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

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.

we're fortunate that Guerrero isn't coming up alone tho. wouldn't be surprised at all if one of Biggio/Smith (or even Heraldo/Groshans further down the road) force him to 1B or DH. the timing of our big contracts is perfect as well. if by 2020 they not spending, then it would

whoops... anyways – by 2020 they better have begun building around Vlad/Bo/Biggio/Jansen/Smith

Biagini worked two-thirds of inning last night, gave up a couple of homers and three runs, and took the loss. His ERA is now 6.66. Really, how much of a signal do you need as to who he secretly is?

He’s secretly Aaron Loup?

Ken Giles is apparently not the answer.

Jansen & Reid-Foley called up.

SRF starting today. Wondering if they’ll have Jansen catch for him.

Yes--first-ever first-game battery for the Jays.

First time in the AL since 1957, actually--surprised it's such a rare thing. Guess he got roughed up a little.

Ya. Wasn’t terrible - but could have been better.
Jansen, however, did p great for himself!

Having a forbidden thought in those Doug Ford days of summer: the future might be quite bright. Jansen, Reid-Foley, Teoscar, Borucki, Gurriel and perhaps Alford all look like solid players to build around Bichette and Guerrero. Plus the more experienced Grichuk, Travis, Sanchez and Stroman can help in the shorter term.

The walls are closing in--conceding that I've hardly watched the Jays at all the last couple of years, I've never seen Gibbons chew out a player before.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/pillar-thrown-stealing-third-draws-ire-gibbons/

Us and the Orioles, 162 games, winner take all. Come on, Baltimore, man up.

Yeah I'd be surprised if Gibbons was the manager next season.

I was looking at a WAR leaderboard the other day, trying to find the first Jay. Had to go down to the 180th spot or something to find Smoak around 2.0 (Happ was about even with him when he left).

You've got to go back to 1979 to find a year when the Jays didn't have at least one guy (and usually more ) at 4.4+. So even when the team was terrible, there was always somebody to root for and a reason to watch--Hentgen, Wells, even Rios led one year in the mid-5.0s. And when the team was winning, there was usually at least one or two guys with MVP-type numbers. Depending upon how excited you are by the two young starters, there is literally nobody worth watching right now.

Obviously, you weren't rooting for Hentgen and Wells to achieve a certain WAR, which didn't exist then. I'm just using that as shorthand for compiling numbers and having good seasons--you could root for someone to his 30 HR, knock in a 100, compete for the ERA title, whatever. I remember James writing once that these benchmarks take on extra meaning when you're following a losing team.

I kinda forgot about Josh Donaldson... after spending almost a month in the start of the season on the DL for his right shoulder, he went on the 10-day DL in May for a low-grade calf strain and has not been heard from since.

you liberated Canadians

http://awfulannouncing.com/local-networks/nbc-sports-philadelphia-intro-for-phillies-blue-jays-game-gets-a-look-at-naked-guy-in-toronto.html

Some full-court second-guessing on the call-in show today: the host (not sure which guy it was) was all over Shapiro and Atkins for not trading Donaldson in the off-season. Honestly, I didn't want them to make that trade. I assumed Donaldson would be healthy and that we had a chance at the second wild-card.

ya - a lot of people were saying to trade him in the off season and write 2018 off essentially. i don't blame them at all for seeing how the season went - there's no way to know your star player is going to be injured at the deadline. but it's a dumb call in show, where everyone is better manager than Gibbons the day after and i wouldn't put too much weight behind what they are saying. tho some people did earn the right to say "i told you so" on this one.

kendrys homers again, 7th straight game

I was at the game, had to explain the basics of the game to my parents and they really enjoyed it. Seeing 6 homeruns and Maikel Franco goofing around helps. Now, I’m almost certain learning about the game is easier when you see it live rather than on television.

Also the Skydome is not nearly as bad a ballpark as some people make it out to be, if only for the convenient location. I much prefer it to Nü-Yankees Stadium.

Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reports that Josh Donaldson is out of the High-A Dunedin lineup due to soreness in his calves and legs.

Maybe time to take up chess or origami?

Us and the Orioles, 162 games, winner take all. Come on, Baltimore, man up.

They did, they did--I am duly humbled.