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Vlad is possibly the least media savvy member of the Blue Jays I can recall at any point. He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth and this isn't the first time he's set off a firestorm with tone deaf comments. That's interesting that his relative intelligence is noted to be high as he appears to be terribly informed with how current day free agent+extension contracts are largely based on expected future performance.

I think George still has what it takes to provide solid offensive output from the DH spot when he's at close to full health but the injuries are starting to take him out of his game more and more. His 120 wRC+ since mid May is tied with Kirk for best on the team among regulars but he's been very streaky and dealing with various aches and pains for most of the season.

Given how the team has played in recent weeks that was likely true even if they were playing.

This post feels a lot like projection on your part.

How is this remotely relevant to what Cease is obviously going through? You are getting awfully close to intimating that Cease is essentially making up his shoulder issue which is fully evidenced by the fact he sitting low 90's in his latest start.

It's nowhere close to a foregone conclusion. This front office has proven that they are far more patient than the gung ho members of the fanbase who want people fired at every possible interval. The front office stuck with Martinez for another season despite the tough 2023 offensive output, and with Popkins being the hitting coach for the 2025 club which was MLB's best for most of the season he'll almost certainly be given another shot to help the club turn things around in 2026. I have little doubts there will be a deep dive analysis to establish what went wrong this season offensively and there's a chance that Popkins will be let go, but I don't think there is a very high chance of this happening.

The club has been publicly stating that they are hoping for something closer to 50-60 pitches so the 104 is all but impossible.

The only real benefit I see is allowing Yesavage to potentially get back onto the mound and end the season on a bit of a high note. Of course this also risks him further injuring the knee so you have to hope that the knee is ready for this kind of exposure at this point of his recovery.

Wait when was it announced that Popkins was going to be fired? I must have missed that.

The most recent example was the perfect game that completely unraveled third time through the order. Soriano was repeatedly making mistakes in the danger zone and the opposition was crushing the mistakes. I think Schneider was asleep at the switch and waited far too long to get someone warming in the pen, and this immediately led to 4 runs scoring in that inning. I also recall a previous game where Soriano was brought back to begin another inning despite already having thrown something in the neighborhood of 95 pitches, and he immediately proceeded to load the bases without recording a single out. This created an impossible situation for the bullpen and eventually all 3 runs crossed the plate.

Soriano has been outright dominant at times. I think a huge reason why his ERA is inflated is due to his manager having little to no feel for when to pull him from games. I can recall 2 or 3 outings when Soriano was obviously struggling to command his pitches and the opposition was having a field day in the later innings. His relievers haven't been doing him a lot of favors with preventing inherited runners to score either.

You must have missed how the team has essentially an entire rotation on the injured list. This isn't the only reason that the team has struggled but it's dumb as hell to pretend like having 2.5 healthy starters for much of the season is a giant nothingburger.

If Bateman's early results end up holding you could add him to that list as well.

Arraez is sort of like a high end version of Ernie Clement this season. I'd hate to hazard a guess what his eventual deal will look like, as there's a very high chance of a dumb owner and/or front office in offering him a premium player deal based on his career season.

I do believe if Bo is able to rebound offensively next season on the way to a better platform season it could make sense for him to opt out. He's largely put the defensive concerns to rest as he's been a solid enough defender at third base but I just don't see any teams offering a sufficient contract this offseason to make opting out worthwhile at this juncture. Furthermore I just can't see this Blue Jays front office offering him a lucrative enough deal to make him seriously consider rejoining the Blue Jays as they were perfectly willing to let him walk due to not being able to align on contract value previously.

The bad first half results still count too towards his season totals. And his second half has him only sitting at 109 wRC+ which is hardly killing it, especially by his own standards.

This is highly illogical. If Santander didn't want to get back on the field he wouldn't have bothered with late season comeback attempts this year and last and would have just coasted into the offseason.

With Arraez I'm not particularly convinced the defensive improvements are going to stick long term over the course of his eventual deal. He's coming off of 1.2 and 0.9 win seasons with pretty similar offensive output compared to this season and I just don't think his bat will come close to breaking even on a long term deal when the defense inevitably slides.

In your case it calls into question your own inability to gauge whether you are capable of serious discussion to any degree, and leaves an open ended question whether every statement is supposed to be taken as a badly formed joke or if you actually mean what you say.

If nothing else you can give yourself a nice Barry Horowtitz'ian pat in the back in celebration of your victory.

Massive bullet dodged there. Just imagine if the nightmare scenario of all of Vlad, Tucker and Bo being locked up long term had come to fruition.

This game was the emotional roller coaster variety of the highest highs and the lowest lows. If you were to encapsulate the 2026 Blue Jays season into a single game this would be the perfect kick in the nuts game to use. There were the early ominous signs of an offense that was putting runners on base seemingly at will but couldn't fully take advantage. Early on Soriano was pure filth as he produced a perfect game through 5 innings and no hitter through six with the only base runner reaching due to a likely strike 3 call had the pitch been challenged. The 7th inning saw him lose his ability to command his arsenal as he kept serving up mistake pitch after mistake pitch and the Tigers hitters were punishing him in plate appearance after plate appearance. I've noted this many times since being acquired that Soriano tends to unravel quickly later in games and that the manager has been caught asleep at the switch on multiple occasions with the opposition piling up a ton of damage against with it taking far too long to get the bullpen up and warming. This has often been compounded with his relievers letting him down and allowing all of the inherited runners to eventually score. I've found that Schneider is generally effective at pulling his starters before they completely lose it but with Soriano he just has no feel of when his starter is nearing the end of his effectiveness. As badly managed as the delayed Soriano pull proved to be the choice of leverage arm to start the 8th inning was probably worse. It blew my mind that Mantiply was chosen as the arm to begin the inning against the top of the lineup of a potent offensive group. This was the most important game to lock down for the entirety of the season, and bringing in Mantiply felt like a situation where the manager crossed his fingers and hoped for the best instead of employing the best available arm given the game situation. I did like the decision to bring in Varland when Mantiply failed at his job, but the fielding curse that has afflicted Blue Jays pitchers this season has also affected Varland and he inevitably botched a nice fielding play from Vlad on the way to handing the Tigers the lead. The 9th inning was the icing on the sh*t sundae as McAdoo was stapled to first base against a reliever with no hope of holding runners, Vlad watched a 94 MPH middle/middle meatball go by and then got caught sleeping on a strike 3 fastball well within the strike zone, and then Kirk grounded into a double play to end the game when the runner likely could have easily stolen second base. If the Blue Jays miss the post season this will be a game that haunts them in their sleep.

The season long numbers paint a picture of a putrid offense but I don't think I'd characterize the Blue Jays offense as worst in baseball right now. Since Bateman debuted the club is 3rd by wRC in MLB and have scored the 8th most runs in MLB and are a single run scored behind the 6th and 7th place teams. Right now this is a solid offensive group that has been scoring plenty of runs on this charge up the wild card standings, albeit one that is prone to the occasional game and/or series where the offense doesn't do enough.

Well to be fair the team announced a demotion to AAA and not an upcoming funeral.