max silver

This offseason has been depressing so far but aside from last offseason the front office made meaningful additions every single offseason since the 2019 period. And if I'm not mistaken this included a qualified free agent every offseason as well prior to last year. The worthwhile additions are drying up in a hurry so hopefully the team can grab a few decent upgrades before the season starts.

This video is painfully accurate. I just went through all of this when selling a bunch of our old home furnishings as we recently redecorated. The worst I encountered were potential "buyers" who asked if I would be willing to deliver stuff to them that I was giving away for free. FFS.

You know you aren't doing a very good job of using the ignore list if you continue to try to pick fights with posters that you are supposedly ignoring.

I think it was perfectly defensible to hang onto Bassitt, at least until they acquired an appropriate replacement for him. Moving him at the deadline would have created another hole in the rotation, and would also remove the possibility of upgrading two positions at once with a new rotation addition as Rodriguez would be needed in the rotation vs being available for shifting to the pen.

LOL, I am going to lose a lot of sleep if you add me to your ignore list.

I don't delineate my own opinions down to a binary yes/no black/white 0%/100% type of ranking as I believe that's far too simplistic of a method to evaluate a front office. I think for the most part they have done a decent job, and the situation has quickly gone downhill in recent seasons. They quickly rebuilt the club once the previous group passed it's best before date. They produced one of the better runs of regular season success in club history, while never quite being good enough to win the division when most years would have required 99-100 wins to take the division. I believe the team had enough talent to win games and even series in the post season if the players on the roster elevated their games at the right time, but unfortunately that didn't happen. The current group built up a farm system that was around top 5 in MLB for a 4 year stretch from 2018-2021, but it's gone downhill in recent seasons due to a number of factors, including poor drafting and/or development, the best prospects in the system either graduating or being dealt to supplement the major league squad, and losing draft picks and associated draft budget due to regularly signing qualified free agents most offseasons.

Do you have anything of worth to add to the discussion instead of a bunch of childish insults? You are making it increasingly difficult to take any of your opinions seriously.

That exciting team didn't win the world series in either season, and the GM at the time going all in at the time and selling the farm is arguably the biggest single reason that turned into a short term window team. Maybe you believe it was worth it, but I often question whether it actually was as the team needed to be rebuilt shortly afterwards. So many of the moves were incredibly short sighted in nature and had zero view towards the future. That's nice the team was left with a single top prospect in the system to go along with the one year window team, that totally changes the discussion. That's exactly the same as the situation a certain GM we love discussing ten years after the fact found himself in when he took over a team with MLB's best farm system and a stacked young MLB team that was just hitting his stride. The rebuild basically lasted three seasons as the team was back in the playoffs in the 2020 season. I don't know how much faster you think a rebuild needs to be, that's pretty damn fast in my view.

There has been plenty of speculation that the team was not allowed to do a scorched earth rebuild as Rogers wouldn't allow it. I'll avoid taking utilizing your tactics and making this is a definitive statement that Rogers 100% didn't allow the team to rebuild. Not everything is so perfectly black and white you know, and a lot of situations are very nuanced.

There are likely less painful ways to remove a tattoo you know.

Are you Steve Simmons burner account? You are using the same tact as the likes of Steve Simmons, Cathal Kelly, Rosie D'imanno etc. of cherry picking small bits of information that are technically true, but then completely twisting the facts into a fake narrative that's tinged with emotionally charged opinions that are easily refuted with basic logic.

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.