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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.

The Blue Jays have been playing at a 100 win pace record for the last 4 months and you just came here to proudly proclaim that it's primarily due to dumb luck. Over this time the club has produced a very solid +104 run differential in a 107 game sample, but you are trying to suggest that this is due to nothing other than dumb luck and as such giving no credit to the team where it's deserved. At the same time you are constantly singing the praises of a division rival who the Blue Jays enjoyed an 8-5 record in the head to head matchup this season. It shouldn't be so difficult for you to wrap your brain around the fact that other posters aren't going to enjoy a total buzzkill/killjoy type who has a post rate of approximately 99% saying how much the 2025 Blue Jays team sucks and how much better their primary divisional competition is. I have a really hard time believing you when you claim that you've enjoyed this season. Every day features a barrage of posts about how bad the Blue Jays are in some fashion or another, and that's exactly the same kind of posts you made last season when the Blue Jays were terrible. It's all doom and gloom all the time and nothing else is ever allowed.

I don't necessarily blame the previous hitting coach for the team's offensive struggles the last few seasons given the previous success under his tutelage, but I do think that change was needed as Martinez wasn't able to provide solutions for the struggling hitters to improve their success at the plate. I believe that the new hitting coaches do deserve a ton of credit, as does the advance scouting group as well. I believe this notion that hitting coaches essentially do nothing and that the players alone drive the bus is foolish at best as pregame preparation is massive in terms of getting the players ready to face the starter on a given day. On top of that in game/pre-plate appearance preparation is also massive in order to allow the players to utilize the most effective game plan possible as well. I recall that Teoscar Hernandez mentioned that the Dodgers were next level in terms of pre game preparation and I think it's not a coincidence that coaches who spent time in the Dodgers organization have allowed the team to morph into a much more effective offense.

Of course here you are to proclaim that the primary reason the Blue Jays have been successful this season boils down to nothing other than dumb luck. That's totally on point for your continuous series Blue Jays suck/Yankees are awesome posts. It's just par for the course that during a season that feels miraculous in nature that you are completely incapable of enjoying it at any point and go out of your way to ensure that others don't get to enjoy it either.

Nice job completely ignoring the massive chunk of extra payroll that the Yankees enjoy every single season. I think the Blue Jays have done a better job producing their own position players with the Yankees getting the nod in pitching development. You have set an impossibly high bar to satisfy your requirements. This team has won 99 games exactly once in it's entire existence

They are taking a massive defensive hit as they either have to play an outfielder with the worst range in the sport or the outfielder who is playing with an arm injury that completely nullifies the ability to put anything on his throws.

So a below average GM is on track to make the playoffs in 4 of the last 6 seasons while playing one of MLB's hardest schedules in a murderous division. That's just a perfectly fair and balanced evaluation from you. The obviously better Yankees front office has typically ran payrolls of $100lion more every season. Imagine what Atkins could accomplish with the types of payroll allotments that Cashman has enjoyed.

That tie breaker feels like a really big deal right now.

I think Atkins has easily done enough to let him play out the rest of his contract. He has his team in first place in September largely on the strength of internal improvements that the team has been chasing after since the massive offensive underperformance th 2023 season. The offense is arguably the best in the sport this season with the pitching taking a step backwards. If the team can find a way to improve the pitching as they did with the offense this can be a really scary team next season.

That one still stings. I think Ohtani's presence alone last season could have been sufficient to push the team close to contending for a wild card spot.

Thankfully there were a few silver linings from this series. The bullpen was largely tremendous, and Fisher came back looking like he didn't miss a beat and can be a key arm for the stretch run. Vlad also appears to have locked in at the plate again as well which is huge for the lineup.

I don't think that's really worth fretting over too much before the front office has had a chance to make their offseason moves. You could have made the same point about this year's team and here they are in first place in September. There is a lot of money coming off the books after this season is up, but I can fully agree there is a lot of work to be done in the rotation in order to have a solid group for next season. It appears as though the team has a really good shot to finally start using their own home grown pitching at the big league level, but this will require finally getting some of these guys across the finish line.

You aren't on the Blue Jays high performance/training department and as such you are making a bunch of assumptions, and further to that you are making baseless accusations against Bo. We've seen over the years that Bo is essentially impossible to convince to come out of the lineup for maintenance days so it's a pretty grand leap to assume that he's insisting that he wasn't in the lineup yesterday. I can only guess his offseason training routine in the winter prioritized keeping him healthy all season long and avoiding reinjury to his wonky calf. This part was a success, but it's a shame that he's so slow in the field this season. He does appear to be carrying a few extra pounds this season and slimming down a little could help to improve his mobility a tad. It's stupid as hell that you are suggesting that Bo is running slower in an attempt to make more money in free agency. His range is diminished at short stop to the point where he is going to need to change positions sooner rather than later, and it's not exactly a selling feature for a player to have lost a bunch of speed on the bases in the season prior to free agency. Let's surmise that Bo has been in fact running at something like 80% effort to avoid reinjury as you suggest. He's avoided the rash of lower body injuries this season and been able to stay on the field, and this has been of tremendous benefit to the team as one of their most important bats.

I guess you've never heard of post injury inflammation before. It's obvious that the injury felt much worse the day after it occurred. You haven't been paying attention whatsoever to how the Blue Jays have been managing injuries this season. All season long they've taken the opportunity to sit a player to get them 2 consecutive days off when a single game is followed by an off day. It's a small sacrifice to lose a player for a single game but to gain an opportunity to allow them to heal more effectively to avoid the injury becoming worse. But yet here you are insulting Bo Bichette for something that was obviously a team decision. Sigh. I don't get why you feel the need to s*** all over Bo like he peed in your cornflakes or something. He suffered from a bunch of calf injuries and as a direct result he's slow in the field now. I thought you weren't too dense to recognize that baseball players who suffer from leg injuries don't always get their prior levels of speed back. This reminds me of Josh Donaldson who lost most of his foot speed after his own series of recurring calf injuries. I guess you also think that he was just playing for himself as well. Apparently you hate Bo Bichette but that shouldn't come as a surprise as you generally act like you hate the entire Blue Jays organization from top to bottom.

Why are you so quick to assume that this was even Bo's decision in the first place? Just so you could post some fake macho ******** and insult a player who is nursing an injury? It was mentioned during the broadcast that Bo was noticeably limping in the clubhouse and I have no doubt this factored into the decision to sit him for the game to give him a few days off to heal up. The only thing softer than athletes these days appears to be your brain. Given how excited you were about posting about how the Yankees were going to sweep the Blue Jays you should be happy that Bo missed this game.

This is a legitimate contender for the worst post of the year award. Not surprising given it comes from the leading contender for least valuable poster award as well

That's incredibly presumptive of you. I specifically recall Montoyo ripping his players in the media when they were struggling and there were reports that he had lost his clubhouse.

Hey Masterbather:

Were you wearing your Yankees pyjamas when you wrote this? This seems like a lot of projecting on your part to so called "Yankees" fans. Maybe you didn't get the memo but the Blue Jays feature an elite level offense. The Yankees have recently been facing teams that are below average offensively and the Blue Jays represent a much larger challenge to their pitching staff. The last time they faced a team with a good offense in the Red Sox they lost 3 out of 4 games in that series. Of course you would essentially be predicting a Yankees sweep here as you legitimately think that the AL's highest winning team is terrible.

Absolutely. I don't think either fanbase should feel super confident heading into this series as the Jays are among MLB's best offenses/comeback teams, and the Yankees are playing at home in a bandbox stadium where they club a million home runs against a pitching staff that allows a ton of home runs.

Thankfully the Yankees are having the same kind of issues in their pen so if the Jays can get the Yankees starters out of the game reasonably early this may give them a shot to run up the score a bit.

Vlad had a few big games to end the series against the Reds so hopefully he's getting his timing back in time for the Yankees series. The hamstring issue unfortunately took him out of his rhythm as Vlad had been positively killing it post all star break.

This shows how fearsome a lineup of hitters the Blue Jays possess this season. Add in the breakouts of Barger and Varsho along with a very solid supporting cast and this places the offense in a very good place for the final month of the season.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people in the entire Blue Jays online sphere that believes Vlad has been the best player on the Blue Jays this season. I don't think he's even been the team's second best player as I would give those honors to Kirk at this juncture.

It doesn't always feel this way as there are a few stinkers mixed in but Gausman's stretch over his last 12 starts is really damn good as a whole. He's thrown 74 innings of 2.77 ERA/3.38 FIP baseball. The strikeouts never came all the way back as he's averaged 8.80 K/9 in this period but he's been pitching like a borderline number 1 starter for 2+ months which is a good sign heading into the stretch run.