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Come on you should know very well it's complete folly to suggest that a major league team should call up a first year professional to MLB and should immediately insert him into the closer position. I think there's a really good shot he is called up before season's end as he's being transitioned into a bullpen role but there's little to no chance he's going to be closing games.

I'm cool if he's a part time player but receiving 4-5 starts a week vs 1-2.

Gausman has picked a really good time to rediscover his ace form. He's making a strong case right now to start game 1 in the playoffs ahead of Bieber.

I hope and pray that IKF would be the odd man out but then the manager seems to be completely infatuated with the guy based on the best 4 month sample of his career that happened in a Blue Jays uniform a year ago.

The first 2 games behind the plate were within a percentage point or so of the expected accuracy which is pretty decent for a replacement umpire. Her last game is certainly ugly though and if she wants to stick around she'll need to improve.

I don't think Lopefido is completely a BABIP creation as he features an above average .324 xwOBA presently.

I looked this up using Chatgpt and Pawol spent 9-10 years in the minors before receiving her first shot to call a game in MLB. It really doesn't appear as though she was fast tracked or undeserving of her shot as she had paid her dues beforehand.

I don't understand what Davis Schneider did to get into the manager's bad book. I thought that the Bo injury would potentially open the door a touch for more playing time, but for reasons I don't fully comprehend IKF and his 76 wRC+ bat is the primary choice for late plate appearances in close games, even with a lefty reliever on the mound. While Schneider's numbers are always massaged a bit due to primarily being inserted into optimal matchups it's really odd that his manager has so little faith in him that he would prefer to insert a career utility player with a weak bat into games late vs a guy who has potential to provide real offensive impact. In the last 2 games which were on the line in the late innings IKF has received 4 plate appearances in a bench role vs 1 for Schneider, and Schneider didn't even appear in the game yesterday and was left to languish on the bench. Lopefido was ice cold as evidenced by a 55 wRC+ in his AAA stint, yet he received 2 consecutive starts upon his callup with Schneider barely receiving a sniff.

The club will be able to see how he looks in spring training to see if he's worth rostering or not. I'm guessing that Bastardo would need to stay on the 26 man roster for 90 continuous days barring injury to be in the spirit of the rule.

I edited my previous post. It appears as though Bastardo may need to spend 90 days on the 26 man roster in 2026.

I just sort of assumed as long as Bastardo was kept on the injured list throughout the entire season that this would effectively remove the need to add him to the 26 man roster at any point. Correction: I looked this up and it appears as though Bastardo will need to be on the 26 man roster for 90 days in the 2026 season. The blurb is a little confusing as I believe they may have mixed the years up. https://www.bluebirdbanter.com/2025/1/6/24337316/better-know-your-blue-jays-40-man-angel-bastardo

Nice political bait post.

Maybe you weren't trying to compare but O'Neill and Santander largely fell into the same type of bucket as outfield power bats. Now Santander has suffered from a serious shoulder injury and we simply don't know how the power bat is going to look moving forward.

It still would have been a more productive signing in year 1 vs Santander although if Santander can make it back in time to be a productive playoff bat that would shift the narrative a lot.

That's far from ideal but at least it's better than experiencing a setback in the injured shoulder.

Holy s*** I was aware his season numbers had taken a nosedive but wasn't aware of the level of prolonged struggles. Heading into last night's game his last 79 games saw a 66 wRC+/-1.2 FWAR. He's literally been MLB's least valuable position player over this period and that's a pretty sad level of decline.

Berrios is a bit of a coin flip recently as to whether he's going to be awful or pitch a decent game. It's key that the plays are made behind him in the field and the manager needs to have a quick hook as well as the wheels are always on the verge of falling off at any point.

If that leads to Santander playing right field more often than not that's a really bad defensive alignment in the outfield so it's just strengthening the infield but weakening the outfield.

I fully agree with this assessment. The plate blocking rules are likely among the dumbest in MLB. It just makes no sense that a catcher is only disallowed from blocking the plate before he receives the ball, but has free rein to set up fort if he's either moving to receive the ball or has already received it. In this particular play the way the rules are set up was a direct cause to the collision at the plate as Bo had very little time to alter course once the throw was received. It's dumb that the catcher only needs to leave a sliding lane open when he doesn't have the ball in his possession if the intent of the rule was supposed to be reducing collisions at the plate.

And this certainly isn't going to help with Bo's already diminished range at short stop.

And he produced pretty well against the Reds as well.

I guess the guy who was calling Bo a massive pussy after he missed the final game of the Yankees series and then proceeded with a full bore character assassination owes Bo a bit of an apology at this point.

I was looking at the minor league schedule for the Jays today and noticed that the lower level teams are all finished for the season. The team generally liked to let the rehabbing players get their feet wet a bit in Dunedin before sending them up to AAA but Santander is going to be forced to go straight to the upper minors for his rehab stint. I recall that it was mentioned that Santander's right handed swing was a long ways behind his left handed swing at the moment so perhaps he'll be forced to hit primarily left handed for the rest of the season if he can't get the right handed swing up to speed in time. The Jays are certainly receiving a bit of a favorable pitching matchup in this series as they miss Brown and Valdez. I feel the key will be limiting the damage that Alvarez produces at the plate as it's felt like he's been murder on Blue Jays pitchers in past seasons. Alvarez's numbers are down at the moment but he's sporting a fearsome .412 xwOBA at the moment so he appears to be a strong candidate for positive regression.