Moncado has been a league-average or better hitter in just 3 of 7 years and i believe ive3 read that there are some makeup issues there ... I don't really see the appeal or a reason to waste $ on what he offers. Just run Ernie out there.

Jays will need to place Hagen Danner on waivers soon if they can't work out a trade. He was designated Dec. 20 but there was a freeze during the holidays. I've seen other lesser arms get DFA'd and dealt for an asset in returned so I'll be very disappointed if Atkins can't get anything back.

Teoscar on the Dodgers approach versus (ahem) some other teams' approaches, per ESPN:

Hernández said he had offers from other teams that would have gotten him an additional $5 million to $6 million.

"For me, money wasn't an issue," he said.

...

He called the Dodgers "different" than other teams.

"They give me the confidence. I didn't get that really in other places," Hernández said. "They trust me in everything that I can give them. That was one of the biggest things for me, that pushed me to do the best job that I can do in a Dodgers uniform."

First Kiermaier's comments, now Teo's comments...the pattern strongly suggests that the Dodgers are simply a better-quality organization than the Blue Jays are.

I think the intangibles matter. Trust, feeling valued, quality of player preparation and scouting staff...it's not all about who can offer the most money. We saw this with Burnes as well.

Does Berrios feel trusted by the Blue Jays? Does Davis Schneider? Does Vladdy?

ehhh....i'd take those words with lots of salt.

it's about the money.

both his money personally, and the money he knows they're spending on the rest of the team to try and win.

I don’t see any reason not to take Teo’s words at face value.

never heard anyone say "yeah it was the money".

It would not shock me to hear that the organization that went 656-377 over the last seven seasons is a better organization than the one that went 518-514.

Good point. What I find interesting is that the Dodgers aren’t simply outspending other MLB teams on players. They seem to be elite in other ways as well (management, coaching, scouting).

Agreed Katie - shocking that a club that has 2 titles in the past 5 years, made the playoffs 12 straight years, was division champ 11 of those 12 (106 wins for WC the other) is doing stuff better than the Jays are. It is a lot like how the Jays in the 80's/early 90's were doing things differently than the rest of MLB with Cito showing confidence in White and others who other teams had listed as problems. If the Jays are smart they will be talking with anyone who was there who is willing to talk to them about changes the Jays need to make to catch up. 29 of 30 teams need to catch up to the Dodgers right now. Money makes a big difference there, but so does how they run things. Remember, Keirmaier said he never saw stuff like he saw there, and that includes one of the most forward thinking FO's in Tampa. Andrew Friedman was stolen by the Dodgers from the Rays for $35 mil over 5 years - a VERY smart investment on their part. If I ran the Jays and was thinking of getting a new team running things I'd be investigating the Dodgers front office for people who might be ready for a new challenge. The next 3 in line behind Friedman are Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer: Bob Wolfe, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer: Lon Rosen, Executive Vice President, Planning & Development: Janet Marie Smith. Those 3 I'd suspect all dream of being team president someday - you don't become VP without wanting to be the president. Also up there are Senior Vice President, Baseball Operations: Josh Byrnes, Vice President & Assistant General Manager: Jeffrey Kingston, Vice President & Assistant General Manager: Alex Slater. Josh Byrnes was the GM for Arizona 2006-2010, and for SD 2011-2014. With SD he drafted Max Fried (7th overall), and Zach Eflin (33rd overall), Hunter Renfroe (13th overall), and Trea Turner (13th overall) - not bad. With Arizona he took Max Scherzer (11th), Brett Anderson (55th), Wade Miley (43rd), AJ Pollock (17th), Paul Goldschmidt (246th, 8th round, sub $100k bonus), and Adam Eaton (571st 19th round). His last draft for Arizona sucked as his first 8 picks (rounds 1-8, 6th pick each round) failed to reach the majors - ouch - but taking Scherzer and Goldschmidt years earlier was more than enough to cover that.

So if the Jays do decide to dump the current front office there are a few names to look at as possibilities. AA went to Dodgerland after his time here as well. Certainly nothing wrong with raiding that front office imo, especially if the Jays are willing to spend money still. If they are going cheap then chase down Tampa's (people who know how to operate on a shoestring).

IMO Jays fans need to abandon the idea that hiring a new GM will bring about meaningful change.

The issue lies deeper than personnel—it’s the organizational mindset, which is rooted in a philosophy that feels like it belongs to a bygone era. The "flat hierarchy" the team embraces is less about fostering collaboration and more about preserving the status quo. In a lot of ways, it's the perfect shield for the people in charge to avoid accountability.

While I’ll give credit where it's due—there’s a certain irony in how long the current management has avoided serious scrutiny, especially considering the vast amounts of money in this industry—let’s not kid ourselves. I’m genuinely convinced that if you trained ChatGPT on basic baseball analytics, it could run the Blue Jays with the same level of success (or lack thereof) we’ve seen over the past decade. The strategy seems to boil down to best practices, minimizing downside, finding value plays, and treating relievers as fungible assets. If that's their formula for success, it's hardly revolutionary.

Mark Shapiro, in particular, seems obsessed with cultivating a "cool boss" persona. You can see it in moments like the video from the recent renovations, where he showed up in a plaid shirt and hard hat, trying too hard to project a down-to-earth image. He’s the kind of guy who’d show up to the office with a Tim Hortons cup and a “let’s keep it chill” attitude. But that image doesn’t hide the fact that the team's leadership lacks real innovation and vision.

At the end of the day, simply swapping out the GM isn’t going to fix the core issue: a front office that seems more committed to appearances than true change.

I hate doubling down on all the negativity (actually in a rare good mood) but I have to agree with all of the criticisms of this Blue Jays organization I’ve read so far in this thread. Hey, until this past World Series there was some doubt the “Dodgers Formula” could work in the playoffs (Covid Championship aside) and now they’re the toast of modern baseball and rightfully so. They’re not afraid to spend money in a game that is abundantly flush with it.

These Toronto Blue Jays are clearly not run like that. They’ve tried to toe the middle ground: “we’ll spend money on certain guys we really like, maaaaybe break the budget for players we have a complete long shot of getting, but otherwise stick to our internal evaluations on value and go on that way”

It’s a hybrid of big market spending (with a limit) and small market where you have to constantly develop young and cheap players to compliment the few high paid stars you’ve managed to keep. Which truly is the biggest failure of the Atkins regime the past few seasons: where are the young stars coming up in the next couple years? Hello? Is there anybody in there? A bunch of potential platoon bats and fringey starters is not what you want to hang your hat on as a player development system.

This is why (like many of you) I think we’re heading for a very bleak period of Blue Jays history. Going back to Teo’s comments, I believe there’s a strong measure of truth in there. The Blue Jays have been noted for how well they treat players and that isn’t nothing… but as far as optimizing their abilities? That stuff also matters, these dudes wanna win most of all, and I think this is where the Jays are so publicly not close to an elite organization.

I’m genuinely convinced that if you trained ChatGPT on basic baseball analytics, it could run the Blue Jays

OK, I'm going on a brief tangent here. ChatGPT — or any other LLM, or "AI" if you must — is utterly incapable of doing this, or any other job that involves creativity or reasoning of any sort. (Not that the VCs and other Top Thinkers would let you believe this.)

Without casting aspersions on anyone here: The mental model I try to instil in non-technical people is that LLMs are very fancy autocomplete. They're big corpuses of text (mostly English, mostly stolen, and which which included Batter's Box until I specifically excluded it from OpenAI because they were hitting us so hard) that can gin up a very convincing facsimile of human thought, one which we believe because we're also prone to thinking that, like, the wind specifically hates us when we're walking between tall buildings.

Current LLMs are based on "general purpose transformers" (the "GPT" in ChatGPT), which are a way of encoding the training so that LLMs can come up with those facsimiles of humanity. These transformers let the LLM work, and this is the most important part: LLMs generate the most likely text based on the preceding text and the prompt, nothing more. We just interpret that as reasoning because we're predisposed to do so.

LLMs ("AI") can't reason, they can't think, and they don't even really have a model of numbers (which is why you can get the wrong answer for very simple math questions by just changing the numbers in the question). We're a long, long way off from anything approaching the sort of decision-making ability that you'd need to do such a numerical and creative job.

Final aside: the only reason so much money's being poured into AI is because capitalists are in search of infinite growth. 3D printing wasn't it, and then crypto (bitcoin) wasn't it, so AI is just the next attempt. The key thing is that nobody's making money using AI, even though everybody's trying to integrate it. I expect the bubble to burst in the next few years. There's actually something of worth there, just like there's a kernel of value to both 3D printing and cryptocurrencies, but I truly don't believe it's the world-changing technology that billionaires want you to believe it is.

Thanks Joe for sharing your view in ChatGPT. It was very informative to me.

Good job from Bauxites to generate opinions on the Jays with so little activity.

IMO it would be cruel of me to remember/remind people of their opinions as the 2025 season progresses. Also the off season does not end until Opening day.

I have not expressed much of an opinion possibly because I am interested but not obsessed with what moves are happening and what moves should happen. Just my way of thinking.

I am currently very interested in our farm and what could happen in 2025. I made a list of SPs with what they throw using gameday for the Dunedin games. Also looking forward to any prospect lists which should be coming out in the next month. I really like Scot Mitchell. The Jan 15 Int'l signing period is soon.

First Kiermaier's comments, now Teo's comments...the pattern strongly suggests that the Dodgers are simply a better-quality organization than the Blue Jays are.

Neither player singled out the Jays with their pro-Dodgers quotes, with both suggesting the Dodgers were better than pretty much every team they'd played for. For Teoscar, that would include the Mariners & possibly Astros; for Kiermaier, that includes Tampa, which many people point to as a model for how a modern baseball team should operate.

The pattern at this point suggests the Dodgers are simply a better quality organization than anyone else in MLB, which is borne out by their record. They have truckloads of money and appear to be exceptionally well-run, both from a baseball and people standpoint.

Kiermaier was also very glowing about his time in Toronto, even saying he wanted to hang out with the team in spring training to continue his relationship with the organization.

Thanks, Joe. That was a really good and informative summary about AI.

Something occurred to me this morning. The Jays have spent millions renovating the ballpark and the spring training facilities. Now isn't it time to invest in the team?

If Vlad was on another club and he had a year like last year, wouldn't the Jays be actively after him? I know he's not in the Ohtani,Soto stratosphere but he is a star. I was kind of on the fence lately whether the Jays should try to sign him, but now I say, to heck with it. Negotiate a bit but give him what he wants and, at least, the team will have a cornerstone to build around. The contract would probably be an albatross in the future but you have to give fans some hope, and as salaries go up, even 50 million dollars a year won't be outlandish 10 years from now.

No stars want to come here to a last place team so sign the one who will and it won't cost draft picks or international spending money. If ownership has the resources ( and they do) to do massive renovations, then they have them to spend like a big market team. Tell the front office to get off their butts and sign Vlad. Don't bring in some geriatric, has-been slugger to try to replace him in 2026. There, end of rant.

I don't think so. The Dodgers typically play worse than the individual records would suggest.
They have been very bad in the playoffs until last year.
Their highly ranked prospects almost never live up to expectations.
Their starters have more than their share of injuries.

It seems to me that they are a media darling.

It's not just the money. Going to a team loaded with superstars who always finish first in their division has some appeal.
They finished second in 2021, but with a 106-56 record.
The last time they finished second before that was in 2012.

AFAIK, the GPT in ChatGPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Totally agree with the rest.
I think ChatGPT is openAI version 3.5 and CodePilot is version 4.0. It's licensed by Microsoft who excels at obfuscating through marketing.

The Dodgers were voted best front office in MLB, based on The Athletic’s poll of 40 execs and coaches in the game.

Short excerpt from the Dec 30 article:

‘One executive described a first-place vote for the Dodgers as “self-explanatory. They are elite at everything.” Billy Gasparino, the scouting director recently promoted to vice president of baseball operations, has drafted well despite picking in the latter half of the first round every summer. The farm system continues to churn out prospects. The roster tends to be well-managed.’

I downloaded the raw statcast data for the young pitchers in Dunedin after I watched them pitch in games (via milb.tv). Between those viewings and what I saw when I compared their four-seam fastballs and best secondary offering, this is how I'd rank them:

SP
1. Luis Torres
2. Colby Holcombe
3. Gilberto Batista
4. Daniel Guerra

Future RP
1. Eminen Flores
2. Cristopher Castro

I compared their pitching results to Fernando Perez, who is generally considered the best young Latin player in the Jays system (although I feel he's overrated)... other than superior control, his stuff doesn't really play much better.

Data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S_M92z0FphwDLB1gWl8dYYDgWKKY3jrqN4E1EILyuSE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Incidentally, 16 teams received votes in The Athletic's poll about the best front offices in MLB (those polled were asked to rank the top five front offices in the game). The Blue Jays front office did not receive any votes.

Marc is clearly not an LLM.

I’d like the Jays to take a chance on Diego Cartaya if the price is reasonable as Kirk is 2 years away from free agency.

Dodgers are likely looking for international signing pool money for Cartaya (for Sasaki). I doubt the Jays would be willing to part with much of their pool but you never know...

greenfrog is your point that the Dodgers are a very good front office and run a team incredibly well? Anybody disagree?

Or it is to show that they are a better run team than the Jays (or any other team)? Anybody disagree?


Comparing the LAD and TOR is a bit pointless to try to show how The Jays are inferior. Let's pick the team with the biggest budget, Championship, biggest free agent signing last year, biggest spend on imports, etc etc and compare them to the local team who is at their lowest and then grade them. Might as well wait for the Jays rebuild when you can make an evebn stronger case that this front office isn't good compared to the LAD.

Agreed 85bluejay - if the Dodgers are about to release Diego Cartaya (just removed from 40 man) then I'd certainly be asking what they want for him. In 2023 he was a top 20 prospect in all of MLB (via all of BA/BP/MLB.com), gotta think there is value there still. Doubt they'd do it purely for IFA cash, I'd rather trade other stuff (lower level prospects for example). From what I'm reading he seems to only have 1 option left but has reached AAA so he could apprentice there, be a call up if someone goes down, but very much not worth giving up much for right now. There is an old rule though - be very careful when trading with smart organizations as you could get your butt handed to you. Tampa is infamous for it, Gillick was the ultimate master (playing chess when the rest of the majors was barely playing checkers).

Cartaya is exactly the type of player the Jays should be targeting. Good chance he’s a bust but he’s still very young and sometimes you get lucky with struggling former top prospects who get a change of scenery. The Jays are very shallow in catching depth at basically every level.

I don't think we should let inflated job titles confuse us - just assume that anyone who is talking about changing "the GM" or "the FO" is talking about changing shapiro on down.

"OK, I'm going on a brief tangent here. ChatGPT — or any other LLM, or "AI" if you must — is utterly incapable of doing this, or any other job that involves creativity or reasoning of any sort."

the idea here is, i think, that this FO isn't using much creativity, but are doing little more than using a basic model to identify value.

Yeah pretty much it all boils down to Shapiro. Shapiro is the AA replacement and Atkins is just one of many planets orbiting the sun that is Shapiro.

Agreed uglyone - if the FO is going to change it should be a full change. I'm not a big one on it unless things are as bad as some suggest it is in the back which we cannot see. If Vlad and others are flat out refusing to consider staying then that is a massive issue that needs to be dealt with. If they aren't then they need to get someone signed to prove it and move on. 10 years seems to be about the limit nowadays for most front offices, it is rare to get guys like Cashman who has run the Yankees for nearly 30 years now - but he certainly has earned that.

Cheers for the correction, scottt! Generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) are types of transformers, which is how I got confused. (Not an ML expert, and obviously a skeptic.)

If ownership has the resources ( and they do) to do massive renovations, then they have them to spend like a big market team.

I agree, but isn't this exactly what they've been doing? They only got under the first CBT threshold by a whisker last year, for example (and were spending over it until the trade deadline). Shapiro has clearly excelled at part of the Dave Dombrowski playbook: just get the owner to spend money, and so even if a front office rebuild is necessary (who knows? I'm not in those conversations!), I'd be in favour of holding on to Shapiro at the top level.

Shapiro is the AA replacement and Atkins is just one of many planets orbiting the sun that is Shapiro.

Only thing is that Shapiro has said that baseball decisions are done by Atkins, and that his focus has been on facilities and ownership-level things (and, evidently, on signing his name to letters written by disgraced city councillors).

Didn’t Shapiro play an active role in the 2024 trade deadline moves?

Shaprio has said that Atkins handles baseball decisions but everybody else ... reporters, agents, players and even Shapiro himself (in interviews) has said he is involved IN EVERY decision and ultimately pulls the trigger on each decision. Sounds like Atkins does the day to day and brings options to Shapiro (of course after getting directions from Shapiro) and then Shapiro makes the choice.

Shapiro: "We have up to 80 million to spend but I don't want to spend more than 30 unless it's for Soto. I don't want Alonso. Let's do this!"

Atkins: "Okay so I met with the agents with the rest of my front office team and these are the agents interested in signing here and what they want..."

*numbers are reviewed, analytically etc. Then Shapiro responds with what he wants to do.

------- End free agency project


------ Repeat the same process for drafting team and all other teams.


Shapiro acts as the director/president

Deep in his core Shapiro believes in "collaborative decision making", which involves as many voice as possible, which most definitely includes his voice.

I too heard that Shapiro was going to play a more active role in the 2024 trade deadline.

Joe, I understand where you're coming from, but in the spirit of combating disinformation. Two of your criticisms are out of date: 1. OpenAI o1 and forthcoming o3 have reasoning models embedded in them. 2. The math issue has been solved and you'd see this if you've played with any recent LLM. The workaround is to generate code (usually Python) and use the code to solve math problems. LLMs now routinely outperform humans on some of the most difficult math problems. 3. Judging the creativity of AI and what they're capable of is slippery. What is creativity? LLM models can be made to seem more creative by turning up a parameter known as temperature which biases them to settle on solutions that are lower probability. I don't have a good definition of the creative process and I don't think anyone does but organized low-probability-shaped randomness seems as good a formal definition as anything. Do I think an AI could run a baseball team, no. But like with coding, writing, using an AI fine-tuned on baseball data, strategy, analytics, and heck even coaches/scouts descriptions paired with a knowledgable user? I'd bet on that combination outperforming a GM that completely ignored the technology. Even if it is used for brainstorming or adjusting biases that all baseball ops people have. (See hybrid chess or go, which was thought to be impossible for AI just a few years ago). I have some skepticism on whether LLMs will take off as a business case, but as someone who codes (and took a class by Geoff Hinton who just won the Nobel Prize), AI makes mediocre coders much better and improves efficiency. Even if all they do is improve software that is a big win that some companies will cash in on. In general, over the last three years, the criticisms of even very informed skeptics (i.e., Gary Marcus) have looked silly approximately every six months. Will the LLM approach hit a wall performance-wise? Yes, it likely can't scale in definitely, but hybrid models are already here and they're only going to get better.

Christaylor, please don't confuse OpenAI's marketing with truth. "Reasoning" is a buzz word.

As I said, I'm not an ML expert, but I am a professional software developer and manager with a background in mathematics, and what I'm saying is that due to the fundamental nature of the current crop of LLMs, all they're capable of is fancy autocomplete on a gigantic corpus of text, some of which, as you noted, is programming languages python or other programming languages. That's fundamentally what a transformer does. (I'm sure you know this.) Saying "you can generate code that, when executed, gives you the right answer" almost makes my point for me.

This is getting increasingly off topic, so I'll leave with this: until something more fundamental changes with the technology, I'm expecting the output of this AI bubble to billions of wasted dollars emitting gigatonnes of carbon so that people can generate plausible-seeming text quickly, but which solves almost none of humanity's problems.

"This is getting increasingly off topic, so I'll leave with this: until something more fundamental changes with the technology, I'm expecting the output of this AI bubble to billions of wasted dollars emitting gigatonnes of carbon so that people can generate plausible-seeming text quickly, but which solves almost none of humanity's problems."

Word. "Billions of wasted dollars emitting gigatonnes of carbon" is my "open sesame" phrase. I'm not much interested in baseball or the Blue Jays these days, but this insight deserves a positive baseball thought from me. I think that Alejandro Kirk is an under-rated player on the home nine, and I'd love to see him signed to a five year extension now.

He was a pretty good hitter in the second half of 2024 and I think he'll be even a little better than that over the next 5 years. Steamer has him as a 4 WAR player over 425 PAs in 2025 with a 120 wRC+ and great defence.

Happy new year, everyone. See you in 2026, lord willing and the creek don't rise. Ha.

Mike Green - I agree 100% on a Kirk extension - he is a player who should be open to it, more so than Vlad or Bo due to not being from a baseball family (thus no intergenerational wealth) plus his bonus when signed was under $50k iirc. So, lets say, a 5 year $50 mil deal would set him up for life. His lifetime earnings are around $3.5 mil right now (BR) and going up by about $4 mil this year (Cot's $4.2 mil estimate). Heck, if I was the Jays I'd probably try for a 3 year guaranteed ($10 mil per on average), then 2 more team option years at say $15 mil per. Could work out as a bargain in the end, while giving him the security he otherwise doesn't have. Just fast gut feel numbers there, but fun to play with (ain't my money).

I'd also explore an extension with Varsho, but doubt he'd go for a strongly team friendly one right now.

Good to hear from you, Mike Green.

Bichette, Vladdy, Santander and Kirk could form a nice (if slow) nucleus of a lineup in 2025. Alonso on a short-term deal would also help.

Reds are getting Gavin Lux and the Reds are one FO that confuses me more than the Jays.

Seems the Reds want a team of infielders at times. Lux is mainly a 2B but probably going to 3B for the Reds (FG suggests) despite only 1 game there in the majors way back in '21. The cost was pretty low - a 37th overall pick (competitive balance pick) and the Reds 4th rounder last year (hasn't played as a pro yet).

The Sporting News used to be a solid paper for baseball but really seems to be into click bait now. Using a Bleacher Report rumor of the Jays possibly signing Jesse Winker to create a full article. Only twice in Winkler's career has he reached 120+ games played, a LF/DH with a lifetime 118 OPS+ he wouldn't be a bad part to add, a LH bat who averages 20 HR per 162 G. Appears to be a negative in the field on defense, but pounds RHP (276/379/462 lifetime) while sucking vs LHP (661 OPS). Said to be expected to get $2.4 mil for a 1 year deal that would work easily within the Jays payroll. Could mix/match him with Schneider in LF or DH. But given the source for the rumor I wouldn't give it much more belief than something anyone here says (no insult to anyone here). Santander they also see coming here (would be nice, but no prediction on price or years).

Given things are quiet, might as well check other rumors - they also see the Jays getting Tanner Scott for 3/$45 mil. Scott LH reliever, 22 saves 11 holds 2 blown saves in 2024, 55-67-20 lifetime. A solid closer who can be wild but doesn't give up many HR. Have trouble seeing the Jays spending that much on a closer, but it could happen.

They also predict Nick Pivetta will come here for 4/$60 mil. Not insane, but would be different - Pivetta has been sub 150 IP each of the last 2 years - very different from what the Jays traditionally chase in starters. But he could be a damn fine #2/3 guy in the rotation (high K, low BB, high HR rate).

Fun to dream, Santander & Winker would help the lineup a LOT, Scott would give us that lock down closer we needed last year and for 2025. Pivetta a solid rotation piece as long as the pen is ready to go when he starts. Sign all 4 and the Jays would have 2 QO to pay for (2 draft picks, $500k from IFA pool) in addition to the raw dollars. But this would address all the major issues except for 3B (Clement should be adequate). Maybe we'll get lucky and they do all of it, but that'd add $20 mil (Santander), $15 mil (Scott), $15 mil (Pivetta), and $2 mil (Winkler) = $52 mil+. Cot's has the Jays at $222.7 mil for payroll tax purposes now, this would push them well into the 2nd tier of the tax and in eyeshot of the 3rd. They could do that, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Oakland extends Rooker for 5 years.

Yup Bleacher Report and the Sporting News are no better than random Twitter reports from people looking for attention.

I find Pivetta to be a difficult add for various reasons but mainly due to the loss of draft pick compensation and international pool money. He's just not worth it... He'll likely end up with a one-year deal on a team that doesn't care about spending as much in those areas.

Of course, in the position the Jays are in (I dont see a path to contending in 2025), Santander doesn't move the needle enough to give up $$$ in those areas, either. Especially with the Jays getting a larger pool this year which could help them restock the cupboard.

I could see Pivetta as an option if they sign Santander. From what I've read signing a second QO guy only costs your 3rd pick, it is the 1st signing that costs your 2nd and $500k international pool money. Over 51 picks in the 3rd round the Jays hit gold twice - John Olerud & Jimmy Key, plus a few solid's in Shaun Marcum, Adam Lind, Jake Marisnick, David Weathers. So 10+ bWAR 6 times, just twice over 20. Olerud was a very special case (no one thought he'd sign, but Gillick spent time, money, and guaranteed ML call up immediately to get him - that last one could not be done today while cash is limited by the cap). The most recent of those was Marisnick (2009) so losing that 3rd pick isn't that big a deal imo - about a 1 in 10 shot of getting something of real value vs someone who might be a solid starter for 2-3 years.

Yeah, I don't know why Pivetta didn't just take the QO and look for a multi-year contract after that.
Fear of not being able to maintain his results?
I like that Stroman actually accepted his QO. that didn't limit his ability to sign a contract later.

Teams have agreements in place very early so I'm not sure the international money matters as much as the lost draft picks.
They are desperate for a middle of the order bat. Santander moves the needle a lot because without him, they will have problems scoring runs. They have many guys who could be very good in the bottom of the order but who can't be counted to produce when the other teams focus on them.

Yeah I don't see how you can say Santander doesn't move the needle. He'd be the first power bat and clean up hitter this team has had since when, three years ago? This team has lots of defense and little offense...I'd say Gimenez moves the needle a heck of a lot less than Santander for this team. If you're looking at WAR and individual value then sure, different story but that's not what signing free agents is about.

If the Blue Jays aren’t going to trade their impending FAs for prospects, they should at least make an effort to go for it in 2025.

Marc, do you think Yesavage could be a contributor in the second half of the season? It sounds as though he’s already pretty polished.

Per Hector Gomez: “The #BlueJays have showing interest in Jose Quintana. Talks have intensified recently.”

Ok, hands up - who had the As being way more active and spending more $$ than the Jays?

SK in NJ - weird rumor there - Jose Quintana doesn't appear a good fit to me. He is an inning eater, not an ace.

jays need innings eaters.

i'm still annoyed if the offseason is focussed on bats over arms tbh.

kinda sabotages their whole apparently impressive trade deadline performance where they added a whole bunch of near mlb ready bats. sign a couple of mediocre free agent bats and then suddenly there's no room for any of the internal guys. and if you're not going to use those guys then we should be trying to trade them for arms.

They do have some interesting bats in the minors but they aren't going to bat any of these guys in the middle of the order.
Not having a cleanup hitter puts pressure on all the hitters and on the starting pitchers.

For a hockey analogy, it's not like missing a scorer on the power play, it's more like playing the whole game with a guy in the penalty box.

I'm not sure interest in a soft-tossing, 36-year-old hurler - who hasn't been around the AL offenses much at all in his career - is anything less than an admission that this club isn't going to contend in 2025.

To answer the question about Yesavage... he threw fewer than 100 innings in 2024... if you add 30-40 or so innings to that, it puts him at 120-130 for 2025. I can't see him getting through A+/AA/AAA to Toronto in time to pitch meaningful MLB innings. Plus Toronto hasn't had much luck developing pitchers (and keeping them healthy).

Looking at the rotation the Jays were 11th in innings for starters in 2024 despite a hurt Manoah going under 5 IP per start for 5 starts, and Yariel Rodríguez being on a strict pitch limit thus rarely getting a shot at 5+ IP. Plus the Jays lost Kikuchi and his 5.25 IP per start. The big 3 all had 170+ IP (Gausman-Berrios-Bassitt) and Francis is a lock for the rotation with his just shy of 6 IP per start last year, I'd expect more this year. Those 4 should be 170 IP each, which means you can afford a good 5 IP starter in the 5 hole. Quintana is another IP guy. Nice as it would cut down the innings for the pen, but I think going for a guy who throws higher quality innings would be nicer.

FYI: Looking at the charts above you can see the Jays rotation in 2024 was damn fine vs all past Jays rotations. Just 10 pitchers were used - we all know the top 7 (Berrios-Gausman-Bassitt-Kikuchi-Rodriguez-Francis-Manoah) while the last 3 were Burr-Richards-Espino for 7 starts going 13 2/3 IP total (sub 2 IP per start) yet somehow getting fWAR of 0.4 out of those 7 starts (I was surprised) or a 1.82 pace over 32 starts - so basically they were average starts that just happened to be a bit (OK a lot) short.

Latest report from Bob Nightengale says if Jays don't re-sign Vlad he is expected to want to join the Red Sox next year. He ays Vlad is now asking for more than 450,000,000 while the team has offered 350,000,0000.

Soto got 51,000,000/year average. At 10 years the high end of Vlad's ask is 45,000,000/year. At 15 years the low end is 30,000,000/year/ I am guessing the Jays are offering 30 million/year for 10 and he wants 40 million/year for 10.

Is it really that challenging to just meet half way to 2/3rds and pay him 35-37.5 million/year which would give him a 20%+ increase over his buddy Devers? It also puts him 20% lower annually than Soto.

In a perfect world I'd let him walk if I had a team that could survive without him like the Braves and Astros and Cardinals have done in the past. Shoot, sucks to have a crappy front office pooping the bed because right now this team is on the edge of collapse and it's insane to even risk losing Vladdy. Sign him, Santander or Bregman and a closer...

The Nightengale piece (he's never been overly reliable) comes out the same week Vladdy is set to meet in person with the Jays and discuss contracts.

Plus he cites Bichette's and Vladdy's "friends" as his sources... is he really slamming back cold ones with their friends or is this a seed planted by an agent at a very convenient time, strongly linking Vladdy to an AL East rival with very little actual proof?

Vladdy career line in Fenway: .356/.432/.622 (206 PA)

It’s not hard to see why both the player and the Red Sox would be interested in discussing a free agent contract next offseason.

The offense needs ceiling raisers, not floor raisers.

But the pitching absolutely needs floor raisers. Any moderate health trouble on the pitching side and we're looking at disaster there.



back to the hitting side - some see Santander and his ilk as ceiling raisers, but for me spending big money on that level of hitter is more of a floor raiser and actually a bit of a ceiling limiter.

Rooker was a waiver claim pickup by Oakland in Nov 2022. He had a V good 2023 and a great 2024. We need some of our guys to break out. Oakland gave him a chance because they were not going to contend. Hope some of our kids get a chance. Maybe Barger can do it.

Ugly, Santander plays up BIG because of his switch hit tool and power. On this team that is non existent. I see him as a lighter, Vlad as a starter log, Bo as the kindling. If done right then the AAAA guys can be the embers. Right now the Jays are missing the fire starter.


Orioles had Santander, Rutschman, Henderson and Holliday as LHH with pop. Ryan O'Hearn (5th best) is better than what they Jays have had since Adam Lind.

NYY had Soto, Chisholm and have added Bellinger and Dominguez.

Boston has Devers, Casas and possibly Duran who had a good year.

TB has Brandon Lowe andJosh Lowe.

Toronto has Lukes, Loperfido and Wagner...

You want to talk about raising the floor on low hanging fruit power and line up balance...

Marc,

Where did you hear that Vlad is meeting the Jays brass this week? I also agree Nightengale's piece sounds like a bunch of BS from agents rather than friends.

This front office has already made a big show on whiffing on superstars.

Whiffing on bill-of-goods fake superstar Guerrero might be the best money they never spent.

The rotation needs a durable arm. It would have been nice if it was Burnes so the ceiling and the floor would both rise, but at this point the options are limited and/or come with a qualifying offer attached, so I can see the logic in trying to raise the floor with someone like Quintana. Not sure he's the one I'd target given his age. Feels a bit similar to Jaime Garcia in 2018, but an innings eater that can suppress hard contact and keep the ball on the ground on a team with great defense might work as a back end SP (barring age related decline). They would be banking on Gausman and Berrios being top of the rotation starters though, which I don't think either one is at this point in their careers. Maybe that's the logic behind doubling down on defense. I think trading for Matz (which I've seen mentioned a few times online) might have a bit more upside to it but that doesn't come with the durability factor that this FO clearly likes.

Dalimon - santander has good power and that's about it. Doesn't bring anything else to the table and even the power is most likely not as good as it looked last year.

For a different look - what about the guy the Yankees are trying to dump - Marcus Stroman? His K/9 has dropped to 6.6 last year, he makes $18.5 this year, $18 mil player option for 2026. If the Yankees are giving him up for nothing he'd be tempting. Especially given he right now would feel that fire lit under him due to being benched for the playoffs (was on the WS roster it seems but never used). A guy who was an All-Star who now feels disrespected by his old team might come in and do well. Kind of surprised by his career numbers - he only has 87 wins so far in a 10 year career. Kind of says something about how pitchers are used nowadays.

He's averaging 112 wRC+ with GF pegging him at 119 next year. If you go by that and OPS and WAR then you can argue he isn't that valuable but then you also have to argue that IKF, Nathan Lukes, Spencer Horwitz and Justin Turner are better, much better.

I think the results show that the numbers are misleading. The Jays have tried using a bunch of higher wRC+ and OPS guys who are cheaper and aside from Wagner and Horwitz in the 2nd half last year they have all failed and all been right handed.

Numbers do not represent the performance day to day only the totality. Since it is not a rotisserie league when it comes to batting stats the numbers are misleading. None of the numbers calculate contributions to actual wins, really.

With Santander you do get a different look. Protection is overrated (I remember a study in the 80's saying how great it was due to how well Dale Murphy hit with Bob Horner in the lineup, but when you looked closely you saw Murphy hit better without Horner).

That said, I see value in having a switch hitter between Vlad and Bo ideally. I'd see it as Springer (sigh), Vlad, Santander, Bo, whoever. (FG has it go Wagner-Kirk-Gimenez-Clement-Lukes after that with Loperfido as the LF batting 9th). So basically it is Loperfido and his projected 84 wRC+ vs Santander and his 119. That is a very big difference. Yeah, Roden projects better at 110 but odds are low the Jays put him out there to start and even if they do will it work out?

The Blue Jays roster is looking pretty bad at the moment. Seeing Springer’s name pencilled in as the leadoff hitter is depressing.

Lineup with Steamer projections:

* SS Bichette 118wrc+
* DH Wagner 117wrc+ / Roden 110 / Lukes 105 / Schneider 104 / Barger 103
* 1B Guerrero 155wrc+
* C Kirk 120wrc+
* RF Springer 109wrc+
* 3B Clement 103wrc+ / Barger 103 / Orelvis 96
* 2B Gimenez 103wrc+ / Jimenez 99
* CF Varsho 100wrc+ / Clase 85
* LF Roden 110 / Lukes 105 / Schneider 104 / Barger 103 / Clase 85 / Loperfido 84




with very good defense all around the diamond.

Last year the Jays were an averagish offense with Bichette amongst the huge disappointments (702 OPS on around a 704 OPS average, T17th in mlb, T7th in AL).

It felt worse than that because 2 years ago the Jays were an above average offense (746 OPS on around 735 OPS average, 11th in MLB, 6th in AL), and 3 years ago the Jays were arguably the top AL offense (760 OPS on around 700 OPS MLB average, 3rd in MLB, 1st in AL).

Looking at SP last year the Jays were averagish with a 3.95 ERA against a 4.00 mlb average (14th in MLB, 9th in AL). Again, this was a big step back as 2 years ago the Jays were a top starting team with a 3.85 ERA on around a 4.30 mlb average (3rd in MLB, 2nd in AL); however, 3 years ago the Jays were again sort of just a slight bit below average at a 3.98 ERA against around a 3.90 mlb average (18th in MLB, 8th in AL). The health of the pitchers was pretty good both of the last two years with most people being healthy and effective (outside of Manoah's effectiveness) - certainly better than average - so I agree the floor is not necessarily there depending a lot on health (but we do have some in house options for 5/6/7).

Looking at the RP last year we were horrible with a 4.82 ERA versus a mlb RP of about 3.96, so nearly a run worse (29th in MLB, 15th in AL). Rockies were the only team worse by RP ERA. White Sox the only other team with RP ERA over 4.5 even. By WHIP the Jays RP were only bad, not historically bad, with a 1.34 (24th) versus average RP WHIP of ~1.27. It was really the HR that cost a lot with 92 HR in 565.2 IP which is a 1.46 HR/9. This was a huge change from 2 years ago when the Jays were solidly above average with a RP ERA of 3.68 against MLB average of about 3.95 (8th in MLB, 5th in AL). 71 HR in 557 IP that year. 3 years ago the Jays were slightly above average in RP ERA at 3.77 versus MLB RP 3.84 (13th in MLB, 9th in AL).

So how much, compared to previous teams, was the lower offense and lower RP a fluke versus what we'd expect to happen? Obviously there is some turn over of team members over these 3 years, but the team has a fair amount of similarity of the core pieces. The starting pitching could catch fire and be like 2 years ago, but I think smarter money is that being an over performance/good luck and that averagish performance is more what you'd expect. The bullpen needs to get back to average or better for the team to be average or better, and really to compete in the East you need not just all 3 pieces to be around average but you likely need a couple of them to be above average or one of them to be tip top with the others no worse than average to be fringe competing. For instance Dodgers were 1 in hitting, 4 in RP, 19 in SP; Atlanta was 3 in RP, 3 in SP, 12 in hitting; NYY were 3 in hitting, 6 in RP, 11 in SP. So just shooting for 3 averages doesn't do it, 2 tops/well above average, and 1 around average is what it takes to be the top sort of teams (obviously all 3 top would be even better).

Combine the offense of 3 years ago with the pitching of 2 years ago and we have a great chance. Don't address the RP weakness, and don't get lucky/skill on the others and we could be struggling again.

"Not to be a downer (okay yeah kinda) but those are some seriously optimistic projections. "

Not sure there's any reason to believe that the projections would be more optimistic about the jays than the other teams.

Michael i'd argue that those ERA numbers there significantly overstimate the quality of the pitching itself as the Jays were probably the best defensive team in baseball last year, and by a good bit.

I challenge you to take the 2024 projections and re-post them here for a more realistic perspective.

dalimon5 - I did that already, but for 3 years not just 1. You can read it here.

Yes the jays came in under the projections last year. In other years, they come in over.

Yes, the team doesn't look a ton different from how things looked at the beginning of last year. Good starting pitching, good to decent hitting, great defense. If the bullpen and Manoah turn things around and we get another bat, things could go very well. Also, let's not forget both Bichette and Vladdy are on walk years -- so they will be motivated to be very good all year.

As per usual I find a lot of prognosticators on this site to be quite dour (and I find myself mostly agreeing with uglyone when he says something with the tiniest hint of hopefulness.) Last year, the dour were rewarded with very lousy results, and I think that has encouraged them further. This year though ... who knows.

I was down on Vlad since 2022 but hopefully pretty much everywhere else. As it turns out Vlad has gone up and most of the rest of the team (and especially FO) have gone down or gotten worse. I don't see why I should remain optimistic since it's only gotten worse since the season ending with all AL East teams improving more than the Jays IMHO.

Verlander going to Giants apparently.Mightve been a worthwhile play for short term with playoff experience.

I'm sure at his age and stage of his career, Verlander does not want to play for a fifth-place team.

You know the Giants are a 4th-place team?

The Giants are the NL version of the Jays.

I suspect Verlander wants regular starts and a half decent offense so he can get a few more W's - he is 38 shy of 300 so that has to be his goal - get 10-20 a year until his arm goes bye-bye. He is entering his age 42 season so time is short. What cost him big time was 2020-2021 he missed most of those years injured otherwise he'd be knocking on the door of 300 (21 wins in '19, 18 in '22 - safe to assume around 20-30 more wins if he was healthy those other years). His stats last year though suggest the end might be near sadly. I'd love for him to have a solid bounceback year. Fun to cheer on old vets as they chase records.

Are they comparable?
The Giants just changed their front office and are cutting payroll.

They signed Chapman to be their clean up hitter.
And then Adames as their shortstop.
Their biggest homegrown hitter is Tyler Fitzgerald.

The rotation has 2 developed pitchers, Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison.

It's a lot easier to sign guys to play in San Francisco than in Toronto, but not because they are a playoffs bound team.

Boston is salivating for Vladdy.

https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-red-sox/2025/01/07/vladimir-guerrero-jr-rumors-boston-red-sox-toronto-blue-jays/?p1=hp_featurestack