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By Steve Adams | at
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chesteraarthur
Not a good start for the jays
bigdaddyt
Jays are done they had a chance to be a wild card team but they blew it with this start… bullpen sucks, rotation is good but no depth and the bench is the worst in the league
jdgoat
While it is looking bad, they are in no case done. Every team goes on a stretch like this during the season, it’s just awful when it’s in the first week of the season. And the bullpen has by no means bin the problem, it’s 100% on the bats minus Tulo and morales
layventsky
Small sample size.
davidcoonce74
Yeah, the Cubs had a 1-6 stretch last season followed closely after by a 1-9 stretch. You just notice those bad stretches more in the beginning of a season. No team is “done” yet. It’s been 10 games.
bigdaddyt
lol because the jays are the exact same team as the cubs right… i know they can always turn it around but when your only lefty in the pen is Loup and your only bench bat that is half way decent is salty then you know your team has Padres level problems
davidcoonce74
No, but, talent level tends to stabilize at some point. As is pointed out, FG has dropped the Blue Jays expected playoff odds. But if Toronto goes 7-0 this week, their playoff odds will stabilize almost to the point they were before the season started.
Ironically enough, the Padres actually have two good lefties in the ‘pen (Hand and Buchter) and the bats aren’t the problem. They have a better record than the Blue Jays, too, but there’s no way the Padres are going to sniff the playoffs, and I think the Jays can still turn it around.
chesteraarthur
The major difference between those two teams are what you think of their true talent level. If you think the jays are a true talent 85ish win team, they have just dug themselves a pretty big hole to climb out of in what looks to be a pretty competitive AL wild card race.
So while they are not done, they have pretty significantly lowered their playoff odds. Fangraphs covered this yesterday. fangraphs.com/blogs/the-blue-jays-upcoming-quandar…
vinscully16
Far too early to write off the Jays. Not at all sure what Shapiro’s plan is for the Jays, as his off season approach was less than focused, but it’s too early to forget about the Jays. This Jays team feels like a JP Ricciardi squad, a group of players that come close to complimenting one another, but fall short. Remember, Jays fans, when you all thought JP was the greatest GM in sports? Jays fans are adorable.
bigdaddyt
Thing is you would be hard pressed to find a single person who likes current Jays management.. long live AA
CubsFanForLife
I loved AA and wish he was still with the organization. Why did he leave? I don’t remember
acm14
They brought in Shapiro above him so his level of power in baseball ops would have gone from #1 to #2 even with the GM title. Basically he was offered a demotion
lesterdnightfly
“…a group of players that come close to complimenting one another, but fall short.”
Your remark begs the question: How could they compliment each other better? Some suggestions:
“I wish I could pivot like you, bro! Teach me?” “Nice bling and shirt combo there, Ace! From Eaton’s?” “Hey, that’s a pro haircut. Like the tapered burns too!” “That’s the way to scamper from first to third, buddy!” “Is that a new Volvo? Cool !”
These compliments do add to chemistry and morale, but as for on-field success, it would be better for a team’s pieces to complement each other too.
layventsky
Haha!
pinballwizard1969
By my math the Yankees guarantee of between $8 & $8.5MM let’s call it $8.25MM and the $3MM he ultimately got via arbitration means he has to get $5.25MM next winter via arbitration to equal what the Yankees were willing to guarantee him. Can he make more possibly, can he get less, absolutely. Seems to me since the universal consensus this past winter was that his asking price of $5MM was a loser from the start the smart thing to do would have been to take the Yankees guarantee of 2 years say $8.25MM.
Steve Adams
Have to weigh that against what he’d have gotten had they won the case, though. Conservatively speaking, he’s going to come away with $7MM+ over the two years anyhow. If he wins at $5MM, that’s more like $11.5MM to $12MM over those two years. He effectively risked a million or maybe $1.5MM in an effort to up his earning power by as much as $3-4MM.
chesteraarthur
It seems he did weigh that, “Seems to me since the universal consensus this past winter was that his asking price of $5MM was a loser from the start”. You can disagree with the weighting he chose (which appears to be a 0% outcome probability), but it seems to me that the poster did that.
It’d be interesting to see what their internal evaluation on the probability of winning that arb case looked like.
gofish 2
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Are the Jays haters saying the Reds will win the World Series because they’re 7-3?
Ted
No, but that’s not an equivalent jump. The Jays are not a WS team that has been written off by a 1-8 start. They are a fringy wild card team that needs to overperform for 5.5 months to get back to the wild card. That’s why this is not comparable to the Cubs of last year as well. There’s also the concern of WHY they’re 1-8. Russell Martin is even worse than last year, and Jose Bautista seems to have zero power. Those two aging bats may not ever bounce back.
gofish 2
Edwin Encarnacion isn’t exactly tearing it up, either. Could you imagine if he was performing the same way in the Jays lineup? They might be 0-9.
chesteraarthur
Tulo is old and oft injured too and now there are questions, at least in the short term, about donaldson as well.
They were a team that needed some sustained performances, some bounce backs, and some luck to be real contenders. That doesn’t appear to be happening at this point in the season.
It’s early, so you obviously can’t write them off, but it looks bad and they have really hurt their chances with this slow start.
jdgoat
Oh Orioles…
outinleftfield
Not signing any international free agents is nothing new for the Angelos owned Orioles. They have never signed any. You almost never hear about them even having a scout at the workouts. Instead, they sign or trade for scrubs like the ones they picked up yesterday and today. It’s too bad we can’t fire the owner.
TheodoreRex45
Wei Yin Chen, Hyun Soo Kim, Dariel Alvarez, Jomar Reyes, Henry Urrutia just to name some of the none they’ve ever signed. that’s just off the top of my head. there’s a Chinese kid in there too that escapes me. first baseman, they had issues with MLB because of his age if I recall.
jdgoat
Stage difference there is that the Asian guys are already professionals and don’t come with the same rules that Latin American prospects do. No matter how you look at it they don’t invest in international prospects for some unknown reason. No way around it
jdgoat
The difference*
Trevor 3
Agreed! Whether you sign international players or college players or amateur players, I don’t see the difference.
Macho King OG
Betances is under team control through 2019 and isn’t a free agent until 2020, his age 32 seasons. Chapman is the closer at least through 2019. Betances has proven several times that he is not a very good closer, but he is a great set up man. A lot of stuff can happen to a pitcher in 3 seasons. His agent is a moron for not taking the contract.