max silver

Totally baseless assumption.

Adams had a nice run of success at high A and AA in 2019, he looks like he might have some potential with the bat. The high strikeout numbers are a bit of a red flag though.

Both guys scare me with their injury histories, Paxton in particular with the back injuries and forearm concern that popped up this season. I bet Odorizzi is kicking himself for not taking the Jays offer last offseason, I'd be curious to see how far apart the two sides were. He may be a decent bounceback candidate if he's willing to take a pillow contract to build some value.

I had checked out the home/away splits as well, they are pretty weird when you take a closer look. For some odd reason he struck out far fewer batters on the road than at home. Away from home he was beat up a few times by the Dodgers and the Rockies, so no real shame there given how good the Dodgers offense is and how hard it is to pitch at Coors Field. It's far too short a sample size to make any definitive statements after only 10 starts but I really don't think he would just magically revert back to mediocrity just because he'd be pitching in the AL East. I see a pitcher that looks to have improved his stuff and tweaked his repertoire for maximum success, this likely isn't the same pitcher he was when he pitched with the Orioles.

MLBtraderumors.com has a survey up asking about whether you would prefer to sign Stroman or Gausman as a free agent. My knee jerk reaction based on past performance for each pitcher led me to immediately pick Stroman, but after taking a look at Gausman's 2020 numbers I was very tempted to switch my pick to Gausman. He had a really nice (partial) season for the Giants. He managed to up his fastball velocity by over a full MPH and also increased his 4 seam spin rate as well, so it appears his stuff has ticked up a bit. He managed a big jump in his K rate, improving his previous career best 10.03 K/9 up to 11.92 K/9. The biggest change I can see that may explain his newfound success is a marked change in pitch usage, he's basically dumped his slider the last few seasons and gone exclusively fastball/splitter. You really can't argue with the results, 3.62 ERA/3.09 FIP/3.49 xERA. I think he's likely to be more successful going forward than Taijuan Walker and would prefer the Jays take a shot at signing him for the rotation. I don't think he'll require a very long term deal due to lack of sustained success in his career, maybe 2-3 years gets it done.

Jays historically have to overpay for free agents anyway so that's already factored into any free agent signings no matter where they end up playing.

I don't think Bo would have any issues moving off of short stop for an established MLB player, he basically said as much when the Jays were linked with Didi Gregorius. Hard to say how he would react to being asked to move for a rookie with no MLB experience however.

Yeah there would be plenty of at bats to go around for Grichuk. Gurriel is pretty injury prone so he seems to be a lock to miss a chunk of time, and Teoscar is a guy you'd want to DH from time to time to avoid him bungling plays in the outfield where possible.

I get the feeling somebody will make him an offer with so many zeros attached that he can't refuse.

The Jays showed that they were able to successfully pull off their games in Buffalo with zero reported covid cases in either the Jays team and staff or the visiting players and staff members. They did this despite playing large amount of their games both in covid hotspots and against teams that were travelling through covid hotspots. Hopefully this would be sufficient to allow the feds to give the Jays an exemption to allow them to play their games in Toronto next season

While this sounds like it would make for extra excitement I really don't think this makes for a very fair setup for both teams. The higher seeded team should theoretically already have a better chance of winning due to simply having a better quality team and not need to be gifted a different set of rules for winning the series compared to their opponent.

I can only assume Anderson is on the roster to soak up innings in case of a blowout. Either of Murphy or Romano (dependent on health of course) would provide nice power arms out of the bullpen.

I'm intrigued by the Shoemaker game 1 start. He flashed some impressive mid 90's velocity in that outing. Combined with Ray and Pearson that could certainly cover 6 or 7 innings to start the game.

If prefer he pitch FOR someone like the Orioles next year, even if the Jays are still paying his salary.

It drives me nuts how much he complains about pitchers daring to throw anything other than fastballs. You can guarantee if an opposition hitter ever manages to hit any kind of breaking or offspeed pitch that there will be an incoming Buck Martinez lecture about how superior the fastball is.

Nice he's rocking the playoff beard.

Congratulations on hitting an impressive new peak to your rampant self loathing. I assume (maybe mistakenly) that you are a Blue Jays fan, it's remarkable that you would complain about them making the playoffs despite all of the obstacles thrown in their way instead of choosing to enjoy it. This team earned their way in, they are only 2 wins behind the Yankees for crying out loud, and just handed the high spending Yankees a 3 out of 4 game series defeat despite the Yankees coming in extremely hot.

I'd hate for the sanctity of all that is proper in baseball to be destroyed in your eyes, that would be a real travesty. That's totally more important than enjoying a young team who nobody expected to make the playoffs going in scraping and clawing their way in despite missing many key performers for large chunks of the season.

Nobody is forcing you to watch if it bothers you that much.

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.