The battle for .500: Average Team @ Average Team, June 23-25

[C Court]

Agree with dagger.

As much as I was not a fan of AA and his approach, he deserves credit for successfully reigniting fan interest in the Jays from coast to coast.

[Mak]

Credit to Osuna for speaking up. As a young professional baseball player, it'd be easy to internalize it and end up with a full-blown anxiety disorder.

It's great that he has this option not to work when he is feeling anxiety, a lot of people can't afford to do that.

[Schad]

Credit to Osuna for speaking up. As a young professional baseball player, it'd be easy to internalize it and end up with a full-blown anxiety disorder.

It's great that he has this option not to work when he is feeling anxiety, a lot of people can't afford to do that.

They should be given that chance, however. Inadequate treatment of mental illness in most areas of life is not a reason to wish that others got inadequate treatment for their mental illnesses.

[C Court]

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[johanliebert]

Nobody here knows what building the right way is.

Aa did something others haven't in 20 years and had arguably the best team in the al the past 4 years.

Lastly why after every loss does this board act like the sky is falling.

[So_Fresh]

1. Jose Bautista (R) RF
2. Russell Martin (R) C
3. Josh Donaldson (R) 3B
4. Justin Smoak (S) 1B
5. Kendrys Morales (S) DH
6. Troy Tulowitzki (R) SS
7. Dwight Smith Jr. (L) LF
8. Kevin Pillar (R) CF
9. Ryan Goins (L) 2B

[So_Fresh]

Carrera stay on the DL please. I want to see Dwight Smith Jr. in more games! Kids playing well so far.

[Schad]

Nobody here knows what building the right way is.

Aa did something others haven't in 20 years and had arguably the best team in the al the past 4 years.

Lastly why after every loss does this board act like the sky is falling.

Well, the way AA built was by assembling a lot of young talent, leaving us with one of the best farm systems in baseball. That's pretty much the way you build; without a top farm system to either develop or trade, good luck trying to assemble the talent necessary, because it sure as hell can't be done through free agency anymore.

However, trading the talent for guys late in their prime does have drawbacks...at some point you have a bunch of old, expensive players who are earning more than their current value, in a league where you need a sizable portion of your roster to be producing like All-Stars and making peanuts. And that's when you need to rebuild, because there really is no other option available; we go into next season with almost no money, and short of trading Bichette/Vlad (which would be madness) for guys with years of team control remaining, we have no means of adding high-end major league talent.

Regarding treating every loss like the sky is falling: it's not every loss, it's the combination of all of those losses. It's also how we have played: our record in June is 9-12, but we've actually been worse than that. We've been outscored 115-79 on the month, an average of 1.7 runs per game, and our expected winning percentage for such a stretch is .321, which is not good.

We're nearly halfway through the season, we're four games below .500, and the numbers suggest that we're actually worse. The only countervailing argument is the Fangraphs projections, which involve our olds experiencing quite a resurgence (they have Martin, Bautista, Tulo and Pillar combining for 6.5 WAR through the end of the year, having posted a combined 1.8 to date; conversely, they suggest that Smoak will not be our offense, which we all know to be madness).

We could indeed step it up and make the playoffs, but it's not particularly likely, and we're less than 25 games from having to make that decision.

[dagger]

Also, this team peaked as soon as it was assembled in 2015, showed clear regression from a division leader to making the wildcard on the final day last season, and is regressing further. If there was a lot of ready prospect talent in the farm system, we could plug holes like left field or second base, or deal surpluses to plug those and other holes. We'd have decent relief pitching talent at Buffalo to weather injuries and overwork. But AA denuded the farm system in his contract year, and rebuilding the system is a work in progress. It is progressing, but it's going to take another couple of seasons before there is a lot of A and B level talent to either fill out the roster or deal from strength in trades. What happened in 2015 and to a lesser extent in 2016 was a limited opportunity from the get-go, and the opportunity is fading fast. It's blowing smoke out of a particular body cavity to suggest this team has a realistic chance of getting out of the wildcard if it even gets that far. The starting pitching is not as good as last season and the offence is tepid and usually one-dimensional.

[Dr Octagon]

Jose smoked that.

[TOStateofMind]

Jays actually getting some breaks

[fouronesix22]

wow

[fouronesix22]

i dont know why barney is not in for goins regularly. hes far better

[Schad]

i dont know why barney is not in for goins regularly. hes far better

Mostly because he hasn't been far better this season. Not as good defensively, and has been worse at the plate to date.

[TOStateofMind]

Good to see osuna just out there.

Time to get the hell outta there. Had enough of the damn royals.

[fouronesix22]

i dont know why barney is not in for goins regularly. hes far better

Mostly because he hasn't been far better this season. Not as good defensively, and has been worse at the plate to date.

Right.Just compared them. I always assume goins is the worst lol