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How dare you suggest that glorious Blue Jays provider Sportsnet would push a false narrative upon us! Sacrilege I say! This is pulled from the Athletic: https://theathletic.com/1482337/2019/12/25/1-on-1-cavan-biggio-on-his-holiday-traditions-musicals-finding-a-positional-home-blue-jays-chances-in-2020/ Those were the highs, but there were a few lows too. At the plate, Biggio displayed remarkable patience and discipline that led to a team-leading .364 OBP, but he also went through streaky periods offensively and his batting average (.202) fell dangerously close to the Mendoza Line in July. A more aggressive plate approach starting in mid-August helped him finish strong, as he posted a .987 OPS over his final 22 games. Heading into 2020, he hopes to build off that mentality to achieve greater consistency at the plate. “When you really commit to it and commit to that aggressive mindset, it really helped me slow the game down more and not being able to miss my best pitch that I’m going to see in that specific at-bat,” Biggio explained. “That whole month of September, I committed to that game plan and that mindset and saw a lot of success from it. And I’m going to build off that going into next year.” Cavan himself believes there was an alteration of approach so there may actually be something to this. It's certainly interesting the monthly discipline numbers don't show anything, perhaps he was more apt to swing at meatballs early in the count than was previously the case, that is one scenario that would help explain the increased success to end the season. Looking at Fangraphs shows that Cavan had a different batted ball distribution for the month of September, as there were more flyballs than previous months, less soft contact overall, and a more even distribution with more balls to center field and less of a pull centric approach, so it's entirely possible a new approach was indeed being instituted.

With the information provided within this press conference it does certainly change the overall picture from one that MLB completely f***ed up, to one where MLB took the poison pill presented by the players union, who end up being very complicit on the guilty parties completely avoiding punishment in what is one of the biggest cheating scandals in modern sporting history. Not getting any cooperation from the players without blanket immunity has turned out to be a huge mistake by the players union based on how angry the overall player base is about this. I think an interesting option going forward is to re-open this investigation, and present the players union with some new options. Either the players union waives this immunity for the guilty parties, or the championship is taken away from Houston completely.

I recall Cavan indeed altered his approach towards the end of the season at the behest of the coaching staff, and he subsequently ended the season on a real heater. I recall it being said that Cavan was urged to be more aggressive swinging at pitches in the strike zone that he could reasonably hit hard, and it seemingly worked out swimmingly for him. A cursory glance at his splits shows a .426 BABIP for the month which he certainly won't be able to replicate, but the 160 WRC+ was a nice reward for Cavan and his altered more aggressive approach.

Yeah that's some pretty crazy level rich dude entitlement. If there is a team that should be more desperate to win now than the Angels I am having a hard time coming up with it. To have quite possibly the best player ever in MLB and fail to make the post season for most of his career up to this point is ultra embarrassing, and to have an owner throw a hissy fit and torpedo a move as that greatly improves your team's chance of winning as part of that tantrum is even worse.

I would hope you are able to distinguish the severity of cheating in an organization that cooked up a multi-tier technologically advanced cheating method involving everyone from the front office to the bench coach right down to the players, something on the level which baseball has never seen, vs an individual pitcher using something to enhance their grip. Systemic cheating vs. micro level individual small scale cheating don't really warrant the same kind of discussion, nor should they.

Oh totally agree here man, like come on the dude garnered a f***ing MVP vote. Boston fans will be totally like Mookie who? within a week.

Hopefully MLB actually goes about enforcing the challenge time rule this time around. That certainly didn't seem to be the case last season, there were challenges that took forever that were allowed to stand even though they were well above the allotted time.

LMAO j-roc was possibly my favorite character on that show

Fangraphs always manages to piss in my cornflakes with their doom and gloom Blue Jays prospect write-ups. Woods Richardson gets a 40 present rating for command, for a guy that's only walking 2 per 9 innings that seems pretty crazy. Same thing for Orelvis Martinez, as a 17 year old he put up a 150 WRC+, with a very respectable strike-out rate, and he gets hit with a 20/45 present-future hit tool. Sure there's something to be said for actually seeing somebody play live vs. stat scouting, but you would have to think actual on the field results need to count for something.

Hopefully this fills our quota for obligatory bad news Jays spring training stories for this year.

Wtf, that's a crazy thing to get caught for on the eve of spring training. This certainly doesn't bode well for the Jays big league catching situation to say the least. I wonder how the club ends up dealing with this? Creepy deviant/pervert type isn't exactly who you want to be employing on a team owned by a major media company.

If reports about Merryweather's stuff are to believed, then I think his ceiling is likely a multi-inning fireman type out of the bullpen. Like a Chad Green type perhaps, you can bring him in anytime in the game to shut down an oppositions rally.

This doesn't feel nearly as crushing as it would have a few years ago due to the depth of intriguing young starters the Jays have amassed in that time span.

I have no problem with a few more teams in each league making the playoffs. If this helps to alleviate a bit of the tanking that's plaguing baseball right now then I'm all for it. It's not like Oriole/Tiger level teams are going to get in, and chances are better than not that the lower end playoff teams are going to be removed sooner or later. The part I don't care is the whole gimmick of picking your opponent. That feels like a WWE style gimmick, who is this part supposed to really appeal to?

This is nowhere close to as bad as having an individual skills content to decide a winner. Baseball version of this would be more like having a home run derby after 9 innings to decide the winner in a tie game.

Good call, Vancouver team-mate Alek Manoah is another guy primed for a huge season as well. It's crazy how many really high ceiling talents there are in the system right now, even despite the recent graduations to the major league squad.

He's going to have some serious competition from guys like Groshans, Woods Richardson, and possibly Moreno and Alejandro if they continue their 2019 levels of success.

Tank isn't the first word that comes to mind for me when watching a video of someone whose body jiggles so much

If feels more like to me that the Twins and Angels potentially would be the big losers in this if the whole trade falls apart.

If Boston balked at Graterol's medicals then I can't see them being over enthused about Murphy's then, dude probably looks like a jigsaw puzzle on an mri with his injury history.

Biggest difference I see in the projections is that Biggio is projected to lose most of his value on the bases. Sure he won't necessarily be a perfect 14/14 stealing bases again, but the guy is a phenomenally intelligent base runner.

Wow Luhnow actually thought TLDR would be useful as a defense, totally brilliant strategy.

Any chance you can post it here? The article is locked behind a paywall for me.

I find it puzzling that people are so quick to give credit to some deity when physical conditions improve, but then not assign any blame to this same deity for causing the causing/allowing this physical condition to exist in the first place.

I always thought this plan was extremely stupid. Expecting two separate cities to both cough up the necessary cash to build stadiums for only half of a season of Major League Baseball doesn't seem likely.