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OT: The Toronto Blue Jays

MindzEye said:
Essential imo. This season is cooked without a few things happening

- Manoah and Vladdy both bouncing back to something much closer to what they did in 21-22.
- Gausman not declining much if any at all (just turned 33)
- Springer power bounce back. Was great that he stayed healthy, not great that his stick went from fringe elite to slightly above average. The Jays need 3 big bats in the middle of the order imo. Bo (125 wRC+ or better), Vlad (130-140+) and Springer (120+) is kind of essential. It will take some of the pressure off of the secondary/complimentary guys like the catcher platoon & Turner. Because there's a lot of spots that could be below average in this lineup (LF, 3B, 2B if Schneider turns into a pumpkin, CF)

A lot of other okay things happening (Varsho back to an average stick, Jansen healthy all year, Bassitt staving off father time, etc) won't be enough if the top of this team doesn't bounce back in some cases, and hold the line in others.
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Basically hope that the pitching this year is as reliable/excellent as last year and the hitting this year is much more productive/better/consistent than last year.

The jays were relatively healthy last year hopefully our luck continues in that department. Please God let the jays stay healthy with very few injuries 🙏
 
The keys for the Jays this year:
-Can we get bounce-backs from Vlad, Kirk, and Manoah? All 3 showed All-Star/MVP potentials in the past, and the 3 combined to be terrible last year. If all 3 bounced back, that alone could be like a 10 win swing
-Can we get a mini-rebound for guys like Springer or Varsho? Both were useful last year, but less than stellar.
-Do we have the depth needed? Last year was healthy, can't always count on that. That also counts handling guys like Turner or KK being disappointments in health or performance due to age, or even someone like Springer falling even further.

The team is coming from a relatively low point last year, but that being said, if you add up the off-season changes, we definitely have not replaced what we lost yet, so things could fall lower if we don't get a rebound from a returning player.
 
UWHabs said:
The keys for the Jays this year:
-Can we get bounce-backs from Vlad, Kirk, and Manoah? All 3 showed All-Star/MVP potentials in the past, and the 3 combined to be terrible last year. If all 3 bounced back, that alone could be like a 10 win swing
-Can we get a mini-rebound for guys like Springer or Varsho? Both were useful last year, but less than stellar.
-Do we have the depth needed? Last year was healthy, can't always count on that. That also counts handling guys like Turner or KK being disappointments in health or performance due to age, or even someone like Springer falling even further.

The team is coming from a relatively low point last year, but that being said, if you add up the off-season changes, we definitely have not replaced what we lost yet, so things could fall lower if we don't get a rebound from a returning player.
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The law of averages tells me pitching will be worse and hitting will be better.
 
Lot of good stuff in the article, looks like the Jays hired David Howell from Driveline which is where the cool kids have been going the last few years to refine their skills using advanced analytics and cutting edge training methods, and which has led to a lot of positive results.

The Blue Jays are particularly encouraged by that third offering, which Little added to give him a second fastball he could locate for strikes and bore in on right-handed hitters hanging out over the plate (Hernandez’s opposite-field homer is a good example of that). It’s exactly what they would have told him to start developing if he’d been a member of their organization. When David Howell — Toronto’s assistant pitching coach — called Little a few hours after the trade, one of his biggest encouragements was to continue working on it throughout the winter.

Good news: Little had already arranged for an off-season pitch design session at Driveline — where Howell worked before joining the Blue Jays — to continue tweaking and improving his cutter. Using Rapsodo data and Edgertronic footage, Little refined his grip and release of the pitch to increase its velocity and improve its movement. What originally came out of his hand like the bad bullet slider he’d experimented with years ago slowly morphed into a truer, back-spinning cutter.

That design process continued with Howell at Toronto’s player development complex in Florida, where Little arrived in mid-January. The Blue Jays had Little throw in their pitching lab and presented him with a thorough writeup of his pitch characteristics and movement patterns on the mound. Using the biomechanical data they gathered, the team went to work improving Little’s back-leg load while helping him move quicker and more linearly towards the plate. By the time spring training began in mid-February, Little had already thrown multiple live batting practices and devised an attack plan for using his new pitch mix in different counts.
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