AMS528

The problem here is that they should have already traded him if they were that far apart (as it's been implied) on their numbers with Vlad. Because you are in a worse position in lots of ways like I noted earlier. If they do well, then Vlad is going to get that ridiculous contract, and the Jays are like a 50/50 shot to make the post season. Nice if they do, but they may also be close and miss like you're saying which is worst case. Either way in that case Vlad's valuation across the league is higher cause he's putting together back to back good years and he goes elsewhere maybe. If we suck, then there's a decent chance that Vlad is also not doing that well, in which case he's going to fetch less value at the deadline (which is already less value because a team is not getting a full season of Vlad). I don't think there's a positive spin here, I think this situation mostly sucks. You listed a bunch of potential scenarios earlier where some did not end badly for the Jays, but I think on a percentage basis, the worse group of scenarios are statistically likelier by a chunk.

Like if they were as far apart as this is indicating, how do you not realize that and then drag out this extension talk all the way to spring training. Passive like you said, just a failure on the front office to figure it out in either direction. People brushed over it at the time, but this happened with Donaldson, and that was a failure on their part. Now we've got both Bo and Vladdy sitting around and as we know freeing up their money is useless because players have to want to come here and that's no guarantee. They've been chasing the market the entire way with this Vladdy thing. It was noted in an article that Tatis changed the market and the Jays couldn't sign Vladdy to their number, given what he made in arb, it probably would have been fine in hindsight, would have just bought his arb years and his free agent years would have been significantly cheaper than discussions that took place now. Then Soto set the market and they were screwed again. It's their jobs to be able to predict and see how things will play out and they have utterly failed. Now if Vladdy sucks, the team probably will as well, and he will return less in a trade. If they don't trade him, even if his value is cheapened it means more teams can get in on him and there's no guarantee he sticks around at that lower price. He does great and now you're probably paying even more for him if you can manage it. There's not really any good outcomes that take place from here on out unless you're trading him in the next three weeks, and even then teams know you're on a timeline.

What the actual f*** is wrong with you.

Cmon how can anyone possibly argue that Rickey didn't underperform as a Jay. That's ridiculous, he was a HOF player, playing at a HOF level who performed like a decent player for us in the regular season. It doesn't mean his play wasn't helpful, it just means he didn't play like the superstar he was.

2021 makes me sad. It's not usually that the best team in the competitive window misses the playoffs but that's what happened to us. Springer/Semien/Vlad/Bo/Teo was an absolute wrecking ball of a lineup, with LGJ/Espinal/Jansen/Kirk also having solid years. Then you get the Cy Young version of Robbie Ray with the best version of Berrios we ever saw, Manoah/Ryu/Matz rounding it out. We should have just signed Semien again. It wasn't a responsible deal, but he's one of my favourite Jays even with just the one season.

7 year run overall though of making the playoffs. That's a long stretch to manage that.

Lots of athletes want to win though. They're competitive people, and they are going to have the confidence that they won't be the person replaced either. Also guaranteed contracts so it's not as if they lose money if they get moved down the order.

Maroudis is coming back from injury, Manoah is a complete question between the injuries and other struggles, Tieds is at this point with all the injuries a complete question mark, Yesavage has never pitched in the minors yet, Rojas pitched decently but only 62 innings last year (plus 15 less great fall innings), Watts-Brown had good strikeout numbers but struggled a lot with control. Bloss could be fine and we did not develop him. The decent group is mostly a group of questions and unknowns. They could turn out, but the issue here is that if that's the decent group it's sad that there's basically no one (outside of Bloss maybe with Houston) that you could point to and say unequivocally had a really great year in the minors.

Every team has failed pitching prospects. But if you take a glance at the lower levels for the Braves they have a few guys who aren't quite well known yet but had excellent years in 2024. Certainly more of those brightspots than we had even between just like Hackenberg and Braun who are both 22 with room for development and will both be at AAA. Waldrep's also still just 22. That's three 22 year old prospects at AAA. Plus AJ Smith-Shawver. I think they basically have enough guys who had good years in 2024 to have possibilities. They drafted some guy in the 17th round who immediately threw 20 great innings in A ball. We certainly don't have as many guys who threw over 100 innings successfully in the minors. I have no doubt the Braves will plug in some of them at some point this season (maybe successfully, maybe not). We have some guys of interest, we have very few guys with any kind of track record with making regular starts.

Yeah it is, but we really weren't supposed to be back here again. Shapiro's bare cupboard comment gets more grating to me to remember every year that goes by. Meanwhile the Braves develop three new pitchers every single season.

From Passan Very fun reading here. If Shatkins either don't manage to make some solid signings to go into the season + extend Vlad, or make the decision to rebuild and make the trades to start that and instead go into the season with some minor moves and no Vlad extension they both need to be shot into the sun. Unsurprising really that the farm is making an impact not just on failing to affordably replenish the Jays current roster but also turning off free agents. Some media member should really ask Shapiro about the "bare cupboard". https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/43261112/teams-winning-mlb-offseason-need-move-dodgers-yankees-mets-braves

Everytime someone posts that number gets higher. Guys we were talking about a 250 to 300 million extension midway through the season. Genuinely painful that 500 million is a real possibility now. Is there some blame on Atkins there for not moving fast enough to try and get a semi discount (maybe they should have seen that Vladdy could return to form)? Is this on Vladdy's inconsistency?

The thing is it really depends on their plans for building this roster. It just doesn't make sense if we're not going to be able to sign or acquire some big bats to compensate for the possibility that Gimenez doesn't hit all (a high probability). In that case we've acquired what is apparently a 20 million dollar cap hit for a team that's already expensive this year and won't compete. It makes sense in two ways, maybe three. If you're planning to blow it up and trade Bo and Vlad, move Gimenez to short. Then you've got a solid player there for the future at a key position as you accumulate prospects. The other is that we go that second CBT apron and make some actual signings like Bregman or Teo (or god forbid Santander) and maybe another trade to pick up a bat. Maybe chase Luis Robert. We can try to compete (although it is a team that is lacking even with those adds). The third option is that we're planning to move on from Bo but not from Vlad. We use Bo to make a trade for MLB talent or about to enter MLB talent at positions we're lacking in and we make a signing or two. That one's interesting but I think unlikely. We don't add to much salary in this instance but maybe we build a better constructed roster.

It's too early to say this is the case but I don't think it's an unreasonable take here. If it's true it's painful though. Full failure on the front office for that.

I think this was a pretty good trade for a different team than this one. This trade is going to need (several) corresponding moves in order to make sense cause you've really added some long term salary for a no bat 2B. If you've committed the money for this you've now gotta commit the money for some bats or otherwise what the hell are we doing. Horwitz was legitimately the second best hitter on the team last year by a decent gap. Whether he could keep it up or not he made up a component of the teams offensive success. We've subtracted that now and from that perspective it means we don't just need one more bat, we need two more bats. A DH type and an OF. I can't tell if the resources are there for that.

I doubt it with this free agency period but maybe Bregman can be had at a not stupid price and we have a reasonable hitting infield that also plays great D?

It's not that Gimenez is a bad player. His numbers would clearly indicate he isn't, but I'm not really sure what we're doing from a roster contruction standpoint here. Allocating a chunk of the limited money that's available to a defense first (and maybe defense only) 2B when we had several decent 2B options that voltron into a starter level player doesn't seem like the right move. If we're thinking of moving him to SS and moving on from Bo, maybe that's the plan here I don't know. But it feels like there are lots of holes in this roster and this move limits our ability to fill those holes? Strictly as a value trade this is fine and probably even a good deal (depending on how good of a bat Horwitz is long term). But I don't know if it's what the team needs.

It does kind of suck given we're looking for hitting and now do have to compensate for losing our second best hitter last year. Wagner or Barger I would have been more comfortable with but I feel like the FO really likes Barger.

Aww man I was really hoping it would be one of the others. Horwitz felt like the most stable bat out of the young guys we had. Cleveland is absolutely going to grind some 2-3 WAR seasons out of him between 1B/2B.

I don't know about Chapman, but with Urias there's a video that came out just a few months ago right? I imagine there's no way he gets signed given the video is fairly straightforward. Like lets be real, the first thing that would happen if a team was even rumoured to be looking at signing Urias, is that the video of him charging at his wife from behind gets played a million times.

Well you made the point, so I decided to go and do the research. The Cubs (2), Rays (3), Guardians (4), Marlins (4), Phillies (1), Red Sox (3), Royals (3) is the list of teams with less than 5 guys making debuts (I went with debuted for any team for this cause I wasn't about to look at each players page for where they debuted). So I missed the Phillies the first time around as team with just one overall debut, but at least it was a decent player. But either way that's 22 teams that had 5 players or more in many cases make debuts in the majors. Of the other teams, 2 debuted 4, 3, did 3, Cubs had 2. And then you have the Jays and Philly with 1 each. And the Jays 1 did not debut with the Jays and he also sucks. In your own words if there are 2 teams with 1 and 14 teams with 5+ that's obviously a different story. Well there's 22 so evidently it's obviously even more of a story than that, and I think I've given you enough that you can slide a bit more over to my position of this example being fairly damning.

It's 29 other teams so pardon me for not memorizing all of it but absolutely no doubt that the next worst teams overall were the Marlins and Royals. Marlins have had four players get a cup of tea with various teams but only one (Max Meyer) with them and he was bad this year but I suppose also a top 100 prospect regularly. I think the Royals were next worst overall, three in total, but without much impact. Again not memorized but I don't recall any other team having just one, and I think every team had more than one if you're including debuts on other teams (again the Jays just had Austin Martin). And honestly usually most teams seemed to at least have one with some kind of positive impact.

The same situations exist for other teams as well. They also have players who may have warranted being called up but didn't because of trades and what not. The broad point is that it is damning to have zero when no other teams did. I mean otherwise some other teams with similar situations would have also had "zero" prospects appear. But they didn't.

Moreno, LGJ, and Chapman are finalists as well.

I think the thing is, even compared to other teams that are low ranked now in terms of prospects (Braves, Padres, Angels, Giants, Astros etc.) have a few guys from recent drafts who wind up coming up and playing from a relatively recent draft. Helps the team reload quick when you can have that fast development. The Jays have zero players drafted since 2020 that has taken a single AB or pitched a single pitch for the Major League team. The only player taken in any of those drafts that has played with any team is Austin Martin, the first of those picks from 2020, every single solitary player picked since Martin has not reached the majors yet. That is damning I think. The Braves have had several (Strider, Schwellenbach etc.), the Padres have had Merril, a couple of other quick looks and James Wood in Washington, the Angels have had Neto along with a couple of others, the Giants have had Patrick Bailey and a few others and even the Astros who I included cause they were the absolute worst of the bunch had Spencer Arighetti this year along with everyone they traded to the Jays for Kikuchi. The Jays should manage to end that run with Roden next year, but he is the only one that is particularly likely to get any ABs or innings from those years of drafts. So what I wound up doing as I was writing this with too much time on my hands is look through every single team as well and the Jays are the only team in all of baseball to have zero players they have drafted since 2020 pitch or take a single AB with them. Every single other team has managed that. That's a particularly bad run even considering every other badly run team in the league. Maybe some more firings were needed on the development and drafting side at a minimum.