Blue Jays Discussion: Blue Jays fire manager Montoyo, Schneider takes over

[trellaine201]

Tiedeman is amazing at High A ball! 0.38 ERA

 

[Maplebeasts]

Frankie Montas from the A’s would be nice. Oakland like quantity over quality so I think we could make a deal. Josh Bell from the Nats. Gives us another big bat although a RH one. We also need 1 or 2 heavy throwers in the pen. Easier said than done I know.

With 2 great bats at the catcher position and Vlad already at first there isn't really a need for Bell. I'd just rather dangle Jansen and any prospect not named Martinez or Tiedemann for more pitching and call up Hernandez.

 

[Scotianhab]

With 2 great bats at the catcher position and Vlad already at first there isn't really a need for Bell. I'd just rather dangle Jansen and any prospect not named Martinez or Tiedemann for more pitching and call up Hernandez.

Bell can play the OF but not sure about his defence. Would get Tapia off the field. Tapia is a shitty 4th Of to have if he’s going to get 450 ab while the rest of the OF has scheduled days off.

 

[canucksfan]

Hatch had a fairly good douting last start but struggled somewhat today. I honestly wouldn't mind trying him in the bullpen assuming his velocity is fine.

Hernandez needs to be called up.

Richards, Thornton, etc, aren't working.

 

[Scotianhab]

Mayza, Cimber, Garcia, Romano is a start. Need a couple more hard throwing good relievers down there.

 

[Maplebeasts]

Bell can play the OF but not sure about his defence. Would get Tapia off the field. Tapia is a shitty 4th Of to have if he’s going to get 450 ab while the rest of the OF has scheduled days off.

Playing outfield is a pretty rare thing for him though. He went five years between 2016 and 2021 where he didn't play there at all. I'd rather take a run at someone like Ketel Marte.

 

[Kurtz]

Will folks finally give up on the ridiculous "bullpen is voodoo" mantra that permeates this board every offseason?

The smart teams (Yankees, Rays, Braves) have discovered years ago that there is no more cost-efficient way to spend your money than spending it on your pen, and yet our stubborn management keeps trying to save money and cut corners in that area.

It cost us a playoff birth last year, and it may cost us a playoff spot again.

 

[ryno23]

take a page out of the Cubs playbook and fire the fun-loving good for the fun clubhouse guy in Renteria aka Montoyo and bring in Maddon to bring them a WS.

 

[Kurtz]

take a page out of the Cubs playbook and fire the fun-loving good for the fun clubhouse guy in Renteria aka Montoyo and bring in Maddon to bring them a WS.

We deserve to see that mohawk, damnit!

 

[The Nemesis]

Will folks finally give up on the ridiculous "bullpen is voodoo" mantra that permeates this board every offseason?

The smart teams (Yankees, Rays, Braves) have discovered years ago that there is no more cost-efficient way to spend your money than spending it on your pen, and yet our stubborn management keeps trying to save money and cut corners in that area.

It cost us a playoff birth last year, and it may cost us a playoff spot again.

Bullpens are voodoo though. Let's look at each of those teams based on the top 8 arms in their pen by IP (these are not sorted by IP, just pared down on that basis).


Blue Jays
Romano - $710k (pre-arb)
Garcia - $4m
Phelps - $1.75m
Cimber - $1.57m (arb)
Mayza - $1.25m (arb)
Richards - $1m (arb)
Thornton - $706k (arb)
Merryweather - $711k (pre-arb)

So that's like $10.13m

Yankees
Castro - $2.62m (arb)
Peralta - $2.15m (arb)
Holmes - $1.1m (arb)
Luetge - $905k (arb)
King - $722k (pre-arb)
Schmidt - $712k (pre-arb)
Green- $4m (only pitched 15 innings before blowing out his elbow and requiring TJ. He's done for the season )
Loaisiga $1.65m

$13.86m but only $9.86m is currently active or on the road to short-term recovery. And most of their regulars are guys with so little experience that they are still on their arbitration clocks

If you're looking for Chapman and Britton, the former has only pitched 14 innings for them (below the top-8 cutoff), was kinda mediocre to crappy, and is now on the DL with an achilles injury. He's expected to be back in the next couple of weeks probably. The latter had TJ last year and is projected to maybe be back in August. That's $32m of salary between them. But point is that most of the Yankees' pen work has been without one or both of them.

Braves
Kenley Jansen - $16m
Will Smith - $13m
Collin McHugh - $4m
A.J. Minter - $2.2m (arb)
Jesse Chavez - $1.25m
Darren O'Day - $1m
Spencer Strider - $710k (pre-arb)
Jackson Stephens - $700k (pre-arb)

That checks in at about $38.9m. So yes, they are spending a lot on their pen. That said while Jansen and Smith have been good (Smith perhaps less so. There are worrying underlying numbers with him), the cheaper guys have been just as good if not better than them.

They also have about $7m in more-or-less dead money in injured pen arms who have played either sparingly (like 10 innings or less) or not at all due to injuries

Rays
Matt Wisler - $2.16m (arb)
Jason Adam - $900k (pre-arb)
Jalen Beeks - $750k (arb)
Ryan Thompson - $700k (pre-arb)
Colin Poche - $700k (pre-arb)
Ralph Garza - $700k (pre-arb)
JP Feyereisen - $708k (pre-arb)
Andrew Kittredge - $1.85m (arb)

Total = $8.47m

The Rays are doing Rays things, churning out an absurd number of pitchers of all types to just patchwork their way into having a very good pen. And their most expensive pen arm by a significant margin, Brooks Raley ($4.25m) is 9th on the list with 18 IP. They also have 2-3m in injured guys not listed above while Kittredge was just put on the 60-day DL in the last couple weeks.

So realistically only the Braves are spending significantly more on the active parts of their pen. The Yankees are spending a lot more, but most of it has been hurt and/or ineffective. And the Braves, for that matter, are getting a healthy amount of their best pen performance out of the less pricey guys. Meanwhile Tampa isn't spending because they never have. They just keep doing this crazy thing where they have a surfeit of pen arms to plug and play and have them be good. Practically their entire pen is inexperienced enough that they haven't even qualified for arbitration status.

Do the Jays need to fix their pen? Yeah. But this is not just a matter of "Throw money at the problem and it'll be fixed!" because they are spending about in line with the teams you contend have "solved" the pen dilemma when it comes to the guy seeing the most action (except the Braves).

What the Jays have failed to do that other good teams will do is replace the struggling arms with other ones until they find something that fits and works. Richards has been ass but is the most-used arm in the pen. Thornton is walking a tightrope right now where his ERA is good but the peripherals say it probably doesn't last. Garcia has been kinda down but there might be something there if they can figure out where some of his Ks went. Merryweather was the only other guy on that list that was a certified tire fire but he's hurt now so it's less relevant.

Mayza coming back should help. Gage probably deserved more run than he got . Stripling is actually probably better as a starter than a reliever.

If you could swap Richards for Pearson, Thornton for Mayza, and have Gage take Merryweather's spot that might actually be a decent pen.

Romano
Pearson
Cimber
Mayza
Garcia
Phelps
Gage
and I guess Stripling as your long-man/spot starter/opener/whatever

And it's a pen with 2 lefties in it too. Beyond that, maybe you call up some of the prospects who could look interesting like Hernandez when he's healthy, Hatch potentially, maybe Hagen Danner makes it up. Or maybe you find another Cimber or Phelps type guy who you can pluck from another team for an unwanted low-end roster piece or depth prospect. All accomplishable without throwing high-end capital at the problem. If Gage can't keep it up you sacrifice the extra lefty and put Richards back in to a lower leverage role (he was mostly decent last season for the Jays and most of his bad career #s come from being a failed starter)

Good pens aren't about spending lots of money. They're about finding the things that work and churning the parts that don't. The Jays' problem has been that they won't do that second part. And they are about getting lucky or the voodoo of reclamation projects. Because some of those nobodies in the pens above that are succeeding now have been very bad in recent years. And then it clicks and suddenly things look a whole lot better. Like, for example, most of those Yankees names were on other teams and had one or more bad years and were probably thought of as nothing-burger, fungible pen depth. But now they're dominating.

 

[kb]

I remember good ol' Bert Blyleven. Does damge to your arm though

Fernando!

 

[Dr.Funk]

Blue Jays signed RHP Andrew Moore to a minor league contract.​

 

[TheBeastCoast]

Will folks finally give up on the ridiculous "bullpen is voodoo" mantra that permeates this board every offseason?

The smart teams (Yankees, Rays, Braves) have discovered years ago that there is no more cost-efficient way to spend your money than spending it on your pen, and yet our stubborn management keeps trying to save money and cut corners in that area.

It cost us a playoff birth last year, and it may cost us a playoff spot again.

We are going to make the playoffs lol take a step back.

 

[canucksfan]

 

[SoupNazi]

Hopefully they have insurance on his awful contract

Meh, personally, I hope they don't. That contract sucked before the ink was even dry.

 

[Dr.Funk]

 

[Discoverer]

Will folks finally give up on the ridiculous "bullpen is voodoo" mantra that permeates this board every offseason?

The smart teams (Yankees, Rays, Braves) have discovered years ago that there is no more cost-efficient way to spend your money than spending it on your pen, and yet our stubborn management keeps trying to save money and cut corners in that area.

It cost us a playoff birth last year, and it may cost us a playoff spot again.

The strength of the Yankees and Rays pens are built almost exclusively on league-minimum arms who cost next to nothing to acquire.

 

[Canada4Gold]

Irv Carter 3.2 IP, 6 K, 3 BB, 2 hits, 2 ER, 1 HR​

Meh, personally, I hope they don't. That contract sucked before the ink was even dry.

Is this about Ryu? You hope the Jays don't have insurance so they don't get a free 20 million back that they can use to make the team better? Maybe I misunderstood.

 

[Emerica]

Irv Carter 3.2 IP, 6 K, 3 BB, 2 hits, 2 ER, 1 HR​

Is this about Ryu? You hope the Jays don't have insurance so they don't get a free 20 million back that they can use to make the team better? Maybe I misunderstood.

They are talking about Rendon with the Angels

 

[Canada4Gold]

They are talking about Rendon with the Angels

That makes sense. I'm kind of curious if the Jays insured Ryu or not.

 

[Suntouchable13]

Last year they improved the bullpen by getting Richards and Cimber, but this year Richards has been awful and the bullpen is a mess again. When we have to use Cimber, Romano, and Mayza , we're good but beyond that it has been awful. There is a way to fix it again as bullpen arms are not expensive to get.

 

[SoupNazi]

Irv Carter 3.2 IP, 6 K, 3 BB, 2 hits, 2 ER, 1 HR​

Is this about Ryu? You hope the Jays don't have insurance so they don't get a free 20 million back that they can use to make the team better? Maybe I misunderstood.

No. Referring to Rendon. That contract was idiotic the moment it was signed.

 

[Suntouchable13]

If Ryu is able to make a full recovery and come back next June/July, what would be his role? Is he going to be worthy of a spot on the active roster? What will they do with him?

 

[Kurtz]

Bullpens are voodoo though. Let's look at each of those teams based on the top 8 arms in their pen by IP (these are not sorted by IP, just pared down on that basis).


Blue Jays
Romano - $710k (pre-arb)
Garcia - $4m
Phelps - $1.75m
Cimber - $1.57m (arb)
Mayza - $1.25m (arb)
Richards - $1m (arb)
Thornton - $706k (arb)
Merryweather - $711k (pre-arb)

So that's like $10.13m

Yankees
Castro - $2.62m (arb)
Peralta - $2.15m (arb)
Holmes - $1.1m (arb)
Luetge - $905k (arb)
King - $722k (pre-arb)
Schmidt - $712k (pre-arb)
Green- $4m (only pitched 15 innings before blowing out his elbow and requiring TJ. He's done for the season )
Loaisiga $1.65m

$13.86m but only $9.86m is currently active or on the road to short-term recovery. And most of their regulars are guys with so little experience that they are still on their arbitration clocks

If you're looking for Chapman and Britton, the former has only pitched 14 innings for them (below the top-8 cutoff), was kinda mediocre to crappy, and is now on the DL with an achilles injury. He's expected to be back in the next couple of weeks probably. The latter had TJ last year and is projected to maybe be back in August. That's $32m of salary between them. But point is that most of the Yankees' pen work has been without one or both of them.

Braves
Kenley Jansen - $16m
Will Smith - $13m
Collin McHugh - $4m
A.J. Minter - $2.2m (arb)
Jesse Chavez - $1.25m
Darren O'Day - $1m
Spencer Strider - $710k (pre-arb)
Jackson Stephens - $700k (pre-arb)

That checks in at about $38.9m. So yes, they are spending a lot on their pen. That said while Jansen and Smith have been good (Smith perhaps less so. There are worrying underlying numbers with him), the cheaper guys have been just as good if not better than them.

They also have about $7m in more-or-less dead money in injured pen arms who have played either sparingly (like 10 innings or less) or not at all due to injuries

Rays
Matt Wisler - $2.16m (arb)
Jason Adam - $900k (pre-arb)
Jalen Beeks - $750k (arb)
Ryan Thompson - $700k (pre-arb)
Colin Poche - $700k (pre-arb)
Ralph Garza - $700k (pre-arb)
JP Feyereisen - $708k (pre-arb)
Andrew Kittredge - $1.85m (arb)

Total = $8.47m

The Rays are doing Rays things, churning out an absurd number of pitchers of all types to just patchwork their way into having a very good pen. And their most expensive pen arm by a significant margin, Brooks Raley ($4.25m) is 9th on the list with 18 IP. They also have 2-3m in injured guys not listed above while Kittredge was just put on the 60-day DL in the last couple weeks.

So realistically only the Braves are spending significantly more on the active parts of their pen. The Yankees are spending a lot more, but most of it has been hurt and/or ineffective. And the Braves, for that matter, are getting a healthy amount of their best pen performance out of the less pricey guys. Meanwhile Tampa isn't spending because they never have. They just keep doing this crazy thing where they have a surfeit of pen arms to plug and play and have them be good. Practically their entire pen is inexperienced enough that they haven't even qualified for arbitration status.

Do the Jays need to fix their pen? Yeah. But this is not just a matter of "Throw money at the problem and it'll be fixed!" because they are spending about in line with the teams you contend have "solved" the pen dilemma when it comes to the guy seeing the most action (except the Braves).

What the Jays have failed to do that other good teams will do is replace the struggling arms with other ones until they find something that fits and works. Richards has been ass but is the most-used arm in the pen. Thornton is walking a tightrope right now where his ERA is good but the peripherals say it probably doesn't last. Garcia has been kinda down but there might be something there if they can figure out where some of his Ks went. Merryweather was the only other guy on that list that was a certified tire fire but he's hurt now so it's less relevant.

Mayza coming back should help. Gage probably deserved more run than he got . Stripling is actually probably better as a starter than a reliever.

If you could swap Richards for Pearson, Thornton for Mayza, and have Gage take Merryweather's spot that might actually be a decent pen.

Romano
Pearson
Cimber
Mayza
Garcia
Phelps
Gage
and I guess Stripling as your long-man/spot starter/opener/whatever

And it's a pen with 2 lefties in it too. Beyond that, maybe you call up some of the prospects who could look interesting like Hernandez when he's healthy, Hatch potentially, maybe Hagen Danner makes it up. Or maybe you find another Cimber or Phelps type guy who you can pluck from another team for an unwanted low-end roster piece or depth prospect. All accomplishable without throwing high-end capital at the problem. If Gage can't keep it up you sacrifice the extra lefty and put Richards back in to a lower leverage role (he was mostly decent last season for the Jays and most of his bad career #s come from being a failed starter)

Good pens aren't about spending lots of money. They're about finding the things that work and churning the parts that don't. The Jays' problem has been that they won't do that second part. And they are about getting lucky or the voodoo of reclamation projects. Because some of those nobodies in the pens above that are succeeding now have been very bad in recent years. And then it clicks and suddenly things look a whole lot better. Like, for example, most of those Yankees names were on other teams and had one or more bad years and were probably thought of as nothing-burger, fungible pen depth. But now they're dominating.

When I talk about us ignoring our pen every year and not spending $ there, I'm talking in the overall strategic approach, in the macro sense. Certainly if we had a couple of young cheap power arms like the Rays do, our lack of spending there could be justified. But we haven't been able to develop those arms (except Romano) so we need to compensate somehow - either by trading some of our prospect capital for legit arms or by spending $$ on them in free agency. Instead, we just ignore the position almost entirely.

Here's what I'm talking about when I talk of Shapkins ignoring the pen:

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8.03% of our payroll is spent on our pen. Dead last in the league. Last year, it was 7.4%, 5th worst in the league. Note that the last 2 champions are spending 26% and 23% of their payroll on their pen - smart, successful orgs that have made the strategic determination that investing heavily in the pen is valuable.

It's a strategic approach where our management simply undervalues the worth of a pen.

 

[dredeye]

Irv Carter 3.2 IP, 6 K, 3 BB, 2 hits, 2 ER, 1 HR​

Is this about Ryu? You hope the Jays don't have insurance so they don't get a free 20 million back that they can use to make the team better? Maybe I misunderstood.

No it’s about Rendon. He was responding to my post