max silver

Shapiro took over at a time where there was a short term window team in place and a mid to lower 20's ranked farm system. He had no assets in the upper minors to use to supplement the team as the previous guy sold the farm on the way out the door, and payroll was largely maxed out as the previous guy assembled an expensive aging team that was quickly moving past it's best before date. Let's not try to pretend like Shapiro took over a great young MLB team with a stacked farm team because both of those aren't remotely true and are nothing more than a completely bad faith argument. Shapiro ironically finds himself in a similar situation as he arrived with in an aging expensive team and a low to mid 20's ranked farm system. I believe that one way or another a decision regarding Vlad needs to be make as he can be a cornerstone player to build around if he's signed to an extension. If that isn't possible he should be moved for the best return possible to start the process of building a new core.

Shopping a player doesn't automatically mean someone will be willing to pay the necessary asking price to make it worthwhile.

None of us knows one way or the other so it's a baseless assumption either way to make a declarative statement about whether or not Bassitt was shopped. We do know he wasn't moved but that's it.

Yeah he mentioned that they were performing some sort of high risk exercise early in the spring before his body was fully conditioned.

You literally said that Mark Shapiro only hired dumb people. This would just like if I were to say that you are a dumb person because some of the posts you make are dumb.

I had a peak at the minor league Statcast box scores for Pardinho last season. When he debuted in AAA in June he was sitting around 93-94 MPH, and by the end of the season this was down to 91-92 MPH. I'd be willing to be he was running out of gas as the season went on as his 45 appearances out of the pen represented a career high for him.

I'm guessing you mean delusional? Alek is certainly optimistic to say the least if he expects the team to contend for anything based on how it's presently constructed.

I don't think I've even gotten the impression that anyone that's worked under the Blue Jays was outright "dumb". I haven't always agreed with Schneider's or Atkins' decisions but neither of these guys strikes me as being unintelligent in the slightest. Atkins takes a lot of flak for talking like an AI generated speech algorithm which is just a bunch of noise and more of a personality quirk. I haven't always agreed with Schneider's decision making but he's very articulate and has generally shown some level of logic behind most of his decisions when asked (with the decision to bat Springer leadoff for so long being my primary gripe for the last few seasons).

Why on earth would Manoah be "dead"? He had his 2023 season largely ruined by an offseason shoulder injury. He was looking much better early on during the 2024 before the elbow issue popped up. I'd at least see how he bounces back from the rehabilitation before making any kind of long term determination on his future prospects.

That's not true. Pardinho was re-signed as a minor league free agent and invited to spring training. https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/blue-jays-sign-pardinho-lauer-and-sanchez-to-minor-league-deals/

I think the high performance department has largely done a good job keeping the team healthy and on the field. This is especially true with the rotation in particular as the team has enjoyed very healthy starting rotations most seasons during this competitive window. On the position player side I think the team has done a good job as well, aside from the recurring calf injuries suffered by Bo and Donaldson during the previous competitive window.

I place the Brewers right up there with the Rays as a smaller market club that consistently does a great job despite not being able to run larger payrolls.

This could work nicely depending on how the recent velocity/stuff gains carry over to the starting rotation. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's more of a Jordan Hicks scenario where he's just more effective out of the pen where he can fully air out his pitches.

That's the thing nobody really knows one way or the other. The Blue Jays have been pretty vague on what his actual job duties entail so it's impossible to know whether some sort of cure for the Blue Jays ills or part of the disease.

I thought you were the poster carrying on about how the best rotation option the Blue Jays could possibly sign was Morton and that they'd be forced to settle for scraps.

I'm sure there's no harm in tossing s*** at the wall to see what sticks, but I don't know if a guy that produced a 60 wRC+ in the infamously hitter friendly PCL would be the second best catcher in any MLB organization. Edit: I went ahead and read through his prospect writeup at MLB Pipeline and he appears to have very solid skills behind the plate which is not nothing. His AAA numbers were just atrocious though including an average exit velocity of 85 MPH on top of a 28% k rate so he'll need to successfully make major adjustments at the plate to have any kind of shot.

It's kind of an inexact science. Santander has typically outperformed his expected home runs season to season. From what I can see the Statcast expected home run metrics shows how many home runs a player would hit if all of his games were played in a specific stadium whereas he'd only be playing there a maximum of 81 times per season.

Based on the Statcast expected home runs metric he'd gain a few extra dingers at Rogers Centre vs Oriole Park.

Perhaps tacking on a reduced cost mutual option for the 5th year could sweeten the pot a bit.

Yeah we can agree to disagree for sure. Having said that I'm argumentative in nature so here goes nothing. 😁 In the end I simply believe Vlad is going to be primarily paid to help his team win baseball games. I can come up with a laundry list of reasons to outline how Vlad is one of the riskier players in MLB to offer a long term extension to, and I don't think that the language he chooses to conduct his interviews in with English media would even register on my list. I would include things like the bad body concerns, inconsistent offensive performance year to year despite hall of fame level natural offensive talent, worst in MLB baserunning and defense since he debuted, questionable offseason work ethics at times, chronic wrist injury concern, several knee related issues at a young age, several seasons where Vlad intimated that off season distractions were largely behind decreased production on the field, etc. I believe that all of these directly tie into Vlad's ability to help the Blue Jays remain competitive on the field of play, and that's the only thing that ultimately matters.

Another point to add is that I think that more teams would be able to squeeze a few months of Vlad's salary onto the bottom line vs paying full freight for the entire season. I think that this would open up smaller market teams as possibilities to enter the bidding, and a full on bidding war between contenders would be the end result. Players with elite offensive potential aren't typically available at the trade deadline, and I think there would be a ton of competition to drive up the eventual trade return.

Vlad entertains fans by playing baseball. He's not an actor or something of that sort where English matters all that much beyond being able to communicate with his teammates. That seems a little self important of you to care what language Vlad chooses to speak in during his interviews. I care only about how he performs on the field and the rest is pretty immaterial.

Why would you assume Vlad can't speak English? He's given plenty of interviews in English in recent seasons but much like a multitude of players prefers to give interviews in his native tongue. He believes he was misquoted years ago and that was directly behind the preference for Spanish most of the time. I think it's a lazy criticism from fans to complain about a foreign player preferring non English interviews.

I think he'd need to post Judge like numbers. He played at an 8 win pace over the last 5 months with a 181 wRC+ so 9 wins would take a step above that kind of offensive production. Maybe it's possible he produces more value at third base if he spends more time there which could help to bridge the gap towards an 8 win season.

It appears as though Vlad values getting paid above all else in terms of signing any kind of extension, but that's a bit of an assumption based on what we've heard publicly.