AMS528

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.

Think this is probably right. The playoffs are always unfortunately going to be at least somewhat luck based. If they weren't the 2015 Jays would be world series champions with what was definitely the best team in the league that year. I would say there's some minor free agency failures as well, but really it's all about every single draft they've had post Bo Bichette.

One prospect for the Jays there (Yesavage), and he's 94th and we just drafted him, so we barely missed having no prospects on this list. Tied with the Yankees and Astros for least, but the Yankees have the 14th ranked prospect. Houston was in the same boat practically with their only prospect on the list ranked 89th. Who's been our highest prospect on any of these lists (BA etc.)? Fangraphs Board has Jake Bloss at 84th.

The ability to reload is maybe the most important when I think about cause of the flexibility it gives you financially. You don't have to rely on free agent deals if you can just trade for a controllable player from a bad team and supplement with the odd great homegrown player. The Jays have undoubtedly failed on that count. I know it's lame to compare to the Braves because it's a constant on this board but it's relevant here. The Braves traded away or called up much of their talent, but if you look at their minor leaguers, the number or pitchers in the minors they had with successful years this year is impressive as hell. AA seems to be aware that he does one thing well, and it's draft solid pitching prospects and they have decided that it's all they will do. Their recent drafts are very funny for that reason cause of the compete imbalance but I suspect finding their strength will allow them to build back capital quickly.

They did have him for the best season of his career (2022), and when they signed him again after Colorado released him in 2023, he hit well for them in the short stretch he was there so I get the sense maybe they just looked to fix whatever changed when he wound up in Colorado. I can see them viewing him as being potentially as good as he'd been in 2022 when he was a 2.4 WAR player given what they saw in his brief return.

Gotta ask is it really that low hanging?

That was a mediocre press conference by Shapiro. Doesn't really matter though.

I see Jeff Hoffman high up on that list. Jeff Hoffman elite reliever. Pretty impressed he stuck it through and got enough chances for long enough to turn his career around. Managed to have his velocity jump significantly after years. Didn't even produce 1 WAR in his first 7 years in the league. He's going to get a good contract. There's probably a decent number of pitchers out there who may have become decent relievers given enough years and opportunities but didn't get those chances. Just a volatile role.

I would like to bet that it's not going to be 600 million or even 500 million. I'd bet like $500 on that easy.

They traded Turner, but at that point they had Horwitz who was already hitting much better. They traded IKF who was never going to keep up his performance and didnt as expected in Pittsburgh his bat entirely collapsed. Chalk that one one up as lucky as Clement was better than IKF would have been the rest of the way. Jansen and KK were both having bad seasons, losing KK was going to help if anything. The pen was a bit worse and losing Kikuchi probably cost a couple of wins, but Clement and Horwitz getting the AB's that may have been taken by Turner and IKF probably makes it close to a wash there. Kirk was much better than Jansen as well and him playing more wouldn't have hurt given how good his defensive numbers were. This team was maybe a win or two better without the deals let's be honest. They sucked and they would have continued to suck in new ways.

No Strider, or Acuna. No Harris for a third of the season, no Riley for the last third run along with some other injuries. Braves deserve credit, both for the players who stepped up and AA for the depth he built.

They have drafted enough pitchers having decent to great seasons this year that they could definitely put together a package. AA stockpiling pitching prospects for deals as he's done forever.

Basically what happened. Sucks for them, but Fried/Lopez are pretty good as the starters for the first two games I guess.

Surely there's like one better pitcher than that in their pen.

What a day for what might the best bullpen in baseball to blow up.

Schwellenbach started the year in high A ball, made the jump all the way to the Majors, has put up a 3.29 ERA/FIP since being up, and has held together the Braves rotation which dealt with injuries and Bryce Elder falling off, blew past his career high in innings pitched and has not slowed down all the way to this critical game. Impressive as hell rookie season.

Former Jays of some specific interest to me roundup. Moreno - 2.5 WAR in 97 games. Injuries hindered him this year. He's got the potential for some 4 WAR seasons in him I think. LGJ - 2.2 WAR in 133 games. He is remarkably consistent and stable as a hitter. You can rely on him for near exactly the same performance year in and year out. Matt Chapman - 5.5 WAR (7.2 bWAR) - Earned himself a massive (and questionable) contract. Would have been great to have him, would have papered over Bo's non-entity of a season I think. Jordan Hicks 0.5 WAR - Started out strong as a starter and fell off pretty hard after those first bunch of starts. Teo Hernandez - 3.5 WAR - Right to his usual numbers. Maybe we'll consider him again. Robbie Ray - 0.0 WAR - Came back from injuries striking out loads of guys and giving up loads of HRs and walking loads of batters. Pitched like his pre Jays self. One of the best decisions the FO ever made was choosing Gausman and letting Ray walk. Marcus Semien - 4.2 WAR - Not the best hitting season for Semien, he was just league average, but like he always does he accrued a f*** ton of value by being incredible defensively, being a decent baserunner, and hitting just well enough. He's up to 46 bWAR for his career and has a 7 year peak of 40 WAR btw. I don't think he'd ever make the hall, but he really is going to probably get to a mid 50s WAR total. Wish he would have hit a bit better and gotten 5-6 WAR. Would have built the resume a bit more. He's put up 15 WAR for Texas. He's the rare older free agent who is going to be worth the contract he signed. Wish we kept him. Simeon Woods Richardson - 1.8 WAR - Did great his first 115 innings and then got smacked around the last 20 or so. Maybe not hugely surprising since it was a career high in innings and he ran out of steam. But decent year overall. He only just turned 24, he might have a good career. Austin Martin - -0.2 WAR in 93 games - He does not hit well enough to compensate for not being good defensively. Feel free to add on and argue about anyone you'd like.

Cmon that's being just as ridiculous in a different way. Teo had a very strong multiyear track record and his one off year he had a .643 OPS at Safeco and .830 everywhere else. Safeco is notorious for hitters, and really if anything it was probably a buy low on an extended deal for some team in the league. The Dodgers benefited from Safeco basically. Actually looking at those numbers I'm surprised anyone considered his Safeco numbers at all when doing a deal.

Vladdy has hit basically .350 since May which is just incredibly impressive.