max silver

With Vlad and Springer seemingly rediscovering their power strokes and Horwitz and Turner constantly on base lately the offense is suddenly becoming interesting. Of course in typical 2024 Blue Jays fashion this will likely be evened out by deep slumps from Bo, Jansen, Varsho, Schneider etc. but at least it's a start.

I recently commented that George Springer should have to earn his playing time. I think he's put that particular issue to bed for the next little while.

That doesn't feel like much of a stretch as he still received a $5.5 million raise in arbitration last offseason.

So this is just another example of you inserting another irrelevant example like other recent threads. Duly noted.

Is it too complicated for you to understand that the processes behind the results suggest this player should be producing nowhere close to the same types of results as the players you keep bringing up? Santiago Espinal was always ripe for a massive correction to his batted ball results given the poor quality of contact metrics that illustrated how unlikely he would be to continue to enjoy success. Ryan Goins never had a single successful season at the plate and was a legitimately awful major league hitter.

I don't Atkins has implied it's some sort of mystery as to why the Blue Jays bullpen has been so bad this season. Romano and Swanson suffered injuries in the spring, were bad upon return and both are unavailable at present. Garcia is out due to injury. Mayza has seen a dramatic reduction in his stuff and subsequently his results are bad as well. Depth guys like Rodriguez and Francis both missed a lot of time due to injury as well.

It's far from a given that Soto is going to just go to the highest bidder no matter the competitive situation the club has to offer. Chances are all of the respective teams are going to be in the same ballpark financially when it comes to the overall offer and money won't be the deciding factor.

When courting Ohtani the Jays could point to a string of successful seasons and where he could be a finishing touch to put them over the top. With Soto the team would have to convince him that this year's total s*** show was going to be a single year anomaly and that they would be imminently reversing their fortunes.

So now you are comparing Bo to Ryan Goins after a Santiago Espinal example previously. Come on man this is getting ridiculous and reaching near troll levels. There's not much point in surmising Bo's bat speed as what's wrong with him as we don't have any previous year's data to compare it to. Bo has certainly seen a drop off in a lot of key metrics and hasn't gotten on track aside from a few bursts since the knee injury last season. He is one of many examples on the team of not producing the expected results the quality of contact would suggest to be the case. The team failed miserably in the offseason to address the performance issues of so many members of the offense and it's high time for some new progressive voices to be brought aboard.

I'd try to do both. The team needs to add more elite offensive talent, and I think having someone like Soto on the team would be a tremendous asset in helping Vlad to finally reach his ceiling year in and year out. There's a snowball's chance in hell Juan Soto would choose to sign with the Blue Jays anyway though vs Vlad who actually appears to be willing to stay long term.

Bo isn't about to become Santiago Epsinal at the plate long term, he's just far too talented for that to be the case. He'll get himself sorted at the plate eventually as the underlying numbers are still decent enough. I wouldn't place any money on him hitting 4 WAR this season but I'm fully confident he'll turn himself around at the plate at some point this season. He produced a .352 xwOBA/.231 wOBA for the month of June and .357 xwOBA/.318 wOBA for the month of May so it's not like he's been as bad at the plate as the results would suggest.

I just hate when hitters directly state that they are trying to aim the ball up the middle given how hard it is to actually produce any results this way. There are a lot of guys on the team who hit a ton of their hard hit balls nearly directly at the right fielder as well. It seems like Bo and Kirk and even Vlad to a degree are much easier to defend as a result.

Yeah I think his stuff should play in out of the rotation but he needs to iron out the command issues.

That team had a really sizeable positive run differential at that point whereas this team is currently sitting at -46.

Tiedemann was on the bump tonight. Put up 5 K's in 2.1 innings along with 2 walks.

I looked up the expected stats during this period and Bo sits at a .316 xwOBA/.275 wOBA. Springer and Kirk have similar splits as well which sees them dramatically underperforming their expected stats. A key job for whoever eventually overlooks the hitters will be turning the quality of contact these guys produce into actual results on the field.

I suspect Barger's 2023 downturn in power was more due to the reported elbow issue that he played through. I recall it didn't really affect his throwing but had a large effect on his offensive output. In his AAA stint this season he was back to producing fairly similar power output to his 2022 numbers in A+/AA.

Feel free to provide receipts where I suggested Springer should be permanently benched. Having said that I see no issue with reducing his playing time a bit until he shows he's able to produce better results at the plate. Turner had an abysmal month of May and needed to earn an increase in playing time and I see no reason why Springer shouldn't need to do the same thing. Other contending teams that don't feature half of their lineup simultaneously producing the worst seasons of their respective careers can afford to keep a struggling veteran in the lineup every day and still keep winning games. If you are suggesting that featuring George Springer's 71 wRC+ in the lineup every day of the week isn't having a material effect on a struggling offensive lineup I don't know what to say at that point. Seeing as how I never said to permanently bench Springer then it stands to reason I would suggest nothing of the sort for Bo. They have each struggled to similar degrees, however Springer's struggles are part of a prolonged year over year decline which have seen his results at the plate suffer from a precipitous decline over several seasons of play, vs Bo whose struggles are much shorter in nature. Springer is 34 years of age and appears to be well past his offensive prime, vs Bo who is 26 old, in his physical prime, and coming off of a 126 wRC+ season. Are you this obtuse intentionally? I'd like to think you aren't actually dumb enough to feature this type of argument but I'm perfectly willing to shift course if necessary.

Yeah I've fully come to terms with a selloff needing to happen at the trade deadline and don't know how I'd react if the team actually creeped back into contention.

He looked like Robocop without his helmet the day he was hired.

Yeah it's obvious nothing is going to happen quickly given how long it took to even move Springer out of the leadoff spot this season. Even 3 months as MLB's worst qualified hitter is enough to see his playing time cut or even moved towards the bottom of the order.

Yeah the obvious answer at this point is that nobody thinks Atkins should be kept around.

Simmons is nothing more than an outrage peddler that panders to the lowest common denominator and really isn't worth giving any attention to.

Chapman is actually a very good comparison for Varsho when you think about it. Both of them are essentially about 4 win players who primarily derive their value from elite defense combined with approximately league average or slightly above bats.

It's just hard to envision any path towards contention in 2025 if that many players are moved out as it opens up so many holes on the roster. The team would have no starting catcher, no leverage relievers and several holes in the starting rotation. That's why I don't see any reason to not move out Gausman and Bassitt as well as at that point you might as well go full rebuild vs attempting some sort of retool/soft reset.