Blue Jays GDT: 2024 v3 | Fri, May 17 | vs TB | 7pm ET/4pm PT | TBD vs Bassitt | ***Apple TV+ Game, no Sportsnet***

[LaP]

I just dont see the ownership ready to tank for a few years after they just blew a bunch of money on the dome refresh. if people stop coming it will be bad, especially that they raised the tickets significantly over the past couple years and you know they're not coming down. nobody's gonna wanna pay money for a brutal team. at least in the past the tickets were cheap.

100%

People expecting a rebuild are delusional. Maybe they retool but Atkins already attempted a retool when he traded Gurriel, Hernandez and Moreno and it did not work so why would it work this time around?

I still strongly believe the first thing to do is fire Atkins.

 

[Suntouchable13]

100%

People expecting a rebuild are delusional. Maybe they retool but Atkins already attempted a retool when he traded Gurriel, Hernandez and Moreno and it did not work so why would it work this time around?

I still strongly believe the first thing to do is fire Atkins.

Is Shapiro busy planning more renos or what? Seems like the time to fire Atkins has come, yet he is still here.

 

[MK78]

Gurriel and Hernandez would be leading this team in RBI by a country mile now. both have 22 each, closest Jay is Turner at 15.

Flippin' DAVIS SCHNEIDER has more RBI than Bo or Vladdy.

 

[canucksfan]

Gurriel and Hernandez would be leading this team in RBI by a country mile now. both have 22 each, closest Jay is Turner at 15.

Flippin' DAVIS SCHNEIDER has more RBI than Bo or Vladdy.

RBIs is not a good stat to use. Teo has more because he hits behind Freeman, Ohtani, Betts, and Smith.

Gurriel is just a below-average hitter this year. Outside of his hot start, he's been pretty bad. He has a wRC of 58 since April 1st.

Honestly, I think the Jays continue to slide until there are changes made.

 

[MK78]

RBI is what drives runners in. How is it not important stat?

If Gurriel and Teo was still here i believe Vlad and Bo would be better as well as they were in the past.

2022 was the last year of those guys, and I'd take that offensive team over this one ANY day. 2023 was a marked decrease in power, rbi, RISP, all of it. This year its an abyss.

 

[GreytWun]

RBI is what drives runners in. How is it not important stat?

If Gurriel and Teo was still here i believe Vlad and Bo would be better as well as they were in the past.

2022 was the last year of those guys, and I'd take that offensive team over this one ANY day. 2023 was a marked decrease in power, rbi, RISP, all of it. This year its an abyss.

It's funny because we have issues driving runners in and have been one of the worst teams with RISP, but oh yea, RBI's don't matter. At the end of the day people are getting on in front of Teo and he is hitting the ball and knocking them in.

 

[canucksfan]

RBI is what drives runners in. How is it not important stat?

If Gurriel and Teo was still here i believe Vlad and Bo would be better as well as they were in the past.

2022 was the last year of those guys, and I'd take that offensive team over this one ANY day. 2023 was a marked decrease in power, rbi, RISP, all of it. This year its an abyss.

It's not a good stat to use because in order for a player to get a high amount the players in front of them need to get on. OPS with RISP is a better stat to use and the Jays suck at that one. To be clear I never said it wasn't important but it needs context.

The Jays definitely need(ed) another bat. Having both of those guys on the team wasn't an option. They are bad defensively and the team can't have Springer playing CF.

 

[Seath The Scaleless]

Tyler O'Neill has only 13 RBI (my fantasy team dislikes this) despite hitting 9 HRs and being one of the best offensive players so far. It's a flukey stat that doesn't have much value in real life.

 

[MK78]

Barker said on the radio today the Jays only have 2 homers with men on base. Unreal.

 

[The Nemesis]

Re: RBI are not an important stat,

The issue is that RBI are not an important predictive stat that represents a repeatable batter skill. They depend heavily on context and things outside the batter's control, chiefly how much the batters ahead of each person get on base. A great batter can have no RBIs because he plays behind crappy other hitters. Or a mediocre batter can have more RBI than you expect because he hits behind a bunch of great batters who are always on base. Generally speaking there's at least somewhat of a parallel between RBI and batter ability but there are enough exceptions to that and enough other hitter metrics that if a guy is good and has lots of RBI he probably has other things in his stats page that will also tell you he's good and don't have the same fault that RBI totals do. RBI can tell you what a player did, but not in a way that makes it useful to forecast what a player will do in the future (Which is generally the biggest value of any sorts of statistical measures for players.)

Stats To Avoid: Runs Batted In (RBI)

Even the best statistics, things like wRC+, are imperfect. You can’t take wOBA as a perfect measure of truth or be certain that FIP is a perfect estimate of pitcher performance. In many cases…

library.fangraphs.com

To wit:

Consider Joe Carter. Fantastically important and fan favorite player in Blue Jays history. That WS winning homer will etch him into team lore forever.

but in his final season in Toronto in 1997 he had 100 RBI. He also put up other hitting stats that would not look a whole lot different than what Vladdy is doing this season, albeit with a bit more power and fewer walks. Mostly because while that Jays team's offence sucked too, he managed to have enough other guys on base when he hit that his hits did damage. Meanwhile Vladdy hasn't hit well, but when he has gotten hits he hasn't had the benefit of as many runners on as Carter did.

and because, and this is important, RISP hitting is not a broadly repeatable skill. Players' RISP numbers will more often than not tend to fluctuate from season to season.

 

[TGB]

Meh, I wouldn't worry too much about the Jays yet. Their offense tends to be slow in April but explodes in May. It's actually pretty impressive they managed to stay at 500 despite playing so many good teams and having so many hits to the pitching staff (called it). Now if they're tanking come June when they tend to have a downturn...then it's time to worry.

RBIs tell us who the good run producers are. Players who just keep driving in lots of runs, regardless of the circumstances, no matter how well the other team is playing, will often lead the team...or at the very least demonstrates a player used in a certain spot in the line up produces well in that spot.
And it doesn't just boil down to batted ball rates and contact efficiency. There's always a certain "x" factor the best run producers have. Sometimes it's easy to figure out what that fact is-the guy who hits 30 home runs while constantly seeing guys on base will naturally rack up RBIs-but sometimes it's something like Bichette just hitting every frickin' pitch he sees until he wears a pitcher down. Some guys just have really good approaches. Whatever it is, it is measurable when you see those guys constantly leading their teams in RBIs. Whereas these stats darlings excel at hitting 120mph shots right at the SS and the stats guys shrug it off as "Hey, advanced metrics aren't perfect!".

Whatever. They can keep lecturing us on advanced metrics, and then drop excuses when their metrics fail them, and I'll keep grabbing the top RBI guys and destroying my fantasy baseball league.

 

[shaner8989]

Jays have the worst average with RISP and the least HR with RiSP in the entire league

f***ing loser management. We sucked last year and then got worse

Fire every f***ing clown in there

 

[Suntouchable13]

Apple TV is gonna show this game? Who the heck is going to want to watch this? I am not bothering with Apple TV for this game. Oh and Apple can get f***ed.

 

[Beaumaris]

RBIs is not a good stat to use. Teo has more because he hits behind Freeman, Ohtani, Betts, and Smith.

Gurriel is just a below-average hitter this year. Outside of his hot start, he's been pretty bad. He has a wRC of 58 since April 1st.

Honestly, I think the Jays continue to slide until there are changes made.

Nonsense.

 

[Jojalu]

Tyler O'Neill has only 13 RBI (my fantasy team dislikes this) despite hitting 9 HRs and being one of the best offensive players so far. It's a flukey stat that doesn't have much value in real life.

Except that you have to have the ability to put the ball in play when runners are on.

I believe analytics work for baseball, but this idea that there is no such thing as a clutch hitter is nonsense.

Yes guys have to get on base for you, but you still need to get the job done once they are there

 

[Eyedea]

Noted “clutch” hitter Justin Turner has a negative clutch rating over his career.

Mookie Betts has a clutch metric of 0.06. Over the last decade, the most “clutch” hitters are Mitch Moreland and Adam Frazier. FYI some of the most anti-clutch hitters over that same timespan include Marcus Semien, Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout, Edwin Encarnacion, Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, and even Teoscar Hernandez.

All this to say that if you are regularly put into those clutch situations, your numbers will eventually normalize to your expected rate and you won’t be considered “clutch”, you’ll just be as good as you are in a context-neutral environment.

So Mookie Betts hitting .300 in clutch situations is not a clutch hitter, he’s just as good as he is in all other situations.

 

[LaP]

It's funny because we have issues driving runners in and have been one of the worst teams with RISP, but oh yea, RBI's don't matter. At the end of the day people are getting on in front of Teo and he is hitting the ball and knocking them in.

Baseball is probably the only sports where you'll read things like RBIs don't matter hitting with RISP is just dumb luck and advanced stats are everything. In pretty much every other sports people recognize that some players are clutch and others are not. The whole some players will get you in playoffs (Plekanec) and others will get you a cup (Claude Lemieux).

It doesn't matter how good you do without RISP if you can't handle the pressure of having to hit a single with RISP and 2 outs to win the game you wont be of much use in the top 4-5. Many Jays hitters have this inability to hit the best pitchers in the game with RISP. It was clear as day in playoffs last year and it still is this season. It doesn't matter how well Biggio do in advanced stats i've seen enough of him to tell you a good pitchers will strike him out when it matters. Pedro Martinez would 100% strike him out with RISP 99% of the time. It applies to almost the entire lineup tbh.

 

[LaP]

Noted “clutch” hitter Justin Turner has a negative clutch rating over his career.

Mookie Betts has a clutch metric of 0.06. Over the last decade, the most “clutch” hitters are Mitch Moreland and Adam Frazier. FYI some of the most anti-clutch hitters over that same timespan include Marcus Semien, Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout, Edwin Encarnacion, Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, and even Teoscar Hernandez.

All this to say that if you are regularly put into those clutch situations, your numbers will eventually normalize to your expected rate and you won’t be considered “clutch”, you’ll just be as good as you are in a context-neutral environment.

So Mookie Betts hitting .300 in clutch situations is not a clutch hitter, he’s just as good as he is in all other situations.

I don't think you can quantify being clutch. That's something you have to experience. Lehkonen is a clutch player and i don't think any stats would tell you that.

 

[Eyedea]

Baseball is probably the only sports where you'll read things like RBIs don't matter hitting with RISP is just dumb luck and advanced stats are everything. In pretty much every other sports people recognize that some players are clutch and others are not. The whole some players will get you in playoffs (Plekanec) and others will get you a cup (Claude Lemieux).

It doesn't matter how good you do without RISP if you can't handle the pressure of having to hit a single with RISP and 2 outs to win the game you wont be of much use in the top 4-5. Many Jays hitters have this inability to hit the best pitchers in the game with RISP. It was clear as day in playoffs last year and it still is this season. It doesn't matter how well Biggio do in advanced stats i've seen enough of him to tell you a good pitchers will strike him out when it matters. Pedro Martinez would 100% strike him out with RISP 99% of the time. It applies to almost the entire lineup tbh.

You’re still talking about small samples, but regular season/playoffs is a different ballpark from clutch vs not clutch.

Still, some guys like Yordan can elevate their game in the postseason. However if you look at his overall performance in the postseason, it’s right in line with his regular season stats.

Reggie Jackson is another case. Mr. October showed better results in the playoffs year to year, but looking at his overall performance in the postseason and it’s right in line with how he performed in the regular season during his prime.

Rare cases like Carlos Beltran are the anomalies and do not conform to the normal standards in baseball.

 

[Eyedea]

I don't think you can quantify being clutch. That's something you have to experience. Lehkonen is a clutch player and i don't think any stats would tell you that.

You can’t just point to outliers and excuse the rest of the data. All it’s doing is comparing a player in high leverage situations vs their own stats in context neutral situations. Is it perfect, no, but it captures the differences in situations enough to delineate between a clutch situation and a non-clutch one.

All of those players that I listed as being not clutch simply hit worse in higher leverage situations than they do in all other situations. If you want to argue that clutch can’t be quantified, then how can one argue that those players are clutch? They’re verifiably worse in those situations.

 

[hoglund]

Jays have the worst average with RISP and the least HR with RiSP in the entire league

f***ing loser management. We sucked last year and then got worse

Fire every f***ing clown in there

They made the playoffs last year so you're wrong they couldn't have sucked. You're right that this year they suck.

 

[The Nemesis]

Mike Trout has the 15th most RBIs over the last 15 years. Worse than Nelson Cruz (who was #1), Andrew McCutcheon, JD Martinez, Gio Stanton, Jose Abreu, Edwin Encarnacion, Manny Machado, and others.

Trout has also spent his whole career on the mostly really crappy Angels with little to no support. But clearly this isn't about that. This is about Mike Trout not being a good clutch hitter or not being the valuable offensive contributor stats nerds hype him up to be, right? All that hype about him being arguably the best player of his generation is bullshit if he can't knock in runners.

This is not to say that those players I highlighted above are bad. But they aren't Mike Trout even if we're only evaluating Mike Trout with the bat and on the basepaths and taking away the fact that he was an elite CF before injuries set in.

Generally speaking high RBI seasons coincide with good overall offensive performance. But the problem is that it's not true frequently enough to be a good measure of player performance and it doesn't hold steady independent of other factors like other stats do. And there are enough "guy has a thoroughly crappy season but manages to collect a lot of RBIs" seasons that it should definintely give you pause when using RBIs as evidence for what a guy will be able to do moving forward. And that's what the value of stats are. Answering the question of "based on what this guy has done, can we expect him to keep doing it going forward independent of anything else (like changing teams if we're talking about signing him to a big money FA contract)?"

 

[Eyedea]

Mike Trout has the 15th most RBIs over the last 15 years. Worse than Nelson Cruz (who was #1), Andrew McCutcheon, JD Martinez, Gio Stanton, Jose Abreu, Edwin Encarnacion, Manny Machado, and others.

Trout has also spent his whole career on the mostly really crappy Angels with little to no support. But clearly this isn't about that. This is about Mike Trout not being a good clutch hitter or not being the valuable offensive contributor stats nerds hype him up to be, right? All that hype about him being arguably the best player of his generation is bullshit if he can't knock in runners.

This is not to say that those players I highlighted above are bad. But they aren't Mike Trout even if we're only evaluating Mike Trout with the bat and on the basepaths and taking away the fact that he was an elite CF before injuries set in.

Generally speaking high RBI seasons coincide with good overall offensive performance. But the problem is that it's not true frequently enough to be a good measure of player performance and it doesn't hold steady independent of other factors like other stats do. And there are enough "guy has a thoroughly crappy season but manages to collect a lot of RBIs" seasons that it should definintely give you pause when using RBIs as evidence for what a guy will be able to do moving forward. And that's what the value of stats are. Answering the question of "based on what this guy has done, can we expect him to keep doing it going forward independent of anything else (like changing teams if we're talking about signing him to a big money FA contract)?"

Major League Leaderboards - 2022 to 2023 - Batting | FanGraphs Baseball

www.fangraphs.com

Over the last two seasons Pete Alonso is the best hitter in baseball. Oh and take a look at where Vladdy is. And no this is not counting his 2021 aberration in minor league stadiums. This is bad Vladdy being better than Ohtani, Betts, Riley, Devers, Seager, J-Rod, Soto, Acuna, the list goes on.

 

[trellaine201]

You guys get waaaaay to caught up in analytics.

 

[Seath The Scaleless]

Time for a fun exercise. In a vacuum, which bat would you rather have?

Player A
671 PA
29 HR
106 RBI
111 OPS+

Player B
691 PA
24 HR
80 RBI
130 OPS+

I'll reveal the names and season later