Toronto Blue Jays 2018: Our Team Was Founded by Regular Canadian Guys, but It’s Being Run by People from Cleveland

ya that's unfortunate. it's Osuna shirt day thursday too.

banner day for the blue jays here.

Jays starters are not doing well, it was supposed to be a strength.

They rank 26th on fangraphs, relievers are ranked 7th, but now with Osuna gone, well...

Speaking of which: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/roberto-osuna-the-blue-jays-and-the-limits-of-presuming-innocence/

Sachez is struggling :(

Teoscar out with back problems...

Sachez is struggling :(

― Van Horn Street, Thursday, May 17, 2018 8:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sanchez too :(

If I were a master impressionist, I'd make John Gibbons my first project. My Gibbons would have the same laconic, aw-shucks manner, but he'd be awkwardly, brutally honest, saying the things everybody knows. Try to hear this in his voice:

"Yeah, you know, we're doing okay. We're in this win-one, lose-one thing right now, just kind of piddling along, so we'll see where that takes us. The guys are out there playing, getting some hits, making a lot of outs, so, uh, it's not like we're not surprised or anything, we're really not that good. Pitchin's been good...I mean, sometimes, we've had some bad games too. We got a few guys like Biagini, and they're out there getting some outs, but, uh, you know, they're really not that good. I like our team, we're gonna be okay. We're really not that good, but we're out there playing baseball."

Now behind Tampa.

Sanchez doesn't seem able to shake off his walk problem.

clippard has gakked two games in four days eh?

we all knew this was where it would wind up.

I suppose Clippard has 'closer' attitude.

A nightmarish top of the 9th goes really well with a nightmarish bottom.

Russell Martin SS

When one albatross is hurt, you try to replace him with an albatross.

i love russell martin, but wtf at playing him at short and now left? they really needed to fit his 73 wRC+ bat in there somewhere? that's some serious mathenaging

Gibbons is pretty solid on the Matheny spectrum.

https://i.imgur.com/KBKBR04.jpg

Martin has a manager is happening one day and I'm very excited.

I just watched the condensed game, and every hit off sanchez seemed to be on a fastball grooved up the middle. where did his control go? :( this season hurtz

Whatever I may have said before, at this point they should not bring Guerrero up. Besides the fact that they're going nowhere, and also the window-of-control issue, I get the feeling this has the potential to be a somewhat toxic clubhouse at some point. I might be totally wrong there, but I can see the seeds of that.

They ought to move him up to Triple-A, though, no? Shouldn't that be done immediately?

yeah maybe the contract situation with Donaldson and Stroman soured the clubhouse a bit, it's pure speculation of course.

I feel like being around stroman, even in the best of circumstances, must be exhausting.

Luke Maile leading the team offensively in fWAR

Stroman is beyond irritating

i am saddened to see joe biagini turn into a pumpkin

There’s Gaviglio now! He’s been a bright spot so far.

I'm wondering when they'll feel there's enough evidence that Biagini is not worth a roster spot. He's 28, and he's pretty much been belted around for two years. Or, to put it another way, he's accumulated 0.1 WAR in three seasons (including his pretty good first year). So go get a replacement player instead.

free borucki imo. at least he's left-handed

who can take a rainbow
wrap it in a sigh
soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie?

Ya - Grandy had himself a day!

Like Seinfeld, we finally met our perfect soulmate and it turned out to be us.

Kelly Gruber
I loved Barker's "who's that?" reply
not so much the misogyny and alcoholism-on-full-display :(

Osuna: 75 games

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/23878504/roberto-osuna-toronto-blue-jays-suspended-75-games-mlb

So - apparently the big problem when he’s eligible to come back is the charges might not allow him to cross the boarder?

Every time they face one of my favourite pitchers, they suddenly play like a baseball team.

I'm a little nervous about Borucki today. i think he's talented and could be a solid, mid-rotation guy... but i don't think he's quite as good as his AAA numbers indicate and he's debuting against the frickin Houston Astros!

2 runs in five innnings ain’t bad for a debut vs the World Series champs

Oh! He’s pitching the 6th...

Nice. 6 IP 2 er. Could not have asked for more.

Bad news for #BlueJays: Josh Donaldson has a setback while rehabbing left calf. Suffered an acute strain while taking groundballs in preparation for a rehab game. Will be re-evaluated in three weeks.

— Kaitlyn McGrath (@kaitlyncmcgrath) June 26, 2018

this thread is for Borucki related news only now.

Santiago Espinal's (Jays got him for Pearce yesterday) having a good year, but he's a 10th-round pick who's 23 and playing in A-ball, so I don't know.

pretty much about what I expected to get back tbh.

Reasonably close to actual hell: sitting in the Rogers Centre in July watching the Jays lose to the Twins 8-1.

will biagini finally be gone? he's killing me holy shit. i actually sat and watched most of that game for some reason

On the call-in show today--Jeff Blair, I think--the topic was whether or not the Jays, while they wait around for Guerrero, have let the supporting cast fall apart to the point that his arrival becomes a moot point. He mentioned how Trout, over his entire career, has spent a total of five or eight days in first place. In at least one instance, Donaldson, this has just been bad luck. But they have to get stuff done within the next year to have something resembling a team waiting for Guerrero (and Bichette).

His supporting cast will be a year or two behind. Bo, Biggio, Kevin Smith. Then there’s a good amount of fringier guys we need to see how they pan out - Alford, Borucki, Foley, Davis, Jansen....
I don’t see why we need a fully formed team waiting for the guy. Maybe he turns into a dud in the bigs! You can’t know for sure. Must of what I would call our teams strength is in the minors right now - and I think we need to plan around our young talent as a group.
Our big, dud contracts come off the books in 2019 and 20. At that point we’ll know what we have in Vlad and we’ll have a better idea of the controllable talent we will have around him. That’s when we spend on free agents and go for it.

I don't think he was calling for a fully formed team--just something competitive enough that you don't end up with a situation like Trout's where the first five or six years of a (still only potentially with Guerrero, yes) generational player are kind of wasted. In particular, they were talking about a player filling the role that someone like Freddie Freeman does with the two phenoms in Atlanta: an established star who is already there as the foundation of the team. Donaldson would/could have been that guy.

The Jays right now fall short on all counts. But yes, I agree, the team is headed into a period of major change, so it's hard to gauge at the moment.