max silver

Future gold Glover at first base.

I'd rather the club aim higher and make a push to sign George Springer to play center field.

What are you even basing this conclusion on? He's raised his WRC+ by 14 points and cut his strikeout rate by nearly 5%. I think it would be foolish to try and make a definitive conclusion after a 49 game sample but those looks like signs of improvement to me.

I'm hardly using the k rate as the only measuring stick here, just more of a way to differentiate between the minor league success of Kirk vs Arencibia. If I were to look for measuring sticks for Kirk's minor league success I would be more apt to look at the 153 WRC+ that he produced in high A Dunedin as a 20 year old.

I think with Grichuk it's still too early to tell where he finally settles out. He's constantly tinkering with his swing and approach, maybe he fully unlocks his potential or remains a roughly league average player. No doubt in my mind Teoscar is a stud, over his last 5 months of play dating back to his callup in June last season he's put up a 140 WRC+. In the 131 games he's played since then he's slugged 39 home runs. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2019&month=1000&season1=2020&ind=0&team=14&players=0&startdate=2019-06-01&enddate=2020-09-22

Arencibia's AAA success was likely largely attributed to playing in the Pacific Coast League where baseballs go to die. The ballparks are all bandboxes, and there are a lot of parks at elevation where breaking balls really don't move the way that they should. Kirk's WORST strikeout rate in his limited minor league career was 11.2%, while Arencibia's BEST strikeout rate in the minors was 17.6%. There is really nothing in common with how these two players come about their success at the plate. Kirk has typically walked more than he has struck out so far, the guy has a pretty amazing eye at the plate. I'll agree it's too early to declare Kirk a 100% certain future star, but he certainly has the necessary ingredients to become one.

I had a peak at his batted ball numbers on Fangraphs, in August when he was hot his batted ball distribution was about 47% to left, 28% to center and 25% to right field. In September when he's been cold he's been 44% to left, 18% to center and 38% to right field. I think he's waiting too long to start his swing and overdoing the whole let the ball travel thing, he's not squaring the ball up with very much frequency and hitting a bunch of weakly hit balls to the right side of the diamond at the expense of his power.

JPA never had the kind of plate discipline that Kirk has displayed so far, he was like a Kevin Pillar level free swinger that regularly ran a nearly 30% k rate. I'm not entirely sold on Kirk defensively yet but it's hard to deny the guy looks amazing at the plate.

I'm really not a fan of the inside out swing he's been utilizing recently. Even the home run he hit was a weird looking swing.

He was hitting the s*** out of the ball early on and was showing some noticeable changes, unfortunately he couldn't sustain it. I certainly wasn't expecting him to hit 60 home runs in a 60 game season.

This is easily the worst stretch of Blue Jays pitching I can remember seeing in my 30+ years of watching. It's amazing how almost every pitcher on the roster is getting their face pounded in every time they step on the mound. At least Patrick Murphy looked decent in game one, he may give them a non-horrible option out of the bullpen going forward.

Nice quick bounce back inning for Ray.

Nice Houdini act by Ray, hopefully he lasts longer than 2 or 3 innings to preserve the bullpen for game 2.

Holy crap my eyes must deceive me, this is actually reasonable lineup construction. Somebody must have tied Charlie up in his office and filled out the lineup card for him.

Holy f*** this team needs to get their pitching straightened out in a hurry. I'm fully onboard with giving Joey Murray and/or Patrick Murphy a start at this point, they can't possibly be any worse than Chase Anderson and Tanner Roark. Even Zeuch looks like he could at least keep games semi competitive without serving up home run derby pitches to the opposition. If Shoemaker and Pearson are both back in time for post season action there's no way in hell the gas can crew should see their names on the post season roster.

Jays have shown they are willing to just eat the cost of bad contracts, so if he's unusable there's always the option of DFA'ing him and let somebody else suffer from his s***** pitching.

OMFG you would think Fisher would at least make a half assed attempt at catching a ball right in front of him.

Hopefully we see today's version of Robbie Ray again this season, that would be a huge add considering how terrible Roark and Anderson have been lately. I was super impressed with Kirk in his debut, he called a great game behind the plate, looked very comfortable and fluid defensively and the bat looked legit as well.

No Gurriel again despite having several off days consecutively, must be dealing with some sort of injury.

To me it looks like the biggest thing that has been missing with Vladdy is the drive to maximize his talents that the best players have built into them. Guys like Bo and Nate are hyper driven to keep improving in every aspect of being a professional athlete and to this point it's easy to question whether Vladdy has that same kind of desire. He really needs to figure out that being a professional athlete is a year round profession, especially given the body that he has been born into, he really can't afford to take several months off at a time like he did during the covid shutdown. Without knowing the guy directly it's impossible to say whether a teammate needs to read him the riot act, or the coaching staff needs to be tougher, or the front office staff needs to have a rather frank conversation with him about proper diet and conditioning, but sooner or later the message needs to hit home with him to really reach the potential he has within.

They better be pretty damn careful with this though, oblique injuries are super easy to aggravate and go directly back to square one.

If it had been up to people that only look at the short term and jump to conclusions we wouldn't even be witnessing the massive steps forward that players like Teoscar and Rowdy look to be taking. This team's history is full of late bloomers who struggled in several go rounds of MLB playing time, but once everything clicked for them they turned into monsters eventually. There are guys like Carlos Delgado, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Josh Donaldson, and most recently Teoscar Hernandez as perfect examples. I can understand frustration of seeing other phenoms instantly become stars, but before the last few years can you really think of many examples of guys who instantly became stars like this outside of one or two guys per generation? I see no utility in writing guys off so soon before they have a chance to take their lumps at the highest level and make the necessary swing and/or approach tweaks in order to maximize their success. This is still a supremely talented 21!!! year old player, it's not like he's a late 20's guy signed out of Japan who's at the make it or break it stage. There are plenty of plusses to the guy's tools still, the plate discipline is decent and improving at this early age, he has a pretty low strikeout rate and decent walk rate for such a young player so it's not like he has no idea what he's doing. Sure it sucks to see Vladdy have growing pains at the major league level, but what choice is there but to keep running him out there and seeing if he can improve?

It's still possible Martin shifts over to third base, so maybe none of these guys?

We have a young player that has only had about 6 months in MLB, in two of those he's put up very good numbers, in a few he's been a little better than average, and in a few months he's really struggled. In this season he has improved upon his plate discipline numbers and is on average hitting the ball harder. Why in the world should we make any conclusions about what the finished product is, especially by basing this conclusion on how the player is looking when he's at his worst?

I didn't think I'd say this but it might be time to move Panik up in the lineup until he starts to cool off. You gotta really hand it to the hitting coach tandem of Martinez/Bichette, many of the young players have taken big leaps forward, and they've managed to get some of the old veterans straightened out as well.