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

[MS]

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.

Especially when this team is having so much trouble with having a good approach and good ABs with RISP, and every time Clement has come up he's having great ABs with a great approach and if they actually gave him some playing time he'd probably be moving runners and cashing in runs ... but instead let's keep more empty strikeouts from Biggio and more empty soft contact from Espinal. And then of course there was the whole Luplow thing.

 

[Eyedea]

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.

The crazy thing about this is that those guys have options too. They’re clearly not helping the club, they’re clearly not able to get out of their funk, and they’ve clearly tanked whatever value they had before the season started. So why do they deserve to be on this team? They’re the ones that could use the plate appearances in the minors.

 

[Kurtz]

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".

Meta, I think you need to be more succinct with your posts. I would also prefer it if you offered less conjecture and theory-crafting and more facts and sources, but that's up to you. But as is, I don't know how I'm supposed to rebut arguments like: "he would have traded Vlad for Mccutchen". Was that ever a rumoured deal?

I brought up the Leaf rebuild because you stated that the city had no appetite for a Jays rebuild - conjecture that has been proven false with this city's fanbase.

I'm not going to go back and fantasy roleplay what I think he would have done in 2016. He's a better GM than I am and I have no idea what options he would have pursued. I'd like to deal with facts, and what I do know is that the guy built the best team in baseball in 2015 and left a week after the team lost to an inferior opponent in KC. The team he left was still good enough to make the playoffs next year.

If you don't think he would have figured out a way to make up for Price leaving, I refer you to what he did after Freeman left him in Atlanta - he pivoted and pulled off a great trade to bring in Matt Olson.

When he came to Toronto, he inherited a terrible team with no farm. He left us one of the best teams in baseball (although old) and a solid farm headlined by Vlad.

I don't see the point of attempting to spin a narrative of him being a mediocre GM when he's clearly amongst the best in the game and was extremely popular here at the time of his departure.

Finally, the narrative about him and Shapiro not getting along was not a local media invention, as it was echoed in US media: Report: Blue Jays GM Anthopoulos, incoming CEO Shapiro butted heads | FOX Sports. I'm not going to indulge your thinking that these reports were mere conspiracy theories, again borne of pure conjecture.

 

[phillipmike]

I like Ernie Clement and i think we should give him more at bats but teams look at more than just results and sometime great AAA players are just great AAA players. And this is the first year in his minor league career where Clement has shown anything.

Clement is 27 years and prior to this year he had sub .700 OPS more times than none with 90 walks to 114 strikeouts in his minor league career.

This year Clement is 27, with .960 OPS 23 walks and 8 Ks. Quite clearly an anomaly from his career numbers.

We have seen this many times before. For comparison sake, here are the ages of AAA players, their OPS, and walk to Ks in the Jays org over the last decade;

Cole Gillespie (30): .923 OPS - 14 walks to 14 Ks
Matt Hague (29): .885 OPS - 61 walks to 65 Ks.
Billy McKinney (24): .872 OPS - 22 walks to 25 Ks
Tyler White (30): .900 OPS - 80 walks to 73 Ks
Gregory Polanco (29): 1.183 OPS - 8 walks to 19 Ks
Nathan Lukes (28): .954 - 13 walks to 9 Ks

And my favourite:

Breyvic Valera (29): .866 OPS - 24 walks to 19 Ks

And here is who he may get at bats over with the numbers the last time they were full-time players in AAA;

Cavan Biggio (24); .963 OPS - 34 walks to 28 Ks

Even Biggio's numbers last year in AAA were very similar to Clements;

Cavan Biggio (27); .841 OPS - 10 walks to 6 Ks

The difference between Clement and Cavan might just be the lefty bat. You bring in Schneider and option Biggio, then all your batters on our bench will be right handed; Kirk/Jansen, Espinal, Clement and Schneider. Cavan is also a more superios base runner this year than Clement which is helpful on your bench.

 

[Hoverhand]

I like Ernie Clement and i think we should give him more at bats but teams look at more than just results and sometime great AAA players are just great AAA players. And this is the first year in his minor league career where Clement has shown anything.

Clement is 27 years and prior to this year he had sub .700 OPS more times than none with 90 walks to 114 strikeouts in his minor league career.

This year Clement is 27, with .960 OPS 23 walks and 8 Ks. Quite clearly an anomaly from his career numbers.

We have seen this many times before. For comparison sake, here are the ages of AAA players, their OPS, and walk to Ks in the Jays org over the last decade;

Cole Gillespie (30): .923 OPS - 14 walks to 14 Ks
Matt Hague (29): .885 OPS - 61 walks to 65 Ks.
Billy McKinney (24): .872 OPS - 22 walks to 25 Ks
Tyler White (30): .900 OPS - 80 walks to 73 Ks
Gregory Polanco (29): 1.183 OPS - 8 walks to 19 Ks
Nathan Lukes (28): .954 - 13 walks to 9 Ks

And my favourite:

Breyvic Valera (29): .866 OPS - 24 walks to 19 Ks

And here is who he may get at bats over with the numbers the last time they were full-time players in AAA;

Cavan Biggio (24); .963 OPS - 34 walks to 28 Ks

Even Biggio's numbers last year in AAA were very similar to Clements;

Cavan Biggio (27); .841 OPS - 10 walks to 6 Ks

The difference between Clement and Cavan might just be the lefty bat. You bring in Schneider and option Biggio, then all your batters on our bench will be right handed; Kirk/Jansen, Espinal, Clement and Schneider. Cavan is also a more superios base runner this year than Clement which is helpful on your bench.

I think most of us are aware that these guys will more likely than not going to end up as an AAAA guy but you don't know if you've found the next Max Muncy/Tommy Pham until you give them a shot.

EDIT: I'd also like to make it clear that Espinal going down for Clement seems to be the move.

 

[phillipmike]

I think most of us are aware that these guys will more likely than not going to end up as an AAAA guy but you don't know if you've found the next Max Muncy/Tommy Pham until you give them a shot.

EDIT: I'd also like to make it clear that Espinal going down for Clement seems to be the move.

The difference with guys like Muncy and Pham is they had track records of multiple .800+ OPS seasons in the minors. Clement (121) has also played more games than Muncy (96) and Pham who took off right away.

I rather give a guy like Schneider a shot who is younger with more control and a better minor league track record.

Yeah i dont like Espinal going down, then that means you are relying on Clement to be your backup SS which im not too enamored with.

 

[Puckstuff]

The difference with guys like Muncy and Pham is they had track records of multiple .800+ OPS seasons in the minors. Clement (121) has also played more games than Muncy (96) and Pham who took off right away.

I rather give a guy like Schneider a shot who is younger with more control and a better minor league track record.

Yeah i dont like Espinal going down, then that means you are relying on Clement to be your backup SS which im not too enamored with.

So When Bichette is back, we will have Bo and Dejong as SS options. So perhaps the Espinal for Clement swap happens at that time.

 

[MS]

I like Ernie Clement and i think we should give him more at bats but teams look at more than just results and sometime great AAA players are just great AAA players. And this is the first year in his minor league career where Clement has shown anything.

Clement is 27 years and prior to this year he had sub .700 OPS more times than none with 90 walks to 114 strikeouts in his minor league career.

This year Clement is 27, with .960 OPS 23 walks and 8 Ks. Quite clearly an anomaly from his career numbers.

We have seen this many times before. For comparison sake, here are the ages of AAA players, their OPS, and walk to Ks in the Jays org over the last decade;

Cole Gillespie (30): .923 OPS - 14 walks to 14 Ks
Matt Hague (29): .885 OPS - 61 walks to 65 Ks.
Billy McKinney (24): .872 OPS - 22 walks to 25 Ks
Tyler White (30): .900 OPS - 80 walks to 73 Ks
Gregory Polanco (29): 1.183 OPS - 8 walks to 19 Ks
Nathan Lukes (28): .954 - 13 walks to 9 Ks

And my favourite:

Breyvic Valera (29): .866 OPS - 24 walks to 19 Ks

And here is who he may get at bats over with the numbers the last time they were full-time players in AAA;

Cavan Biggio (24); .963 OPS - 34 walks to 28 Ks

Even Biggio's numbers last year in AAA were very similar to Clements;

Cavan Biggio (27); .841 OPS - 10 walks to 6 Ks

The difference between Clement and Cavan might just be the lefty bat. You bring in Schneider and option Biggio, then all your batters on our bench will be right handed; Kirk/Jansen, Espinal, Clement and Schneider. Cavan is also a more superios base runner this year than Clement which is helpful on your bench.

None of those K:BB rates are as good as Clement.

And it matches the eye test with what we've seen in his MLB ABs - he just looks way better at the plate than Espinal or Biggio, and basically every AB he's had has been quality and competitive.

And of course it may not hold and it might be a fluke year. But right now, he has a hot bat and is having great ABs and this team *badly* needs hot bats who can have good ABs. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and just play the guys playing the best.

Biggio's numbers from his last AAA year are basically irrelevant right now because the Biggio we're seeing in 2023 is just not nearly as effective as the 2019 version of Biggio who walked into MLB and put up terrific numbers.

 

[phillipmike]

So When Bichette is back, we will have Bo and Dejong as SS options. So perhaps the Espinal for Clement swap happens at that time.

That may make some sense though if Bichette is back then both players are nailed to the bench and i rather have Espinal's late inning defense on the bench over Clement.

None of those K:BB rates are as good as Clement.

And it matches the eye test with what we've seen in his MLB ABs - he just looks way better at the plate than Espinal or Biggio, and basically every AB he's had has been quality and competitive.

And of course it may not hold and it might be a fluke year. But right now, he has a hot bat and is having great ABs and this team *badly* needs hot bats who can have good ABs. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and just play the guys playing the best.

Biggio's numbers from his last AAA year are basically irrelevant right now because the Biggio we're seeing in 2023 is just not nearly as effective as the 2019 version of Biggio who walked into MLB and put up terrific numbers.

Its just such a tiny sample size to say he is "hot" as its only 8 PAs.

3 of his 4 hits have been singles and his hits been in a 20-1 win vs Tampa, a 11-4 loss vs Houston, a 2-0 win vs Miami and a 13-3 loss vs Baltimore. I wouldnt put too much stock in his 8 PAs in mostly blowouts.

My inclusion of Biggio's AAA stats is to show a better, younger Biggio with a track record had very good numbers in 2022 in AAA and it didn't translate either.

I think Clement exceeded expectations and served his purpose. Brought in as org depth never expected to see an MLB roster and he leaped frog guys like Lopez, and Barger and was a utility guy.

I like Clement but for bench pieces i prefer Cavan and Espinal with Bo out and i am much more excited to see Schneider.

 

[dredeye]

How long has Pete Walker been here? It seems like its been ages like 10+ years? Seems he survived at least 4 managers (who usually want to get their own coaches).

When you’re good at your job it lasts lol.

 

[MK78]

When you’re good at your job it lasts lol.

He's had a few clunkers recently, last year Kikuchi & Berrios, this year Manoah. heh.

 

[The Nemesis]

Jays delaying the game start. I await the umps declaring it a forfeit.

 

[Cleetus]

something wrong with the base. ?

 

[The Nemesis]

1-pitch Whit.

 

[Cleetus]

2 hit Whit!

 

[MK78]

Well thats a good start!

 

[Da Cool Rula]

Wow Merry nice

 

[Forgotusername]

That's how you start the game.

 

[Cleetus]

Vladdy! Plakata!

 

[The Nemesis]

Paxton serving up more meatball specials than your local Subway.

 

[Da Cool Rula]

Oh my oh my

 

[Patmac40]

We are so back

 

[red devil]

Hitting homeruns solves the issue of not being able to hit with risp

 

[MK78]

Oh the green monster. i love it.

 

[Forgotusername]

Uhh was there a homerun derby scheduled that I didn't know about?