Ray

Sixto Sanchez is a beast. That trade has definitely become lopsided for the Marlins. Phillies failed to make the playoffs both years they had Realmuto, and he might very well leave them in feee agency.

It’s gonna suck facing Randy Arozarena and Wander Franco for 3 years before the Rays have to trade them away because of payroll constraints.

Jackie Bradley Jr. is someone that would instantly improve this outfield defense. Play him in CF, shift Grichuk to RF where his defense will play up, and play Teoscar only when you have to. Gurriel was an adventure, but you’re hoping he improves his routes with more experience now. The raw skills are there.

I don’t think you know what ETA means. Also, park factors are a thing.

I'm pretty intrigued by Gregorious as well. Could shift between 3B and SS if needed, complements this lineup well with handedness and batted-ball profile, great defensively, proven AL East bat. Shouldn't be all that expensive either. Probably looking at 3-4 years at $13M AAV in this depressed market? I think our front office may have had interest in him this past offseason too.

It'll be a hell of a series. Winner is likely the team that goes to the World Series. I got Rays in 4.

Another thing worth exploring is extensions for some of our younger guys. I'm not sure if Bichette/Biggio/Vladdy would sign one this offseason, but exploring ones Jansen & Teoscar make sense. Teoscar especially since he is arbitration eligible. We have $53M committed to salaries next season. I could see the following moves occurring: - Dolis' option exercised @ $1.5M (what a steal) - Anderson's option declined @ $9.5M - Travis Shaw signed @ $4.5M in his final year of arb - Teoscar Hernandez signed @ $3.5M for his first year of arb - Ross Stripling signed @ $2.3M in arb - AJ Cole signed @ $1.5M in arb - Brandon Drury non-tendered - Wilmer Font non-tendered Realistically, you're looking at ~$13M added between players with options and arbitration salaries which would put us at $66M. That could give us upwards of $50M to spend just to get to the payroll we had this year, and I would expect a small increase. But even if there isn't, seems like there's plenty of money to spend.

....and it worked. Luplow drove in the tying run lol

Sandy Alomar really just pinch hit his hottest hitter in Naylor for Jordan Luplow because of the lefty on lefty matchup, only for Boone to make a pitching change later lol .

This Rays team just feels like they have an air about them. I could definitely seem them going all the way.

I would prefer 2019 and 2020 combined. Jays would pick quite high despite making the playoffs. I think it makes a lot of sense to base it off W-L record in last 162 games played.

He pitched 10 or so innings during the regular season in 2008.

One interesting thing to note is how amazingly bad Roark, Font, and Yamaguchi were. To the point where they significantly altered the collective ERA of this team. If you were to add Roark/Yamaguchi/Font to this postseason roster (who all logged significant innings during the regular season), our collective ERA would be 4.36. But if you compare the collective ERA of the Rays pitchers on the postseason roster vs. the Jays, it's not all that bad: Season ERA for Jays pitchers currently on the postseason roster: 3.55 Season ERA for Rays pitchers currently on the postseason roster*: 3.35 *doesn't include Shane McClanahan, since he didn't pitch during the regular season Of course if you remove the 3 worst pitchers on any team, it no doubt improves the ERA significantly. But what I'm getting at here is that those 3 negatively affected us more than most teams worst pitchers and not having them included improves us more than it improves any other team (including the Rays). To the point where maybe the pitching may be more even than we thought? Or it could just be me grasping at straw trying to give our pitchers a chance. We'll find out.

Playoff roster for the series released: Notable Omissions: Yamaguchi, Roark, Joseph, Romano, Font, Merryweather, Patrick Murphy, Zeuch Notable Additions: Tellez, Davis, Espinal, McGuire

Most people on here are smart enough to know that Shatkins is more than competent, but I was referring to people on Reddit, Facebook, and Sportsnet.

Shapiro/Atkins signing Gurriel for 7 years/$22M doesn’t get talked about enough as a huge coup. What a great signing. This season may have quieted down Shatkins haters regardless.

I didn’t like the idea of this young lineup facing that rotation of Bieber/Plesac/Carrasco without ever facing them before, so I actually prefer the Rays despite their history whooping us in the Trop. We’ve actually played the Rays close all season, so hoping for some good games. Let’s do it.

I knew our offense was good, but I didn’t know it was 2nd most runs in the AL scored good. We’re slashing .257/.327/.442 for a .770 OPS as a team, good for 3rd best in the AL. For reference, Yankees are combining for a .788 OPS

I know it was low leverage, but I thought Stripling looked fantastic. He was locating well and his secondaries looked incredibly sharp. If Robbie Ray can give you 4 innings and Stripling pitches like he did, that's looking like a good option for Game 3 after Ryu and Walker.

Jansen seems like a hard one to gauge. I consider 2019 a wash for Jansen because he seemed to be focusing all his efforts on defense. And they clearly worked because he was one of the best defensive catchers in the majors. This season, he's one of the more unluckier hitters in baseball after going through an offseason regiment focusing on hitting. He was absolutely mashing in Spring Training and then the pandemic happened. Hard to evaluate him. No matter how you split it though, Kirk/Jansen is looking like a strong tandem for years to come. Best case scenario is hoping McGuire is doing well in the alternate site, and a team desperate for catching trades intriguing pitching for him this offseason (McGuire+ for Joe Musgrove?). Riley Adams seems like he could be a perfectly cromulent backup C, and Gabby Moreno has some real potential behind him as well. C is still such a position of strength for this team regardless of how Jansen/McGuire have turned out.

Zeuch hasn’t allowed a hit so far, but also has no strikeouts. Pretty wild outing.

Fine to be disappointed with Vlad, but there was always a not insignificant chance that he would follow the development path of a typical highly touted prospect as opposed to dominating right away. It takes time to adjust to major league pitching. Soto seems to be on a Mel Ott/Ted Williams trajectory as a young hitter and pretty clear that he's on another level compared to just about everyone, but Tatis, Acuna, and even Bo are outliers even amongst highly touted prospects in terms of adjusting right away and dominating. I still think Vlad could surpass them with the bat, but it might take time. We've seen flashes of it (had a higher wRC+ than Bo in August last year), it's just a matter of finding consistency. As for his defense, he's played all of 20 games(?) at 1B. He's instinctually been conditioned to play 3B basically his entire career, so it's not a surprise that those exact instincts kicked in at a seemingly inopportune time. We're probably going to see more mistakes like this happen in the next 100 or so games, but you can only hope he starts showing improvement and doesn't allow it to happen at the worst possible time.

This pitching staff just bottomed out seemingly overnight. Even with the bats slumping, they’ve been scoring some runs, but pitching sans Ryu is painful to watch right now.

Patrick Murphy time. He's been activated as the 29th man for todays doubleheader. Hopefully we get to see him pitch.

Would be fantastic if Rogers allows us to ramp up payroll and we're aggressive towards the top end of the free agent market this offseason. I can envision a scenario where other teams aren't committed to shelling out guaranteed contracts with the economic uncertainty of 2021 (even though things seems to be relatively stabilizing). We're likely looking at another depressed free agent market. Maybe 5 years, $110M gets it done for George Springer?