Blue Jays Discussion: 2024 Season - Complete without a great title in keeping with the performance

[tmlfan98]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1830312206065410517

 

[phillipmike]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1830312206065410517

Could be an intriguing pen arm if Walker can work with him.

That 2022 Savant page was red before he got hurt;

 

[trellaine201]

Ryan Yarborough peaks my interest. How did we obtain him? He has had pretty decent numbers in the majors.

 

[phillipmike]

Ryan Yarborough peaks my interest. How did we obtain him? He has had pretty decent numbers in the majors.

Got him back in the Kevin Kiermaier trade. Re-signing Yarborugh should be a priority. Im wondering if $10M over 2 years - $5M AAV gets it done.

 

[Suntouchable13]

I think the playoff teams in the AL are set. Boston is awful and I am glad they are crashing and burning. Anyone from below them can make a realistic run?

 

[aingefan]

Farm notes from Sunday:
ADun: Nimmala with more bat thunder: 2-4, HR, 2b. Three ‘24 draftees around him all off to good pro starts.
A+Van: balanced offence put up 8 runs, but the bullpen blew a huge lead in the 9th wasting a good start from Pat Gallagher 7ip7h3er6k. My guy Kai (Peterson) imploded giving up 5er over .2ip in the 9th on a hit and 4bb. Not helped by Grayson Thurman (who’s had a rough week during a strong season) who followed him to close it out, but instead gave up back to back hits allowing all three inherited runners to score.
AANH: similar story. Bullpen gave up 5er in the 8th wasting a very efficient 5 scoreless innings from SP Dominguez. Nice to see Josh Rivera with a multi hit game….he might be warming up. Interesting experiment: OF Devonte Brown got the start at 2b.
AAABuff: best game from the system. LHP Trenton Wallace with his best AAA showing, 3 scoreless innings and 6ks. Pulled after 79 pitches, likely to help build some positive momentum. Bullpen was excellent and efficient, getting 6ip from Bash Fluharty and Juenger, allowing just one hit no runs and no walks. Roden the star on offence with a 4-5 4rbi day with a 2b. Jonaton Clase 1-5 with a 2b and sb. Stewart ‘demote this’ Berroa with a 3run shot and sb. Love this guy. Interesting experimentv2.0: contact hitter SS Josh Kasevich has hit cleanup the past two days.

 

[Discoverer]

Roden just keeps hitting and hitting and hitting.

 

[Da Cool Rula]

https://www.thestar.com/sports/blue-jays/the-blue-jays-have-shiny-new-toys-after-the-trade-deadline-but-dont-overlook-these/article_e96620ce-6880-11ef-a3c8-175f50f4dcc8.html

 

[Da Cool Rula]

Gozzo?

Mauro Gozzo

 

[Suntouchable13]

What to make of Horwitz? I think his numbers are great for 2nd baseman, but his value diminishes as a 1st baseman/DH imo. Not sure if Wagner breaks camp with the Jays or he starts down in AAA? Horwitz is a good player just not sure where he fits in come opening day 2025.

 

[Discoverer]

What to make of Horwitz? I think his numbers are great for 2nd baseman, but his value diminishes as a 1st baseman/DH imo. Not sure if Wagner breaks camp with the Jays or he starts down in AAA? Horwitz is a good player just not sure where he fits in come opening day 2025.

I think he lines up as the regular 2B who plays a bit of 1B, a bit of DH, and doesn't hit against lefties. Everything he's done in the majors so far suggests he can be an impact back against RHP.

 

[Suntouchable13]

I think he lines up as the regular 2B who plays a bit of 1B, a bit of DH, and doesn't hit against lefties. Everything he's done in the majors so far suggests he can be an impact back against RHP.

That’s fine, but then where does Wagner fit? It’s all very muddy right now. Horwtiz has not even played 2nd base since Wagner arrived. SO I still wonder what is the plan for the Jays brass.

One potential infield I was thinking about during a slow work day, is it feasible?

3B Vladdy
SS Clement (Bo traded for help elsewhere)
2B Horwitz
1B Pete Alonso

 

[tmlfan98]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1830954249024676303

Fans in a number of major-league cities want change. Ownership changes in many cases, yes. But front-office changes, at the very least. And in many cases, those changes seem unlikely.

“I’m a huge believer in stability and continuity, and those are competitive advantages in professional sports, that reacting and change don’t necessarily mean improvement,” Toronto Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said last month when asked about the job status of his general manager, Ross Atkins.

No one should be surprised in the coming weeks to hear similar comments from other executives with disappointing clubs. Which raises the questions: Why are owners so complacent? Why aren’t more front offices on the hot seat?

Many fans of the Blue Jays are exasperated, if not downright angry. Ditto for fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates. Those teams intended to contend and didn’t. And yet, more trust-the-process blather likely is coming their fans’ way. Insular, sadsack franchises – the Chicago White Sox, Oakland Athletics, Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies, to name four – belong in a separate category. Those teams barely even bothered to try.

For underachieving clubs, managers are always easy scapegoats. The Mariners already fired theirs. The Reds, Pirates and others might, too. But modern managers are glorified middle men, extensions of their front offices. A managerial change often is an act of deflection by the head of baseball operations, a bid to buy more time.

Shapiro had a point. Stability and continuity indeed should be valued. If teams, particularly in this age of social media, reacted to every fan eruption, they would be firing people every three days, if not every three minutes.

Still, the passivity in the sport is disturbing.

Part of it might stem from the expansion of the postseason in 2022, and the illusion of contention provided by the addition of a third wild card in each league. Consider the Chicago Cubs. A good month of August thrust them into the fringes of the wild-card race, and now things don’t look so bad, if you’re willing to overlook how for four months they underachieved.

Another factor is the analytically based groupthink that pervades front offices. Fire your head of baseball operations, and who will you hire? Probably another executive whose decision-making is not all that dissimilar from the one you let go.

The biggest issue, though, is that many teams face minimal financial pressure, the kind of pressure that would motivate a business to act.

Most franchises evidently have it quite good, not that you would know it from their occasional sky-is-falling rhetoric, whether during the COVID-19 pandemic or recent regional television shakeup. Nor would you know it from the rumblings by management, every time collective-bargaining talks roll around, about the need for a salary cap.

But consider how some teams operate:

The Blue Jays are in last place with a club-record payroll. They have not won a playoff game since 2016, the year after former GM Alex Anthopoulos rejected a five-year extension to work under Shapiro. But why should the team’s owner, Rogers Communications, worry?

Rogers has a monopoly on baseball in Canada. And the team still ranks ninth in the majors in home attendance, even with renovations reducing the capacity at Rogers Centre.

Struggling teams always point to tomorrow. Some, like the Baltimore Orioles, eventually get to a better place. But too many others are running what amounts to a borderline con.

In most cases, the problem starts with ownership, not the head of baseball operations. Owners should be scrambling to find the next Anthopoulos, the next Dave Dombrowski, the next A.J. Preller. No one would accuse any of those executives of being afraid. But each also works for committed ownerships.

Financial commitment is one thing. Emotional commitment is another, and too many owners see no need to make that type of investment. Stability and continuity represent the easy way out, even when such noble concepts fail to produce results.

When financial success is attainable without on-field success, why rock the boat?

Rosenthal basically thinks Jays are one of a number of middling teams where ownership just doesn't really care enough to make meaningful changes because fans aren't showing their frustration where it matters.

 

[jetsforever]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1831021032561320288

Crazy the turnaround he's had
Hope this is the real Bowden going forward

 

[trellaine201]

Mauro Gozzo

Oh wow I remember him lol flashback.

 

[dredeye]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1830954249024676303

Rosenthal basically thinks Jays are one of a number of middling teams where ownership just doesn't really care enough to make meaningful changes because fans aren't showing their frustration where it matters.

That’s a solid way of thinking if you want to risk losing your fan base and fan interest

Essentially they are saying the fans aren’t booing enough to warrant changing management. The Mariners fired their gm as he just fell out of the wild card race but we keep trotting this group back out there.

 

[MS]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1830954249024676303

Rosenthal basically thinks Jays are one of a number of middling teams where ownership just doesn't really care enough to make meaningful changes because fans aren't showing their frustration where it matters.

We were 7th in MLB payroll this year so the team is legit spending in line with where we should be so it isn't one of the 'con jobs' that he's referring to in the article.

But in terms of front office security, yeah. If a Canadian NHL team hadn't won a playoff game in 8 years and had a season this hugely disappointing the fans would be chanting for the GM's head, jerseys would be getting thrown on the field, there would probably be fan protests. It would be an auto-GM fire.

But for the Jays the fans just keep turning out and politely clapping and there just isn't this die-hard investment you seem to see for the NHL. And management probably can't believe how little pressure there is on them, and it's easy for Shapiro to just keep his buddy Atkins in place.

 

[metafour]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1830954249024676303

Rosenthal basically thinks Jays are one of a number of middling teams where ownership just doesn't really care enough to make meaningful changes because fans aren't showing their frustration where it matters.

The paragraph that you chose not to highlight (about analytically based groupthink) is as much a factor here as Rogers' proclivity for prioritizing profitability.

The Blue Jays are one of those analytically driven think-tank front offices that Rosenthal refers to. They can fire Atkins and promote James Click (former Astros GM), but he is already serving as "VP of Baseball Strategy", so its not like you're likely to see something wildly different from what they're already trying to do.

 

[Suntouchable13]

We were 7th in MLB payroll this year so the team is legit spending in line with where we should be so it isn't one of the 'con jobs' that he's referring to in the article.

But in terms of front office security, yeah. If a Canadian NHL team hadn't won a playoff game in 8 years and had a season this hugely disappointing the fans would be chanting for the GM's head, jerseys would be getting thrown on the field, there would probably be fan protests. It would be an auto-GM fire.

But for the Jays the fans just keep turning out and politely clapping and there just isn't this die-hard investment you seem to see for the NHL. And management probably can't believe how little pressure there is on them, and it's easy for Shapiro to just keep his buddy Atkins in place.

With all the renos too and the social places they created a lot of fans go to games to socialize rather than be 100% focused on the game. If there are 35,000 people in attendance any given game, how many of them are actual diehards? People keep coming out because this is the place to be, and I think the team has done a great job with marketing and such. 15 or 16 years ago, there wouldn’t be 15,000 people in the attendance because the stadium was shit and nobody wanted to go.

 

[metafour]

Essentially they are saying the fans aren’t booing enough to warrant changing management. The Mariners fired their gm as he just fell out of the wild card race but we keep trotting this group back out there.

The Mariners fired their Manager, not their GM. Jerry Dipoto is driving their baseball decision making anyway, and he most certainly hasn't been fired.

Furthermore, the Mariners are a much worse example than the Jays are. Seattle was ~10 games up on the Astros in mid-June, and today they are sitting .500 with a 6% probability of making the playoffs per FG. That is a complete collapse.

 

[HamiltonNHL]

Lack of front office pressure

Apparently we don’t draft players that make the big leagues

 

[tmlfan98]

The paragraph that you chose not to highlight (about analytically based groupthink) is as much a factor here as Rogers' proclivity for prioritizing profitability.

The Blue Jays are one of those analytically driven think-tank front offices that Rosenthal refers to. They can fire Atkins and promote James Click (former Astros GM), but he is already serving as "VP of Baseball Strategy", so its not like you're likely to see something wildly different from what they're already trying to do.

You're basically just disagreeing with Rosenthal himself here. He said the "biggest issue" is related to lack of legitimate financial pressure, which is why I bolded it.

 

[Discoverer]

That’s a solid way of thinking if you want to risk losing your fan base and fan interest

Essentially they are saying the fans aren’t booing enough to warrant changing management. The Mariners fired their gm as he just fell out of the wild card race but we keep trotting this group back out there.

That hasn't exactly fixed anything for the Mariners.

 

[canucksfan]

Lack of front office pressure

View attachment 904838



Apparently we don’t draft players that make the big leagues

Drafting in the MLB is tricky. The 2020 draft was a really bad one for the Jays but at the time it was praised a lot. We've mentioned this before but the development of pitchers has been really bad in recent years, but injuries aside, there's been very good progress made with pitching prospects. The problem is too, it takes a few years before the team realizes if their drafting is good or not.

The 2024 draft is too early to tell but the 2023 draft looks pretty solid so far.

In some ways, I get what Shapiro means by having continuity because the organization can learn from mistakes. Bringing in someone new doesn't mean results will improve. With the Canucks, fans wanted GIllis fired but he was much more qualified than his replacement, Jim Benning.

 

[dredeye]

The Mariners fired their Manager, not their GM. Jerry Dipoto is driving their baseball decision making anyway, and he most certainly hasn't been fired.

Furthermore, the Mariners are a much worse example than the Jays are. Seattle was ~10 games up on the Astros in mid-June, and today they are sitting .500 with a 6% probability of making the playoffs per FG. That is a complete collapse.

Sorry yea manager not gm. I would say that proves the point further really. They were doing well and dropped quickly and immediately responded dumping their manager. We still have the same manager after two brutal post seasons that easily had some fingers that could be pointed at the manager. Then we had an awful season living in the bottom half and near bottom 5 most of the season and he still has a job. Because we are winning games in garbage time Against mostly awful teams should not change those facts. But they are clearly telling us that this management group that has been so inept will be back for the last year of Bo, Vlad, Gausman and Bassit and walk them to free agency and leave us with nothing just like AA on their way out. It’s infuriating