2018-2019 Blue Jays Off-season thread

[Machiavelli]

Yes, please

[Samonadreau]

Man the Jays are paying a lot of salary for guys not wearing a Jays uniform. I get and support it but man, glad I'm not paying the bills!

[bluejays]

^ you're not a customer of Rogers here in Ontario. We are paying the bills.

[Roof-Daddy]

Harper and Machado still not signed.

Man that'd be awesome if the Jays swooped in and signed both. What are they looking at, $30 million per year for 10 years each roughly?

C - Jansen
1B - Smoak
2B - Gurriel
3B - Vladdy
SS - Machado
LF - McKinney
CF - Grichuk
RF - Harper
DH - Morales

C - Maile
IF - Travis
IF - Drury
OF - Hernandez

Use Pillar, Bichette, etc to get some more pitching.

That'd be a fun offense to watch.

[KelVarnsen]

How high are you right now?

[Roof-Daddy]

Haha

[Samonadreau]

It is kind of surprising neither are signed yet.

[Inferno]

So I'm hoping to go to Toronto this August for SummerSlam. The Jays are playing the Yankees and I was planning on going to the game on the 11th and then going to the arena right after. I was looking at ticket prices and they're $140-$150 behind home plate which is more than what I was hoping they would be with the team being bad and me already planning on getting tickets to all four WWE events.

Where should I be looking for a good view? This might be the only game I get to go so I don't want to cheap out for a bad view but if there's other areas that are just as good as behind home plate and cheaper I would consider those.

[flames_fan_down_under]

^^^3rd baseline to get in as much Vladdy Jr. as humanly possible!!

[calculoso]

Fairly informative story up on Sportsnet’s website today, talking about how a couple of prospects were happy to be traded from the Astros to the Jays

https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/ml...logjam/sn-amp/

The swing between roles ahead of the draft weighed on him — “as soon as they started throwing my roles around it affected me mentally a little bit,” he admits — and his delivery got messed up along the way. Once he joined the Astros, they presented him with some data and video on his arm slot, extension and release point that explained some of his command issues and helped him make an adjustment he couldn’t figure out at North Carolina.

“My arm slot started getting higher and higher (in college), which is not normal for me, and as soon as I went back down, to about three-quarters, I started throwing strikes extremely consistently,” says Thornton. “My stuff went back to normal, which was awesome for me because I felt normal.”

Thornton subsequently learned to embrace all the data offered by the Astros, once he learned how to effectively identify and implement the information he deemed most relevant. Initially, he explains, “if you don’t know what you’re looking for, your head explodes, really.” As he learned to identify the way things like spin rates impacted his repertoire, he learned how to eliminate the guesswork from his self-evaluations.

“Everything the Astros do is based off statistics,” says Thornton. “They use Trackman data a lot and Rapsodo (measuring spin rate and angles) so I was looking at my spin rates on my curveball, my cutter and my fastball — all the pitches I throw. And then I was looking at all my pitches on the break chart so if I’m trying to work on a pitch and make it better, I can see if I’m going in the right direction or not, and make little tiny changes along the way.”

[Inferno]

Originally Posted by flames_fan_down_under

^^^3rd baseline to get in as much Vladdy Jr. as humanly possible!!

I see there's one 7 rows back from the Jays dugout for $153 after taxes and fees. It's tempting since I did save money renting a room through AirBNB across the street from Scotiabank Arena for less than $100 a night.

[flames_fan_down_under]

Honestly Inferno that price still seems a bit steep to me. I guess it is a matchup with the Yankees so they will always demand a higher ticket price. Personally I would go back a few rows to see if there are cheaper options, as I think your game experience won't be affected much if you're in row 20 vs. row 7 but that IMO of course. If you're happy spending that much go for it though.

[Inferno]

Originally Posted by flames_fan_down_under

Honestly Inferno that price still seems a bit steep to me. I guess it is a matchup with the Yankees so they will always demand a higher ticket price. Personally I would go back a few rows to see if there are cheaper options, as I think your game experience won't be affected much if you're in row 20 vs. row 7 but that IMO of course. If you're happy spending that much go for it though.

Yeah, it's like $80 the next night against the Rangers but I'll be at the arena the next two nights and the night before while they're playing so the Sunday game is the only one I can go to. The whole first level behind home plate is no less than $140. And it only starts getting in the $120 range when you start getting into the outfield behind third base.

I've thought about waiting and seeing if some season ticket holder sells their ticket for cheap on Stubhub but it's the Yankees so those are probably games most season ticket holders will go to.

[TheAlpineOracle]

Originally Posted by Inferno

So I'm hoping to go to Toronto this August for SummerSlam. The Jays are playing the Yankees and I was planning on going to the game on the 11th and then going to the arena right after. I was looking at ticket prices and they're $140-$150 behind home plate which is more than what I was hoping they would be with the team being bad and me already planning on getting tickets to all four WWE events.

Where should I be looking for a good view? This might be the only game I get to go so I don't want to cheap out for a bad view but if there's other areas that are just as good as behind home plate and cheaper I would consider those.

I actually find the first few rows of the second bowl (1st base of 3rd base) are the best seats arbitrary Rogers Center.

[flames_fan_down_under]

https://jaysjournal.com/2019/01/23/b...erica-top-100/

This is the first time in Blue Jays history that seven prospects have made the Top 100 rankings in the same season.

7 Jays in Baseball America's top 100 Prospects:

#1 Vladdy Jr (apparently the first Dominican ever to have the BA top spot)
#8 Bo Bichette
#42 Danny Jansen
#70 Nate Pearson
#84 Eric Pardinho
#89 Jordan Groshans
#91 Kevin Smith

Danny Jansen will likely be off that list when BA releases it's midseason rankings. All of Pardinho, Pearson, Groshans and Smith will move up the list in my opinion. I can see Kloffenstein getting into the top 100 as well.

[Samonadreau]

Ya I see Pearson being a top 10 pitching prospect by the end of the season

[Samonadreau]

Double post

[flames_fan_down_under]

Great article on Jays prospect Kevin Smith.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/ml...eakout-season/

No one can deny Smith’s eagerness. At this time last year, he was on the phone with Toronto’s development staff, asking them for the earliest date he could report to spring training. It was there in early camp that he met Guillermo Martinez, then a minor-league coordinator and now preparing for his first season as an MLB hitting coach with the Blue Jays.

Martinez had some ideas. Smith had just completed his first professional season after being selected in the fourth round of the 2017 draft — a 61-game rookie ball stint that saw him hit .271/.312/.466. Smith demonstrated some raw power with eight home runs (half of them to the opposite field), and was putting up above-average offensive numbers for a shortstop at his level. But he was striking out a quarter of the time, getting exposed by breaking balls away, and struggling to make the kind of consistent, hard contact the Blue Jays felt he was capable of.

[TheAlpineOracle]

So if I’m reading a recent article correctly, Halladay’s wife says he will not enter the HOF with any team on his plaque as his family doesn’t want to alienate Toronto or Philly as he loved both. Halladay is on record multiple times saying he would go into the HOF wearing a Blue Jays hat. If this is true, that’s extremely disappointing. Contrary to anything Halladay has said.

[calgarybornnraised]

I don't think anybody else should have a say but his Wife and Kids. It should be up to them.