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People still use batting average by itself to evaluate offense nowadays? What year is this?

Yeah for sure, if you combined Eric Thames bat with Anthony Alford's defense and base-running you would potentially end up with a borderline star.

The only way I really see this becoming more than an occasional thing is if one of either Fisher or Alford ends up breaking out, as that suddenly creates more talented players deserving of playing time than there is available time to go around. Definitely a good problem to have, even if it's unlikely to happen.

Lol I didn't start steer the discussion towards politics in the first place so no need to direct this my way specifically.

Holy f*** man, turn your brain on. If you read through that list of cherry picked "accomplishments" and think that they are all actually good things being listed then I suggest you start thinking every once in a while. The whole thing reads like it was written by Donald Trump himself interestingly enough given the phrasing. Things like increasing exports of coal means the world burns more coal, not exactly a fantastic accomplishment, imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum for "national security reasons" was punishing both the United States and it's supposed allies for no net economic benefit to anyone, withdrawing from the "horrible one-sided Iran agreement" means Iran is now actively enriching uranium for the purpose of creating nuclear weaponry.

In your view what does the study propose for a line-up, vs. what Charlie has proposed? I haven't seen the full line-up quote from Charlie yet, but didn't see the sense in batting Vladdy so far down in the line-up at the clean-up spot. I would argue he's in the top two going forward.

Wow, add in that the German suspension as well and the Yankees rotation has taken some major hits.

Kevin Pillar has put up a WRC+ of 103 vs LHP for his career, vs only 85 WRC+ for Benintendi. Chances are better than not that Pillar would put up better defense in left field than Benintendi would as well, so for a team that just traded away their best outfielder Kevin Pillar actually becomes an important platoon player in maximizing their outfield usage.

Hopefully common sense eventually takes over in lineup construction for the Jays. They have the perfect lead-off man in Cavan Biggio. He has the perfect combination of best OBP in the team and just so happens to also be the team's best base-runner by a large margin. Batting second and third would ideally be the team's two best hitters in Vladdy Jr. and Bo Bichette. In my eyes it's up in the air which of these two will eventually be the better hitter, but for this season at least these two will each should be getting close to the maximum amount of at bats possible, and ensuring they come up to bat in the first inning. I think Gurriel would make a great clean-up hitter, the guy is an extra base machine.

You may need to fine tune your Buck ******** detector then, the discussion included quotes from Cavan directly taken from a Kaitlyn McGrath written Athletic article. Absolutely zero Buck Martinez affiliation guaranteed from that particular discussion actually.

Did you bother reading the fact that it was quoted straight from Cavan himself? Perhaps reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.

Who bats 5th I wonder? Hopefully it's someone that can at least provide a small modicum of protection for Vladdy Jr., last season he was already seeing one of the lowest percentages of pitches in the strike zone, this will likely continue to an even greater degree this season.

That's an interesting graphic, if it were to break down on a monthly basis we would have exactly what we need to see whether or not there was an approach change. It certainly does suggest Cavan has been too passive with pitches in the strike zone, but the overall results of +24 take runs and -10 swing runs suggests the passive approach mostly works for him. It appears most of his success is attributable to taking pitches out of the strike zone, with the passiveness in pitches in the strike zone working against him. I look forward to what 2020 brings for Cavan, if he looks more like the September guy going forward than the preceding months then he is a much better player than originally expected.

I don't think we have enough available data to definitively make a decision on whether his approach is changed, but I'll lean towards taking Cavan's word for it. To do otherwise is to suggest the man is either a dumbass or a liar, and I see no reason to believe either is true. Cavan is one player who I think can successfully become more aggressive on hittable strikes while still taking borderline pitches. There aren't many players with the type of pitch recognition/strike zone awareness that he possesses, and if he is actually attempting to do more damage on hittable pitches then he is certainly going to better off for it. Is there a way to look up at which areas of the strike zone a player is swinging? All I have come across is more vague data only showing overall swing percentages, but nothing breaking it down into zones over a month to month basis.

The guy is/was so underrated it's shocking, I fully agree that his upside is tremendous. But I see no issue with him being coached to be more aggressive swinging at pitches he can crush, if that means he puts up more doubles and home runs and a few less walks overall then that makes him even better. With the reported new altered approach as you have illustrated the overall plate discipline profile wasn't changed for the worse, and the walk rate remained as high as was the case previously, so there were seemingly no negative consequences for Cavan. My only question for Cavan going forward is whether the high strikeout rate will eventually end up biting him in the ass, perhaps if the umpires stop giving him the rookie treatment 2 inch extra wide strike zone on both sides of the plate the strike out rate will plummet eventually.

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.