2022 Toronto Blue Jays Off-season Thread

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

It's an average of $11.2m with available $7.05M bonuses if he reaches MVP status.

The kid is good, very good and most likely will out perform this contract but I'm not a fan of this deal as he can walk to UFA at 28 years old.

He can certainly but baseball is full of career derailing injuries. He’s not as wildly talented as we make him out to be. He’s no slouch but nothing tells me he’s worthy of getting an 8 year franchise player deal. The yearly value is steep so that we don’t have to do a lengthy deal. I’m good with that. Ideally it would've been 5 years but no complaints as arguably they’re overpaying him on the short term.

[Sylvanfan]

The shrewd move would be to trade him before that last year and let someone else give him the mega deal where he's very unlikely to be putting up career numbers.

[Jason14h]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

It's an average of $11.2m with available $7.05M bonuses if he reaches MVP status.

The kid is good, very good and most likely will out perform this contract but I'm not a fan of this deal as he can walk to UFA at 28 years old.

The deal is irrelevant - he was under contract for 3 arbitration years

What it does do it set a fixed starting point for negotiating a longer term deal next offseason / this season where he knows exactly what he is earning and how much a new deal increases that , etc

Plus you don’t need to go through arbitration and risk pissing off the player

Bichette also gets financial flexibility as he can more easily leverage current day real $ against he contract that can’t as easily be done when there’s arbitration in the future

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by bluejays

He can certainly but baseball is full of career derailing injuries. He’s not as wildly talented as we make him out to be. He’s no slouch but nothing tells me he’s worthy of getting an 8 year franchise player deal. The yearly value is steep so that we don’t have to do a lengthy deal. I’m good with that. Ideally it would've been 5 years but no complaints as arguably they’re overpaying him on the short term.

Curious if you can expand on why he's not wildly talented?
He's a pretty complete player who's start has been as good as any young player at this stage.
What is he lacking?

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Curious if you can expand on why he's not wildly talented?
He's a pretty complete player who's start has been as good as any young player at this stage.
What is he lacking?

Until this past year he’s very very disciplined at the plate. This year he got into the groove again towards the end of the year but most of the year he was inconsistent on his plate approach. We seen that a bit last year too. His fielding for his position is bad. I don’t have the stats to back that up but as a SS I’d say he’s in the lowest quartile. I’m trying not to use hyperbole but I really think he’s suited for 2B as he doesn’t have the range, glove or the arm. So what you have if he returns to form is a really good bat. But given he’s an infielder and his position he’s gunning for, if you’re going to pay him franchise money of $30M plus, he’s gotta be consistent at the plate and he has to come through on making his throws. I see why he’s going for SS, as if he masters it his value is through the roof, but I don’t think he has the capability. Now, would you may $30M plus for a very good 2B? I dunno.

[Blaster86]

Bo is an elite second baseman, and an elite offensive short stop.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

Bo is an elite second baseman, and an elite offensive short stop.

It defensively he isn’t, at SS

[Kasi]

Montas out for the season, Cortes to miss that start of the season. Hopefully we take advantage of it and get off to a good start.

[transplant99]

The man called a ton of WS games.

Tim McCarver, the All-Star catcher and Hall of Fame broadcaster who during 60 years in baseball won two World Series titles with the St. Louis Cardinals and had a long run as the one of the country's most recognized, incisive and talkative television commentators, died Thursday. He was 81.

[bluejays]

Victor Martinez is apparently joining the staff as a special assistant, is a good thing. He was a role model and had a very long successful career. Always helps to have that credibility, especially working with the young Caribbean players.


https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article...-front-office/

[Kasi]

So White hurt his shoulder in the offseason and will be late to the party. Also looks like Kikuchi cleaned up his delivery some to get a bit more control. Hopefully that sticks.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by Kasi

Also looks like Kikuchi cleaned up his delivery some to get a bit more control. Hopefully that sticks.

He's missing the strike zone by less than a foot and his meatballs over the plate are not quite dead center anymore.

Still a coin flip for where it's going on release. Don't ask him, either, cause he's still also not sure. Don't even think about asking the catcher calling the pitch, he's stabbing that glove in a random direction and hoping he guessed right.

[Roof-Daddy]

I'm hoping Tiedemann pulls a Manoah and forces his way onto the roster a couple months into the season.

Seems crazy because he's so young and hasn't racked up the pro innings. But the talent is undeniable.

[cSpooge]

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/m...adio-1.6751963


Once again Sportsnet showing how cheap they are.

[jayswin]

Embarrassing company.

[Samonadreau]

All about the bottom line.

[bluejays]

In this day and age with the looming recession I can see companies leaning into cutting back on various things. On the surface it looks like they're only saving $2000 in flight savings for two guys per road trip but there's probably several people behind the scenes who also fly down. Then there are hotel costs, per diems paid, etc. I don't agree, but I can understand some of these costs being high. And considering the average person probably isn't the wiser, I do understand where they're coming from.

[Kasi]

Tbh all sports games should be done remotely other than I guess championship games. In a world where global warming is a thing I don’t see the justification to flying people who will not be talking to the players post game. (And that can just be covered by beat reporters who travel with the team) Of course I know that’s not the reason here. That being of course cutting costs but I think the world in general should get used to less flying.

[mrkajz44]

Brutal, but somehow expected. So much nuance is missed while calling a game from a TV. I can't believe the savings are even that much anyway. Don't they normally just fly with the team, who is travelling anyway? So you have hotel and per diem costs, but that cannot add up to very much when you consider payroll in the hundreds of millions.

[Kasi]

I think most if not all of that nuance can be regained by just having better home setups. There is zero reason that the setup can’t be setup to have a 100% faithful reproduction of what you can see from a sky box. You just need more than a single monitor and regular sound. Instead have multiple monitors/displays and surround sound. Also doesn’t that change from stadium to stadium and some are pretty far up anyway?

Tbh I think for a sport like baseball where so much of the sport is centered around a 4x4 foot square there exists options to make casting off video better than what you could get by in stadium announcing. Just give the announcers the view and sounds from the home plate umpires perspective and that could lead to some amazing insight.