Blue Jays Discussion: Spring Training v2.0 - Same great taste, now with less Bruce/Bautista drama!

[The Nemesis]

Continue.

for those that missed it, the news of the last thread was the Jays signing former top-shelf reliever Rafael Soriano to a minor league deal with a spring training invite. So more pen depth competition.

What I wanted to post up early was this: Bluebird Banter's 2016 Top 40 prospects:

Just Missed the Cut: Parts 1, 2, 3 (each part is one author's personal list)
Guys who were too old to make the cut
40-36
35-31
30-26
25-21
20-16
15-11
10-6
5-1

It's a good read. The system is thinner, for sure, but there's still some intriguing pieces all the way down the list.

Click to read more...

 

[Habsfan18]

Jays officials note that Tulowitzki has grown particularly close with Donaldson, the reigning American League MVP. Donaldson, as I wrote late last season pushes his teammates relentlessly. According to one player, he would scream at Tulo, who was playing in the AL for the first time, “This is the big-boy league! This isn’t facing the Phillies at Coors Field!â€

Love that quote.

 

[BackHandShelf22]

Two fantastic lengthy interviews.

Jose
http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/video/bautista-addresses-contract-demands-and-more~817975

Shapiro
http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/video/shapiro-on-villain-status-future-of-bautista-and-encarnacion~818243

 

[HOCKEYGOON]

Love that quote.

LOL

Love Donaldson..... Look up the video where he's talking trash to the Angels bench, it's not PG enough to post here.

 

[Canada4Gold]

^

"5 to, check my clock"

what's wrong with telling the Angels bench the time?

 

[JS19]

LOL

Love Donaldson..... Look up the video where he's talking trash to the Angels bench, it's not PG enough to post here.

You know you pissed someone off when Scoscia had to call for an umpire to shut Donaldson up.

 

[TootooTrain]

All the leg kicks are belong to us.

Sportsnet: Following Donaldson’s lead, trio of Blue Jays add leg kick to swings

 

[Neil Hamburger]

There's been a lot of negativity about this off-season, Jose's demands, leaked Jay Bruce trades, etc (me included).

I think we need to just enjoy this season. We have the best offense in baseball, and we'll be the among most entertaining teams to watch as well.

This is the first really great thing to happen to Toronto sports in decades, and everyone is ruining it complaining about everything.

 

[TootooTrain]

It was a shock to the system for sure. Uncertainty regarding your franchise player is always worthy of overreaction.

At this point though, it is what it is. Players are facing live pitching today. Games start friday. Lots to be positive about.

 

[Discoverer]

Games start friday.

Even better... tomorrow!

 

[TF97]

For those with MLB.TV or Extra Innings, tomorrows game will be broadcast by CSN Philadelphia

 

[TootooTrain]

Even better... tomorrow!

Good stuff. Maybe I'm thinking of the first snet broadcast.

By the way someone was asking if Tulo is using the same glove. Old faithful lives. Atleast that's what it looks like via photos from today's inter-squad game.

 

[Canada4Gold]

Colabello 2 for 2 with a double and a homerun today in the intersquad game.

 

[Discoverer]

Colabello 2 for 2 with a double and a homerun today in the intersquad game.

1.000 BABIP! Unsustainable my ass!

 

[zeke]

Colabello 2 for 2 with a double and a homerun today in the intersquad game.

was Happ pitchin?

 

[Discoverer]

was Happ pitchin?

 

[theaub]

Well technically yes the double was off Happ lol

 

[zeke]

heh.

 

[one77]

Love this team. All this drama is overblown and is not such a big deal. EE will get re-signed to a good deal, Jose will get re-signed to a deal smaller than most are speculating.

Travis 2B / Goins 2B
Donaldson 3B
Bautista RF
Encarnacion DH / Colabello DH
Tulowitzki SS / Goins SS
Martin C / Thole C
Colabello 1B / Smoak 1B
Saunders LF / Pompey LF
Pillar CF / Pompey CF

Stroman - Estrada - Sanchez - Happ - Dickey
-Hutchison/Chavez/Loup/Cecil/Storen/Osuna

 

[zeke]

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/previewing-the-best-and-worst-team-defenses/

fangraphs says Jays have #2 defense. way behind #1 KC though.

 

[Discoverer]

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/previewing-the-best-and-worst-team-defenses/

fangraphs says Jays have #2 defense. way behind #1 KC though.

Sounds about right.

I love the Rays' projection. Kevin Kiermaier: +19. Everyone else combined: +3.

 

[TF97]

Scheduled to pitch tomorrow is Stroman, Hutchison, Delabar, Tepera, Jenkins, Copeland. The starters for the rest of the week are Dickey-Floyd-Happ-Hutchison, with Sanchez pitching after Dickey. So this week we'll get to see Stroman, Happ, and Hutchison start (only Friday/Saturday are SN)

 

[zeke]

So fangraphs updatsd their team depth charts today to include the Zips numbers, and it upgraded the jays slightly to 40.9 team war. The good news is that it dropped the red sox a couple wins down to 42.2 as I expected, and the Yanks dropped below the Jays.

But I expected a bigger bump based on the zips released in december, but it seems the new zips numbers have downgraded the jays slightly across the board. I'm not sure if this is due to an updated calculation or if the zwar in december is actually just a different calculation than the fwar released today. They are all for the same projected playing time, for the record.

These are the changes from December to today:

Donaldson 6.6 --- 6.3
Bautista 4.1 ---- 3.9
Martin 3.5 ------ 3.1
Tulowitzki 3.5 -- 3.1
En'cion 3.3 ----- 3.1
Pillar 3.2 ------ 2.8
Travis 2.5 ------ 2.2
Pompey 1.2 ------ 0.9
Saunders 1.1 ---- 1.0
Smoak 0.7 ------- 0.6
Barney 0.7 ------ 0.5
Colabello 0.4 --- 0.3
Goins 0.3 ------- 0.0
Thole 0.0 ------- -0.2

every single position player downgraded from december. That's a cumulative 3.5war drop from the position players. Pretty huge.

Stroman 1.8 ----- 1.9
Chavez 1.4 ------ 1.9
Happ 1.3 -------- 1.6
Estrada 2.0 ----- 1.1
Dickey 1.6 ------ 0.9

Cecil 0.9 ---- 0.9
Storen ??? --- 0.7
Osuna 0.9 ---- 0.7
Sanchez 1.2 -- 0.6
Loup 0.4 ----- 0.3
Hutchison 0.7 - 1.5
Tepera 0.1 ---- 0.1
Delabar 0.1 --- 0.1

All over the place here. Must be a different type of calculation used. Either way the net difference is -0.4war.

So all in all around a 4war drop from the numbers released in December, which is the difference between an elite team and just a good team.

 

[Muston Atthews]

What is it based on? I don't understand how players values move when they haven't played a single game of baseball

 

[zeke]

either:

1) the "zwar" released in december is simply different kind of war than the fangraphs war released today: or
2) some sort of updated numbers became available (i.e. detailed park effects or defensive metrics) or his model was adjjsted.

It's probably #1 but i'm not sure.