max silver

I think giving Bassitt a chance to recover from the back issues may be very important as well. The team will need to run a 4 rotation in the ALDS if they don't want their starters pitching on short rest and I believe Bassitt is firmly in the top 4 options.

I think the tradeoff is well worth it to give Bo a better chance to be ready for the post season. I think the Trajekt machines can be a big difference maker in allowing the hitters to maintain their timing more effectively compared to prior seasons.

Yeah it was definitely some of both. He did paint a lot of pitches inside the edges of the zone without being rewarded for it though, and combined with a bogus trap call and shaky infield defense his line made it look like he pitched far worse than he actually did.

Ramirez certainly cost himself financially although he'll already earn generational levels of wealth on his well below market value contract.

The MLB replay room just keeps on finding new ways to screw over the Blue Jays. It doesn’t seem to matter how obvious a missed call on the field is given the murder trial burden of proof that is employed.

The Blue Jays are still completely in control of their own destiny at this point.

If they were playing at home instead of on the road they may have enjoyed a winning streak prior to heading on the road trip.

I hope they win today's game and clinch a playoff spot. I think the team is a little too tightly wound at the moment and a champagne celebration could be just the thing to loosen them up a bit for the final home stand.

Pushing what narrative? The Blue Jays need to clinch a playoff spot first before worrying about the division. If they fail to clinch the division it's not like it's game over as they can still advance through the wild card round.

To be fair they were within a foot or two of lead changing home runs two of these 4 games. The only silver lining is that the pitching staff has been performing admirably in September which was the biggest concern heading into the playoffs.

Better to get this out of the way now instead of in October.

I guess that means Yesavage should get an extended audition out of the rotation.

Super small sample size alert but IKF has produced an 80 wRC+ vs LHP and 68 wRC+ vs RHP in his brief time with the Blue Jays this season. These numbers could easily flip over the course of a single game but he's shown typical platoon splits as a Blue Jay in 2025. I'd rather he not get any starts no matter the handedness of the starter but this may be the lesser of two evils.

Yeah he's one of those near miss additions that would have dramatically raised the ceiling of this club year to year. A Lindor addition would have produced similar impact as well.

Manoah is sitting at 90 MPH in his AAA starts. I think it's far more likely that the team would call up Macko before giving Manoah a sniff of the majors this season.

I'm calling shenanigans to this narrative that literally anyone on this board said home runs weren't a concern for Scherzer. Find even a single post stating something close to this.

They are both easy locks for the pen at this point.

Little is the team's best/only leverage lefty and it appears as though he's turned the corner since adding the cutter back into his arsenal. Hoffman is obviously going to feature in the post season bullpen as well.

Posted this for those who don't subscribe to the excellent Future Jays newsletter. Future Blue Jays Newsletter Vol XIII No 17 Welcome to the special Trey Yesavage edition. First off - I’m a Day One Blue Jays guy, whose parents allowed him to take the afternoon off school to watch that snowy home opener nearly a half century ago. And I have never seen such a scintillating starting pitching debut as Yesavage’s performance last night. He had his moments in the first inning - which is to be expected. Not only has that been Trey’s routine with each start at a new level, but with a number of pitchers in the organization. As much as the Blue Jays have changed their pitching philosophy to Owning the Zone, subconsciously, as a pitcher reaches a new level, they know they’ll be facing guys who don’t chase as much as those at his former level did. And that tends to make them nibble, whether they realize it or not, often out of a fear that their stuff won’t be quite as good, or if they’re in the zone with it too much, they’ll get hit. But when Andres Gimenez made that nice play on a slow roller over Yesvage’s head in the first inning, that seemed to slow the game down for the organization’s top pitching prospect. After allowing that first inning run, he went on a bat-missing spree. And I suspect this start on this date in this location was the plan for Yesavage all along. So much of his season was mapped out beforehand. While he easily had the talent to start at AA, the pitching development staff knew he had some things to work on, most noticeably a third pitch - he even resurrected his curveball at Dunedin. Low A hitters were no match for Yesavage, but as my regular readers will know, farm director Joe Sclafani told me back in June that their analysts had done studies on the effect of the cold, moisture-laded Pacific air of the Northwest League on pitch movement. Yesavage needed time against professional hitters, and as inexperienced as Florida State League competition might have been, to learn to harness command of all three of his pitches. Finally came the promotion to Vancouver, but his time in a C’s uniform was brief. When I reached out to one of my contacts in the system (who spoke off the record) about his seemingly quick ascension to AA, he told me, “The battle is not with the league. We want to challenge him to be his big league self going forward, and he needs competition of the league to help that. AA will give him that.” The plan for Yesavage to reach the big leagues, then, was already in place by June. As I have written, the jump from High A to AA is the biggest in the minors (outside of the leap from AAA to MLB). Guys at AA have a plan, whether it’s hunting a certain pitch and/or certain location. But Yesavage met and passed this challenge with flying colours. It was at about this time that I had begun to take notice of his splitter. Initially, I thought he was using it more often, but it turns out that learning to command his fastball, especially to left-handed hitters, made the pitch even more effective. Again, I went to my source to ask what work they had done on the pitch with him. Surprisingly, the answer was not a whole lot. East Carolina, Yesavage’s college team, had worked with him extensively on the pitch. “We worked mostly on fastball command,” says the source. “We also worked on spin breakers to leverage difference off the split, for count leverage to both platoons……but the ticket is (his) fastball command. Being able to stick a heater in each quadrant when needed allows for his secondaries to play accordingly.” This would fit with what Jays’ MiLB pitching director Justin Lehr told me last week. It’s not necessarily one pitch, but a pairing of pitches, with a third thrown in to keep hitters off balance that is the focus of their development plans. It was that fastball command, with the thought of the splitter in Tampa hitters’ heads, that was the key last night. That Yesavage made his first start in a minor league park against a team that will not face him in the playoffs was all part of the plan; the date had probably been circled on the player development staff calendar since early in the season. Now, I’m not quite ready to pencil him in as, say, a game three starter in the playoffs. Word is going to get around the league, and while his delivery is no doubt unique and hard to prepare for, there is a ton of video available for hitters to watch. It will be his next outing(s) that will really tell the tale. If there’s reason for optimism, it’s that all three of his pitches come from almost exactly the same release point; hitters will need multiple looks to pick up on other aspects of his delivery, and the Blue Jays have timed his debut to limit the chances of that. And not to get too far ahead of ourselves here, but……I have gotten a definite sense that the organization views Gage Stanifer, who pitched at three levels himself this year, as being on at least the same level as Yesavage. Stanifer is a year behind in terms of development, but thinking about the two being in the rotation in the second half next season is truly nice to think about.

Bo was an 800+ OPS short stop, I find it really unlikely that anyone is going to be willing to pay him short stop money at this point. I've mentioned that he could need to take a short term show me deal to prove he's healthy and can be an effective defender as well, whether that's a defensive bounceback season at short stop or as part of a move to elsewhere on the infield.

Springer's outfield metrics are UGLY this season. I do suspect some of that could be small sample size weirdness as he's barely played the outfield in recent months but the numbers are hard to completely ignore. I tracked this back in the Statcast defensive search and George has provided an even 0 OAA in his last 107 innings dating back a full 3 months so the lousy numbers are largely a function of the first few months of the season. Checking the first 3 months of the season show George at -7 OAA in 305 innings and this is likely the primary reason that George has barely seen the outfield grass in recent months.

Let me guess he's a pussy and needs his vagisil correct?

Bo is going to be returning from a knee injury of an unknown severity. He's done everything you could ask for with the bat but he was in the midst of an awful defensive season due to limited mobility in the field. He could be forced to change positions for next season and with him coming off of yet another leg issue I suspect he might be forced to take a short term deal to prove he's healthy.

I think there's a good chance Bo will need to take a show me type of contract for next season and the Blue Jays should be all over this.

I thought that the best spot for Yesavage would be out of the pen but after this start he looks like he could be a dynamite rotation option at this point and into the playoffs as well.