I always liked Thames and felt the Blue Jays mismanaged his development and gave up a bit quickly on him. I’m very glad to see him do so well.
Liriano got him last night. I jinxed it.
Hate to speak to soon, but damn I’m glad the Red Sox traded for Chris Sale.
Wish they could score some runs for him.
Huh - Jose Bautista batting .109, Devon Travis .104 and Russell Martin .103…
Donaldson’s calf.
Sanchez’s blister.
I’m not slightest bit convinced those last two items will be just a passing issue this season. Pearce has been shitty so far.
But hey there’s always Justin Smoak!*
Gibby’s reassuring post-game mumblings are a bit more strained now.
I guess Pillar will have to be Extra-Superman now.
*probably the most sarcastic statement I’ve made at the SDMB.
This day was coming.
The Blue Jays are the oldest team in baseball, and they were the oldest team in baseball last year, and they got no younger. The 2013-2015 trades dealt away most of the farm system’s high level value in an effort to win right away, and in 2015 and 2016, that paid off. But the fact is that after the deadline trades in 2015 the team had given away basically ALL its high level talent in an effort to win immediately.
It was inevitable the team would collapse; without spending an absolutely insane amount of money buying expensive players to replace other expensive players, the team was going to need a rebuild. The team is REALLY old. The great majority of its value in 2016 came from old players. There is some youth here - Sanchez and Osuna are quality players and very young - but really, even the guys who are young relative to the other guys are past their prime (Josh Donaldson is 31.)
Now, obviously a catastrophic 3-12 start was not expected, no MLB player is really a .104 hitter, and they’re not going to lose 135 games. But 73-89 would not actually be surprising, **and the path forward is not going to be quick or easy. ** You can’t trade Martin, Tulowitzki or Bautista for any value without paying their salaries, and those guys eat up over $55 million in payroll. (Bautista also has a veto as a 10-and-5 player.) The most tradeable expensive players are Donaldson and Happ, both of whom are injured and won’t get you value unless they’re proven healthy. Morales can’t be traded until after June 15 without his permission. Right now only really worthwhile tradeable assets who aren’t young and cheap are Marco Estrada and, if he proves he’s really back with a few more solid starts, Francisco Liriano.
The Blue Jays have, to use a metaphor I’ve used for a few years, a talent base that is a mile wide and an inch thick. They have been at least good at every position for two years, but there is no depth. They’re running Steve Pearce and Zeke Carrera out there not because they wanted those guys out there but because the team simply doesn’t actually have a real left fielder. Once someone is injured they’re playing either Darwin Barney or “uh, call Buffalo and find out who on the 40-man roster has a car.”
So what’s available? Well, what significant talent is there in Buffalo? Absolutely true fact; the Bisons do not have a single pitcher younger than 26. I’m not shitting you. The only A-level hitting prospect is Rowdy Tellez, with Dwight Smith being a B- at best. There’s a little more to look at in lower levels but all are either B-grade or guys who need one or two more years of development.
So, really, the team should be aiming for, like, 2019 to start re-contending and 2020-2021 to win, depending what the free agency markets in different offseasons have to offer. Which sucks, I guess; it’s fun to watch a team win playoff series, and it’s not as fun to watch a team lose 96 games as it rebuilds. But a true commitment to rebuilding might get you teams like, you know, the Chicago Cubs, who were awful for a bit but used it to build a great team, or the Indians. If you sort of go half assed, you end up looking like the Blue Jays did from about 1999 to 2012, where they’re always okay but never good enough.
Madison Bumgarner hurt his ribs and left shoulder in a dirt-bike accident yesterday.
He’s been placed on the 10-day DL, but apparently is expected to miss 6-8 weeks.
This is not what I would call “good news”.
Bautista is on a one-year deal, right? That might be moveable (and eating salary is more palatable for the Jays, as they’ll be paying that money to him this year one way or the other). I also expect that he’d be willing to move on from the team if it continues to be such a dumpster fire. Of course, that’s all moot if his batting average still starts with a “1” come the trade deadline.
Tulo and Martin the team is just stuck with. Too many years with too much money attached.
This Dodger fan begs to differ.
Trying to think if there’s any left-handed hitter on the Jays, other than my go-to Mr. Smoak:o (who’s a switch-hitter).
I miss that dude who used to stick his arm up at a horizontal right angle.
The Orioles manage to keep winning, and winning the close ones. They are 11-4, which is the best record in baseball. They’re 9-3 in the division, and 5-1 in 1-run games. If they can keep that up (they can’t), it will be a fun season.
Speaking as an Astros fan, the three-season “rip the bandage off” rebuild was much less painful than the four years of whistling past the graveyard that preceded it. In some ways it’s better for the Jays that they got off to such a bad start because it means they can’t pretend; it’s so easy to look at a roster and say “if this guy and this guy gets back to where he was two years ago, this is a great team if we just add this one mid-level free agent.”
Well, at least the Giants can win the really important games…
It’s a one year deal with a mutual option. Mutual options never happen, so it’s a one year deal.
Bautista will only be tradeable if he starts hitting; right now no team would take him even if the Blue Jays paid his salary. A 37-year-old guy who’s playing this badly is not worth a roster spot.
If he can hit a few homers and get the on base percentage above .300 by June, yeah, he’s probably gone to whatever AL team needs a DH. If things are very bad, Donaldson may also be dealt, and certainly Estrada might be quite attractive to a contender. So too would be Happ, if he’s healthy.
[QUOTE=Eddie The Horrible]
Trying to think if there’s any left-handed hitter on the Jays, other than my go-to Mr. Smoak (who’s a switch-hitter).
[/QUOTE]
Zeke Carrera, Chris Coghlan and Ryan Goins are left handed hitters, and Kendrys Morales and JArrod Saltalamacchia are also switch hitters.
They can win as many as they want…just so long as they stay where they are, at the bottom of the NLWest. Behind the Padres! 
Quite a day today. Four teams won while scoring 2 runs or less, and two teams managed to score 9 or more runs and still lose the game.
Eric Thames hit his 11th homer of the month, and Chris Coghlan pulled off a pretty great “slide.”
Marlins fans rejoice, as it appears they’ll be rid of owner Jeffrey Loria. He’s agreed to sell the team to Derek Jeter and Jeb Bush (and I’m sure a handful of other investors).
It’s a “Willie Mays Hays.”
That wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened. The winning run was scored by pitcher Marcus Stroman, who was summoned to pinch hit for another pitcher, Jason Grilli, because Toronto had run out of hitters - in part because they started their starting catcher as a third baseman, then later switched him to catcher so they could pinch hit for the catcher with a guy batting .125, and they figured Stroman was the best athlete they had available. (He’s been used as a pinch runner.) Sure as hell, he promptly got his first major league hit, a double. Then he scored when Steve Pearce hit a routine ground ball that Aledmys Diaz inexplicably heaved ten feet wide of first.
Of Eric Thames’s 11 home runs, eight are against the Reds, in just six games. In fact, “Eric Thames Just Against The Reds” would be the major league home run leader right now. He’s going to be disappointed to see opponents in different uniforms.
Predictably, Thames is being accused of PED usage. I don’t know if he;'s using or not, but I’d make three observations, speaking as a guy who saw him play a lot with Toronto:
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Thames was a very, very strong, muscular guy before. When he hit the ball he could hit some absolute rockets. The guy who played in 2011-2012 was no weakling, he was a compact, powerful player who looked like he was lifting a lot of weights. He didn’t hit well because he lacked a good batting eye. In his 2012 season - his last MLB year- Thames walked 15 times and struck out 87. This year he already has 13 non-intentional walks and 18 strikeouts, an excellent ratio.
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The statistics say Thames is hitting well primarily because he is not swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. He has one of the lowest percentages of swinging at pitches out of the zone in the major leagues.
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He’s also just kinda lucky so far. He isn’t going to keep hitting home runs at this rate.
I appreciate the way that he’s addressing those accusations: “So if people keep thinking I’m on stuff I’ll be here every day — I have lots of blood and urine.”
Nats are on a tear, but their bullpen is shaky. Ryan Zimmerman seems to be playing at the level he did before his plague of injuries. Some guy named Bryce Harper is hitting well and Daniel Murphy continues to punish the Mets. All is good in the world today.