Blue Jays vs. Angels, July 4-6

[Brinbe]

great fielding work by the angels

[WuTang_OG]

great fielding work by the angels

Lol

[Randle McMurphy]

Strategically a sac bunt wasn’t even a good choice there because they would have walked Vlad immediately in the event of a successful one (putting the game on Heineman/Jimenez instead) but everything’s coming up Milhouse at this point

[C Court]

Read on Twitter

[Raps in 4]

This is the most clutch team of all time.

[tecumseh18]

The winneriness is strong with this one.

[SharoneWright]

Another +1 run win game! Don’t want to mess with that run differential!

[Ranger One]

Barger now has 2 more extra base hits than Guerrero in 145 fewer plate appearances. $500 million well spent. Im convinced that had he hit free agency, no team would offer him more than 275-300 million. Remember when he said in the offseason that his FLOOR was $500 million and his Ceiling $700 million? Good times. Meanwhile he can barely maintain an .800 OPS and is on pace for 18 HRs and 65 RBIs.

[Mehar]

Barger now has 2 more extra base hits than Guerrero in 145 fewer plate appearances. $500 million well spent. Im convinced that had he hit free agency, no team would offer him more than 275-300 million. Remember when he said in the offseason that his FLOOR was $500 million and his Ceiling $700 million? Good times. Meanwhile he can barely maintain an .800 OPS and is on pace for 18 HRs and 65 RBIs.

I said a week or two before he signed the ridiculous 500 million dollar deal, that if Vlad reverted to 2023 Vlad which is what he is now, the most I could have seen for him would be a desperate team offering him a 10 year deal in the 275 million range (what Alex Rodriguez signed for with the Yankees many years ago). A team would have offered Vlad significant incentives also pushing the yearly amount significant more. If this team had just waited in the off-season, Vlad could have potentially been gotten for 200 million less guaranteed. Just a ridiculous signing when this team outbids itself again, and it did not need to. I went to the Yankees game on Canada Day and on Thursday, where he was a brutal 0 for 5 in both games and he looked like an amateur at the plate.

Imagine if this team did not hand out ridiculous money to Vlad or Santander, what other players they could have signed for this off-season (Kyle Tucker being a guy I wanted this team to target instead for next year). This team shut itself out to get real talent in free agency this off-season, by signing both overrated guys to ridiculous deals. The best course of action this team could have done is to trade Vlad this past off-season which I had hoped, and gotten legitimate MLB ready prospects and talent back in a big haul. But this organization cares more about Public Relations, than doing the right thing long-term baseball wise. Vlad is no Aaron Judge, but this organization treated him like he is offering him what they did and now we are stuck with this guy for 14 years. Just terrible long-term if Vlad does not ever figure it out.

[Randle McMurphy]

Yimi right back to the IL.

I think the RPs we have available today are Fisher, Estrada and Pina. Time to trade for another one.

[Boogie!]

With no bullpen we need to score 10 runs and have a laugher today

[Boogie!]

Lmao scherzer oh Nono no

[Boogie!]

Barger is a beast

[ItsDanger]

Barger has been the catalyst that pushed this team to 1st place.

[Cyrus]

Barger and all the scrubs are hitting and carrying team, hopefully it'll last, even if it's just 1 year thing.

[Randle McMurphy]

Scherzer on 4 days’ rest is something this team should avoid going forward. This is a tough watch.

[-MetA4-]

I said a week or two before he signed the ridiculous 500 million dollar deal, that if Vlad reverted to 2023 Vlad which is what he is now, the most I could have seen for him would be a desperate team offering him a 10 year deal in the 275 million range (what Alex Rodriguez signed for with the Yankees many years ago). A team would have offered Vlad significant incentives also pushing the yearly amount significant more. If this team had just waited in the off-season, Vlad could have potentially been gotten for 200 million less guaranteed. Just a ridiculous signing when this team outbids itself again, and it did not need to. I went to the Yankees game on Canada Day and on Thursday, where he was a brutal 0 for 5 in both games and he looked like an amateur at the plate.

Imagine if this team did not hand out ridiculous money to Vlad or Santander, what other players they could have signed for this off-season (Kyle Tucker being a guy I wanted this team to target instead for next year). This team shut itself out to get real talent in free agency this off-season, by signing both overrated guys to ridiculous deals. The best course of action this team could have done is to trade Vlad this past off-season which I had hoped, and gotten legitimate MLB ready prospects and talent back in a big haul. But this organization cares more about Public Relations, than doing the right thing long-term baseball wise. Vlad is no Aaron Judge, but this organization treated him like he is offering him what they did and now we are stuck with this guy for 14 years. Just terrible long-term if Vlad does not ever figure it out.

I can almost guarantee that this team would be nowhere near where they are today without that Guerrero extension, regardless of what his numbers are on paper.

What you misconstrue is the significant tonality of what that signing meant for the expectation and future outlook of this team, and how it has impacted their makeup (which you see translated on the field). There is a SIGNIFICANT amount of goodwill that is tied up in that contract, and this was always going to be the case with any extension of Guerrero.

You conveniently forget that this team entered this season with the outlook that this was going to be a fart-in-the-wind final losing season of the Guerrero/Bichette era on way to both of them leaving, the team selling everyone else at the deadline, Shapiro/Atkins out, and a complete rebuild in place. This was the path they were on after last year's disappointing season, missing on Ohtani, missing on Soto, etc. Don't believe me? Read any of the pre-season threads or posts.

The Guerrero signing reset the expectations and was a statement signing not only to the team and fanbase, but the rest of the MLB as well. Regardless of what anyone thinks, he was the face of the franchise - not Bichette, not Springer, not Gausman or anyone else. This franchise was teetering on falling back to irrelevance, which is what would have been the "vibe" had ownership let yet another "franchise player" leave on a low note (which is what happened with Halladay, Delgado, etc). The rest of the players on this roster know where they were standing entering this season and what the action or inaction on Guerrero meant. These types of moves absolutely do impact the performance of other players on the roster, because it sends the clear message that ownership still believes in the makeup of the roster. If you trade or let the franchise player walk, you are more or less admitting that you don't believe in the competitive capability of the roster. This seems stupid on paper, but contrast the Jays to the Orioles:

Orioles: 100+ wins two seasons ago, 90+ wins last year. Tons of young talent and a top farm system. Predicted by everyone to be a force in the AL East for years to come. Their front office has spent the last two trade deadlines and off-seasons trying to nickel-and-dime their way to small improvements instead of making any sort of statement acquisitions. Didn't want to overpay and instead banked on long-term improvement. They let the air out of the hype balloon that they were riding on, and all of a sudden they are back in last place in a season where they should have been a World Series contender. Their star players are all having down-years.

Jays: Last place in the division last year, third in the division the year prior to that. Tried to land franchise altering free agents and came up short. The core players who were supposed to be the backbone of the team had regressed (Kirk), been hurt and regressed (Bichette), or otherwise had been up and down (Guerrero). The free agent signings they had made to supplement that core were aging and declining themselves (Springer, Gausman, Bassitt). They were sellers at the deadline last season.

Instead of waving the white flag and starting the complete rebuild, they lock up the 26 year old face of the franchise and double down under the belief that last season wasn't the true talent of the roster. They trade for Gimenez. They sign a closer. They sign a power-bat. They sign Scherzer. What's funny is that those moves have all been flops on paper for the most part and haven't come even close to producing the expected on-field results, but they all add up to set the tone of the team as a WIN NOW team that has the expectation of making the playoffs. The psychological effect of whether there is an expectation of success, versus an expectation of failure, is something that can't be measured - but yet it clearly plays an impact in sports. Kind of like how trading for Tulowitzki made a huge impact on the overall tone of the 2015 team, even though he actually underwhelmed completely with the bat (he had a 92 wRC+ in the second half of 2015 after being traded to Toronto, while hitting for just .239 with a decrease in power as well). On paper they could have traded for a much cheaper defensive specialist SS, but would the results have been the same?

[xAIRNESSx]

Springer dinger!

[Mehar]

George Springer looking like the 500 million man Vlad was supposed to be. Looking like 2019 George Springer of the Houston Astros. On an incredible hot streak right now.

[Cyrus]

"Washed" springer as some said on here last year and at the start of this year, gotta be one hottest hitter in baseball right now