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That's easily the worst outfield collision I've ever seen. I have a hard time seeing how this guy can return to the outfield after this wreck, but I'm really pulling for him to fully recover. It's been a totally f***ing awful couple of days for young Canadian ballplayers, with Soroka retearing his achilles and Naylor's leg being decimated.

LOL this is like my favorite comment ever. 😁

Holy overreaction Batman. Or Iceman or whatever. This team's only real weakness is the lack of reliable relievers. If/when Borucki and Merryweather come back this team should be able to fire off a ton of victories.

Just to be clear I'm thanking this post as a kind of thank you for deleting the incoherent crazy guy posts. Trying to decipher some of those feels like trying to crack an ancient code.

Holy f*** this team knows how to break your heart. If the team actually had any decent alternatives I would be banging the drum to move Chatwood to a lower leverage spot given the Jekyll and Hyde routine he's been performing lately. But realistically who does the team have available that's any better? Perhaps Patrick Murphy could be that guy eventually, but he's been a bit shaky to start his season. Castro looked really good for awhile but he's been getting lit up lately. Thornton's stuff has ticked up nicely but he's had his own share of recent troubles. Could Payamps maybe have earned a shot at a little higher leverage? He doesn't wow you or strike many batters out but the results have been consistently good. I can only imagine how demoralizing it must be for the team to constantly see the bullpen pissing away leads late in games. The offence has been solid, the defence typically makes the plays it should, and the starters have been very reliable lately. But until this bullpen gets some more consistent arms it's going to be hard for this team to stay in the race. They desperately need for Borucki and Merryweather to make it back and immediately start contributing. Aside from the typical waiver wire garbage there looks to be no external help realistically available at the moment.

I really like the coherent version of Spanky, he adds an interesting flare to the board.

Must have been Jon Rauch. Absolutely huge f***er but didn't have the stuff to match.

That walk rate in the 7 BB/9 range certainly isn't helping. Hopefully his issues are mostly command related given the seemingly high quality stuff.

Every single one of these player development failures occurred under different front office regimes, under largely antiquated training methods and with an underequipped dilapidated training complex. This organization under Mark Shapiro has been striving to modernize the entire minor league system and overhauling every single aspect in order to maximize the potential of every single player in the system. Players are being highly encouraged to spend their winters in Dunedin in order to utilize the new developmental complex. Whether it's making strides in practice routines to practice at full game speed, or utilizing nutritionists and chefs to maximize nutrition, or utilizing the pitching and hitting labs in the developmental complex, we are starting to see this new minor league system really starting to bear fruit. This season alone we have seen breakouts from players like Gabriel Moreno, Kevin Smith, Samad Taylor, etc., and I think we will continue to see more and more success stories like this over time. Obviously there won't be spots for all of these players on the Jays, but this system is well primed to produce a talent pipeline going forward to both feed the Jays with quality inexpensive talent, and to function as trade currency for filling holes on the major league roster as required. In the last few seasons alone we have seen prospect graduations/success stories in players like Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Alec Manoah, Alejandro Kirk etc., and there are more players in the upper and lower levels of the minor leagues making strides towards becoming effective major league contributors. I think the days of lamenting about all of the Blue Jays players ultimately becoming busts is a thing of the past.

Holy s*** man that's a truly awful trade proposal. Martin is an elite prospect, so the idea of moving him out for a rental starter and a decent left fielder is unnecessarily throwing away value.

I more meant that he's likely to end up as a utility player than a regular if he sticks with the Jays. That's still a potentially valuable piece but simply doesn't put him in the same conversation as higher upside talents like Moreno, Martin, Groshans etc.

The lack of home run power and no defined position take a lot of the luster off for Lopez.

Must be gods will.

I think I might be inclined to switch Vlad and Springer around to maximize Vlad's at bats but you really couldn't go wrong either way.

Imagine how great it would be to make Buck eat his words when it comes to catchers catching on a single knee. Although at his age it would be lucky if he can even get into any kind of crouch.

I can't open the story as it's paywalled. Who is the player in question here?

I agree that you wouldn't want to mess with the top of the lineup right now, they really have a good thing going. I certainly wouldn't mind Springer hitting in the cleanup position with Teoscar backing him up, but no matter where you put Springer this is just a massive addition.

Hopefully the bullpen curse doesn't hit Axford like the rest of the Jays relievers. The way the year has unfolded he'll likely throw something like two innings and blow out his ulnar collateral ligament.

The Fisher Cats roster is just crazy stacked with great prospects this season. I'm super pumped about the Moreno breakout, the reports from the alternate training sight were glowing about his ability to square up baseballs on a regular basis. That's continued right into the AA season but with an uptick in power as well. The Samad Taylor offensive explosion is a really nice unexpected bonus that came out of nowhere. He was purported to have a solid speed power mix but hadn't shown much professionally up to this point. I'm not sure what would be a good major league comp if he were to hit his full ceiling level though, but a speedy 2nd baseman with good power sounds like an interesting possibility. There's always the possibility he could be moved to center field long term as well.

Damn that's a total buzz kill.

I suspect Smith may not be far off from being given a shot to take over for Espinal. In a perfect world he would replace Panik on the roster but that would never happen given how deeply in love Charlie seems to be with Panik. I think the Jays should give Harris and Snead a shot sooner rather than later, it's not like they can possibly be any worse than the likes of Carl Edwards Jr. and Beasley after all.

If Romano got through the 9th in decent shape pitch count wise you could always bring him into to pitch to a few more batters in the 10th as well. But I have to agree, once Biggio didn't make the play the game I had the feeling of dread that this was the beginning of the end. Semien likely would have made that play easily if Biggio let the ball go through to him.

I would have much rather had the game actually make it to the 10th rather than losing in the 9th. Had the bottom of the Red Sox lineup been coming up in the 9th then I would have zero issues with bringing in anybody other than Romano or Castro. The Jays have a fantastic offence and would have had a great chance to score themselves in the 10th inning, but they never got the shot after an unreliable reliever unsurprisingly failed to shut down the Red Sox in the 9th.

Just finished watching yet another disappointing late inning loss. You really can't say enough good things about Vladdy, this is the most amazing run I've witnessed at the plate from any Blue Jays player since I started watching decades ago. Something really needs to be done with this bullpen though. Dolis has been pretty damn shaky for the most part and it's time to move him down the pecking order. The club looks to have a very good reliever in Castro, and it's time to give him a chance in leverage situations to see what he can do. Aside from Romano and maybe Mayza against lefties, Castro is the only guy that can reliably get outs right now. I really didn't agree with not using Romano against the top of the order, bringing in a guy with a 5+ ERA against the top of the order with zero margin for error is just asking for trouble. I got serious shades of the 2016 wild card game when Britton was left to rot in the bullpen for a situation that never came.

We don't know whether he's been vaccinated or not. The Yankees outbreak was largely unvaccinated individuals if I recall correctly.