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Vladdy's defensive turnaround has me pondering whether he could actually play a decent quality third base at this point of his career. He looks very athletic at first base, the hands have looked good, movement is fluid and the arm is obviously plus, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that having him man third and letting Rowdy play first would be a rather sizeable upgrade for the club. Rowdy is a capable first baseman and his bat is really showing signs of turning around from the early season struggles, he's produced a 180 WRC+ in his last 11 games so it would be nice to see his bat in the lineup more often. It has to be a big improvement over playing the likes of Panik and Espinal at third base every day. At this point the club isn't going to upset the apple cart and move Vladdy from a position that he's excelling at after the initial defensive struggles, but it's certainly food for thought.

deGrom is unbelievably good, in his 8 starts he's given up 1 or fewer runs in 7 of them. It's crazy how the best pitcher of the era just keeps on getting better.

Lately Charlie is managing like he's trying to get fired. We can only hope that Atkins sees the recent problems the same way we do, it is totally baffling that a man with so much baseball experience can continue to make such incomprehensible decisions.

That was a pretty fun double header despite the boys coming up a little bit short in game 2. Ray needs to spend time in the Dunedin pitching lab on his offspeed stuff, for a guy with such an overpowering fastball his other pitches are pretty terrible.

It's always just felt to me like the projection systems are of limited usefulness for players who unlock new levels of performance later in their career. Some of Teoscar's projections heading into 2021 were downright laughable, I recall seeing projections showing a 100 WRC+ player for 2021. He was only ever that bad exactly one time in his career as a rookie. He had a really bad first half in 2019 leading to his demotion to AAA, but since returning he's done nothing but mash. The projections always seem to assume a player is going to lose any newfound abilities and regress to prior career norms, and Teoscar is a guy I would bet that the opposite is happening right before our eyes. Before getting hurt last season he was really locking into a previously unseen advanced approach at the plate, which after returning from the covid list he has resumed this approach which has seem him really cutting back on his strikeouts. K rates tend to stabilize pretty quickly, I've seen it suggested that it stabilizes in as little as 60 plate appearances or 15 games. In his last 24 games Teoscar has a k rate of only 15%, so when projection systems (and all of them are assuming this to be the case for the rest of the season) that his strikeout rate is somehow going to balloon back up to 30% I'm going to take that with a grain of salt.

There's definitely some risk in extending any player as you can't see the future, but Teoscar isn't the same player he was early in his career, and it seems that projection systems are still placing a certain weight on his pre-breakout numbers. He's been performing now at this level for almost two full calendar years over 3 different seasons, it's time to acknowledge this is the player he is going forward. Teoscar's numbers since the July 2019 breakout are pretty crazy, he's produced a 142 WRC+ and 4.5 WAR in 148 games. He's been a contributor on the bases during this time with 1.2 base runs as well. Maybe he's "only" a 4.5 win player at this point, but this season he looks to have taken a step forward defensively, and has honed in on a new and improved approach at the plate which has seem him cut his k rate dramatically. I don't think we really know what his true ceiling is yet, second half of 2019 and during the shortened 2020 season he mashed despite the extreme strikeout rate, and if that's no longer an issue then the sky is the limit offensively. Despite a slow start prior to his covid infection he's on a 6.3 win pace when prorated over an entire season. He won't be winning any gold gloves in the field due to the occasional boneheaded moment that creeps up, but he's not he same liability out there that he was earlier on during his Blue Jays tenure. Depending on what version of Springer eventually returns from injury it's entirely possible Teoscar is the team's most valuable outfielder going forward, that sounds like a player you should try to lock up at a discount.

Semien and his agent made a great move accepting the Jays offer to move off shortstop and play second base. There are far fewer really good quality second basemen compared to short stop, so Semien isn't tied to the shortstop position only. If he doesn't find a short stop offer to his liking he can simply slide back to second base again.

I'd give a contract extension to Vlad in a heartbeat, but outside of a Tatis like contract I can't really see him being interested in signing one. Bo could be an extension candidate in the future, but first I'd like to see if he can get his plate discipline issues under control a bit, his ceiling is likely to be determined by whether or not he stops hacking at everything in Kevin Pillar fashion and starts hunting pitches. Teoscar is a guy I'd like to see extended, no idea what's reasonable. Perhaps a Grichuk like extension would be possible, but if I were Teoscar's agent I'd be shooting for much more than that as he has raked continuously since his midseason of 2020 breakout. Semien is a guy I'd lock up for sure if an agreement can be reached that's amenable for both sides, I wouldn't worry about taking away Biggio's best position when you can hang onto a 6 win player. I was initially thinking a contract similar to DJ Lemahieu would make a good starting point, but Semien is several years younger. Semien certainly won't resign for cheap, he's well on his way to a second 6+ win season in the last 3 years, I could see it taking something 5 years in the $125 million range to keep him. Before this season I thought Gurriel might be an extension candidate, but he's taken a big step back defensively and appears semi lost in the outfield a good chunk of the time. He's far too streaky a player to consider a core member, he's either looking like one of the world's best hitters or hacking at everything that's thrown his way, there is seemingly no in between. On the pitching side I wouldn't mind extensions for both Ray and Matz being explored, each has resurrected their career as Blue Jays and really helped to keep the rotation afloat. They have both historically displayed good health and ability to stay on the mound. 3 years for each would be great at $12-15 million per year, if it started taking more like 4 or more years I'd be hesitant.

Goddamnit Charlie, he brings in Romano with a 5 run lead and now he's likely not available for tomorrow. But against Tampa with the bases loaded and 2 outs he brings in....Travis Bergen. What the actual f*** Charlie?

Damnit that blows big time. I'm starting to think it may be necessary to move Hatch into the bullpen again with the relievers continuously dropping like flies. If Manoah can keep his head above water the club may be better served to wait for Pearson to put things together at AAA to fill the remaining rotation spot.

At least we won't have to deal with a late inning nail biter pressure cooker situation today.

I hope your incorrect as well but also have my doubts. Charlie's only redeeming quality seems to be his "niceness" and sunny disposition, but this team desperately needs an MLB quality manager, not a goddamn cheerleader.

f*** me, just when I thought bumblef*** Charlie couldn't get any dumber, he totally one ups himself in grand fashion. I get that Chatwood wasn't his usual lights out self, but Chatwood on a bad day is still a far better choice than bringing in rule 5 re-retread Travis Bergen. I can understand why Charlie would be gunshy after watching Dolis melt down earlier in the week, but you really need to have your best remaining reliever up in the pen as backup in a situation like this. Bergen really struggled with his command in his previous outing, and there was no surprise he struggled with the bases loaded as well. Is this really the guy you want to bring into a game with the highest possible leverage? Like how many times can one manager manage to make the wrong decisions that directly lead to losses in one week?

It looks like this idiot genuinely thinks the club is better off with the rotten corpse of Joe Panik playing every day. You just can't fix stupid unfortunately.

Yay looks like we get to enjoy Joe Panik playing basically every day again.

Do you actually think that the front office is giving Charlie directions to bunt with two strikes in extra innings? Let's give them a little more credit than that.

I just can't believe how f***ing stupid our manager is. Bunting with two strikes at any time other than a pitcher batting in an interleague game is completely indefensible. But doing it with a runner on second base in extra innings is a fireable offence. There's already a runner on second, if the batter gets a hit there's a change the game is over instantly. I wasn't thrilled about the Biggio pinch hitting appearance either with the rash of strikeouts recently. And to top it all off he does the reverse, instead of gifting the Rays extra outs he instead decides to grant them two extra baserunners with the worst pitcher in his bullpen on the mound. I can typically deal with Charlie's stupidity but this is getting to be too much.

I'd be happy with Stripling not giving up multiple runs in the first inning.

He was my top pitching target for the Jays going into last offseason. But then again I was also banging the drum for Ha-Seong Kim so you win some and you lose some.

I think Pearson still has the higher ceiling but Manoah is looking like he will hit his peak much sooner.

Good to see Stripling locked in after the rocky start. Just gotta keep the game close so we can see some more late game heroics.

Goddamn umpires have been brutal this year.

Man that was a really fun game to watch. It's really a treat to watch Ryu deal like this when he's really on his game. One highlight of the game for me was when Ryu called out the pitching coach to go over strategy when a pinch hitter was brought in for the Braves, I don't think I've even seen that before in a game. Charlie continues with the maddening decision making, letting Ryu swing the bat with 2 strikes with a runner on base. This is from a manager who forces his position players to bunt, even with two strikes and after the hitter has shown that he is anything but comfortable with bunting. Chatwood is giving me shades of Dwayne Ward with the lockdown 8th innings in back to back games against the top of the order. It's great that Teoscar has come back from his covid infection looking like the monster he's been last season and the last 4 months of 2019 as well. Even before tonight's game he was at 146 WRC+ since his return from the covid list. On top of that I think he's improved his defense a great deal as well, there are far less of the brain cramps in the outfield so far compared to what we've seen in the past.

With the large cash outlay spent on position players in the offseason it feels like just a little more spending on the rotation would have made for a far more complete team. Perhaps the budget was basically tapped out, or a little extra room was left for deadline additions, but seeing how little guys like Odorizzi and Walker signed for left me feeling pretty surprised. Even if everything would have broken perfectly the rotation still looked like an obvious area of weakness in an otherwise very well built ballclub. The position player core for the year is very solid other than the need for better infield depth, and the bullpen looked like it had a chance to really lock down the opposition, even after the loss of Yates this was still the case. But the rotation is all that was remaining in building a team which was built to truly compete right away in 2021. Maybe Pearson figures things out with his command and Manoah can help the team sooner rather than later, but neither of those looks to be sure things.

Obviously this is with the benefit of hindsight, but it feels like the Jays front office missed a bit of an opportunity to solidify the rotation on the cheap by passing on signing Walker. He signed for relative peanuts all things considered, and was vocal in expressing his desire to stay with the organization. Of course the early results aren't bulletproof, he won't keep up the .226 BABIP forever and xERA is alot higher than actual ERA so far, so it's very possible he's been the beneficiary of good batted ball fortune so far. His stuff seems to have ticked up a fair bit as he's added a tick of velocity and he's striking out batters at a career high clip as well, but with the new deadened ball it's hard to say how much of the new success is new offseason training methods and how much of it is attributable to the new baseball. Atkins is on the record as wanting to provide opportunities for the young starters, with Pearson, Manoah, Hatch and Kay as obvious younger candidates. And they were looking to give Roark a chance to rebound as well, but with the rash of injuries and continued failure of Roark the lack of another starter acquisition has really hammered the bullpen early on.