AMS528

We should have just tried to figure out if there was any way for Vlad to play in the OF and get some value out of his arm instead of sticking him at first where struggles all the time and never uses the one part of his defensive strength. He still has average sprint speed, he's not a slow guy out there.

6.3, 3.3, 1.3, 3.3 (projected) is not a 1-2 fWAR 1B. Get out of here. You don't take his worst season and decide that's the amount he produces, it's ridiculous. Vlad would get a decent return, he's the third best hitting 1B in the league this year (behind Harper and Freeman), and his value is hurt by his defense and baserunning, but teams are going to value a 140 wRC+ hitter who is still only 25 years old.

Vlad just bleeds so much value elsewhere because of his lack of range. His base running seems to have the opposite problem of last year. He never advances and that's hurting him there. His bat has genuinely been back for months. He's hit a ton of home runs now since his slow power start.

It's definitely that one cause it was posted to reddit and was on the top of the Jays subreddit for a little bit.

This persistently comes up, but isn't quite right for the trade deadline thread especially with Bo injured through the deadline. It's going to get discussed past the trade deadline so I figured maybe a separate thread was appropriate. It's basically the two most important decision the team has to make, and really will set the expectations of where we're going for the next few years. Bo I think we know is incredibly unlikely for an extension. Vladdy by all accounts and his own words really wants to stay here for his career. I am genuinely fine with a Vladdy extension at this point. He's never going to probably play to the level of whatever extension he gets cause he's such a s***** baserunner and his defense is below average, but I think I do believe in his bat to be solid at least. Bo's injury filled season has potentially f***ed us. We're not going to get the value we want out of a guy who is probably not going to stay here anyways. An early offseason deal is best because we really should be targeting someone like Kim if we want to keep competing. It may just be best take what we can rather than hoping he has a good start to the year and then dealing him at next years deadline. Ideally he comes back and has a good end to the season but I'm pretty skeptical at this point.

It is absolutely not easy to acquire a power hitting 1B. There's only one Freddie Freeman and he went to LA. And past that you have Bryce Harper. After that there is really not anyone who is a consistent star which is why even this version of Vlad is basically a top 5 1B. He's been the 5th best hitter among 1B this season, that's how little 1B depth there is in the league.

I remember when he became a batter and had some good numbers but it was Vegas, and then he sucked after we called him up. We had so many guys who put up great numbers in Vegas but it wasn't ever possible to know if they were actually any good. David Cooper (a proto Spencer Horwitz), Brad Emaus, Arencibia, list just goes on. Also looking at those teams I saw Brian Dopirak, who I was very excited about after he had a huge AA season. Honestly surprising that he never managed to get a single major league AB. He got as close as you could.

I wasn't clear but I didn't mean over like 162 games. Just as a bench piece that gets a decent number of starts. Which really is useful but not very exciting.

Of those guys I think everyone felt Soler was likely to be a terrible signing for more than a year. I think I saw that regularly on this board. He was remarkably inconsistent year to year for a guy who got a multi year deal. Duvall only signed for 3 million so I think he was seen as a comparatively lower level signing in that list. I think getting success with Santana is absolutely lucky. He hasn't hit anywhere near like this for years and he signed for a bit cheaper than the rest because of that as well. Turner being the oldest position player in the league would have been a strike against him along with a fairly steady year to year decline since 2020. He's a bit unlucky this year as well unfortunately but his numbers wouldn't be too much better. Garver would have been a reasonable one to sign and that would have been a bit unlucky to get the performance he's had. Albeit he's been very inconsistent in his career and with very few games played year to year. I'd put Turner and Garver on a similar tier of signing. To me Pederson and JD Martinez were the two guys who stood out a bit more as better options. Pederson had good underlying numbers and a good year before that. JD Martinez was older but also had the best, widest, and most recent history of being a great hitter. Is it unreasonable to see Pederson and Martinez as the two best of the bunch at that time? Not by a huge amount, and I think Pederson carried some risk as well cause he's had inconsistency. Really I think Martinez just by virtue of being a really great consistent hitter was the guy you could look at and say if he fails you can't complain cause he's been a great hitter 10 of the past 11 years and his underlying numbers are always great as well.

Clement is 28 and is like a possible 1 WAR bench player. Which is useful, but whatever. His walk rate is 2%. I said this earlier in the year but Schneider is absolutely someone who could be a 2-2.5 WAR ok option as a starter, which is currently what is playing as, or he could fall apart in a year. He has a profile that strikes me as very precarious. Cavan Biggio had two good years of performance before things fell apart for him. I think Horwitz strikes me as having a higher floor than Schneider, with his lack of strikeouts and very good walk rate. If he really is potentially decent at 2B, and the very small sample size stats seem to be fine with him so far, then he could produce some great value. Too early at this point to say what we have in Jimenez and Barger, but it would be nice if one of them turned out, especially Jimenez if we're getting rid of Bo.

Yeah on the whole this is right. I'm probably more annoyed about KK than it makes sense to be. The frustration is moreso that you stick with KK, and instead of running Varsho with Schneider in the OF right away you waste time and value. It's like 1 WAR here and there with the bats. Turner/KK etc. But ultimately not as meaningful as Bo being terrible, or Kirk not hitting at all etc. And definitely not as meaningful as the bullpen collapsing and the starters being mediocre especially. Atkins could take some blame for not seeing the starters not having some regression though and needing more hitting as a result. But even then, lack of bats available so we were stuck relying on them and hoping they'd be just as good again. And for the sure, the main thrust is that he can be blamed for the drafting and development which left us with inadequate pieces to chase Soto though. Really the issues with the core, inability to trade for additional pieces, lack of excitement all gets traced back to drafting and development which make you then have to hope you sign some saviors in a s***** free agent market.

But the strategy aspect of it can make it a bad signing overall can't it? You got a good hitting season out of a defensive CF. But he's now turning 34, which means in all likelihood like most mid 30 players he's going to decline offensively. The strategy aspect of it with Varsho. That the team was worse offensively the year before and now you're locking them into a very defense first bat second OF anyways. I think most people thought we were signing him to be our 4th OF guy and that isn't really how Shatkins ran/saw it? I can definitely see the idea of it not being a terrible signing from the start because yeah if you see him as your 4th OF, he's pricey but presumably you're getting someone better, and that's not at all what took place. Distinctly remembered and found this post in a discussion on whether Varsho would be our CF. He has literally only played CF and only once it was abundantly clear he was done did he go to the bench. He got 56 starts at CF, and basically the entire first two months. I don't think it's what most people envisioned. That makes it a bad signing to me.

At the same position as the guy who is possibly the best defensive player in the game who is a weak bat and is forced into the corner. The guy who you traded your best asset for a year ago. For an aging (34 year old) CF. To play with your aging outfielder in Springer who is also 34. To play with the as old as f***ing possible fulltime DH you signed in Turner. I also noted that IKF has been a good signing, but at the same time he is obviously outperforming his batted ball numbers and his career numbers. There's no reason to expect he'd keep that up over a full year. Chapman would probably beat him out by a 1.5 to 2 WAR over a full year. If anything Chapman has cut down on the strikeouts and has been the unlucky one with the bat. You can't be too mad with this one, IKF is fairly cheap and he'll have value defensively even if the bat falls off next year, but we'd be slightly better with Chapman over IKF.

I think it's probably fair to both note that IKF had a fantastic first half of the season, he has been a good signing and also that he probably has been lucky with his bat and would probably hit at closer to his career levels over the rest of the season. But from a what does this team need standpoint, the team needed hitting more than fielding, it appears they had more options than were initially reported, and they did not bring in the right ones.

Honestly this has confused me as to why he didn't get any kind of flyer. But I'm going to assume that because he did overperform his peripherals, and had a very scare strikeout rate teams figured they could do better with less risk or go internal. Still he absolutely mashed righties last year.

So that is now two different players who have said the Jays didn't seem particularly committed to obtaining them (Chapman/Joc). With Chapman he said they only came in right at the end, and with Joc even though he apparently was interested, and cost the same as turner, and was younger, and is left handed they weren't willing to come in with a real offer. Once you can probably chalk up to it being the player in that case, twice is embarrassing to have players specifically comment on the process with the team and is a clear indictment of the front office staff. Atkins has to go at the least and maybe Shapiro as well unless he really is super hands off on personnel stuff. Just again bizarre as well from a from the player evaluation perspective. Why choose the oldest position player in the league to sign if you had other options who were interested in playing for you at an affordable price? In what circumstance with any understanding of the baseball aging curve does it make sense to sign the oldest position player out there? Also not even the old DH option that was the clear best hitter of the bunch with excellent peripherals (JD Martinez). If it was actually like what was implied, where players wanted to play elsewhere sure, you can't force anyone to sign here and that's fair, but now we're getting more than one piece of info that seems to make it fairly clear that this was not the case. These were choices.

Genuinely the absolute worst case scenario took place with the pen. Two reasonably reliable guys literally forgot how to pitch and are gone. No one has stepped up, instead everyone is either treading water or blowing games left and right. I think it honestly may be one of the worst declines for an entire bullpen ever.

Well it's comforting to know he made it there at least once in the past year, I don't think Fangraphs listed those game logs. And is it meaningful in that case with the Kyle Harrison example that now that he's being used for more innings his K rate is nowhere near what it was? Although with Harrison it's probably fair to note that along with those K rates he significantly cut down on walks so it may be that he had to really ramp things down to get some semblance of control. Either way I suppose now we're dropping down expectations for RT. It's less #2 starter and more hopefully he can be a super effective short inning starter. It's still possible he hits his peak projection, but I've gotta imagine the likelihood has dropped a fair bit.End of 2022 and we're thinking, we're going to have a near future top three of Manoah/Gausman/Tiedemann and that is going to be as elite of a rotation as you can have. Maybe Berrios bounces back and he's an incredible #4. We drafted Barriera and he probably wont' be a starter by then, but hopefully he's a good prospect. Manoah is broken goods that we hope can recover to be a back end starter again when he's back from injury. Tiedemann is now a much bigger question mark as a prospect. Gausman is no longer looking like an ace. Berrios has had his stuff completely decline. Barriera is a non-prospect for the moment. f***ing pitchers.

That's entirely true, but it's also a very fair question to ask if Tiedemann can be relied on to throw even 5 or 6 innings. The last time he threw 5 innings in a game was July 1, 2022. Which was over two years ago now, and given how this season and his injuries are going, unless he returns quick and builds up quickly he's not getting there this season either. It's going to be hitting nearly three years since he pitched the minimum amount for a start to even qualify for a win. He has not been an actual starting pitcher in a very very long time. I get why people would look at that and think I'm not sure this guy is a starter. Also not that it matters at all, but this is amazingly why RT does not have a single win in two years. In more positive news, Nimmala hit his 6th HR of the season, he's been hitting exceptionally well since going back up to A ball, and has a .230 ISO for the season. I think you can now say he's doing well for an 18 year old.

Feels like it extracts a heavy price and shorter outings, but that obviously makes sense. It is interesting that there's basically no super successful pitcher now under the age of 30 who has a body of effective work and I have to imagine that it's a factor alonger with the types of off-speed pitches they regularly throw. Of the under 30 group, Sandy Alcantara has the most WAR at 20, and then it's like Zac Gallen, Shane Bieber, Logan Webb and Corbin Burnes between 16-18 WAR . Alcantara lost all of this year already. Bieber is gone again as well. Burnes is 29 so he's at the edge of that age group anyways. The youngest guys on the active top 100 WAR list are Webb, Logan Gilbert, and Tarik Skubal and they're all 27. Skubal and Gilbert have 10 WAR. They're going to have to change the standards at the HOF after Verlander/Kershaw/Scherzer/Grienke get in. After that you have maybe a group with Cole/Nola/Sale who have a shot if they have strong ends to their career. None of them are likely at all to get near the former groups total production.

Article looking at the Blue Jays drafts, in particular after they fired Brian Parker who oversaw the draft with Bo Bichette. https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/putting-blue-jays-spotty-draft-record-under-the-microscope/ Spencer Horwitz lifted them a couple of spots with his last month. But all in all not great, bottom third of the league, but not at Pittsburgh and Colorado numbers. Colorado is somehow in the negatives, Pittsburgh was just barely above that before Skenes. These quotes are so annoying to look back on now, along with the empty cupboard stuff. Eight years later and what we've got is definitely an empty cupboard. The arrogance of what he had to say at that time compared to the results of what they've actually accomplished prospect wise.

Agreed it really stalls them out. And in addition tanks any trade value they had. I really doubt after a year like this, and with his history there are any teams that would want any sort of package with him as a centerpiece. That's quite risky for them. Honestly with Orelvis getting tagged for PEDs and Ricky being injured every two weeks this year, our only two real trade chips have tanked their value. There's not really anyone else I can see teams looking at with high upsides. Not as if we should be dealing prospects for major league talent given the current state of the team, but it's sad that it's not even an option now. At least Nimmala has turned it around and looks like he could be a blue chip prospect by next year. Above average numbers now as an 18 year old in A ball.

May as well get ahead of the curve and give Tiedemann all the other surgeries that are available too. Let's get it all out of the way so we can get to the end of the eventual line we're heading towards, and get him started fresh. I'm not really being serious, but honestly it'd be nice if that was possible.

I said upside if he ever gets a bit more power. And I said 3-4 WAR is what he is right now. He's at 1.7 in 69 games this year, the projections see him ending at around 3.2-3.3ish in 120 games. He had 2.3 in 111 games last year as a rookie. I think it's reasonable to criticize what I said as being early on saying he's a 3-4 WAR catcher, but I think looking at his numbers where he has both great strikeout and walk numbers, and looking at his defense which also grades out well, that's what he's going to be. I think he'll be that by the end of this season. He's doing that while being a terrible blocker and an average hitter. I think he'll be that for a number of years as his framing and particularly his blocking improve which creates a solid floor for his value. And if he does improves his blocking, and takes any steps at all with his power I think there is absolutely the upside for a 5 WAR season. Catchers rack up value quick when their defense is great across the board (why Kirk still has value even though he can't seem to hit anymore). Also I don't really think the Varsho/Moreno trade was some terrible trade. Arizona might wind up getting more long term value out of it, but it's hardly a disaster. My response was more to him saying that a great catcher can have a huge impact on your team long term, and I was saying it's possible we have given up a player who could fit that role.

Well then it really sucks to have traded a 24 year old catcher who has performed like a 3-4 WAR player during his age 23 and 24 seasons. Solid defensive numbers, solid BB and K%. I do think he's got the upside to be a 5 WAR catcher.