max silver

I think the best the team can likely hope for is for one or more of the young outfielders to force Springer into more of a 4th outfielder type of role. I haven't completely given up hope on George returning to slightly above league average type of production over a full season as he's still capable of little mini hot streaks where he hits a pile of home runs in a week or two, but he's also capable of really deep slumps for months on end as well. As an example of this he hit a terrible slump in July of last year, and started the 2024 season in a rut as well leading to a 110 game stretch where he was a 77 wRC+ replacement level type of player.

It's a damn shame that Springer finally managed to stay on the field the same year he stopped being an impact player.

Springer has been a pretty solid contributor over the last 3 months or so. His 118 wRC+ over his last 370 PA is more indicative of the type of decline that could have reasonably been expected of him vs the numbers he produced in 2023 and the first few months of this season. The quality of contact metrics aside from max exit velocity in this stretch are pretty similar to his overall numbers from the 2022 season so hopefully it's something he can keep up.

I'm far more concerned about his declining bat.

Yimi's average fastball velocity was only 0.5 MPH higher than the 2023 and 2021 seasons so it wasn't that high of an overall bump.

The team still tried to sign Chapman as spring training approached. IKF himself mentioned he didn't know what his role was going to be after signing as this largely depended on what other players were brought aboard.

He showed signs of an offensive breakout in 2022 as he maintained a .750 OPS for nearly 4 months of the season so this season's offensive success wasn't completely out of nowhere. All that was needed was a tad more consistency in order for him to approach a league average bat. I still think he was signed as a utility player as the team made an attempt to sign Chapman as spring training approached.

I still think that Kiner Falefa was a decent pickup. IKF signed for utility player money last offseason and provided better than average starter level player type of output for the Blue Jays. He's in the midst of a 3 week slump with the Pirates that has led to his numbers taking a tumble, but he's still sitting on a career best season at this point. The IKF signing in a vacuum was perfectly acceptable, the issue I had was that he was the final position player signing made by the team when there was the obvious need for offense to be added. It seems as though there was still available funds to be utilized but the team simply chose not to utilize them as they reportedly attempted to sign Chapman before spring training.

If Bo actually wants to stay long term with Vlad it's time for him to put his money where his mouth is and accept a team friendly deal. That seems about as likely as him winning a gold glove at short stop someday. Vlad is the franchise player and he's going to get paid like one, but Bo simply doesn't offer the same type of offensive upside.

Garcia was the team's best reliever this season. The current status of his elbow is meaningless to this discussion as he was traded for a nice outfield prospect. Roden doesn't even need to be added to the 40 man roster yet so there's no need to rush him to the majors. Lukes has earned a shot to show what he can do in the majors, whether it's for the Blue Jays or someone else.

I'm sold of Horwitz. He's been a weapon against right handed pitching and I think he's all but earned himself a spot on next year's team. He probably maxes out as a platoon bat but that should still afford him plenty of opportunities for starts and pinch hit opportunities off of the bench.

And good thing the team didn't punt Yimi Garcia last season to avoid paying a perfectly reasonable option. And then there was the recent whining about Nathan Lukes being granted a well earned callup etc.

If you employ both of Vlad and Soto on the same team you wouldn't need to worry about rotating lesser offensive players through the DH spot. You could simply give guys like George Springer full days off instead of rotating at DH and utilize them off of the bench as the situation dictates.

I'm not entirely sure what point you are even trying to make here with your word salad post so I'll take my guess at how to respond. At best Orelvis unwittingly broke the rules for a legitimate fertility treatment, at worst he was cycling steroids and using clomiphene for a post cycle after steroids. I won't hazard a guess at how many guys are busted for this drug for cycling purposes, but a cursory glance at the internet shows it has an extremely long detection period of as many as 8-11 months and as such it would be very hard to avoid detection for this particular drug given the fact that minor league players are regularly drug tested as well. I have no way to know the truth of the situation as I'm not Orelvis or his doctor, but as far as I can tell he's accepted the punishment, has served his time and hopefully it's nothing more than a bit of a speedbump on his path towards becoming an MLB contributor. The timing sucks as this was a perfect season for him to break into the big leagues under a lower pressure environment but what is done is done.

Yeah that's the reason that Orelvis gave for using the drug. It seems as if he had a prescription for the drug in question so it's entirely possible he was using the drug for legitimate reasons. It seems as though he may have been able to receive a therapeutic use exemption to allow him to use Clomiphene if he went through the proper channels but unfortunately that wasn't the case.

That's great but Orelvis wasn't taking a banned supplement. He was taking a banned pharmaceutical that you can't exactly buy off the shelf from your local Walmart.

That's likely part of it but a glance at his Statcast numbers shows that he is getting much better jumps on batted balls this season.

Adam Macko is another guy who has a shot to be a depth option next season. He was in the midst of a breakout season in AA when the elbow issue popped up, and he's made his way back as he's been starting (albeit in shortened starts) for Dunedin. There's a good shot that Manoah will be back for the second half if he follows a similar timeline to Ryu.

I'm not sure what to make of Soto as an outfield defender as his metrics have been all over the map. He's posted very respectable numbers in right field this season, but was Vlad level bad in 2022/2023 across both outfield corners. He was an above average defender in right field back in 2021, so that's two of his last three seasons where he's posted respectable numbers in right field.

It all comes down to the cost for me. Kirk has been performing admirably since the Jansen trade and he's been playing a ton, but I really liked Kirk and Jansen and Kirk as a 1A/1B catching tandem over the last few seasons. I think Jansen has cost himself a lot of money in free agency with the terrible season. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it comes out after the season that he was playing through some sort of injury for much of the year given how badly he's declined offensively and defensively this season.

Up to a month or so ago I thought that Bregman was likely going to be forced to take a bit of a show me kind of deal similar to what Chapman signed for last offseason. Having said that he's been on a tear after the horrible start to the season and his overall numbers are probably going to be close to his last few season totals by the end of the month.

Yeah it's hard not to see him rebounding big time from this season offensively. I'm much more concerned about the defensive decline as his metrics range from bad (-2 Statcast FRV) to downright awful (-9 DRS). All this is happening in a season where he largely managed to finally stay healthy.

Sign me up all day long for a Kikuchi reunion.

I wonder what portion of the minor league pitching developmental woes are directly attributable to this dude.

He's easily displayed the strongest throwing arm of any Blue Jay I can recall watching. I wasn't watching yet when Jesse Barfield was patrolling the outfield for the Blue Jays yet but Barger has to be near the top of the all time leaderboard for Blue Jays throwing arm strength.