Olerud363.354

Why would he not pitch Sunday in front of 42,000 saying good bye to this god damn disaster In fact. A season without happinesss, a season without a bright spot, that's an exagerration, or maybe not, the Batemen bright spot wrecked his hip... The Cease bright spot wrecked his shoulder, the bright always dimmed in 2026. Not a smile that didn't turn upside down. Often not a smile at all. What reason is there not for 42,000 who had sit through the worst product in 50 years (given expectations), a run scored total not seen since 1980... What reason is there for those 42,000 who showed up day after day (with tickets bought in February) to see Max "Mad Max" Scherzer pitch his final start???? The only reason I can think of is that every smile needs to be turned upside down, so the small boy, thinking at least he'll see Max must be exposed to ... Brandon Little, followed by Dallas, followed by Miles Straw.

For the Jays to have a future, the Dodgers have to win the World Series. The strike can't be about constraining spender 2-9. It has to be about and only about stopping Dodgers. Red Sox win World Series over Phillies - strike becomes about stopping Red Sox, Phillies which bad for Jays Dodgers beat Cleveland 4-1 - Best possible outcome. Dodgers host trophy in visitors stadium 3rd year in a row and start 'drive for five' talk. Then strike is about stopping Dodgers.

Positive Pete outlook 1. Dodgers win World Series again 2. Strike become hyper-focused on stopping Dodgers 3. The other high revenue teams, NY teams, Toronto, Boston, Cubs and a couple of others take control of negotiations with one purpose, constrain Dodgers but keep their own power. 4. Strike ends May 1st 2027 - Season to start June 1st. 5. Environment is similar to post 1994 strike in April 1995. Small market teams demoralized, worried, and trade stars, Dodgers constrained, teams 2-9 including Jays are able to operate quick and smart. 6. Vlad and Cease return functional 7. Jays go 62-48 and win a wild card.

Positive Pete's vs Negative Nancies Positive Pete: Bieber has taken the option. Great price for elite starter. The power of friendship! Negative Nancies: Bieber is injured. Verdict: Negative Nancies indeed right. Especially considering Bieber's half functional arm went fully un-functional in August when we needed him bad. Positive Pete's: Cease's MRI is just inflamation. All systems go for 2027! Negative Nancies: The tear is too small to see on the MRI, but only grows from here. He likely doesn't make it through spring training 2027, but good news is there won't be a 2027 anyway, bad news is the tear won't grow until baseball restarts in June 2028, so it will get big enough to see in July 2028, and Surgery in August 2028 so misses 2029 too. Are you a Positive Pete? Or a negative Nancy?

How many years or decades will Jays have to wait for next division title? 1985 - 4 year wait until 1989 1989 - 2 year wait until 1991 1991 - 1 year wait until 1992 1992 - 1 year wait until 1993 1993 - 22 year wait until 2015 2015 - 10 year wait until 2026. The franchise can't measure wait until next division title in decades? Can it? Will it be 1, 2 or 3 decades until the next? Will they win another division title in the Vladdy contract years (to 2039) ?? Atlanta Braves have won 7/9 division titles. Dodgers 13/14 with the 106 wins the one season they didn't. Maybe the strike will be decades. So we will go decades before next division title, but not like years of baseball. In 2038 when baseball comes back it will probably pretty different and maybe Blue Jays will still exist, and maybe win division title because everyone basically on even ground starting over.

Just noticed Dancingmachine pointed out the Vlad/Alonso thing on the game thread. I hadn't seen his thought, when I posted mine, just an obvious thought. Nevertheless he clearly said it first, so any profit I make off that above comment should be use.

If Jays hadn't signed Vlad to 14 years 500, lost him in free agency, and signed Pete Alonso as the token replacement (like Raul Mondesi was to Shawn Green) Blue Jays make playoffs in 2026.

I'm moving playoff odds down to 39.5% Start 6 teams make it 6/15=40% Batemen injury timeline to return uncertain -- likely be back within 6-18 months it will take for baseball to be back. Cease injury minor, but some posters say 'tear too small to see now, it will grow big by 10 starts next year' Not being a negative nancy here. I moved the playoff odds down very very fractionally. They are still 39.5%. Could move up if anything good ever happened

Playoff Tracker thread for unknown month and year when baseball starts again... Hard to calculate the play off odds when we don't know who the players will be, when the games will start, and how many games. My guess is it starts June 2028. I don't know that. Assuming they don't change the playoff system there are 15 teams, 6 spots. Best I can do is 6/15=40% So. Not a bad way to look at it. Playoff odds have gone from 4% to 40% just by switching to a new (unknown at this point) year. What can Jays do to increase the odds above 40% in the year 202x ?

Cease situation reminds me of Bieber situation. Bieber is not taking an under-pay for friendship. Cease is not throwing 92 for no reason. In both cases, sure, maybe there is an optimistic outcome. In the Bieber siutation the reality wasn't that optimistic. He was injured 4+ months, first basically some undisclosed problem, second a shoulder injury. 55 innings, not elite but not horrible. Second injury at a horrible time.

C'mon. No one is saying to literally give someone surgery that doesn't need it. They just don't want another Berrios situation. Or Bowden Francis. The decision to get surgery is actually pretty gray in some cases for both TJ and Shoulder surgery. Some guys, Tanaka I recall have gone years with a partially torn UCL. So literally what people are saying, is they just want to organization to make the right call here, IF there is a gray area. Get surgery now, not June 2027 and have 2 useless seasons.

On Twitter they are saying get Cease and Vlad their surgeries tonight. Not April, not November, not Wednesday, tonight! Depending what type of surgery they need and recover time might be worth it. medium serious surgery - get them back if ball starts in July serious surgery - if ball ain't starting until May 2028 get those done.

If they are playing the Pirates yes. If Marlins play Dodgers don't they have to adjust the odds so they get enough on both sides that the house always wins? I think that is what I was getting at with Yankees and Cleveland. So many people would be betting on those games, they'd adjust odds to make sure they had lots on both sides and something fishy would get lost in the volume. With the first pitch thing I'd they'd be like 'who the f*** is this weirdo that won Clase first pitch 15 times in a row?'

What I wonder though is would it be easier for weird bets on ALCS to go unnoticed. Like millions of people will be betting on the ALCS. How many people bet on Emanuel Clase to throw a ball first pitch? So few that any weird behavior is probably easily detectable. So if (god-forbid) someone wanted to rig something, it might be harder to detect the strange betting patterns. So if Clase has gotten caught for some oddball small thing, that actually would be easy to detect (I think). What faith do we have that his 0.5 ERA in the regular season and 15.00 in the ALCS doesn't have funny business behind it. Conditional probability, condition on Clase being awesome, and conditional on Clase known to being involved with Gamblers what are the chances of...

It would have to be sophisticated to work. So the idea that it can be happening at a large scale is unlikely. Did Emanuel Clase blow the ALCS? Was rocked game 3 and 4 after being untouchable all year. Gave up more in those 2 games I think then regular season combined. Cleveland won game 3 despite Clase blowing it ... so you are right there that a gambler would not get a guarantee if he just hired Clase. The betting on individual player performance is way more easily manipulated.

Jays may be last in runs for first time since 1981. Even 95-97 wasn't this bad.

I mean what would LA and Toronto do? I guess Toronto just wouldn't be able to spend more to make up for Dead weight of Berrios, Cease, Vlad, Santander ... so we'd just have to field a all prospect team What would LA do ? Trade half their team. So it gets grand-fathered in but how? Can't have LA allowed to keep everyone with a grand father rule, so just have to lower payroll a bit every year for 5 years? No way any of this is going to work.

I don't understand why they don't go Sphaghetti first. If Spaghetti gave 3 good innings, then go Miles, if not save Miles for tomorrow since they have to do this twice anyway. I mean none of it matters anymore anyway like you say, and why not just give Miles a hand shake, and get him ready for next year. The Soriano/Ponce/Miles/Yesivage and an acquisition could be interesting as long as they don't push too much (I assume Cease is probably done with a messed up shoulder).

Season over, but JaysBlue made some interesting points on one of the gamethreads. My reply here because I think it deserves it's own thread. Basically his vibe was things are so weird, how do we even know it's real and not just manipulated for gambling? Is Cease really only throwing 92 now with no control? Did Vlad really lose his power for no reason? Or are they just playing to the whims of gamblers? For the record I do not believe at all that Cease and Vlad's problems are on purpose for the Gambers. Simply an arm that's toast and a back that's probably just as bad. However I think there is some truth to what JaysBlue is getting at. I don't think Cease, or Vlad, or the Jays are doing anything improper. However I also think the problem is WAY bigger than people acknowledge and MLB is kind of doing what they did with the steroid era. They are aware of bigger problems but only acknowledge the small. Emanual Clase blowing the ALCS on purpose. So much smoke there and no one hardly talks about it. Check out his regular season and playoff stats. So it's like there are levels to this. 1. Emanual Clase just thew balls on first pitch - bad but not game changing. 2. Clase purposely blew the ALCS 3. It's everywhere. Everyone is blowing everything on purpose for the gamblers. I think we are at 2 for sure, but probably not 3, but also somehow barely acknowledging 2. I truly believe Clase blew the ALCS but it will never come out, and they will just go after the stupid 'ball on first pitch' thing I truly believe there are some other cases out there just as bad, that we may, or may not ever know about. I don't believe Jays are tanking on purpose though, just major undisclosed injuries ...

I think there is some truth to what you are saying. I don't think Cease, or Vlad, or the Jays are doing anything improper. However I also think the problem is WAY bigger the people acknowledge and MLB is kind of doing what they did with the steroid era. They are aware of bigger problems but only acknowledge the small. Emanual Clase blowing the ALCS on purpose. So much smoke there and no one hardly talks about it. Check out his regular season and playoff stats. So it's like there are levels to this. 1. Emanual Clase just thew balls on first pitch - bad but not game changing. 2. Clase purposely blew the ALCS 3. It's everywhere. Everyone is blowing everything on purpose for the gamblers. I think we are at 2 for sure, but probably not 3, but also somehow barely acknowledging 1. an obvious case.

Yeah. So not exactly a clear solution here. Quite honestly if Jays went to some crazy piggy back system. Cease, Soriano, Yesavage, Ponce, Miles, Perry, Tiederman, King, Stanifer, Spaghetti it would be interesting. Off and on over the years teams have toyed with this but never seen it through. f*** it. Tell the boys they aren't built to throw 98 for 200 innings and they are throwing 130 or so. And the boys with mediocre stuff aren't built to face good hitters 3 times. End the concept of 'starter' just pitch guys, keep them thowing 98, avoid 5th inning implosions.

Have to laugh at this franchise and this fanbase. Anyone under 40 doesn't have a memory of a decent season start to finish. 2 division titles in 33 years of the 5 team divisions. And both those were with slow starts. Next year: Jays start 8-13, Red Sox start 15-4. Division title chances down to 3% before end of April, Playoff chances 25%. Blue Jays message board. Remember 2015 and 2025. Jays come from this all the time.

I think if Cease is back to 98 and Guerrero has a decent start you should watch again. Stop watching if Guerrero's wRC+ goes below 100 and/or Cease velocity starts dropping. Decision to watch should be made based on whether Jays have any ability to fix these kind of problems. If Cease goes for TJ and Guerrero for back surgery I might also watch Keys and Perry... at least that would be at attempt to fix things. If Cease is starting at 94 next year and guerrero .100 0 2 with 78% ground ball rate then probably need to take 15 years off of watching.

You'd have a point if Cease wasn't throwing 92. I think injury a la Berrios style is the more likely explanation. Did anyone bet Vlad guerrero to have above 140 games but below 10 homers?

How will each player deal with the end? For some the end of the season. Others the end of their career. Will the sun ever come up again ?