I could be way wrong as this as my outfield experience is limited to bad softball leagues, but is LF really that different from RF that the skills don't translate easily?
Those guys should have had interpreters...or just been better at baseball. The irony of the league shoving betting down your throats at every opportunity and then having issue with these guys betting on games they were not playing in (and with all but Marcano in a league they weren't part of).
Very true here and they haven't been terrible on the position player side of things (arguably better than many regimes before them, but I do wonder what Vlad would have become under a better development team). Their record on pitchers is truly horrendous though.
I get a kick out of Orioles fans making fun of the Jays City Connects when theirs are literally just black uniforms with a little bit of colour camo on the inside.
They banked on all of their underperforming players regressing to the norm (while making little to no changes in their approach) and also banking on all the overperforming players (bullpen, rotation) not to regress to their means (in performance and health). It was a terribly flawed approach.
If the reports are to be believed, AA's team had to fight the new regime quite hard to draft Bo too. I do wonder what Vlad would have turned into on a team that had better development ability.
It's truly amazing that after 9 years AA still has more relief pitchers he drafted on the roster than Atkins does. So far in the 2024 season for the Jays, guys AA drafted or signed in international period have 2.0 bWAR/2.2 fWAR. Atkins players have 0.7 bWAR/2.3 fWAR .
I personally thought they were OK when I saw the initial leak (although I didn't love the hat and still don't) but seeing them with better lighting and the red accents (espeically this) really changed my opinion of them more than any marketing video or materials have.
I like them, especially with the red accents worn with them. I'm not sure I could rank them as I'm inherently biased towards the Jays ones. I personally don't think the Rays are that special but do like the Rockies and Nationals quite a bit.
To be fair, they removed many of the stats for these players for things like their barnstorming tours and exhibition games. Otherwise, the counting stats would have been MUCH higher.
Is it really an issue that Hugh Duffy, who played in a league pre-integration that had a collective batting average of .309 and an ERA of 5.33 is no longer the single season batting average leader? To me, it's not.
I saw mention of a homerun red carpet a couple of weeks back on twitter. Was that something that actually happened? Are they just bringing these things out for Bo's homers? If that is the case, this clubhouse might be really bad as he's the one guy who seems not to like those celebrations.