max silver

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.

Tsutsugo has never shown an ability to hit major league pitching so I wouldn't really consider it a bounceback if he eventually figures it out. Hopefully for his sake Yoshi is willing to accept a minor league assignment to give himself a chance to figure things out against lesser competition.

It's been amazing how stout this bullpen has been despite the injuries. They are missing basically a full collection of back of the bullpen types and keep shutting down the opposition. Another crazy thing is how Ray has been finding success with basically one good pitch this season. His fastball is top grade quality but his breaking pitches are all s*** right now and are getting hammered. If he can find at least one decent breaking pitch then he has a good shot to trim the home runs back a bit and go on a really nice run.

Yeah that was such a bad decision. Especially seeing how Pearson was brought into a blowout and absolutely destroyed the Rays in the following game.

Yeah I've been impressed considering this is his season debut. This could be a very nice addition given the rash of bullpen injuries.

Teams are going to figure out eventually that you don't run on Gurriel.

Big play gunning down the runner.

Bo is a cornerstone player, I think some patience is going to pay off to allow him to work through some stuff at the major league level. I think the tools are there to be a good major league shortstop, he just needs to continue working, just like Marcus Semien had to do as young player.