Blue Jays GDT: 2023 v8 | Tue, Aug 8 | @ CLE | 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT | Kikuchi vs Bibee

[Eyedea]

Everyone dropped off defensively in the infield except Bo. Vladdy ain't gonna win a gold glove this year. Chapman has made several more errors than all of last year and we're 2/3rds into the season, he ain't winning one.

Outfield defense has been plus.

Chapman has also shown significantly more range at 3B. He's graded out way more positively this year on defence than last season.

 

[canucksfan]

Not all of us have the milquetoast opinion of finishing 13th in the league and maybe making the playoffs is an example of management doing well. Good for you if that's your bar, probably better for your health.

Lots of blame for Schneider here, but sometimes the players just need to produce. Schneids can't go up there and not strike out for Chapman.

Springer, Chapman, Vlad, Kirk have all been huge disappointments for me this year.


I guess I just had high hopes for this core, watching the Orioles crush them feels like a passing of the "potential" crown to the new king.

First off, if ownership got rid of them, who would you bring in that is available to replace them? There are a lot of significantly worse management groups out there.

When they took over in 2016 they made the playoffs and did fairly well but the bats went cold against Cleveland. Due to an aging core, they had to rebuild, and they did it fairly quickly from 20117-2019. Look at other teams, they are still in a rebuilding phase years later. Even the O's, they have been crap since 2016 and are finally doing well in 2023.

In 2020 the team made the playoffs earlier than expected and in 2021 they had an excellent team and missed the playoffs by one game. A fault of management is they hang on to guys much longer than they should. They kept Roark too long even though he was a gas can. Kept Montoyo longer than they should have as well. Last year was a good season but the playoffs was a disaster, mainly one game.

While this season has definitely been frustrating, the team is still in the playoffs. I still maintain a change in hitting coaches would have been beneficial. Again, this goes back to a flaw of the management, keeping people too long at times. Mitch White is another smaller example.

Furthermore, management has built a high end development complex that has attracted many young players to it, are highly involved in the IFA class, and renovated the Skydome. They also attract high end players in the FA class every year which wasn't always the case for the Jays.

They definitely have faults but for the most part, they aren't major. James Click is in the organization and I wouldn't be opposed to giving him a larger role. However, cleaning house and likely bringing in a worse group doesn't make any sense, especially when the current group has done many positive things.

 

[Eyedea]

A franchise player is a superstar building block that performs like a superstar every year. The last positional home-grown franchise player we had was probably Delgado.

A one year stretch where a guy puts together what now looks like an outlier season aided by padding his numbers in a minor league homer-heaven ballpark does not qualify a guy as a franchise player.

Dunedin has never been a homer-heaven ballpark though. I understand temperature, environment, etc., and their factors on the trajectory of balls, but park dimensions were essentially identical to the dome. They also played at Sahlen field (a fairly notorious pitcher's park) in 2020 and they had one of the lowest HR rates in all of baseball. Vladdy was also putting up elite numbers on the road in 2021 so even despite his contributions in minor league stadiums, he was still way better than what he has shown in other years.

I can't really pinpoint the exact problem outside of maybe pitch recognition. I look at Soto who has an even worse launch angle issue, who has a similar pull/centre field approach, and yet he's typically been able to match his expected stats. Acuna, same deal has been fighting LA issues for the past two seasons now, but this year he's rebounded and is having the best year of his career. The only thing that I feel is truly separating them is their chase/whiff rates. Once Vladdy is more inline with recognizing what pitches he should swing at, then he'll be able to consistently tap into his power.

edit: Vladdy was also doing all of this at the beginning of the year before his injury in Pittsburgh. Walking as often as he struck out, hitting homeruns, making tons of contact. Ever since then it seems like he's struggled to find a groove.

 

[Kurtz]

First off, if ownership got rid of them, who would you bring in that is available to replace them? There are a lot of significantly worse management groups out there.

When they took over in 2016 they made the playoffs and did fairly well but the bats went cold against Cleveland. Due to an aging core, they had to rebuild, and they did it fairly quickly from 20117-2019. Look at other teams, they are still in a rebuilding phase years later. Even the O's, they have been crap since 2016 and are finally doing well in 2023.

In 2020 the team made the playoffs earlier than expected and in 2021 they had an excellent team and missed the playoffs by one game. A fault of management is they hang on to guys much longer than they should. They kept Roark too long even though he was a gas can. Kept Montoyo longer than they should have as well. Last year was a good season but the playoffs was a disaster, mainly one game.

While this season has definitely been frustrating, the team is still in the playoffs. I still maintain a change in hitting coaches would have been beneficial. Again, this goes back to a flaw of the management, keeping people too long at times. Mitch White is another smaller example.

Furthermore, management has built a high end development complex that has attracted many young players to it, are highly involved in the IFA class, and renovated the Skydome. They also attract high end players in the FA class every year which wasn't always the case for the Jays.

They definitely have faults but for the most part, they aren't major. James Click is in the organization and I wouldn't be opposed to giving him a larger role. However, cleaning house and likely bringing in a worse group doesn't make any sense, especially when the current group has done many positive things.

It comes down to two main things imo:

1. Management is perfectly average. That'd be good enough in the Central, but unfortunately not in the East.

2. They got rid of AA who is one of the best GMS in the game. They haven't caught enough flak for that, imo.

 

[canucksfan]

It comes down to two main things imo:

1. Management is perfectly average. That'd be good enough in the Central, but unfortunately not in the East.

2. They got rid of AA who is one of the best GMS in the game. They haven't caught enough flak for that, imo.

They are above average in the league. Furthermore, I am sure ownership got rid of AA.

 

[Kurtz]

Dunedin has never been a homer-heaven ballpark though. I understand temperature, environment, etc., and their factors on the trajectory of balls, but park dimensions were essentially identical to the dome. They also played at Sahlen field (a fairly notorious pitcher's park) in 2020 and they had one of the lowest HR rates in all of baseball. Vladdy was also putting up elite numbers on the road in 2021 so even despite his contributions in minor league stadiums, he was still way better than what he has shown in other years.

I can't really pinpoint the exact problem outside of maybe pitch recognition. I look at Soto who has an even worse launch angle issue, who has a similar pull/centre field approach, and yet he's typically been able to match his expected stats. Acuna, same deal has been fighting LA issues for the past two seasons now, but this year he's rebounded and is having the best year of his career. The only thing that I feel is truly separating them is their chase/whiff rates. Once Vladdy is more inline with recognizing what pitches he should swing at, then he'll be able to consistently tap into his power.

Vlad's home park OPS that year:

Rogers - .935 (35 gp)
Sahlen - 1,180 (23 gp)
TD Ballpark - 1,418 (21 gp)

 

[Eyedea]

Vlad's home park OPS that year:

Rogers - .935 (35 gp)
Sahlen - 1,180 (23 gp)
TD Ballpark - 1,418 (21 gp)

And how does that disprove what I said? Sahlen has always been considered a pitcher's park and it was the year prior to his breakout year for MLB hitters. Plus a .935 at Rogers is still elite. Same with his .885 on the road.

You can look at the entire team's home splits and see nobody aside from Springer was in the same stratosphere as Vladdy. If it was so easy then his wRC+ would reflect that.

 

[Kurtz]

They are above average in the league. Furthermore, I am sure ownership got rid of AA.

Above average plays in the Central. Not so much in the East.

Why would the ownership get rid of AA if not at Shapiro's behest? There were plenty of rumours of Shaprio going at AA after he got hired.

 

[Kurtz]

And how does that disprove what I said? Sahlen has always been considered a pitcher's park and it was the year prior to his breakout year for MLB hitters. Plus a .935 at Rogers is still elite. Same with his .885 on the road.

You can look at the entire team's home splits and see nobody aside from Springer was in the same stratosphere as Vladdy. If it was so easy then his wRC+ would reflect that.

The variance between .935 at Rogers and 1418 at TD is so great that it is impossible to dismiss the park as a major factor.

If we look at the team as a whole, they OPSed .804 at Rogers, .833 at Sahlen and .840 at TD. Again, a rather significant difference.

 

[Eyedea]

The variance between .935 at Rogers and 1418 at TD is so great that it is impossible to dismiss the park as a major factor.

If we look at the team as a whole, they OPSed .804 at Rogers, .833 at Sahlen and .840 at TD. Again, a rather significant difference.

Yes I'm sure a 1.418 would tip the scale a bit for a team OPS. All the splits point to him being significantly, significantly better than everyone else in those stadiums. Like I said, if it was so easy for him, it should have been easy for everyone else.

246 sOPS+ in TD Ballpark, 193 sOPS+ in Sahlen Field, 157 sOPS+ at the dome. Those numbers prove how much better he was hitting than other players in that same park. Let's also not dismiss the numbers he put up at Fenway, Yankee stadium, and Camden Yards which were 267, 242, and 172 sOPS+.

 

[metafour]

2. They got rid of AA who is one of the best GMS in the game. They haven't caught enough flak for that, imo.

He was offered an extension and left on his own. Why does this still get posted? AA knew what he was doing and he left at the peak of his value, knowing full-well that he created a timebomb that he would not be able to salvage. This allowed him to wait around for the next optimal job to pop up (the Braves).

It was a very smart move by AA. Let's pretend he stays...what do you think his 'moves' are? Bautista, Edwin, Russell Martin, Tulowitzki all falling off a cliff at the same time because they are 35+ years old. Price gone to free agency (or do you overpay for him, which in retrospect was a colossal mistake). You traded most of your top prospects who are even remotely close to the majors. The team was ancient and expensive and the ownership/fan expectation would be that they keep pushing forward somehow (ie: doubling down).

There is no prudent move there. Doubling down would create an inevitable implosion. But you can't take a step-back and re-tool or "regroup" to get younger/cheaper because fans wont allow it.

Instead of navigating that, he simply walked off the hero. Joined the Dodgers (best organization in baseball) and got to sit around until a golden opportunity came calling, which was inevitable because by leaving as a "playoff building GM" his image was infallible.

 

[LaP]

He’s literally already been a franchise player. And he’s still younger than Aaron Judge or Adley Rutchmann when those guys made their MLB debuts.

Vlad is 22nd in the league for RBI playing in a team struggling to run batters in. I mean he's disappointing for sure but the level of criticism he gets is a bit crazy. I'm surprised about the free pass Varsho gets personally. He's awful in pretty much every offensive metric that is not an advanced stat or base running. He's on his way to a 18HR, 51RBI and 147 SO season. His OBP is 275 almost as low as Vlad BA. OPS of 628 only. I don't know how to feel about Varsho personally. On one hand it's not his fault the Jays traded one of their best prospect for him. He looks like a nice dude. But on another hand he's so frustrating to watch.

 

[metafour]

Vlad is 22nd in the league for RBI playing in a team struggling to run batters in. I mean he's disappointing for sure but the level of criticism he gets is a bit crazy.

Vlad, your "generational talent" alleged superstar is hitting worse than 35 year old Brandon Belt who is here on a 1-year, $9 mill contract as a reclamation project.

This entire statement is backwards. Vlad is horribly underperforming and provides zero value elsewhere. You realize that Vlad makes $14.5 mill, right? He is posting a 117 wRC+ at 1B/DH. He is extremely overpaid for that level of production. Again, he provides zero baserunning or defensive value.

I'm really flabbergasted by what the 'common fan' seems to want to place blame on. Brandon Belt getting blame? Are you kidding me? Daulton Varsho makes $3 mill this season and still does some things (defense, baserunning) at an elite level regardless of how lost he is at the plate.

This team is where it's at because Vlad and Springer are underperforming HORRIBLY.

Some of you really need to grasp how bad 117 wRC+ hitting is at 1B/DH. Ryan Noda, our former prospect who we once upon a time traded for Ross Stripling, is posting a 131 wRC+ season for the Oakland A's.

 

[Kurtz]

He was offered an extension and left on his own. Why does this still get posted? AA knew what he was doing and he left at the peak of his value, knowing full-well that he created a timebomb that he would not be able to salvage. This allowed him to wait around for the next optimal job to pop up (the Braves).

It was a very smart move by AA. Let's pretend he stays...what do you think his 'moves' are? Bautista, Edwin, Russell Martin, Tulowitzki all falling off a cliff at the same time because they are 35+ years old. Price gone to free agency (or do you overpay for him, which in retrospect was a colossal mistake). You traded most of your top prospects who are even remotely close to the majors. The team was ancient and expensive and the ownership/fan expectation would be that they keep pushing forward somehow (ie: doubling down).

There is no prudent move there. Doubling down would create an inevitable implosion. But you can't take a step-back and re-tool or "regroup" to get younger/cheaper because fans wont allow it.

Instead of navigating that, he simply walked off the hero. Joined the Dodgers (best organization in baseball) and got to sit around until a golden opportunity came calling, which was inevitable because by leaving as a "playoff building GM" his image was infallible.

I heartily disagree with this spin.

The narrative that this city wouldn't allow a multi-year rebuild should have died off when Shanahan came in. For years this was the narrative about the Leafs too - this city wouldn't stand for a multi-year tank job and all that...and yet when Shanahan initiated it, this town saw it as a breath of fresh air and loved it.

AA took on a team that hadn't made the playoffs in two decades and turned it around. To say that he ran away in fear of not being able to do a rebuild when he had just proven himself capable of doing just that is absurd. To say that Shapiro coming aboard did not force his departure is also extremely naive, especially given that we know how much the two had clashed.

 

[tmlfan98]

It should have been Biggio who was optioned instead. By optioning Clement for Schneider, the team actually downgraded their hitting options vs LHP. They should have also optioned Espinal for Lukes too and Clement could have taken the role of backup SS/3B who hits better vs LHP than Espinal, while Lukes could have taken Biggio's role as backup RF since the team for some reason will only use Whit in LF specifically.

I'm guessing Clement is the next DFA candidate though once Chad Green is back, unless there's another 60-day IL candidate in the minors I'm missing.

 

[MS]

It should have been Biggio who was optioned instead. By optioning Clement for Schneider, the team actually downgraded their hitting options vs LHP. They should have also optioned Espinal for Lukes too and Clement could have taken the role of backup SS/3B who hits better vs LHP than Espinal, while Lukes could have taken Biggio's role as backup RF since the team for some reason will only use Whit in LF specifically.

Yup. Seems like nothing will get Biggio off the roster.

Really feel for Clement who has done everything right this year.

 

[Beaumaris]

I've been coaching and playing this game for well over 40 years, I've seen this movie before, I've seen it on teams I've coached, on teams that I played on and on pro teams that I watch, it always, always, always plays out the exact same way, they will disappear like a silent fart in the night. This team will roll over like the dead dog they are. You don't need to be a farmer to know a cow is a cow and you don't need to be a fortune teller to know this team is already cooked, good night Irene... show is over, everyone can go home ...this team is really unlikable/unwatchable.

Your last line there,is the absolute truth.

 

[tmlfan98]

Yup. Seems like nothing will get Biggio off the roster.

Really feel for Clement who has done everything right this year.

This will probably just end up being wishful thinking on my end, but I think Biggio is the one who is optioned when Bo is back.

 

[Eyedea]

Vlad, your "generational talent" alleged superstar is hitting worse than 35 year old Brandon Belt who is here on a 1-year, $9 mill contract as a reclamation project.

This entire statement is backwards. Vlad is horribly underperforming and provides zero value elsewhere. You realize that Vlad makes $14.5 mill, right? He is posting a 117 wRC+ at 1B/DH. He is extremely overpaid for that level of production. Again, he provides zero baserunning or defensive value.

I'm really flabbergasted by what the 'common fan' seems to want to place blame on. Brandon Belt getting blame? Are you kidding me? Daulton Varsho makes $3 mill this season and still does some things (defense, baserunning) at an elite level regardless of how lost he is at the plate.

This team is where it's at because Vlad and Springer are underperforming HORRIBLY.

Some of you really need to grasp how bad 117 wRC+ hitting is at 1B/DH. Ryan Noda, our former prospect who we once upon a time traded for Ross Stripling, is posting a 131 wRC+ season for the Oakland A's.

Noda's also 3 years older than Vladdy and outhitting his expected stats. He's got a good eye like Belt but I'm not sure how likely it is to expect him to hit like this moving forward. I was a fan of his when he was in the org but not sure how well he'll fare once the league adjusts to him. Dodgers didn't even bother to protect him in the Rule 5 which you're right, might explain how easy it should be to get value at 1B/DH but what Vladdy is doing is uncharacteristic of him. He's usually pretty on the nose to his xStats, but this year there's been such a large disparity between his outcomes vs performance indicators. Now he's also back to having issues with pitches on the corners and he's not murdering fastballs like he should be.

 

[Cleetus]

well no more Mountcastle for the next while man that guy put on a clinic lol

 

[Hellcat]

Somebody(s) is not going to have a job with the Jays in October.

 

[metafour]

I heartily disagree with this spin.

The narrative that this city wouldn't allow a multi-year rebuild should have died off when Shanahan came in. For years this was the narrative about the Leafs too - this city wouldn't stand for a multi-year tank job and all that...and yet when Shanahan initiated it, this town saw it as a breath of fresh air and loved it.

AA took on a team that hadn't made the playoffs in two decades and turned it around. To say that he ran away in fear of not being able to do a rebuild when he had just proven himself capable of doing just that is absurd. To say that Shapiro coming aboard did not force his departure is also extremely naive, especially given that we know how much the two had clashed.

I'm not spinning anything. You also didn't answer any questions.

Did he or did he not create a timebomb? I asked you what his hypothetical next moves would be had he stayed. The expectation of that roster was that they were on the precipice of winning the World Series. But this was actually fools gold because all of their best players were seconds away from implosion.

Here's a fun angle for you to see; the "core" of Bautista, Donaldson, Encarnacion, Martin, Tulowitzki, and Pillar which led the 2015 playoff emergence:

2015: 29.0 combined fWAR (AA's last season)
2016: 19.9 combined fWAR (team made the playoffs)
2017: 10.0 combined fWAR

That's a 66% decline in output just two seasons after AA's golden year (2015).

So again, what do you think AA's options were had he stayed. You spun my question into some other random point about Shanahan. Here's the deal: after 2015 the onus would be to keep pushing due to Rogers/fan expectations. It's NOT an option from an optics perspective to say "we need to shed salary and move some of these declining stars". You see that by 2016 your core position players have already lost 10 fWAR. ALL of them declined. By 2017, they dropped another 10 fWAR. That type of regression from the players who actually made your team a threat is impossible to navigate around without a stable of cheap young stars to step in; but we had no such players in our system.

What you fail to remember is that AA was seen as a failure all the way up until that 2015 trade deadline. He had made a bunch of trades and added on a shit-ton of salary and aging talent (Martin, Reyes, Buehrle, Tulo, Dickey etc.) and had nothing to show for it. Fans like yourself were actually calling for his firing. Isn't it funny how he went from "time to fire this guy" to "he's the best GM in the league" within the span of half a season?

You need to consider the decision from AA's perspective. At the 2015 trade deadline he was well on his way to getting fired. After the 2015 season he was executive of the year. But that 2015 team he built had literally one more season of contention in it. AA isn't an idiot; he saw what he created and understood that he was a season away from needing to go back to rebuilding under a new President, which means that he'd be the first guy out the door as his protection (Beeston) was gone. But he had just spent how many years rebuilding prior to 2015? The point is that all of the goodwill he had built would be gone in a flash and he would be left the scapegoat. He left himself no way around the inevitable collapse as again there was no talent ready to step in and he had no financial flexibility to attack free agency. I legitimately think had he stayed that you would have seen young Vlad traded for someone like Andrew McCutchen, which of course would have just delayed the inevitable.

Or, he could make the big-brained decision and simply cash in his stock while it was at it's highest point and not have to worry about any sort of rebuild scenario. He leaves and his reputation and stature is locked to whatever happened in 2015 when he left (ie: the savior!). He gets to name his next job (goes to the Dodgers under Friedman and learns more, something he was lacking under Ricciardi) and now he's the hottest prospect in the game. Again, the other option for him is to accept Shapiro's 5 year extension (which WAS on the table) and try to do a second rebuild in the AL East.

Could he have successfully rebuilt a second time? Quite possibly, but you left out some very key points. Most notably that his first rebuild was fueled by exploiting the broken qualification system that allowed him to stockpile compensation draft picks for free. That's where virtually all of his prospect trade-chips came from. Take a look at his last ~2 drafts after the MLB closed that loophole: there is virtually nothing there. So you fail to consider that he traded a lot of prospects, but also completely lost his way for quickly re-stocking.

Most of what you see of his success today is heavily dependent on learning from Friedman. He was a very flawed albeit talented exec with the Jays who was able to capitalize in 2015, but the refinement learned with the Dodgers allowed him to become a much more prudent decision maker.

The "reports" about Shapiro scolding him all came from the same legacy baseball media in this country who at the same time were writing love-letters to Paul Beeston, so how truthful do you actually think that was? Beeston was a renowned dinosaur of yester-year: a President who spent most of his time schmoozing and amassing goodwill. He had next to no baseball decision making. Those last few months of his tenure with the Jays saw all of his friends in the media openly campaigning for his job to be retained, so don't you find it a little convenient that once AA himself chose to walk away (again: he was in fact offered a 5-year extension) those same writers had the "intel" on Shapiro yelling at him? Really? What about Mark Shapiro comes off as a guy who has a temper? In case you forgot, those same writers were also championing the idea that Shapiro wanted to make baseball decisions himself (hence "pushing" AA out), however, that has proven to be completely false by actual reality. He has spent the entirety of his time here on stadium renovations and other non-baseball big picture items. So then why would you continue to believe that Shapiro scolded AA and wanted to push him out so that he could play defacto-GM, when in fact he had already stepped away from day-to-day operations years prior in Cleveland, and has clearly left day-to-day decisions in Toronto to the actual "front office".

 

[Hoverhand]

I mean, really, how much further under .600 does Espinal's OPS have to drop before this team gives Ernie Clement an honest shake. I mean, jesus christ people.

Ernie has been AAA Barry Bonds since the start of May and they just refuse to give him real PAs

 

[MS]

Dunedin has never been a homer-heaven ballpark though. I understand temperature, environment, etc., and their factors on the trajectory of balls, but park dimensions were essentially identical to the dome. They also played at Sahlen field (a fairly notorious pitcher's park) in 2020 and they had one of the lowest HR rates in all of baseball. Vladdy was also putting up elite numbers on the road in 2021 so even despite his contributions in minor league stadiums, he was still way better than what he has shown in other years.

I can't really pinpoint the exact problem outside of maybe pitch recognition. I look at Soto who has an even worse launch angle issue, who has a similar pull/centre field approach, and yet he's typically been able to match his expected stats. Acuna, same deal has been fighting LA issues for the past two seasons now, but this year he's rebounded and is having the best year of his career. The only thing that I feel is truly separating them is their chase/whiff rates. Once Vladdy is more inline with recognizing what pitches he should swing at, then he'll be able to consistently tap into his power.

edit: Vladdy was also doing all of this at the beginning of the year before his injury in Pittsburgh. Walking as often as he struck out, hitting homeruns, making tons of contact. Ever since then it seems like he's struggled to find a groove.

I'll just keep repeating the bolded.

Vladdy had a ~150 OPS+ when he hurt himself in mid-May and was looking like the 2021 version. Took 1 day off, came back clearly still hurt and went into a big slump, and his OPS+ since that injury is about 95.

They made a huge mistake letting him play while hurt, it messed up his mechanics, and he hasn't really found his form since.

Baseball and golf are the two sports where IMO playing through injury is a very bad idea because the mechanics are so finite and slightly favouring an injury can totally throw off a swing. Guerrero's season is totally night-and-day from the exact point of that injury.

 

[Tw1ster]

Sending Ernie Clement down is such a bad message, “you’ve come up and rode pine for most of your tenure and when you’ve been called upon, “you’ve hit .500, that’s not going to cut it”. I get options and whatever but maybe it’s time to cut ties with Biggio and/or Espinal and get a different look.