max silver

I fully expect the AL East to be a dogfight this season. The Yankees injury issues have really evened out the field to a great degree.

A factor that has me excited about Roden is that he appeared to have flipped a switch later in the season in AAA and fully carried over that level of performance into spring training. He appeared to require a period of adjustment as he really struggled to start the level with a 49 wRC+ over his first 23 games. His last 48 games saw him mash to the tune of a 181 wRC+, and that's impressive no matter the age of the player, particularly a guy who was essentially a second year pro at that point of his career. If he were to start the year in AAA and continue producing like that I expect that Roden would start rocketing up prospect rankings accordingly.

I'm not going to hold Roden's age or draft status against him all that much, as he was a college draftee and has only been a professional for a shade over 2 seasons up to this point. I can't help but feel that Roden is being underrated to a degree by the scouting community at large, as they seemed to have completely missed the massive leap forward that he made at the AAA level and carried that over completely into spring training. Having said that I'm aware of the danger of stat scouting, so we shall see how he responds to proper MLB level pitching and defenses in the near future. I can agree that Spencer Horwitz is a good comparison for Roden at the plate, but I expect that Roden will likely offer up a lot more value defensively and on the bases as he's a far better athlete. I see that MLB Pipeline recently upgraded Roden to a 50FV over the previous 45FV they had assigned to him. Keith Law was fairly complementary in his own ratings, He had the same concerns about a potential platoon role, but Roden was actually very solid against LHP in his time in Buffalo with a .317/.353/.524 line.

Come on man, letting a mediocre longman type go at the end of spring training is hardly going to provide ammunition for firing a front office.

Are you suggesting that Roden has a likely ceiling of a league average outfielder, or simply stating that even if this ends up being his ceiling that he's still a useful piece? The various projection systems essentially see him producing at a rate similar to a league average outfielder in his rookie season, surely there would be a solid possibility for improvement to become more than that in the future.

What makes you think that I "worry" about your opinions? I like to debate on message boards, and you are a particularly easy target to pick apart based on your lack of basic baseball acumen and proclivity for making statements that aren't rooted in reality or based in any sort of fact. I've found that the default response of those unable to understand basic statistics is to claim that statistics are "cherrypicked" whenever someone presents any sort of statistics that support their argument. You need to spend some time brushing up on your basic reading comprehension if you want to have any sort of chance of contributing anything to the discussion on this board aside from offering yourself up as a punching bag for other posters to utilize. It seems you are getting yourself confused. You said that I suggested that Kirk is 98% of the player that Vlad is, but I simply showed that he has provided 98% of the overall value to the Blue Jays since he became a full time regular. I fully admit to providing statistics that showed that Kirk has been nearly as valuable as Vlad, try to keep your facts straight. Having said that Vlad has a much higher overall ceiling than Kirk up to this point, peaking at 6.3 FWAR vs 4.4 FWAR for Kirk. Players get paid a lot more for offensive contributions than they do for their defensive contributions, and Vlad has a much higher offensive ceiling so it stands to reason that his eventual contract is going to be several magnitudes higher as a result.

Ultimately I think it made more sense for Jansen to move on to a new team that had a starter opening to provide. I was always hoping/waiting for Danny to put together a full healthy season where he was productive with the bat to prove he was capable of this. He was able to largely remain healthy last season, but unfortunately he produced the worst MLB season of his career so it was time to fully hand the reins to Kirk and move on from Jansen.

I think this basically boils down to "Shatkins bad" as a default response.

It's not particularly surprising that you are having a really hard time fitting in on a forum where the typical member utilizes logic back up by statistics in order to formulate their opinions. I get that actually using your brain to think when forming opinions is beyond your capabilities but try your best to keep up. I never suggested that Kirk is 94% of the player that Vlad is, those are your words and not mine. However Kirk has provided 94% of the overall FWAR that Vlad has in the last 3 seasons, and just signed a deal for approximately 1/3 of the term that will likely be required to sign Vlad long term at approximately 12% of the total financial outlay. That's a fantastic extension deal whether you have the mental acumen to understand that or not.

I don't know why you keep referencing the BABIP value for the month as if it's useful on it's own. It's nothing more than a surface level statistic. Vlad still ran an overall ground ball rate of 53.2% for the month of June as well, so it's not as if he can't be a very productive hitter despite the ground ball tendencies. Vlad outproduced his expected batting average for the month by a handful of points, but conversely underperformed his expected slugging for the month by a sizable degree. I believe some of this was the fact that he was hitting line drives so hard the ball was bouncing back to the fielders so quickly that it mitigated the chance for a lot of doubles. I was very hopeful as the calendar turned to June that all it was going to require was an incremental improvement to Vlad's launch angle for a lot of the harder hit balls to start clearing the fence.

Vlad mashed the s*** out of the baseball for the month of May last season. Literally the only issue was the low overall launch angle of only 3 degrees. BA/xBA .366/.352 SLG/xSLG .475/.542 wOBA/xwOBA .409/.426 This came along with an average exit velocity of 95.1 MPH and hard hit rate of 64.7%. The results suggest Vlad was actually a tad unlucky with the batted ball results, there was literally nothing fluky or lucky about the month he produced. The month end result of 168 wRC+ could have been something approaching 175-180 wRC+ with a tad better luck on batted balls, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

I'll leave this up to you to explain why you think this was offered too soon. Every single piece of analysis I've seen online suggests this is a team friendly deal, with potential to become even more team friendly over time. Kirk is a core member of the team, and the club has nothing coming in the pipeline to replace him in the next few years. Kirk has been MLB's 6th most valuable catcher by FWAR since becoming a full time regular in 2022, and he offers a solid floor and a very high ceiling with room for potential improvement in the future. I find it interesting you are trying to claim my views are ridiculous when you have been constantly whining about how the team doesn't want to pony up $500 million to a defensively challenged/awful baserunning/inconsistent 1B/DH type with a chronic wrist issue and long term body concerns, and then you immediately start complaining that the team offered up a shade over 10% of that total to lock up their catcher. In the 3 seasons since Kirk became a full time regular he has provided 9.4 FWAR for the Blue Jays vs 10.0 for Vlad. But of course you are going to complain that Kirk agreed to a team friendly extension while complaining that the team should just capitulate to Vlad and hand him a well above market value extension because you are the type to complain about every single move the team makes because "Shatkins" can do no right in your view.

This is just more proof that you are so one sided/biased in your opinions that you'll complain even when the team makes very smart moves with massive potential upside and little to no downside.

I believe Kirk is primed for a huge season and the time was right to sign him at a very reasonable cost. He was willing to negotiate a mutually beneficial overall term and AAV which was equally sharing the risk between he and the team. He has improved his peak and overall throwing velocity in the offseason as mentioned on yesterday's game broadcast, and he has greatly improved his exit velocity in the spring as well which is a strong indicator of a potential offensive resurgence. He is basically worth this deal if he simply continues to perform as he has been, and if the offense works it's way back this deal has potential to be extremely team friendly. I'd like to think you can do better than this, but based on your entire posting history I'm not holding my breath. You are the type of poster that's constantly railing against the front office for not taking a giant leap of faith with Vlad and assuming that he would be worth a franchise player deal before coming anywhere close to earning it, so it makes little to no sense that you are complaining about the team handing a market value deal to their starting catcher who has turned into an elite defender, has typically been very durable, and the team has little in the pipeline available to replace him in the future.

Schneider said he looked good in the spring with a newly added splitter, although Barnes' overall numbers are pretty ugly aside from a surge in strikeout rate.

I think for Kirk to do substantially better in free agency he would need to regain a lot of his previous offensive form at the plate. This feels like a case of a player who spoke with actions rather than words in regards to wanting to remain a Blue Jay long term and was willing to accept a mutually beneficial/reasonable contract extension instead of trying to squeeze the organization for a contract that he hadn't fully earned.

Good thing it didn't take $20 million AAV like someone on here was insisting.

That's assuming the other depth options are actually better than Pop. I suppose this opens the door for someone like Nance to make the opening day roster.

All of Chad Green (3.21), Brendon Little (3.74), and Nick Sandlin (3.75) finished 2024 with ERAs below 3.85.

I recall that Nunez hit a ball at approximately 117 MPH off of the bat earlier in the spring. It was on the ground but I fully agree that there is some really high end power potential in his bat.

Wait where did the thumbs down button go?

Bloss has been very impressive his last few times out. He was sitting at 96 with the heater today and touched as high as 98 MPH. How earlier issues were primarily command related and that's been much better in recent outings.

Yeah this one is tough.

I'm not positive but I'm thinking that looks like George Bell.

I thought based on the limited viewings of Nimmala this spring that he has displayed a very strong arm at the short stop position.