[GDT] Jays Series Thread - vs. Mariners April 27-29

[Hockey]

Massive HR from Mathis...

[KelVarnsen]

Buck is right, beaning EE fired up the Jays. Lawrie with a 9 game hitting streak.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by flames_1987

This is not a good hitting team...

When you have 4 regulars that are below average hitters, that's not a good hitting team (Lind Thames (albiet not right now) JPA and Rasmus)

Add on that practically everyone else is struggling as well, and you have an average offensive team at best, who's currently struggling.

[The Big Chill]

Please get healthy soon Santos...

[flames_1987]

Fransisco Cordero should not be closing ball games. Hopefully getting beat up again even when it's 7-1 can prove what a weak reliever he is. Man It hurts having Santos down. His stuff is electric when he's on, really was excited to see that slider

Edit: Mental lapse of idiocy

[flames_1987]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

When you have 4 regulars that are below average hitters, that's not a good hitting team (Lind Thames (albiet not right now) JPA and Rasmus)

Add on that practically everyone else is struggling as well, and you have an average offensive team at best, who's currently struggling.

Not sure how they scored all those runs last season and the season before with even weaker lineups. Jays offense is going to be just fine and be up there in the Top 10 in the Majors at the end of this season. Sample size is far to small on Thames to call him a below average hitter, I think Rasmus's bat and potential is great to have in an 8th spot.

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

Originally Posted by flames_1987

Chad Cordero should not be closing ball games. Hopefully getting beat up again even when it's 7-1 can prove what a weak reliever he is. Man It hurts having Santos down. His stuff is electric when he's on, really was excited to see that slider

Francisco Cordero shouldn't be, either!

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by flames_1987

Not sure how they scored all those runs last season and the season before with even weaker lineups. Jays offense is going to be just fine and be up there in the Top 10 in the Majors at the end of this season. Sample size is far to small on Thames to call him a below average hitter, I think Rasmus's bat and potential is great to have in an 8th spot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hopeful that the players I listed become adequate enough to be decent bats, and the decent bats actually start to hit. The problem with thames is that he's so bad defensively that he basically has to be an all-star calibre bat in order to justify him in the outfield. It might make more sense to put EE at 1st, Thames as the DH, and call up Snider (ditch lind for anything that some team might be willing to give) and roll with that instead.

Lind is not looking like he's going to rebound and will continue to be one of the worst 1B in baseball with the bat

Rasmus could rebound, he could bust. I'm somewhat indifferent with him as he has potential but we aren't seeing the results yet. Definitely give him till the end of 2013 to figure stuff out and then have Gose/Marisnick take over if he still isn't good

On the whole, I think the Jays are probably going to be in the 10-12 range for offense this year, but that won't really cut it in the AL East. Basically you need to be in the top 5 or top 3 to be a contending team in our super fun division, either that or have 5 aces.

[flames_1987]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

Don't get me wrong, I'm hopeful that the players I listed become adequate enough to be decent bats, and the decent bats actually start to hit. The problem with thames is that he's so bad defensively that he basically has to be an all-star calibre bat in order to justify him in the outfield. It might make more sense to put EE at 1st, Thames as the DH, and call up Snider (ditch lind for anything that some team might be willing to give) and roll with that instead.

Lind is not looking like he's going to rebound and will continue to be one of the worst 1B in baseball with the bat

Rasmus could rebound, he could bust. I'm somewhat indifferent with him as he has potential but we aren't seeing the results yet. Definitely give him till the end of 2013 to figure stuff out and then have Gose/Marisnick take over if he still isn't good

On the whole, I think the Jays are probably going to be in the 10-12 range for offense this year, but that won't really cut it in the AL East. Basically you need to be in the top 5 or top 3 to be a contending team in our super fun division, either that or have 5 aces.

Rasmus with his defense and his bat right now, I'm fine with. His defense alone is a huge upgrade for this team and anything they can get out of his bat is great. Marisnick isn't close to being ready and Gose still has his own problems to deal with at the plate. I still think it's crazy to think of giving up on him anytime soon. He's got a bright future

No argument on Thames. His defense is horrible but the argument itself was offense.

I'm pretty vocal about how awful i think Adam Lind is, but he should at least be hitting better against right handed pitching.

The biggest question is what will we see out of Bautista for the rest of this season. If he gets going, then i believe this team can compete in the AL East without question, if the pitching holds up. Escobar, Johnson, Bautsita, EE could do some serious damage in the 1-4 spots, as I'd assume as dumb as Farrell can be, that EE will be in the cleanup spot eventually. Lawrie will only get better this season and if JPA can just hit for power in the 9th spot, this is the same lineup that was 4th in runs last season.

No moves should be made based on whats happened this early on in the season however. Still far to early and to small of a sample size. The Jays are going to give Thames a long enough time that there will be no question or controversy when Snider is called up.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

Don't get me wrong, I'm hopeful that the players I listed become adequate enough to be decent bats, and the decent bats actually start to hit. The problem with thames is that he's so bad defensively that he basically has to be an all-star calibre bat in order to justify him in the outfield. It might make more sense to put EE at 1st, Thames as the DH, and call up Snider (ditch lind for anything that some team might be willing to give) and roll with that instead.

Lind is not looking like he's going to rebound and will continue to be one of the worst 1B in baseball with the bat

Rasmus could rebound, he could bust. I'm somewhat indifferent with him as he has potential but we aren't seeing the results yet. Definitely give him till the end of 2013 to figure stuff out and then have Gose/Marisnick take over if he still isn't good

On the whole, I think the Jays are probably going to be in the 10-12 range for offense this year, but that won't really cut it in the AL East. Basically you need to be in the top 5 or top 3 to be a contending team in our super fun division, either that or have 5 aces.

I agree with a lot of what you have said here, and this is what has made me so excited about this season and this team. There are a lot of young guys here that have potential to be all-star caliber players...or end up not even MLB worthy. This year will tell us a lot about what direction guys like Rasmus, Thames, Lawrie, Drabek, etc. are headed in. If they succeed, great. If not, we have somebody else with similar potential right behind them.

A couple points I have about your post though:

1) EE is terrible defensively, even at first base. Maybe if he played there more often he would start to look better, but its tough to stick him out in the field at this point. He makes Lind look like a great defensive player.

2) I think Rasmus has been impressive this year. His range in the field is fantastic, and he has turned a least of couple of doubles into outs already this year. Plus, his hitting has already been significantly better then last year. He still has room to improve, obviously, but I really like how he has looked this year.

[flames_1987]

Lawrie is only going to get better as the season goes on. When people try to pro-rate this team off a ridiculously small sample size, I think they forget to take into account how young some of these players are.

[flames_fan_down_under]

Rasmus is a player I have no problem with. Stellar D, and he's a decent hitter, and will improve.

[flames_1987]

Alvarez was walked 2 batters for the first time in his career. Never walked more then 1 before.

[GirlySports]

Two good games, bats woke up.

I liked how this game went.. Jays need to break games open in the late innings and not give other teams a chance.