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I saw a post suggesting that a reader had seen the job listing for the Athletic Jays beat writer and it was in the $75k range or thereabouts.

I recall there was discussion that they were attempting to hire a new writer. I used to receive a ton of value from my Athletic subscription as there were the aforementioned 3 Blue Jays centric writers along with several Flames writers as well, but not it's down to zero for each. A large chunk of the Blue Jays coverage now is basically Ken Rosenthal dunking on the organization at every possible opportunity which is not something I'm interested in paying for as I could read Steve Simmons for free if I was actually interested in that kind of content.

Adames basically produced a Bo Bichette season in 2024 with a 119 wRC+ and -16 DRS/0 OAA. It's nearly impossible to know what to expect from Adames moving forward.

That was the Athletic who fired him. I believe he was drunk for a podcast where Stephen Brunt was being interviewed. It's a shame he got himself shitcanned from the Athletic job as that publication used to feature 3 Blue Jays centered writers and now is down to none.

Bo tends to go in defensive slumps where he makes a bunch of mistakes and his metrics have a tendency to plummet as this occurs. I hope that it will be possible to track changes to the metrics a little more easily at some point in the future to make it easier to quantify the drops to the various metrics once the inevitable slump hits. I think his arm strength has never been much of an issue, I believe his issues stem from poor mechanics at times that leads to the errant throws. We shall see how the range looks this season after the barrage of calf issues last season, hopefully that hasn't been overly affected.

I was impressed by Nimmala in the field as he was silky smooth at short stop and flashed a very strong arm. He wasn't overly challenged by any of the plays but I thought he looked very sure handed vs Bo who has people holding their breath when the ball is hit his way.

I liked the stuff he was featuring but the command is definitely a work in progress as he grooved a bunch of fastballs.

If you read between the lines even a little bit it appears as though Bo is very old school in his preparation approach. He's made comments that strongly suggest he's not particularly interested in the more advanced data and training approaches. That's fine as it's obviously his prerogative with regards to training methods but I fully believe he's holding himself back with the extreme over aggressiveness at the plate and unlocking his full potential will require improvement.

In the unlikely event that the current front office actually wins a playoff game you can still keep him. This version is much better.

If I'm not mistaken the shoulder issue wasn't a long term and that the initial injury happened a month or so before his season ended. I believe it occurred on a defensive play.

Ok I'm getting suspicious someone has hacked Jonn's account or something.

Fantastic post.

The board has been a bit of a nuthouse at times this offseason. It's perfectly understandable as many here are completely stressed out and people are at each others throats even more than usual. It's interesting that there are some loose factions that have formed over the offseason as well.

I'm actually low key a little bit worried about how his shoulder bounces back from the surgery. He's not blessed with the strongest throwing arm to start with and primarily relied on getting rid of the ball quickly with great accuracy. Losing any zip on the arm could force him to play primarily left field. A greater concern of mine is whether the power output is affected, as he could very quickly become useless at the plate if he can't even produce decent power output.

Well to be fair you did suggest that Varsho should be fired into the sun...😆

That's an interesting discussion topic to be certain. I went a little further back and George also featured reverse splits in the 2022 season as well which makes 3 seasons in a row. You have to go all the way back to 2018 to find another season where he performed better against left handed pitching, so that makes 5 of the last 7 seasons where he posted reverse splits. It appears as though his career split totals are largely being driven by the results from his first 4 seasons in the league. Over the last 3 seasons he's gone backwards year over year so hopefully this is something that he can reverse with the appropriate adjustments at the plate. Springer RHP/LHP splits over time Career 124/134 2014-2018 120/150 2019-present 127/124 2022-present 113/99

Springer has reverse splits the last two seasons so this might not be a great option. Popkins has his hands full trying to squeeze some more juice out of Kirk and Springer as these guys have both been underperforming their expected statistics to a large degree.

Come on man you should know by now that Orelvis didn't test positive for steroids.

I'm hoping that Wagner can at least be passable defensively at third base to open up a little more potential playing time. I believe the club is giving him some reps at first base as well to increase his versatility. DH could be a little clogged up with both of Santander and Vlad featuring quite a few plate appearances there which could limit his playing time a bit.

The primary issue that held the team back was the lack of performance when it mattered from the all star talent on the roster. If you examine the 4 year period in the current window from 2021-2024 peaked the club enjoyed peak combined performance from their two young cornerstone players once, and had one season where the duo was basically acceptable. The other two seasons saw a really disappointing combined contribution. Bo and Vlad Combined FWAR 2021 11.2 FWAR 2022 8.1 FWAR 2023 5.2 FWAR 2024 5.8 FWAR Imagine how much better the 2022 and 2023 teams could have been if both of Bo and Vlad performed up to their capabilities. 2023 in particular was a massive disappointment, and that team very well may have been challenging for the division instead of squeaking into a wild card series if the supposed core didn't disappoint to such a large degree.

Dude, you made a grand declaration about how people on the board were going to be in shambles. I have no idea whatsoever who this was supposed to be directed at. Maybe you'd like to expand upon this a little bit but it appeared to be directed at an imaginary Alan Roden detractor that doesn't really seem to exist. I guess I have to spell things out for you, which honestly isn't surprising based on the types of wisdom nuggets that you constantly bless us with. You are obviously attempting to save face after making an embarrassing statement and are fooling literally nobody but yourself.

Dude just take your lumps and move on. You said something dumb and got called out over it. Your attempted dunk ended up with you slamming the ball off of your own face. It's not helping your case by trying to claim you are using some sort of newfangled "internet lingo".

The first sentence is a perfect illustration of the illogical types of post that you regularly feature. You are using an 8 year sample size for the current front office when they've been in charge of the team for the last 9 years. It's perfectly fine and even probably reasonable to give the credit for the bulk of the 2016 success to AA as that was a team that he built. Having said that it also stands to reason that he should receive the blame for the next 3 seasons as well as those years were a direct result of the team that he built crumbling to dust and an eventual rebuild being forced upon the new front office. There is literally nobody on this board that is "impressed" with the current front office. The overall tenor of the comments tends to range from those who are disappointed with how things unfolded and are ready to see wholesale changes, and those like yourself who are downright angry at the front office. There you are again with using an 8 year sample, when the actual team that was built by the current group has largely been in place for the last 5 years alone. The payroll didn't even reach luxury tax levels until last season. In the previous years it settled more in the top 10 range, which is the same identical range that AA's teams were featured in as well. The "franchise record payrolls" sounds impressive at the surface, but even at the current levels it's only a top 5 payroll in MLB. The Blue Jays ran the highest payroll in the sport back in the early 90's, which is a far bigger deal that simply being in the top 5. This is a point where I am more disappointed that the players largely didn't perform on the field when it counted. I believe that there was sufficient talent to have success in the playoffs if the team played up to their capabilities when the games counted. There were some questionable decisions by the manager mixed in with a failure of the hitters in particular to plate any runs in the short wild card samples. MLB playoffs are notorious for being a crapshoot. Look no further than the Braves for evidence of this. I believe they have been MLB's second best regular season team over the last 3 years and they have a single win to show for it in the playoffs. I've literally never felt talked down to a single time by the current front office group. I could listen to Mark Shapiro speaks for hours as I find him to be very articulate and appreciate his passion. Atkins speaks like an AI that was implanted in a robot at times, but I don't find I particularly have any issues understanding the message. The farm system experienced a definite lull in recent seasons as they've been typically churning out one major league player in most recent seasons. I think there is actually a wave of talent in the upper level of the minors right now, but unfortunately the best of these guys have realistic ceilings of potentially good major league players vs potential stars. We have a rumor that Shapiro was displeased with AA for selling the farm at the trade deadline. I have little doubt this rumor was worded in an especially salacious fashion to make it appear as though Shapiro was threatening to drop kick Alex from the top rope vs simply voicing his displeasure. Nobody can take away the accomplishment from AA of winning the AL East division title, but take a deeper look at the state of the division at the time and it loses quite a bit of the lustre. The Blue Jays won the division with a whopping total of 93 wins. The second place team Yankees won all of 87 wins that season, and the third place Orioles only managed a paltry 81 wins. Contrast that with the meatgrinder that the 2020-2023 Blue Jays team competed within, when it required a minimum 99 win full season pace to take the division. AA's team would have finished second place at best in those seasons. Even in the 2024 when the division took a step back would have seen the 2015 team place second assuming the same end of season records. Not all projection systems are in agreement. Pecota for instance projects the team to win 85 games with a 46% chance at the playoffs. The Yankees by comparison are projected by this system to win 89 games, so there stands to be serious competition for the division this season as the teams in the division are very closely matched in overall talent. I don't know why people act like the fact that the team has a lot of available payroll is a bad thing. That will eventually allow the team to accelerate a future rebuild if one is required. It's far from a given that the current window is going to slam shut, and this will largely depend on whether Vlad is retained at the end of the season.

Don't give yourself so much credit, I don't "worry about what you post" in the slightest. A more correct assessment would be that I disagree with nearly everything that you post. If you don't want people to comment in response to the posts you make then there is a really easy solution to that problem.

Fans would have run AA out of town well before he eventually built a competitive team.