decosabute

It's a good question. I think Vlad has been extremely stubborn and not been willing to change a whole lot this season. He's decided that he and his people (seems like some bad influences) know best. However, despite his interview the other day and what everyone is saying about him, I do think he has professional pride that will make him desperate to pull out of this. If next season is also awful, I think that the club will be able to really step in and demand he develops something different with his swing. And I think Vlad will be a lot more willing to take advice and go with it - I think not being a historic-level embarrassment is a bigger motivation to him than money. While the contract will probably never come close to being value, it's not like there isn't a really good, sometimes great, hitter in there somewhere. It has to be possible to get at least some of that guy back. I have no idea what we do if he continues to look like this indefinitely.

Another part of the idiocy Vlad has shown here, is that he seems to take support for granted. I think most of the fanbase would agree that the crowds and general fan discourse have been extremely kind to Vlad this season, all things considered. He's been booed at most a couple of times despite an entire season of utter garbage. He got a huge ovation and curtain call for hitting ONE homerun at home! It takes a special kind of stupid to not appreciate that 99% of fans wish him well and only want to help him be better. It's so disrespectful and tone-deaf to start talking about the booing and "real fans", when he's had the softest, easiest ride possible under the circumstances all season. He deserves to catch hell from the fans at the weekend. But judging by these comments and his total lack of self-awareness, the moron would probably think that validates what he's said.

To be fair, I hadn't seen his comments properly when I posted. I still think that he doesn't quite mean it in the way people are interpreting it, but there's no way you can dress it up as anything other than a bad look. While I do think that the main issue with Vlad won't be a lack of effort, what worries me about his comments are how stupid and ill-advised it is to come out with something like that. I still think Vlad will try his best for the Jays, but when you show the lack of judgement to talk about a frankly embarrassing season like this, then I worry about whether he has the brains or self-awareness to find himself again as a player.

I'm as pissed off as anyone at Vlad this season and he deserves all the s**t he's getting for his performances. However, I don't at all subscribe to the idea that he doesn't care and will just coast and collect a paycheck for nothing the next 14 years. He became an elite player because he's a competitor. He's only just come into his peak age. He'll be as desperate as anyone to get back to his best.

I'm sure the coaches and analysts all know what's wrong. It's up to Vlad to change things though, and I honestly think a lot of this is his own stupid stubbornness. We'll see if he changes his mechanics in the off season, because he probably needs to do something major.

Most predictable double play in history

DFA him now or keep him exclusively to DH or pinch hit? Even though right now, I mostly never want to see him again, I'd probably still go for the latter. But is there a roster advantage to just cutting ties now?

We don't need 3 wins from these 6. Going 2-4 vs the Rays and Yankees on the road is totally acceptable, as long as we then start doing the business against the garbage we play the last five weeks.

If we somehow make it to the postseason, would this possibly be the worst offense in history to get a playoff spot?

It's hard though. If you take, say, Springer out of the meat of the order, then who do you put in there instead? We have absolutely no reliable power. Before today, I couldn't remember the last time Kaz had an extra base hit. Vlad absolutely sucks and injured. Sanchez is completely unreliable and a terrible fielder. You can't just put contact hitters and rookies in 3-4-5 spots. I don't blame JS for any of our offensive woes. It's pretty much all on the individuals.

Yeah I feel like we really could've done with winning today, especially as the next six could be ugly. But like you say, sweeps are tough at the best of times, and they're especially tough when you've been absolutely flogging your bullpen to death. I'm not going to hold this one against Little or Fisher - those are the situations we're facing when we've asked all the relievers (not just the leverage guys) to go to the well day after day after day. Probably if we'd had Miles, Rogers and Varland available, I could've seen us win today too. I'd take two from the next six and only being three games or less back right now if you offered it to me. From late August we should get back to winning.

Springer will rightly be remembered for the great moments as a Blue Jay, but right now I can't stand the sight of the guy. If we even had one reliable big bat this season, we'd have comfortably been in the playoffs. The lesser hitters in the lineup have generally been fine and performed to what you might expect overall. But then you have Springer, Vlad, Kirk (obviously better lately) and Okamoto making me want to gouge out my eyes whenever they come up in big spots. It's genuinely incredible how lobsided this roster is. The pitching staff have been heroes and the lineup has been attempting to out-villain each other all season.

Of course in hindsight it looks bad throwing Lee in there. But I gotta admit I was OK with it when the call was made. Our offense has been pretty pathetic today - one of the most anaemic hitting performances in a season full of them. I really didnt see us tieing it up and Rogers and Varland are getting destroyed in terms of workload. Sure, it backfired, but I can understand Schneider's thinking at least.

Yeah this can't just be explained away as bad roster management from RA or bad bench management from JS. What we're seeing is spectacular, nearly all-time historic levels of awful offense. Look at some of our lineup's OPS, WAR and HRs this season compared to not just what they did last season, but just to (in brackets) career average and normal expectations: Biggest producers not producing: George Springer .725 OPS (.825), 0.3 WAR (4.5), 12 HRs (~25 HRs for the season) Vlad Guerrero .687 OPS (.844), 0.6 WAR (3.9), 6 HRs (~25-30 for the season) Alejandro Kirk .667 OPS (.738), 0.4 WAR (3.1), 4 HRs (~15 for the season) Daulton Varsho .682 OPS (.719), 0.8 WAR (4.0), 7 HRs (~20-25 for the season) From the above, you can see a pathetic combined 2.1 WAR from the four players. Basically we've gotten very little from them that replacement players couldn't have given us. Also, we could've reasonably expected around a combined 30-35 HRs more so far from these players alone, just based on their career average level, and what they've done over the past few years. Another 30-35 HRs puts us up in the top 10 of all MLB teams. Players who haven't played at all due injury: Anthony Santander (.762 OPS and ~30 HRs for the season) Addison Barger (.694 OPS and ~15-20 HRs for the season) Obviously you can't simply add on all of the HRs that Santander and Barger might have hit if they'd been healthy, because others have played those games. But them playing a normal amount of games and producing at a level you'd reasonably expect from them might have added approximately 10-15 HRs. Add that on to what we're missing from our underperfomers, and we'd be in the top few teams for HRs. What we're seeing this season is the wheels coming off to varying degrees for four of our biggest run producers offensively. And two of the other big bats missing the entire season. The only true run producer we have who has actually produced is Okamoto, and even he is extremely frustrating and streaky, with only a 1.4 WAR. While they're clearly getting overpaid, our problem isn't the likes of Jesus Sanchez or Andres Gimenez - they're very mediocre overall, but they're at least somewhat doing what they were expected to. The problem is those who should be carrying the offense simply aren't. We can moan about Atkins and Schneider all we like, and some of it will be fair. But if you basically remove six of the seven biggest hitters from any team and replace them with league-average players for an entire season, which is effectively what has happened, then I don't care who that team is, they'll struggle. No team in the history of baseball could cope with pretty much all their run producers not producing anything above league average, all at the same time.

I turned it off as soon as we lost and only just saw it back. I hadn't seen it clearly and just assumed Valenzuela had airmailed it, but it was definitely at least a catchable throw. Smith is a joke of a player - completely useless.