Barry Bonds is on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot (or some title much like that).Barry was on the Writers’ ballot 10 times, reaching as high as 66.0% of the vote (he started at 36.2% his first time and steadily increased). And he was on the Veterans’ Committee ballot in 2023 (the year they voted Fred […]
3 months ago | 4 reads
Happy Friday. We brought our cat home from the vet hospital last night (after paying quite the ransom), and he seems almost 100% now, which is great considering he was at death’s door when we took him in. We have to give him special food now (special is code for very expensive) and we had […]
3 months ago | 1 read
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Cleens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. Both Keith Law and Ben Clemens have Pete Alonso at number […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
Mark Eichhorn turns 65 today. The Blue Jays drafted him in the 2nd round, 30th overall, in the 1979 amateur draft, out of Cabrillo College, CA, where he played shortstop and pitched. Mark quickly rose through the Jays’ farm system and made seven starts for the Jays as a September call-up in 1982. Unfortunately, they […]
3 months ago | 1 read
This will be Carlos Beltrán’s fourth time on the Hall of Fame ballot. He’s gone from 46.5% to 57.1% to 70.3% in his first three shots. Carlos played for 20 seasons. In 2586 games, he hit .279/.350/.486 with 435 home runs, 1587 RBI, and 312 stolen bases. His 9,768 at-bats put him 39th all-time. He […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
After four full seasons (plus nine games), with the Blue Jays, we had some to realize the good bat/poor glove description that we had been given of Alejandro Kirk wasn’t accurate. He’s tremendous defensively. And his bat? That’s seen good times and bad. With the trade of Danny Jansen, at the deadline in 2024, Kirk […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Cleens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. Kyle Schwarber is number 8 on Keith Law’s free agent list […]
3 months ago | 1 read
This is the second part of my review of what went right for the Blue Jays over the past year, in an effort to learn why I was wrong in calling for a fresh start under a new front office. On Tuesday, I looked at the pre-2025 roster construction and last year’s draft. Today, I’m […]
3 months ago | 3 reads
When you post on SB Nation, we don’t want you to miss all the conversations and responses that follow. So starting today, whenever a user replies to your comment or to your post on the Feed, you’ll see a notification at the top right corner of the page. And of course, this means that when […]
3 months ago | 1 read
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. FanGraphs has Bo #8 in their top 50 prospect list. Keith […]
3 months ago | 3 reads
This is Bobby Abreu’s seventh time on the Hall of Fame ballot. He’s been very slowly building his numbers, but much too slowly to get to the 75% by his 10th and last chance. Last year 19.5% of Writers had him on their ballot. His first time, he was on 5.5% of the ballots. Abreu […]
3 months ago | 6 reads
There’s a little bit of procedural news today. First, it was the deadline for players to officially accept or reject the qualifying offer. As expected, Bo Bichette has rejected the Jays’ offer. Bo is going to make a lot more than $22.025 million over a lot more than one year, so accepting the QO was […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
2024 was George Springer’s fourth season with the Blue Jays, after signing a six-year $150 million contract. And, ummm, it wasn’t a very good season. Since 2022 his bWAR had been falling, from 4.2 to 2.0 to 1.1. I’m probably wasn’t alone in thinking that he was aging out of where he could be a […]
3 months ago | 4 reads
About 16 months ago, I wrote a post arguing that the current Blue Jays roster had likely hit the end of its road, and that they needed at least a soft reboot. Specifically, I argued that that would involve punting the 2025 season and retooling with an eye on 2026, and that in order to […]
3 months ago | 1 read
Programing note off the top, there might not be the usual level of content over the next few days. One of our cats is not well. I ended up taking him to the pet hospital in the early hours this morning. The cat is going to be staying there for, likely, three days. I should […]
3 months ago | 3 reads
Ernie Clement was picked up as a free agent signing in March of 2023, after his release by the A’s earlier that month. I wasn’t thrilled with taking a castoff of the A’s (one who only played 6 games for one of the worst teams in baseball). It wasn’t like we didn’t already have a […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. Today’s subject is Cody Bellinger. Keith Law has Bellinger as his […]
3 months ago | 3 reads
Addison Barger played in 69 games for the Blue Jays last year. It wasn’t totally successful, hitting .197/.250/.351 with 7 home runs. Before the season, he was number three on our top prospect list. Tom wrote: Barger is listed at 6’0” and 210lbs, and looks as physical as that suggests. He’s added over 50lbs since […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. I’m skipping a few to get to Edwin Diaz, because, when […]
3 months ago | 3 reads
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. Ben Clemens (no “t”) has Framber Valdez his number 4 free […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
It is Pat Hentgen’s 57th birthday today. Pat will always be one of my favourite Blue Jays. He was the Cy Young winner (the first Jay to win the award) in 1996, going 20-10 with a 3.22 ERA and pitching an outstanding 265.2 innings. He won the prize on this day in 1996, a terrific […]
3 months ago | 4 reads
There isn’t all that much for Jays’ news, which isn’t a surprise. John Schneider came in second for the Manager of the Year award. A lot of us figured he would win, because he took the Jays from last to first in the AL East. Of course, he was the manager when they finished last […]
3 months ago | 2 reads
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them. Number 3 on Ben Clemens’ list and number 9 on Keith […]
3 months ago | 1 read
Homer Bush turns 53 today. Bush came to us from the Yankees, along with David Wells and Graeme Lloyd, for Roger Clemens. Clemens wanted out of Toronto after winning two Cy Youngs in a row for a poor Blue Jays team (we finished 5th in 1997, then moved up to third in 1998 (we finished […]
3 months ago | 4 reads
Coming into 2025, Bo Bichette had spent seven seasons with the Blue Jays (one of them was a Covid-shortened season). All of them were good, until 2024. He had received MVP votes in 2021, 22 and 23. He led the league in hits. Then came 2024. He went from a 4.8 bWAR in 2023 to […]
3 months ago | 4 reads