Olerud363.354

Dumb stat but it is the second I have invented after 'bases clogged' (walks + double - stolen bases - triples), lower is better. For example John Olerud has a lot of clogged bases (100 walks 40 doubles 0 steals 0 triples in a year would give you 140 clogged bases). Vince Colemen in his prime might have 50 walks 15 doubles 110 steals and 10 triples. That's like -55 clogged bases (negative is good, not clogging bases). Second stat I am inventing is called LOD. LOD stands for Leverage OPS dif. a) Take worst of your lead-off or second hitter and subtract the OPS against of your closer from it. Jeff Hoffman last year was like .750 or something, Nathan Lukes, who hit second game 7 of World Series was .730 or so LOD is -20 or so. That is bad. You'd like the LOD to be 200-300 (.800 OPS for worst of first or second hitter, .500 to .600 OPS against for closer. Kind of being stupid here, but the point is that for a World Series contender the closer should have a good OPS against (.500 or .600), and 1st and 2nd good OPS for (around .800 at least). They are the ones pitching the critical inning and getting the most at bats. Now of course not every team is perfect, but I bet almost every team with a bad LOD can fix this stat very easily. Hit Vlad second, Varland closes and LOD is like 400 or something. So teams could have both actual LOD (decision by management) and optimum LOD (what it could be if players used in best way.

ETA could realistically be any where between late next year or sometime 2028 IF he has as good as we hope. Like 2030 would mean a full year at each level, and that doesn't happen unless there is a bump in the road. If things are going good he'll do two levels a year.

Yeah... not saying it isn't out reason. Season is f***d all the same. Injuries are always the worse then expected. Like Barger and Springer aren't even running yet, so probably 2 weeks away. Varsho now. I also am pretty sure Yesivage isn't healthy. Getting beat up a bit in the minors and they will pitch Lauer again instead of giving him a start next week. Yeah I know. His "command" isn't quite there. I don't know. Seems to me if they were confident he was healthy he'd be up next week. A healthy Yesivage is a better bet then Lauer... we will see I guess. Happy to be wrong.

Never understood why guys like Lauer don't embrace this. If they did well 35 times a year on a good team they could go 12-2 3.50 and win a big arb. A starting pitcher has to go 5 to get win but a relief pitcher doesn't. So if some bulk guy journeyman with good attitude embraced it would be to their financial advantage. 1. Can vulture wins without 5 innings pitched 2. ERA a bit lower because miss top hitters one time.

Heard Vancouver park factor is bad for hitters maybe because of same climate as Seattle, which knocks down scoring by 10%. New Hampshire is good especially for lefties. So maybe I exaggerate but I think Sean Keys might go .220 .350 .400, in Vancouver, .300 .400 .600 in New Hampshire (exciting), then .270 .370 .450 in Buffalo. I'm making up numbers point is guys may not put up sexy numbers in Vancouver then too sexy in New Hampshire. Someone with a BA subscription can let us know the Park Factors.

According to fangraphs they are at 2% to win world series, 9% for division and 32% for playoffs. That is 49-1. So Vegas odds reflect that "the crowd" I guess thinks it better than that. Fair enough. Complain if you want about Fangraphs models, but Jays are now ranked 19th out of 30 teams according to playoff chance. They are all of a sudden a sub-average team in terms of "expected happiness provided to fans" in 2026. At least according to fangraphs.

Like I've always said, the seemingly irrational fans, are actually rational. Division odds now under 10, playoff odds maybe 30? Fans react to the odds, and have a good intuitive feel for them. And just frustrating that this basically happens every year. Every goddamn year. Never just a nice fun season end to end, they pull out of it for a division 7% of the time, for a wild card maybe 20% of the time. Just like the fangraphs odds say.

I believe almost every year since 1993 they've had a slow start and gotten 8-10 games out of 1st early. Like by mid May. Outside of 2014 and 2016 and 2009 arguably. Even the 2 years they won the division 2015 and 2025 they were out early. Jays fans under 40 have never had like the kind of seasons we had, 91 to 93 where they were just good and fun to watch all year. Every year? Yeah almost every year they do this. I think fangraphs has their chance to win the division at 10%. And that's what the data says. They've themselves in this position probably 30 times since 1993, and crawled out of it twice. Like everyones like 'hey its OK, we pulled out of last year'. NO! Of the 30 times this happened they pulled of it twice to win a division, and I guess 3 wild cards. So like it's 10% division 25% wild card now.

Launch angle -8, exit velocity 102 = VERY BAD Launch angle -25, exit velocity 62 = Kind of works.

Vlad is making good hard contact and crazy low k rate so I guess can sort of survive like this... maybe He is ... Yandy Diaz?? His launch angle is 1. His ground ball rate 55. Those are crazy bad and if he hits .280 instead of .320 with that kind of ground ball rate he is worthless... How are we still here after 8 years of this? The playoffs last year were just like his 2018 in New Hampshire or the first 100 games of2021 a weird few weeks that showed his 99.99th percentile true talent level but disappeared in to the abyss to be replaced by our old friend, who we see so often, ground ball Vlad.

A season has ended in April. A sad thing and true pain, far worse then post season pain is the pain of meaningful summer baseball that will never be. At least people will learn to appreciate last year

What is his arm like? Seems like "unathletic" (compared to Ozzie Smith) guys like RIpken and Tulo can make up for it and still be elite if they have a great and accurate arm. So like there is some combination of Ozzie Smith like athleticism and arm strength with accuracy that has to be at a minimum. Unathletic with not a great arm he has no chance so yeah move him. However if athleticism + arm is at some minimum where it's feasible keep him there.

People shouldn't give me a hard time, a jobless middle aged loser, fancied myself a day trader, was far too clever and shorted the market time and again (most recently just a week ago), am hundreds of thousands in debt, and no hope for ever a moment of happiness, now wasting almost the entire day now watching Pluribus youtube videos (don't even post here much). If you disagree with the fangraphs statistical playoff odds model write them a letter. Dear Fangraphs I see you only give the Jays 33% chance of making playoffs while Yankees have 84% chance. How so only 2 weeks into season? The Yankees, they can't play defense, can't run the bases, and frankly aren't a good team, while the Jays are a hell of a bunch guys, who just had a 10 day stretch of bad injury luck. Make sure you take all that into account in your modelling. Respectfully yours Blue Jays Message Board.

I'm not sure what the point of the post was. It could be to illustrate that as bad as things have been it is unlikely they will continue to continue to trend that bad. Barger will come back and hit 30 homers. Okamata 30 too. Yesivage 11-3 140 innings pitched. Beiber 9-3 103 innings pitched. Hell even Ponce may show up October 15th. Perhaps. However according to fangraphs and Bayesian statistics you can already update your beliefs significantly based on new events. So more than likely if Ponce shows up October 15th the only place has to go is Dunnedin (I think about a 8% chance Jays are planning October 15th now, down from probably 25% opening day). Less than 10% chance they win the division.

2013 - Josh Johnson career over, Brett Lawrey complete bust, Melky Cabrera can't hit without roids, Brandon Morrow no!. RA Dickey not a Cy Young just an old slopper like the other knuckleballers. Emilio Bonficacio? Maicer Izturus? What were they thinking. 2017 - Bautista done (same age Springer is now), Tulo done (30 more games played left in life), Sanchez done (no more health), Ryan Goins... what were they thinking. 2013, 2017, 2009, 2018, 2004, 1997. Such is life. Disaster, disappointment, total disaster, no hope, no chance, not even a bit... just as common as the good, more common for most. The lucky few experience little pain, but for most pain is the norm.

Depends how it is true. If he hits .220 with 19 homers and Vlad hit .270 with 17 homers that is bad. If he hits .250 with 32 homers and Vlad hit .320 with 31 homers that is fine. 2019/2020 Eloy was capable of leading a good team in homers, so if he returns to that awesome, if he is awful but everyone is too, not awesome.

There used to be the Michael Kay show. It was fun to watch when the Yankees went 14-12 in a month and the Red Sox or someone got within 3 games. There was no Michael show last year, but Michael Kay was still fun with the 'don't hang on the rim in July' thing.... and finally had to admit the Jays were good in October.

Good news is the other teams suck so Jays are 'projected' to sneak into playoffs with their 83 wins and could even host the Astros or Rangers in the Wild Card series. That's projections so it probably won't work out like that. Like 6 teams are projected to be 82-84 wins. However in reality one or two of the 6 will got hot and win 88 so 83 won't be enough to host the wild card. Maybe Jays be the one who wins 88? Barger probably two torn meniscus but no doubt Eloy Jiminez can replace Barger if healthy (and so far healthy in Buffalo but probably will tear his two meniscus when he gets up game 2 at bat 3). One of Bieber, Yesivage, Berrios returns? Maybe... maybe... or maybe they all need Tommy John. Problem is if the season is cursed everything will go wrong. Like if their is redundancy in a normal season the redundancy plays. 3/3 things don't wrong in normal season... but in a cursed season, which this very likely is, everything goes wrong. Even there's only a 1% chance of 10 wrong things happening, they will go wrong in the cursed season.

It's an 83 win team according to fangraphs. Yankees 91. I think both were 88 to begin the season. Jays are only 3 games back of Yankees so how is the projection costing them 8?? I think they were supposed to be a couple games ahead right now given easy schedule + the injuries. So they literally lost 8 projected games to the Yankees in 5 days.

His numbers are close to what they were projected for .250 hitter with 20 homers... the strike-outs are really concerning though. Like he struck out 60% of the time. Hopefully turns it around.

Feels hopeless. 50 wins for the 50th season? Or will they be in the 40s. Fun week ahead for the Dodgers. Good opportunity to get Kyle Tucker going and the pitchers pad their numbers with some shut outs.

Jays division odds have gone from 30% or something to 15%. While Yankees from 30% to 60% in 5 days. The reactions are fully justified given the last 5 days. It's been an awful 5 days and likely changed the shape of the season. At least according to the playoff odds math. I know last year we came back from a situation like this ... but we didn't in 1998, or 1999, or 2003, or 2006, or 2007, or 2008, or 2013, or 2017, or 2018, or 2021, 2022, or 2023, or 2024. In 2022 and 2023 we got the wild card, but those years the division was lost very early, which has quite likely just happened again with a slow start and injuries. Fans that seem irrational are really not. Humans are good at probability even if not good at math. The seemingly over-the-top reactions always correlate with the playoff odds and injuries.

Last year you could say the same. Barger, Clement, Schneider, Lukes came through. Still have similar at Buffalo. Jiminez, Kasevitch, Mcadoo, Schrek a few others. Not saying any them are anything, but no one new Clement or Barger, maybe that just got lucky that second tier prospects/journey men worked out last year, and you can't count on it again.

Yesavage probably gets rocked (haven't looked yet) and needs two Tommy Johns. Patrick Corbin healthy, very healthy, 5.77 ERA though. Life is short. Life is brutal. Life is disappointing, the sun does shine occasionally, but when the clouds come back it makes it all the worse. The NY Mets and the Toronto Blue Jays are the same. I was talking to my friend about this the other night. Very similar. Can have awesome years. Have big payrolls. Are in big cities. Have awesome TV contracts and awesome fans. They both go into most years looking golden with so much excitement. They have their moments but then they can win 71 with a horrible effort out of nowhere. Maybe that is every team, but it doesn't happen to the Dodgers or Yankees it seems. The small market teams are what they are. Jays and Mets though. Teach kids not to have hope. Enjoy the good when it comes, but never have hope.

Dodger 18 Jays 0 Dodgers 7 Blue Jays 6 (blow lead heartbreaking things in extra innings, random craziness just to make people feel sick) Dodgers 14 Jays 1 Jays 4-8 Sadness high. Hope never. Rebuild Starts though and hopefully Jo Jo Parkeris not Kevin Ahrens.