Ray

Michael Wacha missed 3 months with this injury, and he was 24.

Nah. Apparently, it's just "wind" that's aiding him.

What was that throw by Donaldson? His arm looks absolutely cooked.

That was 102.5 mph off the bat. Pretty sure that's a home run, wind or not.

Nice article on Julian Merryweather and how he’s revamped his offseason regiment to try and stay more healthy: https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/after-off-season-changes-merryweather-hoping-to-make-impact-for-blue-jays/

Was supposed to pitch a couple of days ago against the Braves, but it got rained out. He pitched an intrasquad game instead. Apparently, his line was 4IP, 3H, 2ER, 4K, 55 pitches. I'm sure we'll see him some time this week.

Didn't make as much sense after we traded for Tapia. Bird also may make the team.

Projection systems really seem to be underrating our OF. According to ZiPS: Teoscar Hernandez - 2.0 fWAR George Springer - 3.3 fWAR Realistically, it should be something like this (assuming everyone stays relatively healthy): Tesocar Hernandez - 3.5 fWAR George Springer - 5.0 fWAR Lourdes, I understand has quite a bit of variance associated with him. I think he'll outperform his projection (1.8 fWAR), but George Springers 162 game average over his career is 5.6 fWAR. Even if 5 WAR is too lofty, he should have at least a 4-4.5 projection.

Fangraphs projects Yankees with the most WAR in baseball too, for whatever it's worth.

That background colour was a bad choice.

Ryu averaged 88 mph on his fastball the first inning By the third, he was consistently sitting 91-92.

https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/roster/40-man Feel like this must be a website error. No one else is reporting him being added, and the Jays usually tweet something out when someone is added to the 40 too.

This is kind of interesting (?). Blue Jays just added 19-year-old Angel Del Rosario to the 40-man roster. He had a .639 OPS in Rookie-League last year. Right-handed bat. Can't for the life of my really understand that transaction.

Knowing the Rockies, they probably had Tapia focus on hitting the ball on the ground and using his speed to run out grounders. Dumb organization.

That was more of a roster composition issue. The only reason he even got as many reps in was because Springer was injured most of the season and Grichuk was the only guy who could play CF. When Springer returned and we got Corey Dickerson, Grichuk was essentially benched. I doubt Montoyo bats him higher than 8th when everyone is fully healthy.

Our entire 40-man was already confirmed as being fully vaxxed as of a couple weeks ago.

This seems like the exact type of player that if the Rays traded for, everybody would be lauding them and declaring them a huge winner because you know they'd turn him into an above-average contributor. It's a good trade, and I'm a fan of it despite eating salary since we also got a pretty intriguing prospect (MVP of the Dominican Summer league). We need good defense, stolen bases, a lefty bat, and a .320 OBP from that 9th spot more than 20 home runs and not much else. Grichuk was a redundancy, and when he wasn't hitting, he was absolutely brutal to watch at the plate with the baserunning and fielding not really making up it.

I would imagine eating more salary is the reason we got a pretty decent looking prospect.

Not entirely sure why, but this trade makes me believe another move is coming soon. What's Michael Conforto up to these days anyways?

Kinda gotta feel bad for Grichuk. Right as the team is a world series contender, he gets traded to the f***ing Rockies, which is baseball purgatory. All the best to him. He had his good moments, but the was consistently inconsistent.

I think a little too much is being made of this tbh. I view it as Bo and Manoah voicing displeasure at the pre-arbitration system, not necessarily the team. Going through arbitration will paint a much better picture of the player-team dynamic. Generally speaking, this regime has maintained really good relationships with their players. I think they’ve only gone to arbitration hearings twice: Stroman (lol) and Tepera. And Shapiro almost never went arbitration when he was a GM in Cleveland even though they notoriously penny pinched because he realizes there’s value in not dragging the players name through the mud to save a relatively small sum of money.

The Nick Castellanos contract is probably the ceiling for Teo unless he makes more offensive and defensive strides this season. If you were to offer him an extension today, 5 years $80M sounds about reasonable factoring in that he’s still under control for two more seasons and not a free agent. Obviously you prioritize Vlad and Bo. Hell, you could make a good case that Lourdes should be extended before Teo too because he’s younger and there could still be more upside there. My theory from the start has been that Shapiro is waiting for a deep playoff run to happen before doling out extensions. If we make it to the ALCS, it’s much easier to campaign to ownership to invest more money and keep the group together. Plus, the added playoff revenue helps too.

Bird is having a pretty great spring so far. 1.261 OPS, in a short sample size obviously, but he's having good AB's and hitting the ball hard. Maybe it's because I've always kinda liked him, but I would bring him up as the 28th man on the roster and see if we can try and capture lightning in a bottle. If the alternative is having a guy like Josh Palacios or Mallex Smith, I'd rather roll with Bird honestly. Would be quite happy if we broke camp with the following roster (assuming no one else is added): Infielder(s) 1. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 2. Bo Bichette 3. Santiago Espinal 4. Cavan Biggio 5. Matt Chapman 6. Greg Bird Catcher(s) 7. Danny Jansen 8. Alejandro Kirk 9. Reese McGuire Outfielder(s) 10. George Springer 11. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. 12. Teoscar Hernandez 13. Randal Grichuk Starting Pitcher(s) 14. Jose Berrios 15. Kevin Gausman 16. Alek Manoah 17. Hyun Jin Ryu 18. Yusei Kikuchi Bullpen/Rotation depth 19. Jordan Romano 20. Tim Mayza 21. Adam Cimber 22. Trevor Richards 23. Yimi Garcia 24. Julian Merryweather 25. Ryan Borucki 26. David Phelps 27. Nate Pearson 28. Ross Stripling

Miguel Vargas is the next Dodgers prospect who’s going to be a superstar. Him going deep off of Shane Bieber: