Rumour: Eric Wedge to join Jays' front office.

[Scott Hall]

The country club process is starting to happen don't hire the best candidate possible hire your buddy!

[The_Hater]

AA's track record is also very spotty. There have been a multitude of failed trades and experiments, but he does do one thing, and that's take risks, and lots of them. He stopped playing it safe ages ago, and that's something I can respect and get behind. It's go big or go home.

We can all act like LaCava is responsible for these moves, but we sure damn know Shapiro had influence on them.
The blame isn't on Shapiro as much as it is on Rogers for payroll restrictions. It seems like they are okay with the Blue Jays plateauing and treading water, even though they were in a prime position to keep pushing forward.

You can say all you want about letting these moves play out, but you cannot honestly tell me that, as of right now, this lineup is better than the one that we had at the end of the season.

Obviously not but it doesn't need to be as good on paper as the end of the last season on December 2nd. Why are we judging AA on his last two months of 6 years here but giving Lecava/Shapiro only two months and 3 moves similar to what AA would have been able to do?

AA/Beeston were not going to convince Rogers to sign David Price to 7/217. Beeston had his famous 5 year policy. So what exactly do you want from Shapiro/Lecava at this moment? I'm truly trying to understand that from some people here. Aa was the guy that went all of last offseason without signing a single pitcher when the team needed a rotation. And now somehow AA would have fared better putting this rotation together over this offseason. People have selective and short memories. Going into this past season the rotation was atrocious. Why don't people remember that? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes.

Honestly, I would've rather them not sign anyone besides Marco than pay $11/year for Happ. I'd rather have Hendricks than Chavez.

Sorry, I think I'm still reminiscing of Happ's 4.5ERA over the course of 3 years here to think our rotation can sustain anything.

I'm not In love with the Happ who pitched for us in 2014 but I wouldn't be in love with the 2014 version of Estrada either. It's interesting that so many Jays fans are so convinced that Happ was a fluke but not Estrada. Most projections I've read for 2016 have Happ being the better pitcher.

I like the Hendricks trade. Chavez is better than people realize and tons of journeyman pitchers have decent seasons in the bullpen that they can't replicate. Look at Delabar. The worst move of the offseason came after our previous exchange. Smoak for $3.9 is ridiculous.

[protothe]

Obviously not but it doesn't need to be as good on paper as the end of the last season on December 2nd. Why are we judging AA on his last two months of 6 years here but giving Lecava/Shapiro only two months and 3 moves similar to what AA would have been able to do?

AA/Beeston were not going to convince Rogers to sign David Price to 7/217. Beeston had his famous 5 year policy. So what exactly do you want from Shapiro/Lecava at this moment? I'm truly trying to understand that from some people here. Aa was the guy that went all of last offseason without signing a single pitcher when the team needed a rotation. And now somehow AA would have fared better putting this rotation together over this offseason. People have selective and short memories. Going into this past season the rotation was atrocious. Why don't people remember that? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes.

Honestly, I would've rather them not sign anyone besides Marco than pay $11/year for Happ. I'd rather have Hendricks than Chavez.

Sorry, I think I'm still reminiscing of Happ's 4.5ERA over the course of 3 years here to think our rotation can sustain anything.

I'm not In love with the Happ who pitched for us in 2014 but I wouldn't be in love with the 2014 version of Estrada either. It's interesting that so many Jays fans are so convinced that Happ was a fluke but not Estrada. Most projections I've read for 2016 have Happ being the better pitcher.

I like the Hendricks trade. Chavez is better than people realize and tons of journeyman pitchers have decent seasons in the bullpen that they can't replicate. Look at Delabar. The worst move of the offseason came after our previous exchange. Smoak for $3.9 is ridiculous.

Estrada had 2 previous seasons with a sub 4 ERA in addition to the one he just had (3.13 ERA)
He has had seasons with 1.14 WHIP, 1.08 WHIP and also 1.04 WHIP last year.

JP Happ?
1 season of sub 4 ERA back in 2009, but his WHIP was still 1.23 that year, and also last year, he did it for 11 games with a WHIP of 1.03.

So yeah, Estrada's track record is better by a significant margin. JP Happ did it for 11 games last year...

The bigger worry for me is that most of our starters are soft tossers. We don't have a single power pitcher to start.
Can any of our starters even hit 93 on average?

[The_Hater]

The bigger worry for me is that most of our starters are soft tossers. We don't have a single power pitcher to start.
Can any of our starters even hit 93 on average?

No different than last season. Dickey and Buerhle had the 2 slowest average fastballs in MLB last season. I think Estrada was in the bottom 10 too. With Buerhle gone and Stroman back the average velocity will likely go up.

[Patman]

Lol why did Shapiro even leave Cleveland if he want everything to be like the Indians organization?

[HoopAndTheHarm]

None of this is surprising. Ed Rogers brought him in to create a financial model similar to Cleveland, though I believe Rogers would prefer the team be more middle of the pack than Cleveland has been recently.
The math has been done and the numbers crunched. Rogers knows there will always be a hardcore bunch of ticket buyers regardless and that the increased expenses to put more butts in the seats leads to a worse margin.
Furthermore, they've crunched that their broadcast viewership throughout the season is fairly consistent regardless of payroll or position, excluding playoff runs. In other words, advertisers pay to reach that audience regardless. Yes there would be larger audience during playoff runs and advertisers would pay more during a run but it obviously doesn't improve profitability.
The Rogers model for the Jays is to be just good enough to miss the playoffs.

[HeatedEnd]

I'm sorry but I don't see how Shapiro hiring people that he has worked with and clearly seems to value highly suddenly suggests that he is going to make the Jays tank and drop the budget to Cleveland levels. You are a moron if you think he would rather run a team with a tiny budget. It's one thing to use available resources as efficiently as they see it, which one should expect a publicly held company like Rogers to want the Jays to be run. I'm not saying that he did an amazing job on the Indians or that is he will be amazing in his future with the Jays (I didn't follow him when he was there, nor can I be bothered to research it) but to condemn him when he basically just started without any real evidence to the contrary is idiotic.