AMS528

It's honestly very damning indictment of the front office that they got something that simple incorrect. First everyone obviously knows that CF would be a more valuable spot for an elite defender like Varsho. Second he had just come off of a bad offensive year and generally his underlying numbers seems to indicate he would probably be at least a slightly below average bat, so again better in CF than the corner. Third that KK was going to be 34 and had just given you his best hitting season in half a decade. Fourth that this team had taken a step back offensively and it was probably better to aim for some additional offense. Fifth why would we have traded our best prospect if we were going to waste the return for that prospect at a position he'd be less valuable in? That would be ridiculous. Instead they resigned the 34 year old CF who has predictably cratered as a hitter, their corner OF's value is being wasted there and his bat is now potentially even worse if the underlying numbers are correct. Just a real bad sign for the FO.

I think if Horwitz can stick at second (and so far at in a very small sample size he's done well), I have more confidence with him being a consistent contributor over DS for the next few years. I've said it before but his profile is definitely precarious, especially compared to a 2B version of Horwitz. Schneider can still be valuable though as like a better version of Biggio and he'll get a decent number of ABs playing all around the field. He does have similar concerns to Biggio though and people have forgotten how high everyone was on him after his first couple of seasons.

Don't be obtuse. Goins produced 1.3 WAR in 128 games for the Jays in his career year. That's a bad comp given he's performed better than that multiple seasons including already in this one in many less games. Second many contending teams have had defense first players at positions like CF and SS. You're saying 60% of playoff teams in the league all just happen to not have enough OFs, and they are surviving with their OFs. I don't think you're understanding that he's outperforming various starting outfielders on more than half the playoff teams. It does not make sense to describe that as the level of surviving it when it's not a couple of teams dealing with that. It's not surviving if it's most of them. That's not like a super complex thing. Teams would want to start Aaron Judge at every position but they can't, and they'll have starter level or above average starter level guys as well, which is exactly what Varsho tracks as. Surviving would be what Philly is doing with Castellanos and Rojas. That's one of those teams. Varsho would be a vast upgrade over Castellanos and Rojas.

I don't even think that trade was great for the Jays, I think his bat could be worse than it is right now, I think it's just a genuinely ridiculous statement to make that he's a bench depth piece on contenders when you actually look at the players that start on those teams.

He's been worth decently more than Kelenic by fWAR and bWAR. Maybe he still wouldn't start over him, but overall he's been worth more. It is what it is. He'd also start over Siani in St. Louis. Those two statements don't align very well. You said he wouldn't start for contenders in the league, but he'd start for most of the playoff teams in the league. How could all these playoff teams be contending while having worse than defensive bench depth levels of outfielders they're starting? Does that mean they're not contenders, do contenders not require good outfielders. Or does the premise not make much sense? I think you made a hyperbolic statement because you dislike Varsho and you're sticking to it even though it doesn't make much sense.

Wouldn't he be starting for Cleveland, is basically worth the same as Perkins in Milwaukee, is worth more than all of Seattles OF, is 100% better than Mullins in Baltimore, would definitely start somewhere in the OF for Philly over Rojas or Castellanos, better than Kelenic or Harris in Atlanta as well. It sounds mostly actually like it's the exact opposite of what you're saying, Varsho would start for almost every single playoff team in the league right now. I don't think you've followed the other teams, or are aware of the types of guys other teams are trotting out there some of whom are bad both defensively and offensively. Are you under the impression all the contenders are running out all-star level players across their outfields?

What people always forget with Lourdes, is that he is the streakiest player to ever exist so even if he's struggling early all he needs is a hot month. And if he's doing great than all he needs is a s***** month to pull him back to his equilibrium. In a way it makes him perfect for this trade because depending on the month he's sitting right there to be used for each agenda. Very helpful for the discourse on this board and elsewhere. Varsho is streaky as well so you've got that. Now that Moreno's gone on his own little heater, he's been worth as much as Varsho probably, and he's showing a bit more power as well. It's probably never going to be a horrible trade, but if I was picking which side of the trade I'd rather have, I'd probably take Arizona's now. Lourdes has gotten them a decent little bit of value and is signed to a not unreasonable deal. Moreno has more years of control, is younger and his bat has a much more sustainable approach. He's improved his K/BB ratio and it looks quite good now. You add that with a touch of power and his already very good defensive numbers and that's going to have value. Varsho's value is going to have a steady floor with his defense, but any upside is going to depend on what is a very very shaky looking batted ball profile.

Little interview with Horwitz on hitting. Always find these interesting to see what different guys focus in on. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/spencer-horwitz-talks-hitting/

Really a huge part of that feeling is that our young players did not turn out as expected. Kirks bat looked great, and now he's a backup at best. Manoah was an *******, but our ******* and he went out there and struck out the side in an All-Star game and suddenly he falls apart. Even when it looked like he could recover a bit, it was done. Vladdy was an MVP world beater for a season and has been disappointing until he turned it around the last couple of months, now there's some hope with him but it's muted by the fact that Bo turned into a pumpkin this year and unlike Vlad doesn't seem to have much interest in staying long term anyways (at least Vlad is perpetually talking about wanted to play with the Jays forever, that's worth something). With Vlad as well now there's ingrained skepticism where instead of being super excited about him, what you're waiting for is for him to turn back to hitting ground balls or long flyouts to CF. There's no fun in that. None of high draft picks have turned into top 10 or even top 20 prospects to dream on. The only one who could like Tiedemann has stalled this year and last because of injuries. No one is getting that excited for Davis Schneider, Barger, Ernie Clement or Leo Jimenez (if Horwitz plays second consistently he could be worth a lot I suppose). Barriera sucks, we traded Hoglund for Chapman, we traded Martin for Berrios. Groshans sucked. None of those guys look like they would have been top prospects either anyways. So then you're left with free agents and guys you trade for who can but don't always create that level of excitement. Springer had too many injuries when he was still really good. Free agents like IKF aren't exactly seat fillers. Gausman has a couple of great seasons but never inspired the confidence of like a Halladay. Even when he was statistically better Manoah was more intimidating out there. Berrios just makes you wonder how he became so much worse while with us.

Vlads an all-star starter again. And this time he absolutely deserves it. Definitely the best AL 1B.

All we've got left to do is get rid of KK and bring up Lukes and that's basically all of the Buffalo guys. It's probably too early to include Tirotta with that group, but with Martinez gone we may as well trade Bo and get him up here as well for the infield.

It's actually kind of impressive how terrible the statscast page is. He doesn't hit the ball hard, he doesn't hit it at the right launch angle, the exit velocity is at the bottom of the entire league he strikes out a lot. The only qualified hitter his expected numbers are better than is Tim Anderson. I think given his expected numbers the last two years before this, it's very reasonable to run on the assumption that he's going to be a below average bat going forward. How far below average is an open question cause he can't be quite as bad as his expected numbers currently I think. It'll be the difference between him being a 2 WAR player and a 3 WAR player.

1.5 games up on the Angels. Couple of bad days and they may manage to be behind the Angels of all teams. Astros and Rays both have looked better. The worse we look the more likely we'll get some actual moves happening so it's for the best that we fall further and further behind. No false hope.

His statcast page was horrifying when his overall numbers were decent. I haven't paid proper attention in a couple of weeks and I see that he has gone 2/36 since then, and now he's overperforming poor hitting numbers. Literally everyone agrees he should just be playing CF (and signing KK was a waste) for the future. It's the only place that bat will play.

I mean regardless he has a 143 wRC+ for the season now so he's been unambiguously a very good hitter. Being back beyond that really means MVP level hitter. For the moment he's been a top 20 hitter and that's nothing to complain about.

He wouldn't even need to be close to that to have huge numbers. Compare him to Soto who has also doesn't have great launch angle numbers. He's at the 48th percentile. If Vladdy was there his numbers would shoot up to a top ten hitter in baseball.

He's tracking for it at this point. And again taking a look here, there's gotta be something to tweak to take his bat from very good, which it is as of right now, and take it to elite. Like you know if he leaves it's going to happen elsewhere (and if it does if Shapiro or Atkins are here they should both be launched into the sun). https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

f***ing Marty York. The worst sports writer in Toronto history. And I just learned he apparently became the director of comms for B'Nai Brith, although I don't know if he still is. Should make you skeptical of anything coming out of there.

That's interesting, and I wonder if that would be that the kind of thing a creative hitting coach would consider. Like there's gotta be something that exists to make the power viable, he's already a good hitter. I don't know if you can slow down the bat without making the rest of the mechanics out of whack but again that's what good coaching is for. Bautista needed to make one change to get to fastballs without fouling them off and he became one of the best hitters on the planet for like 6 years from when he was 29-34 and past the usual best hitting years. One change can make it happen and makes the Jays retooling much more viable (while trading Bo since one thing we have is infielders and we could also try to go for Kim in the offseason).

I really would rather not trade Vlad, figure out a mildly reasonable extension and give various new coaches the chance to figure it out because literally nothing would be worse than him figuring it out elsewhere. If Bo is great elsewhere that's fine we saw him do it here as well, if Vlad is great elsewhere kill me cause we mismanaged a potentially elite bat. As a comparison Horwitz's statcast page shows a much lower exit velo, hard hit percentage and he doesn't have elite bat speed but he barrels everything and pairs that with getting everything into the launch angle sweet spot and boom his numbers have been great. He won't maintain them, but it's clear what makes the difference.

There's just been too many other stretches of being hot, months here and there of hitting for power, before reverting back for me to be hopeful about it. I know it's possible, but I've adjusted the likelihood of that happening while he's with the Jays down to a fairly small percentage chance. I think if we don't keep him the odds of him figuring out increase, not even because of the Jays hitting coaches (though I think that's a cause), but because of course he figures it out after leaving.

It's definitely true, and it would not make sense to replace Atkins right before the deadline, but it is incredibly unfortunate that the guy that may certainly be fired at the end of the season is the one who will handle major decisions at the deadline that will have strong role in shaping the teams future. If the Jays manage to win even a couple more games than they lose and are still within spitting distance it is of concern that Atkins may be motivated to save his ass. Even if he's not, the idea here is that he's done a poor enough job that he's going to get canned and nonetheless we're stuck with him making these decisions. Unfortunate for the next GM as well.

Having glanced at Vlad's statcast page every couple of weeks to see how it's going, it's now at maybe it's most ridiculous point. His statcast page says he's really expected to hit as well as Freddie Freeman or Bryce Harper, which we know he is not and his launch angle sweet spot percentage is the likely culprit which we also know. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb But it still really is something to look at that page and see all that bright red. Somewhere inside Vladdy is a HOF hitter being wasted because of a single adjustment he can't seem to make. He has to be one of the most anomalous hitters of all time. Honestly his statcast page seems to show that if he was just marginally able to fix the launch angle he'd be Juan Soto who is like Vladdy has great numbers across the board but is middling with the launch angle (whereas Vladdy is in the bottom quarter).

Ok well I think it's possible the ship has sunk now.We may as well move towards salvaging what's possible and getting value for the pieces we have. 35-43 is bad, the run differential they're running backs it up. The starting pitching is worse than last year, the relievers have been even worse than that and we were only going to survive if it those parts had stayed great.

The demise of the Braves offense was a little premature apparently. Riley has bounced back, Albies has as well, Murphy has started to come around. If Schwellenbach is decent, their rotation is still one of the best in the league even without Strider.