Blue Jays Discussion: 2024-25 Off-season: The free agent watch begins (and sometimes old baseball radio broadcasts)

Honestly, if the numbers in free agency or trade work out better for adding a starter and a reliever instead of another bat, I think I’d be okay with that.

Fangraphs projects the Blue Jays to have the 7th highest position player fWAR but the 21st ranked pitching fWAR in 2025.

I still think they could use another bat, and they should continue to explore that, but adding 2.5 fWAR to their pitching could move them from 21st to 12th in projected pitching fWAR. That would improve the team more overall.

We probably need both, but if the economics make more sense to prioritize pitching, they should go that route. That said, I also think the Jays could get contributions from Roden, Martinez, or Wagner this year, and Santander was a huge addition.
 
When the “it’s not my money” / “richest owner in the MLB” crowd tries to flip and say the Jays can’t be throwing money around like it’s nothing. Not surprised there’s still people criticizing them on spending money on a hail mary.

Where did I say this again?
 
They were throwing ~700m at Soto and 200m+ at Burnes and just committed over 90m to Santander after getting Straw… plus showing legit interest for Scherzer (and maybe Alonso but who knows). 10m is a drop in the bucket and they’ve shown creativity with their deals with Hoffman/Santander to be able to continue to look to add in free agency.

But of course, taking a gamble on an overpaid 2 year contract in order to add more to their bonus pool to pursue Sasaki is going to be the deal that hamstrings them.

I agree with you, at worse Staw is a Kiermaier, at best he might "figure out" his swing and become a legit 8 or 9 hitter. It is always a good thing to have a guy with "generational" fielding abilities. At worse he can come in, in the 9th for defence purposes.

Lets close out on Alonzo, Flaherty, Bregman and call it a OK-ish off season. ;) . Hell give them all stupid money, one year contracts so they can bridge to next year, when they can get mega contracts, pretty clear the teams with deep pockets are falling off the UFA market. Dodgers are what $380 mil payroll, Mets owner is saying Alonzo needs to take a deep haircut if he wants to come back. Yanks look set with their line up. IMO, based on owners net worth, the Jays, Nats, Braves and Giants are the only big spenders left. Not so sure the Nats are part of the free spending big clubs, so Jays, Braves and Giants.

Anyone else find it weird that the Jays are so focused on run suppression and not run production, when we play in a park that is known as a hitters park? Wouldn't you want your line up to have a bunch of mashers and a bunch of pitchers that induce a lot of ground balls?
 
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If you’re willing to take some likely unreliable and underwhelming news, there’s suggestions on X that we’ve been in contact with both Ryne Stanek and Randal Grichuk.
I'm not big on mediocre outfielders since they have so many nearly-ready young ones, but Grichuk is actually kind of interesting because all the others hit left-handed and Grichuk still mashes the shit out of lefties.
 
If the report from Shi Davidi is true about Straw's AAV not counting towards the Jays CBT payroll number if he's not on the 40-man, there is absolutely no way this guy ever sniffs the 40-man roster in this org.

I'm not sure if Davidi actually knows what he's talking about here because on payroll sites like FanGraphs it shows that his AAV counts, but if Davidi is right, all Shatkins has to do is never add this guy to the 40-man while he's still under contract here, and that trade is guaranteed to be a win for them.
 
If the report from Shi Davidi is true about Straw's AAV not counting towards the Jays CBT payroll number if he's not on the 40-man, there is absolutely no way this guy ever sniffs the 40-man roster in this org.

I'm not sure if Davidi actually knows what he's talking about here because on payroll sites like FanGraphs it shows that his AAV counts, but if Davidi is right, all Shatkins has to do is never add this guy to the 40-man while he's still under contract here, and that trade is guaranteed to be a win for them.

Seems wrong to me. If that's the way it worked I think you'd see more teams that are over the CBT DFAing bad contracts and removing them from the 40 because you're saying all that extra tax money that no longer counts.
 
Seems wrong to me. If that's the way it worked I think you'd see more teams that are over the CBT DFAing bad contracts and removing them from the 40 because you're saying all that extra tax money that no longer counts.
There is some weird convention here.

Somehow by trading for him, the Jays weren't forced to add him to their 40 which means he doesn't count.
 
There is some weird convention here.

Somehow by trading for him, the Jays weren't forced to add him to their 40 which means he doesn't count.

Jays weren't forced to add him to their 40 because he wasn't on Cleveland's 40 man roster. Same as trading for a prospect essentially. I don't see why the system would treat that any differently for Toronto than it would have for the team who signed the contract initially and then DFA'd them like Cleveland did.
 
Jays weren't forced to add him to their 40 because he wasn't on Cleveland's 40 man roster. Same as trading for a prospect essentially. I don't see why the system would treat that any differently for Toronto than it would have for the team who signed the contract initially and then DFA'd them like Cleveland did.
Because CBT is based on your 40 man roster. When you dfa, you remove the player but not the hit. Toronto doesn't assume the hit unless they add him.
 
I don't understand NY , it's not like money is an issue. If you really want Alonso as much as it seems just sign him. Ugh
Yeah, and reports are he wants to be a met for life?
Somethings obviously gotta give, but you could see him feeling unappreciated for his service.
He’d still be a great fit.
 


Smart.

Never got why they want to trade Pressley. Now I know why.

Wonder if they are willing to move Paredes if they land Bregman.

We take Paraedes and Cartini frees up another $12M for them.

They need outfielders. Give them some variation of Lukes, Barger, Schneider, and/or Loperfido. Will have to put something good in like Kasevich.
 
Smart.

Never got why they want to trade Pressley. Now I know why.

Wonder if they are willing to move Paredes if they land Bregman.

We take Paraedes and Cartini frees up another $12M for them.

They need outfielders. Give them some variation of Lukes, Barger, Schneider, and/or Loperfido. Will have to put something good in like Kasevich.
Paredes would be a great add for the Jays.

Publicly the Astros seem to have indicated that he’d move to 2B and Altuve would move to LF. Not sure that’s a very good defensive option though.
 
The Tigers, Houston Astros, Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox are in the hunt to sign Bregman, who has a six-year, $156 million offer from the Astros on the table. The Tigers have not signed a free-agent position player to a multi-year contract in nearly three offseasons under president of baseball operations Scott Harris.

Paredes would be a great add for the Jays.

Publicly the Astros seem to have indicated that he’d move to 2B and Altuve would move to LF. Not sure that’s a very good defensive option though.

Yeah. That’s a bad move. Better off trading Paredes for value than risk Altuve in the OF. I still think that Christian Walker signing was dumb. Painted them into a corner and it wasn’t a great deal and they lost a draft pick.
 
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Yeah. That’s a bad move. Better off trading Paredes for value than risk Altuve in the OF. I still think that Christian Walker signing was dumb. Painted them into a corner and it wasn’t a great deal and they lost a draft pick.
Might be bad optics to trade a key piece of the Turner return. That said, there may be some teams that miss out on Bregman that want a 3B not named Arenado.
 
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