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By Mark Polishuk | at
Email a copy of 'Blue Jays Notes: Atkins, Shapiro, Price' to a friend
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bradthebluefish
Without Price, the Blue Jays should go hard after relief pitching to make up for their lack of an ace.
George
Consider that most of their early struggles last year were due to the pen’s inability to finish games, and a good pen is absolutely essential to what they want to do this year. It wasn’t until the addition of Hawkins and Lowe that the bullpen started to get the job done. With the absence of Mark Buehrle, the pen is likely going to have to pick up a few more innings, so they will have to be not only good, but deep.
Lifted Mind
This is absolutely disgusting. Ownership is a joke.
Shapiro has never accomplished anything substantial business-wise or on the field. Why hire him? Now you allow him to bring in Atkins and Wedge who were part of the do-nothing Indians under Shapiro’s watch.
Shapiro said there were “no bad choices….” in selecting from Atkins and LaCava. Then why not choose the guy with more experience in a GM capacity and is already familiar with the team. Obviously, Shapiro is looking to run all aspects of the team and Atkins is his yes-man.
I realize his first season with the Jays hasn’t even started yet but Shapiro is already rubbing me the wrong way. He comes off as a sleazy used-car salesman to me. I was willing to give him a chance, but him repeating was done in Cleveland is flat-out idiotic. It wasn’t successful. TRY SOMETHING NEW SHAPIRO.
basquiat
Shapiro thinks he’s smarter than anyone. However, he will try to copy things that successful teams have done. The problem is, he doesn’t understand how other teams build foundations for certain things to work within the overall strategy. He’s not a strategist. He reacts. In all the years he was in Cleveland, he never presented a clear plan of how he wanted to build a winning team.
burlhouse
Wedge now too? This gets more disconcerting by the day..
Hank Murphy
“Depth”, HA! Having a large number of bad pitchers isn’t depth. The Blue Jays have a poor rotation with the potential for awful depending on whether a kid of less than a full year of big league experience can step into a #1 role and a career mediocre pitcher can replicate a career season. The rest of the rotation is absolute garbage. Stroman, Estrada and pray for rain for three days doesn’t work when you play in a dome (and that’s the best case scenario.
rivera42
Agreed. The Jays rotation is “already strong enough to contend”? What is this guy, a comedian? Outside of Stroman, that rotation doesn’t even have potential. Dickey has one foot out of the door, Happ is a back-end starter, and it’s unlikely that Estrada repeats his career year. Not to mention, the high upside pitching in the minors was moved last year. I can’t see how the Jays don’t try Sanchez in the rotation.
cxcx
No potential is the most ludicrous thing you could say when Happ has possibly the highest potential upside over expected performance in baseball. He showed for a couple of months last season that he could pitch like a true ace even though he has spent his whole career demonstrating himself to be a below average pitcher. That is the definition of upside.
George
Have a look at Happ’s career. He has done his best when he had a good team behind him, as with the old Phillies, and the Pirates. Astros, Mariners, and old Jays, not so much. This year, he will have the best scoring lineup in baseball, and one of the best defenses behind him. Look for a good year.
Chaqvez has one of the best caught looking rates in baseball, mainly because of a very good slider. He put up those numbers last year in spite of pitching to one of the worst pitch framing catchers in baseball. Expect that to continue at a greater clip this year pitching to Martin, who is one of the best pitch framers.
Two pitchers have made mechanical adjustments as well. Estrada’s success last year was due to adding a 2 seamer, and Happ made adjustments to his body angle, etc., that accounted for his success at Pittsburgh. These physical improvements won’t go away, so we should expect them to carry through to this year.
Hutchison is a good pitcher who had a bad year. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t pitching through some nagging injuries. We don’t know what he will be like this year, but I have to give him at least a 50-50 chance of turning it around.
stormie
Dickey and Happ are absolute garbage? Exaggerate much? They’re perfectly serviceable mid-to-back end starters, and you can pretty much pencil in Dickey for 200 innings, which has value as well. The rotation is nothing special, but it will be no worse than last year’s, and when you have the best offense in baseball, that’s good enough.
Wolfy1980
The first mistake they made was not promoting AA to President.
George
Very interesting that Shapiro is taking the lead in discussing baseball matters. In the past, Beeston let AA do most of the talking, except a couple of times a year. We will have to watch and see what happens as the new front office settles in.
On an aside, I wonder if AA will show up at the Winter Meetings?
ryan5714
Shapiro, Adkins and now possibly Wedge?? I feel……SICK..the 2016 season is already a failure…