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Blue Jays Discussion: The trade deadline has passed. Time to see what this can do (most acquisitions expected to be present Thursday in Minnesota)

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canucksfan said:


Looking at the schedule and standings I doubt the Twins will make it. Sox have a chance but need to go on a run. I’m hoping the O’s decline because that would mean a good path for the Jays to make it. The key for the jays is they need to do well against the easy part of their schedule during this stretch.
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Seattle's final 20 games are kind of a joke.
I would bet on them finishing WC1 right now.

Screenshot (398).png
 
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Eyedea said:
Their contracts don't exactly overlap. It was the sunk cost fallacy in Roark that ended up having them not re-sign Walker (and opting for Ray/Matz instead).

Knowing that Ryu's down for basically the entire season next year, and the Jays were already very aggressive in targeting Freeman/Schwarber after adding Gausman, I think the Jays still have room to sign/acquire an impact player this offseason.

Edit: Verlander also almost signed with the Jays last offseason.
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god, if only. if only.
 
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Assuming the Jays capture a wildcard spot, each potential team they're projected to face has got to be some of the most annoying clubs to play against. Tampa (historically pesky), Seattle (they walk a lot), and Cleveland (they don't strikeout). Still not sold on Baltimore catching up to the pack with their starting pitching.
 
Eyedea said:
Assuming the Jays capture a wildcard spot, each potential team they're projected to face has got to be some of the most annoying clubs to play against. Tampa (historically pesky), Seattle (they walk a lot), and Cleveland (they don't strikeout). Still not sold on Baltimore catching up to the pack with their starting pitching.
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I would like Seattle. That would be a neat series. I don't want the Rays. Hate their ballpark.
 
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Eyedea said:
Does he even get a start in Seattle? Castillo-Kirby-Gilbert might be the go to SPs.
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There's no way they wouldn't. I'd assume Kirby would go to the bullpen - way too big of a clubhouse issue to be pulling your Cy Young veteran in favour of a rookie when their numbers are that close (and basically identical since Ray's bad April).

Man, is their rotation stacked.
 
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Since July 1st;
Ross Stripling: 1.2 fWAR | 2.41 ERA - Team record 5-3
Kevin Gausman: 1.2 fWAR | 3.12 ERA - Team record 4-4
Alek Manoah: 0.6 fWAR | 3.67 ERA - Team record 3-6
Jose Berrios: 0.5 fWAR | 4.47 ERA - Team record 8-2
Mitch White: 0.4 fWAR | 3.34 ERA - Team record 4-3
Yusei Kikuchi: -0.4 fWAR | 6.75 ERA - Team record 1-4

 
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phillipmike said:
Since July 1st;
Ross Stripling: 1.2 fWAR | 2.41 ERA - Team record 5-3
Kevin Gausman: 1.2 fWAR | 3.12 ERA - Team record 4-4
Alek Manoah: 0.6 fWAR | 3.67 ERA - Team record 3-6
Jose Berrios: 0.5 fWAR | 4.47 ERA - Team record 8-2
Mitch White: 0.4 fWAR | 3.34 ERA - Team record 4-3
Yusei Kikuchi: -0.4 fWAR | 6.75 ERA - Team record 1-4
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It’s gonna be funny when Berrios leads the Jays in wins with the worst ERA.
 
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Fun exercise that we do every competitive Jays' cycle: Make a realistic but bold Alomar-Carter for Fernandez-McGriff kind of trade with this roster to put us over the top.
 
Maybe I'm high off my own supply but I think Cleveland is primed for a deep run.

The term is overused a lot but they're scrappy as shit. Like Eyedea said, they don't strike out. All of their hitters, while not particularly intimidating outside J-Ram are all incredibly strong fundamental guys where they will make your pitchers work their asses off which usually ends in a bloop hit.

They hit well for contact, can work the count, steal bases at an aggressive clip and are backed up by an great pitching staff and elite bullpen. Teams who can manufacture runs are the ones who generally get stuff done come October and Cleveland does it better than almost anyone. Not to mention the guy steering ship has been there done that in Francona.

Of the three options I think I'd want to face the Guardians the least. I legitimately would rather have home field against the Rays or face Seattle than that team.
 
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ktownhockey said:
He was so bad that we helped us win a world series :)
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Nobody's saying Jack Morris was bad. Merely that his perceived talent level was boosted by the fact that he won a lot of games and people tend to conflate team success with specific individual performance.

Jack Morris won a ton of games because:

a) he was a pretty good pitcher

b) he spent most of his career on pretty good Tigers teams (including the 1984 WS winners) along with mercenary stop-overs on the WS-winning 91 Twins and the back-to-back champion Jays (he is inconsistently credited as winning the 93 WS in spite of not pitching in that post season after a terrible regular campaign)

c) He received a fairly strong amount of run support from those good teams

and

d) He generally pitched a ton of innings, leaving him in games for longer and giving him a greater chance of being the winning pitcher.

Basically all of his HOF candidacy and major modern plaudits rest on the fact that he won several world series and racked up a ton of wins. But this ignores that outside of that he was very good, but not that good. He was only an all-star 5 times. He never won a Cy Young nor finished higher than 3rd in the voting. His only times leading the AL in a major pitcher stat that wasn't wins/IP/starts were a year where he led qualified starters in walks and a year where he led in strikeouts (which was also the year he led in IP and batters faced and wasn't even his best year by K/9). If you look at Jack Morris' results based on individual performance he probably shouldn't have been a HOF pitcher. He didn't significantly prevent runs on his own (and the idea that he "pitched to the score" has been researched heavily and found lacking) and he was never the kind of dominating mound presence that's usually identified with HOF-caliber pitchers.

Heck, it's been pointed out that his HOF case sort of initially limped along, getting decent voting traction but never threatening the admissions threshold until he and Bert Blyleven became the pitcher flashpoint in the sabermetrics debate. With Blyleven identified as the pitcher emblematic of the limitations of traditional stats and whose career was grossly overlooked because he didn't rack up wins or WS victories, Morris became the traditionalist rallying point, hyping up his gritty, gamer, intangibles-laden nature and spinning the narrative of him as this magic victory totem who breathed in oxygen and exhaled winning in concentrated form. when the SABR war hit its early peak, Morris' HOF vote totals rose, buoyed by curmudgeonly writers who were going to put a "real" pitcher in the HOF over spreadsheet nerd hero Blyleven and his non-winning ways.

Honestly, a reasonable case can be made that Dave Stieb was a better pitcher than Jack Morris, he simply had the poor fortune to play for some garbage Jays squads in the 80s and see his career fizzle out due to injury. But because he didn't put up gaudy win totals or trudge through a slow decline phase where he continued to accrue IP and counting stats, he was one-and-done on the HOF ballot while Morris got himself within a hair's breadth of induction on vote totals before he aged out and was subsequently put in by one of the small standing committees that do special inclusions (including stupid special inclusions like Harold freaking Baines)

The point of that last paragraph is that most people probably wouldn't make a super strong case for Stieb in the HOF. He's probably considered mid to upper echelon "hall of the very good". And yet there's less that separates him from Jack Morris than separates Morris from his now-contemporaries in the hall.

None of this is to say he's not a good pitcher, or even a great one. He's just not nearly as good as he gets lauded for being if you stop associating his win totals with his personal worth/success as a baseball player. Wins are a team stat decided by total team performance. Crediting them to a single guy who doesn't even interact with half of the equation for earning victories is a disservice to accurately reflecting the impact that players have.

Further Reading

www.si.com

Revisiting Jack Morris's Controversial, Never-Ending Hall of Fame Debate

Jack Morris has become the poster child for old-school vs. new-school Hall of Fame debates. His candidacy gets another inspection, and it's plenty complicated.
www.si.com www.si.com

blogs.fangraphs.com

“The Cooperstown Casebook” Excerpt: The War on WAR

Read an excerpt from Jay Jaffe’s new book, “The Cooperstown Casebook.”…
blogs.fangraphs.com blogs.fangraphs.com

bleacherreport.com

The Case Against Jack Morris

Is Jack Morris a great pitcher? His 254-186 record is pretty similar to Hall of Famers Bob Gibson (251-174), Red Faber (254-213), Vic Willis (249-205), and Herb Pennock (240-162)...
bleacherreport.com bleacherreport.com

mopupduty.com

The Dave Stieb vs. Jack Morris Hall of Fame Debate

Hall of Fame voting is almost here, and again the case is being made for Jack Morris to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Jack Morris’ career is being compared to the careers of pitchers in…
mopupduty.com

I think there honestly used to be more easily available links discussing Morris' career and the reckoning htat occurred when the statistical revolution happened, but googling Morris now turns up more results for the firestorm surrounding his offensive antics in the Tigers' broadcast booth that got him suspended last season.
 
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