Another Canadian Icon Traded - The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Thread

i don't get these last two moves. we already have some good right handed arms in the pen – why add Lowe? and we already have two speedy/meh-OBP outfielders in Pilar and Carrera (plus Saunders or Pompey could be back within a month) – why add Revere?

Boy, I don't mind Revere at all. I don't have a lot of faith in Bautista right now; he's probably still hurting, and when you mix in normal decline, he's pretty iffy in the three spot. I assume they're looking to get Tulowitzki or Donaldson in there and lead off with Revere.

Should note that I say that having no idea what they've given up to get him.

‏@JSalisburyCSN 3m3 minutes ago
Hearing the Phillies will get pair of pitchers, Jimmy Cordero and Alberto Tirado, for Ben Revere in TOR deal

.334 obp not bad really, these days

@jgoldstrass
To recap: 11 Jays MiLB pitchers traded. All position-player talent remains. (And, trust me, there are big-time arms left in the system.)

^^^class a lansing broadcaster

why not put him at false leadoff? having a guy like tulowitzki lead off is not a bad idea at all when edwin, bautista (old or not), donaldson, martin, and whoever's hot between colabello/pillar/etc at the moment are all behind him.

the closest thing to a big-time arm i can think of in the minors is possibly Jon Harris - this years first round pick. or *maybe* *possibly* Sean Reid-Foley, Dawson or Castro.

i saw harris throw his first pitches after signing as a jay. one of them was 95.

I don't mind Tulowitzki leading off at all; he'd do fine there. Watching Bautista and Colabello come up 3-4 last night wasn't pretty, though--they're both slumping badly. I'd just like to see someone other than Bautista batting third. (By false leadoff you mean bat him 9th, right?)

yeah exactly, meant ninth. i mean i am not entirely opposed to putting the "prototypical leadoff" guy first, but when you have that many guys who can just hit doubles and home runs, why put a guy with a lower obp who might steal in front of them?

my thoughts exactly.

Wow. If not for Trout, Donaldson would be right there for MVP this year.

tulo > donaldson > bautista > e5 is p sick

everything about the jays' lineup is insane; i hope it works out because it's worth a shot

and tomorrow i imagine Revere will be batting leadoff.

i guess the odds are against it -- as they're against everyone -- but srsly look at this fuckin team

if only they played on grass i could love them absolutely. (and if buck martinez had a different voice). it's close nonetheless

just need one of the new guys to wear 17 in tribute to wendel and let's go

should be playing on grass by 2018 apparently.

I wouldn't count on Saunders contributing after being out for the entire season. Anyone is better than Colabello on defense.

Do people really remember Henderson as a key contributor to the '93 Jays? At the time everyone knew he was underperforming, but the team was winning so there was only so much complaining you could do.

At the time, sure. The people I heard yesterday seemed to be younger, with no specific recollection of '93 (or too young to have any)--just "Jays got Rickey Henderson, went on to win World Series." Just in general, from listening to the call-in show a couple of times last week (a sure sign I'm back on the bandwagon), I was surprised how many people had never seen the Jays in the postseason. It was 22 years ago, though.

Is it just me, or does Bautista seem to be in a weird place right now? Some combination of Reyes' departure, his own slump and injury trouble, and (maybe) a sense that he's less central to the team now? I'm sure I'm reading too much into things, but he doesn't seem especially happy. Probably just the slump/injury and wanting to contribute more.

i recall him as more of a rental mascot that anything. tho he was still evil on the basepaths.

sooo - as a result of the Revere deal, Jays just DFA'd Valencia. which sucks because he has been great so far.

My favorite thing about Henderson was how WAMCO (White-Alomar-Molitor-Carter-Olerud) became HAMCO overnight.

Agree about Valencia--he's been real good with the bat this year. How many pitchers are they carrying right now? Didn't they have a reliever who was expendable, or have they already made that move?

... and Revere is batting leadoff! (Tulo has the day off though)

Is it just me, or does Bautista seem to be in a weird place right now?

I think he's been playing hurt all season, but even at 75% he's still really good. The offense is so great that I'm fine if he settles into the Joe Carter role (low-BA with power, not good enough to carry the team but always a threat).

So Valencia's gone and Kawasaki's here (and starting today)? I seem to be the rare person who's not enamored of Kawasaki. I take it he's their sole backup infielder, otherwise I don't get that.

I'm not sure why Buerhle came out after only 89 pitches, I guess Gibbons felt obligated to use all his new toys right away.

Then again, contending teams with real bullpens should be able to turn leads over to the 'pen in the 8th, and Lowe had only given up one homer all season. I guess we're still not that kind of team.

I don't like him - this new guy.

Geez, when I ducked out it was 5-1 Jays.

If we had time machines it would be cool to travel back one year and say that we saw Tulo pinch hit for the Jays in the 9th inning of a game against the AL champion Royals.

We lost today, but the game (and the series) felt genuinely important.

Definitely feels vintage. 1) Last night, after they won, I picked up a pizza and there was a table of five guys in their 20s sitting in the restaurant. For the first time in forever I felt like saying, "Hey, Jays came back tonight." 2) I just sat in a parked car listening to the bottom of the ninth. Again, first time in forever.

Put this one down to the law of averages--Toronto had one three in a row, KC had lost three in a row.

Just so I'm not second-guessing: don't press your luck--Dickey's been great, put someone else in for the 8th.

Daniel Norris and the Tigers are leading the Orioles 6-1 and the 7th, and the guy we traded for Norris is sitting against the best team in the AL on his normal start day.

I guess I shouldn't complain because Dickey is pitching well and we're winning.

Either the greatest or the worst baseball name ever: Cheslor Cuthbert.

Wild! Pathetic umpiring.

i was at a thing and didn't catch any of the game – was it really that bad?!

So I'm reading the post game tweets and Volquez sounds like a wretched human being. Pretty much admitted to throwing at Donaldson. Why the fuck were the umps asleep at the wheel for all of this?!

It was that bad. The first-inning warning was questionable, in terms of what it sets in motion; not following through on subsequent HBP/close-calls with Donaldson and Tulowitzki was worse; ejecting Sanchez was preposterous.

what was the deal with throwing at Donaldson intentionally anyways? he had hit well so far this series so, they decide to bean him and then throw at his head? wtf?!

Yeah, it was bad. Gibbons getting tossed also made no sense -- the Royals were throwing at his guys after both benches had already been warned, what was he supposed to do? Talk about blaming the messenger.

The Jays are now running nine games behind their Pythagorean record (54-52 vs. 63-43). Their run differential is 561-455. How does that happen?

1) As they said many times on-air this weekend, they're 11-23 in one-run games.
2) Looking at all those green and red bars on Baseball Reference, they've lost one game this year by more than six runs (12-3 to Tampa in April). They've won ten such games.
3) Baseball Reference counts a blowout as 5+ runs. They're 22-6 in blowouts.

Oakland is running 10 games behind their Pythagorean. I'm guessing it's really rare to have two such teams like this in the same year.

did they Jays do this last year too? can some teams just be more prone to have a better pythagorean record without an expectation of a correction?

The record of a 14+-game differential ('93 Mets) seems to be out of reach. There's a list (compiled in 2007) of the biggest differentials here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3APythagorean_expectation

Teams that under- and over-performed are mixed together there. Teams with winning records near the top of the list are made up exclusively of teams that over-performed. If I'm reading correctly--the numbers are in a jumble--the Jays have a chance to be the worst under-performing winning team ever; right now it's the '70 Cubs, who won 84 games and should have won 94 (806 runs scored, 679 given up). Or we may start winning one-run games, or we may start losing some blowouts. I think I'd like to start winning one-run games and leave the Pythagorean record to the Cubs.

(xpost) Just barely--they won 83, Greek math says they should have won 85.

Patheticer and patheticer.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/blue-jays-sanchez-gibbons-suspended-by-mlb/

(I did wonder about Gibbons showing up on the field in the middle of the brawl--suspected that was a problem.)

Gibbons makes sense. I guess Sanchez does, in a technical sense. But there are more or less doubling down on the bullshit joke officiating.

I'm not big on conspiracy, but the radio guy pointed out something a little unseemly today: the umpire responsible for all this is the brother of Randy Wolf, who has been stuck in Buffalo all year with a 7-1/2.48 record. Would seem to be a conflict of interest.

I thought that was weird. But not sure how that would make him biased against the Jays tbh

It doesn't seem out of the question, as the Jays shuttle guys back and forth from Buffalo, and then acquire another reliever at the deadline, that he'd be angry that his brother--who's pitching really well this year--has not gotten a call-up. (Not that I disagree with the club; Randy Wolf will turn 39 in a couple of weeks.)

I looked him up online, and the league doesn't allow him to call balls and strikes when his brother's pitching (but didn't say he can't work the bases). I'd broaden that to anything involving any game with his brother's organization.