? I would argue quite the opposite, given how the bullpen injuries in particular led to a parade of relievers such as Edwards Jr., Beasley, Thornton, Barnes, etc. pitching innings in their place. Even the expected depth guys ended up getting hurt such as AJ Cole and Patrick Murphy ended up getting hurt and missing significant time. The presence of the roster chum and missing presence of the planned relievers heading into the season played no small part in the underperformance of the club for much of the season.

Are you really suggesting that the bullpen pitchers who were injured had no effect on how this season unfolded? The team lost most of their expected back end of the bullpen for crying out loud. This has hardly been an everything is awesome injury season for the Jays despite how much you seem to want to belittle the players who ended up missing large chunks of time due to injury. Plenty has gone right for the team but there has also been plenty that has gone wrong as well. I'm going to give Biggio a chance to get healthy and return to playing a position he is suited for before completely writing him off.

The slider rating in particular seems awfully low. When Manoah's slider is on it certainly plays higher than a 55 rating pitch.

Pretty much the entire reason his defensive metrics show so poorly seems to be due to errors. Lately aside from the odd missed throw I have no other complaints about his defence. He's shown good range, made a lot of nice plays and his throws have improved a ton as well. I really don't think he's been performing badly at short stop lately but that doesn't improve his overall season numbers as a whole given how long he struggled for early on.

Bo took way more s*** early on than was deserved. There was a lot of complaining about his arm strength which hasn't been an issue, it was more his mechanics were so bad that he didn't give himself a shot to repeatedly make good quality throws. I'm encouraged that he has a chance to turn into an above average defender with time. I think Gurriel deserves a lot of credit for how much he's improved lately as well. He's made a large number of very nice running catches lately which have him suddenly looking like a fully competent left fielder. He's come so far from earlier in the season where almost every ball that came his way turned into an adventure.

Holy f*** this is one of the worst instances of watching a team get shafted by an ump I've seen. Not only were the Jays pitchers getting squeezed all game the Rays were constantly being gifted extra strike calls. The 9th was the worst as strikes were called several inches down, several inches up and several inches off to the side of the plate.

The club reportedly opened extension talks with Semien recently so it's obvious they want to retain his services. Unfortunately they weren't able to come to an agreement, but there is obvious interest from the front office to do keep Semien going forward. Ray is the best pitcher on the roster and if he walks that leaves a Cy Young contender sized hole in the pitching staff. I think there is going to be a concerted effort to sign both. Whether that comes to fruition remains to be seen of course but the desire is certainly there.

Last season was Ray's walk year after his first contract and he had the worst year of his career. Kind of disproves the whole "career year on walk year" theory don't you think? He looks to have unlocked the key to maximum performance with himself by rebuilding his body with twice a day workouts and returning to simpler, easier to repeat mechanics from earlier in his career. I sincerely think he is going to be a top of the rotation pitcher moving forward. I don't necessarily think he'll be competing for Cy Young awards every season as he's basically a 2 pitch pitcher, but he started spring training dealing, and after a little bit of a slow start after a minor injury scare in the spring, has actually been getting better and better as the season has continued.

Pure speculation on my part just like with yourself. Has either of these guys given the slightest indication that they are lazy types who are going to sit on their asses during the offseason after getting paid? Semien is one of the more respected players in the game, and that's well earned. He plays every single day and is known for his meticulous preparation. Both Ray and Semien are known as lead by example types and as such are integral parts of this team given the amount of young players on the roster. What in the world gives you the slightest bit of concern that they are going to start resting on their laurels? Each guy has been lauded for their character and how they bust their ass every single day to stay prepared in order to perform at peak levels of performance. I simply see no reason why this won't continue based on everything we have heard about these players. By the way this isn't Semien's career season, this is more like a return to the form he displayed in 2019.

I have zero concern with either guy coasting after getting a well deserved large money contract. You likely won't find another individual more dedicated to his craft than Semien, and Ray pushed his body through twice a day offseason workouts to help get to the point where he is now. Each guy knows what it takes to reach peak performance and should accordingly do what it takes to maintain as much of that performance as possible as they age.

Can't say I agree with the mostly fully healthy comment as Springer was far from the only guy to miss a lot of time. The bullpen was basically decimated by injury. Yates missed the entire season, Phelps and Merryweather both missed most of the year, Borucki missed significant time as well. Pearson has had yet another season ruined by injury, Kirk missed a good chunk of time, and Biggio had his year pretty much ruined due to various injuries as well.

The 2015 and 2016 teams were just so much fun and it was great how much opposing fanbases hated the team as so many of the team's best players had chips on their shoulders (JD, Bautista, Stroman before his antics got to be unbearable).

Cleveland would be fully within their rights to insist that prospects the ilk of Pearson, Martinez and Moreno (not all 3 obviously) be included in any talks for Ramirez given the crazy surplus value his contract creates relative to his production. Instead of blowing up the farm system and the subsequent shortening of the competitive window that would result I would far prefer the Jays somehow manage to convince Semien to stay. That only costs money and no talent needs to be sent out for this to happen.

We've seen what this team can do when all facets of the game finally started clicking at once. I do see the point that having all of Springer, Semien and Ray on big dollar contracts in their decline years could certainly start to cause some issues 4 or 5 years from now, but I'd still say go for it as this team as constructed is a true world series contender in my view.

Sarcasm dude.

I'm simply hoping the front office is able to keep this current group together. Add a few high leverage arms to the bullpen and this team should be a nightmare for the opposition to face for years to come.

Nope fit as a fiddle. Are you honestly dense enough to continue to hold the position that Ryu pitching more effectively that Matz is recently? Going back to my original point I stated that Ryu is the 5th best starter on the Jays right now. I made no declaration of what the future holds for each pitcher moving forward, but for you to be so outright dismissive if not downright hostile still has me rather puzzled. By the way I'm still waiting for you to somehow prove your point that Ryu has been unlucky with his batted ball results lately. I see a ton of hard contact with many of these hard hit balls leaving the park.

I 100% place more weight based on recent results when comparing the relative merits of Ryu and Matz. You can call it recency bias all you want, but when in the thick of a playoff race I don't see how you can continue to hold your breath and hope for the best when a pitcher is looking like Tanner Roark 2.0. You come across like Charlie in his defence of Dolis earlier in the year when he stated that he was good in 2020 so therefore he has to be good again this season. I see you seem to have come to your senses but maybe in the future you don't need to be such a dick when you are spouting nonsense opinions such as these.

That's very cool. I hope that eventually Statcast can include metrics like arm speed and bat speed as well.

If Stripling were stretched out to the point where he could go 80 pitches or so I would seriously yank Ryu out of the rotation. The team simply can't afford to be throwing games away right now in hopes that Ryu finds himself.

This is as good a point as any to send out a giant FYSMC to those that attempted to ridicule me recently when I suggested that Ryu is the team's worst starter right now. I have more confidence in Hatch giving them at least passable starts than Ryu right now and that's scary given the fact that Hatch has been a weak performer this season.

John_Havok looks to giving Palmer the Keith Law Cavan Biggio is not a prospect treatment.