Mr. Biagini, Mr. Joe Biagini: The 2017 Toronto Blue Jays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFqov8a9iL4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdT8lnJL38

http://68.media.tumblr.com/bad035f5b3025fb5468e81b3e4af6821/tumblr_ocqx3frDcM1tx72cpo1_500.gif

Also works with Chris Cannizzaro, Bob Apodaca, and John Boccabella.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlOsnlnr33I

Bautista looks helpless up there--9 strikeouts in 19 AB this year.

ya. it's starting to hurt to watch him. he seems to still have an eye for the zone tho, and he looks p decent out there in right – so hopefully he'll start connecting soon.

Taking injuries into account, Bautista has never really had a bad year, at least offensively, since 2010. He was a bit spotty in 2016, but still retained most of his best qualities at the plate (BB% stayed excellent; ISO dropped off, but still close to 2013-14 levels) battling injuries. Who knows, could be looked back on as the beginning of the end or an anomaly. I tend to believe he'll have a characteristically strong year.

It was misleading of me to say he looks helpless--in the six or seven strikeouts I've seen, he's taking good hard swings. He's not being fooled or anything, they're just blowing fastballs by him. He's missing the ball.

Donaldson dinged, eh?

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2694301-josh-donaldson-exits-game-vs-rays-with-apparent-leg-injury

Do you give a damn about your bad reputation? I don't think i've been to a night game there...

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/toronto-the-rude-jays-fans-are-the-broad-street-bullies-of-baseball/article34641590/

i stopped going to the home opener years ago. too much of a shit show. i've never had a problem, personally, but i want to strangle half the people there. just general shit behaviour. i wouldn't qualify it as dangerous tho.
tho, nothing i have ever seen at a ball game has been worse than the time we saw the seven year old kid get called a little piece of shit at that yankees game.

yes, that was one for the books, TT.

Man. What a shit start.

Rational or not, seems like a textbook early-season managerial firing. Going to guess that Gibbons doesn't see May.

Every game except for one has been close though. The offense shouldn't be this bad, but it is an old offense (almost every regular is on the wrong side of 30) so a sudden collapse wouldn't be too shocking.

If the team starts 5-15 then Gibbons probably will be fired, but up until now this is more the fault of the GM and the cheap ass ownership.

.565 OPS

(xpost) Yes--they could just as easily be 5-2, and firing the manager is almost always just a we-have-to-do-something move. Between lingering disappointment over last year, the new regime, and the bad start, though, I suspect he doesn't have a lot of leeway. (The grumbling would be even worse if Edwin had gotten off to a huge start, but that's not part of the picture for at least the time being.)

That, and Morales is off to a decent start. Like Morbs said, you can only complain so much about the managing when the team OPS is 565.

Bautista will make adjustments and Russell Martin won't hit .000 all season long, but the offense fell off significantly between '15-'16, although it was partly hidden by coming down from such a high ceiling in '15 and the continued brilliance of EE and Donaldson.

well
we're fucked.

About the only thing they have going for them right now is all the attention on the Leafs and Raptors.

Anyone know how to use Play Index to generate a list of all the 1-8 starts in history? There must be one or two of them a year. I'd like to splash some cold water on a friend's belief that this is just a typical lackluster start for the Jays--I bet that, with very few exceptions, 1-8 starts lead to dismal seasons.

I'm interested in the awful-start idea, so I went ahead and (laboriously) answered my question above.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/index.html

They won today, which shouldn't really change anything.

Wow. Have to go back to 1983 to find a winning record.

I do think they're a lot better than their start because the pitching has been excellent (only four AL teams and two NL teams have allowed fewer runs). But those nine losses are in the books, so even if they're a 90 win team on paper and play at that level for the rest of the season, it still only gets them to 85 wins.

eric wedge is staring at his phone every five minutes

well
we're fucked.

(Sanchez AND Happ goin on the DL)

So when do the Jays trade 2LO and Donaldson?

A few minutes later, he told me that he plans to get a giant image of a lion wearing a crown tattooed on his chest. Before I could finish the word “Why?” he snapped his head in my direction and barked menacingly, “Because I’m the king of the fucking jungle.”

http://torontolife.com/city/life/home-josh-donaldson-blue-jays-resident-hothead

I was down there last night. My friend and I cut out after the 8th, missing the near-comeback. Felt completely uninvolved in the game. (xpost) I agree with Wilner--realistically, you have to tinker in baseball. A #1 draft pick won't save you, and unless you're willing to write off the next few years--negating all the reawakened interest of the past two seasons--a fire sale leaves you nowhere. The second wild card underscores that.

With two wild cards and a high level of parity in the game, nobody is more than two or three seasons away from contending. Unless your franchise is a disaster, staying the course and tinkering is the best strategy these days. With hardly any long term contracts on the roster, the Jays have plenty of roster flexibility, which isn't to say that the cheap ass owners plan to do anything useful with that.

i have to admit, i can't stop thinking about what a rebuild would look like. i'm excited to see how Vlad develops and beyond him, the Jays have some decent, good-but-not-elite prospects. Alford, Telliz, Urena, Gurriel, Foley, Bichette, McGuire, Zeuch etc – there's great depth there, although not a lot of "buzz"-worthy names. if they could add one or two top prospects at the deadline, i think we'd have a pretty exciting team in a few years.

seems like a "big" April win if they can pull this one out.

joey sombrero

he is making me, and my two year old, very sad.

I checked the boxscore last night just before turning in, and Bautista was 0-4 and down to .102--figured I'd be posting in the morning about his possibly historically brutal (for a player of his caliber) start. Surprise, surprise.

I listening to the whole thing.

I guess it's still early, but Pillar and Bautista are both at -0.1 dWAR for the season. Something seems fishy.

After last night, they've lost six games by one run and four by two runs.

I know Stroman's off to a pretty good start, but the ceiling on how good he can ever be over a full season would seem to be ordinary at best if he's striking out fewer than six batters per nine. Is there any starter who's effective nowadays with that kind of strikeout rate? In Fangraphs WAR list for last year, no one in the Top 30 had a K rate lower than 7.32; in the top 50 the lowest was 6.01, which is a little better than Stroman's rate right now. That belonged to Bartolo Colon.

Fangraphs as always been underrating that kind of pitcher (the groundout/sinker expert), something even they aknowleged at some point (covering Buerhle I think).

But then using fangraphs leaderboards, in k/9, Stroman isn't far away from Porcello, Quintana and Tanaka in 2016, I mean if he becomes that kind of ace over the next 3-4 seasons, the Blue Jays are over the moon.

Hard to say where he settles in--he's had two years over 7.0, one year between 6.0-7.0, and this year he's at 5.6. Maybe there are still (rare) exceptions, but Buerhle at his best goes back 10-15 years, and even there, he was ever one of the 10 best starters in the game? Maybe he grazed that list once or twice. I'd use Baseball Reference's list of last year's best starters for the same comparison, but their new design (which I hate) makes that difficult.

Maybe Stroman can have a Buerhle-like career, I don't know. I think he needs to keep his K-rate up near 7.0, though, to be anything more than a #3 starter.

("was he ever one of the 10 best"--transposition)

i've never seen a runner score like Coghlan just did! Leapt right over Molina (clipping him on the head).

That was unbelievable

Instant classic

Lovely.

Can't believe that worked

no bench for extras :/

I want to go to bed, but now I'm worried I'll miss some other ridiculous play.

Stroman pinch hitting. I can go to bed now.

goodbye?

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/is-this-the-end-for-jose-bautista/

will be at the game today. so i'll have seen the last game as a Jay for Halladay, Wells and Bautista.

Correction: just realized the Yankees series is here. So never mind what I just said.

Was that the last game before he was traded to the Phillies in the offseason or the last game when he came back for a day and retired?

Vernon Wells or David Wells? :)

We hear about this every TV broadcast in Toronto, but some notes on Ryan Goins' serendipitous RBI total (hit his second grand slam last night). He mostly hits 8th or 9th in the lineup, has just under 400 AB, and is hitting .228 with 8 HR. He's basically a terrible hitter--.225/.273/.330 lifetime--but will end up with 60-65 RBI this year.

Men On: 170 AB, .288/.330/.459
RISP: 95 AB, .337/.376/.558
Bases Loaded: 14 AB, .714/.688/1.214 (20 RBI)

Great send-off for Bautista: popped up in his final AB, but numerous standing ovations throughout the day, and he got to do the extended trot in, hugging every player along the way, when Gibbons sent out a defensive replacement in the bottom of the 9th.

Jose's 9th-inning exit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xseb-868_pg

Great moment.

I'm glad no one--Bautista, the other players (who let him take the field alone before the game), Gibbons--tried to keep up the pretense that he might be back next year. Bautista paid lip service to that idea post-game, but not in any serious way.

It's better left unsaid, and no team ever comes out and says that a player definitely won't be back.

It's too bad that in a different era, a player like him could hang around a bit longer as a power threat off the bench, getting 150 at bats per year. But with teams carrying 12 pitchers these days nobody has a bench anymore.

I think Teoscar hitting as well as he has the last few weeks has also really driven home the idea that Bautista’s time here is over.

he's unfortunately been Albert Pujols-level bad this year, too

which i guess at one point was a sentence i never thought i'd type

Donaldson has homered his first two times up against Sale tonight. The announcers said his 23 since the break is the most in either league--doesn't sound quite right (I would have thought Stanton has more than that).

How's this for a small-sample hot streak: his last five road games, Donaldson's 14 for 19 with 8 HR.

lol yeah Stanton has 31

One of the great finishes in team history: we spend the last day of the season not in last.

(To be clear, every single other day we were.)

We waited until the last minute with them last year too!

We beat out Baltimore on the last day of the season again!

So it was almost like making the playoffs ... almost.

The unplayoffs.

Apologize for unplayoff

Still basking in the wild success of the Troy Tulowitzki acquisition, the Jays are now thinking about Carlos Gonzalez.

Career:
Home - .323/.383/.593
Away - .252/.308/.427

2017:
Home - .323/.403/.520
Away - .203/.274/.332

Put aside whatever I've said about Arenado or Blackwell--at least those guys are in or even just entering their prime. The idea of investing in Colorado hitters past their prime falls somewhere between dubious and doomed.

Somewhere between dubious and doomed: The 2018 Toronto Blue Jays

That's good! Set it up.

By the way, by "Blackwell," I meant famed arbiter of fashion Mr. Blackwell, currently enjoying a comeback in Colorado.

Should they keep Donaldson, y/n.

I mean the AL is lost for the foreseeable future.

I'm not completely buying in on that. Last year's Stanton trade was the Sale trade, and the Red Sox were going to have by far the best rotation in the league. Guys get injured or underperform, stuff happens. The Jays have almost nobody signed past next year, they can easily sign Donaldson and keep adding pieces.

https://cdn.fangraphs.com/tht/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Pic-01B.png

vlad jr is gonna be so good

And there’s Bo too, not far away. 2021 cant come soon enough.

The Indians, Yankees, Royals, and Dodgers have had some success the last few years by loading up on bullpen arms and using a five-inning strategy. We're going to try the same things with spare-parts middle infielders. (Solarte looks pretty good, I guess.)

I doubt any of our new infielders can pitch as well as Goins tho. We’re fucked.

Is the Donaldson signing a wait-and-see move? Enough money that, with those two guys on their way, he'll consider resigning if they look competitive a year from now (if the Jays still want him, that is)?

That wasn’t an extension - they just came to an agreement to avoid arbitration.

I understood that, what I meant was that by avoiding arbitration they maintain a good-faith relationship, and there's at least a chance Donaldson will resign next year if Donaldson's still playing well and the prospects for 2019 look good. (Whereas an arbitration hearing ensures he leaves after this year.)

It's the typical running in place non-move that Jays management excels at. If they trade him now then it's a clear sign that they're punting the season but the same time they don't want to sign him to an extension and commit to being competitive. Gord Ash would have been proud.

I think most of the arb eligible guys have managed to come to an agreement tho, haven’t they?

And, in regards to running in place - in this case, I’m ok with it. I feel like they’re a league average corner outfielder and a 5th starter away from having a shot at the wildcard. They are going to have to decide at the deadline this year - are they competitive - or are they selling (Donaldson). Then they can suck for two years until the Tulo and Martin contracts are up, which coincides with Vlad and Dante Jrs being ready - ideally Sanchez and/or Stroman are extended and they can plug whatever holes we have with FAs in 21/22.

i think they ought to trade him now. he's a great player but he's also 32, and whoever signs him as a free agent is going to be paying for age 33-whatever. he also happens to play vlad jr's position.

zips projects the jays winning 83 games and being the first team out of the playoffs (albeit five games behind the second-wildcard angels). that's pretty good and certainly within the margin of error, so it would be hard to just punt on 2018. but if they could get a decent return on donaldson i think it still would be worth it.

on a completely different note: http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/01/11/doug-ault-and-the-triumph-of-joy

wow at all the snow on the field in that video!

sometimes I'm astonished at what teams will part with at the deadline for a rental, partial-season player. tho the market for a 3b would be more limited than OF or P, i still like their odds of getting a good return, should they move him in August.

that, and knowing what i know about Jays (non-hardcore) fans – dealing him in the offseason would cause a minor revolt. would be a much easier sell if they're having a repeat of 2017.

Will have to read that Doug Ault piece. I was sitting in Mr. Lightfoot's grade 11 history class, with three or four of us listening to a transistor radio (with his okay).

All of last year's great teams had, and still have, a lot of depth. The Jays don't have much depth, especially on offense. They might luck into a WC spot if everything goes right, but that doesn't happen most years.

If there was ever a year for throwing in the towel, it's this year. Trade Donaldson, get Sanchez healthy again, commit to Stroman, get in on next year's historically great batch of free agents, and get Vlad and Dante Jrs ready. We could have a kick ass team in 2019-2020. Instead they'll hedge their bets and fall behind teams that stuck to their plan all along.

I don’t think they’ll be able to spend much until Martin and Tulo are gone in 20/21

As I see it there is three teams that will fight for the wild card spot: Twins, Angels and Jays. That's a low amount of odds to get in a one play-off game against either the Red Sox and the Yankees. It does not seem really worth it.

IT IS WORTH IT WE HAVE SO LITTLE HERE!

Also maybe I should do a new thread...

I wonder if we could have gotten McCutchen. The two guys San Francisco gave up look pretty good. Obviously, I wouldn't want the Jays to give up Jesus or Godot.

Anyway, we are making moves:

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/22110273/toronto-blue-jays-announce-plans-extended-protective-netting-rogers-centre

They did... signed Granderson.

They've plugged the 25 HR/.220 hole left by Bautista.

Sooner or later the Jays front office is going to learn that every cheap player they sign on a flier doesn't always pan out.

But it might take another ten years of mediocrity for that to happen.