2021 Blue Jays (Cito still sucks)

[Moose Milligan]

Well, as much as I was hoping Vlad Jr would be a bust...it doesn't look like that'll be the case.  He's off to a monster start after losing 40 pounds this past offseason.  

3 homer, 7 rbi night last night against the Nationals.  Touched up Scherzer for a Grand Slam.

.360/.484/1.177 OPS so far this year.

Don't get me wrong, guys like Vlad Jr are great for the game....just wish he wasn't in the AL East to terrorize us for years.

[Frobby]

I was waiting for someone to post about this.   Lots of gloating here last year when Vlad Jr. wasn’t an instant superstar, but it looks like that gloating may be short lived.   And, he’s barely 22.   

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Frobby said:

I was waiting for someone to post about this.   Lots of gloating here last year when Vlad Jr. wasn’t an instant superstar, but it looks like that gloating may be short lived.   

Any idea what is going on with Biggio?

[Frobby]

49 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Any idea what is going on with Biggio?

I hadn’t really been paying attention, to be honest.   My guess is he’ll snap out of it.   His walk rate is still high but he’s striking out more than in the past.   

[ArtVanDelay]

I have them going 78-84. 

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, ArtVanDelay said:

I have them going 78-84. 

They look to me like a team that might overpay for Means.

[bobmc]

On 4/29/2021 at 8:29 PM, Can_of_corn said:

They look to me like a team that might overpay for Means.

Tommy Milone wasn't the answer?

[bobmc]

The Blue Jays announced that they will shuffle off from Dunedin to Buffalo on June 1 after completing many (jointly funded) improvements to Sahlen Field including: 

• Moving the bullpens off the field to behind the outfield walls
• New batting cages built beyond right field
• Resodding the outfield grass, completing a full field replacement that began with the infield in 2020
• New weight room and renovated clubhouse facilities
• LED light bulb replacements plus two additional temporary lighting poles

The Orioles face the Jays on June 24.  I remember Ryan Mountcastle's (RMC?) big blast last year onto the interstate (at 0.58 below).

https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/press-release/press-release-blue-jays-to-move-home-location-to-sahlen-field-beginning-june-1?t=blue-jays-press-releases

[Moose Milligan]

Vlad Jr. just might **** around and win the Triple Crown.  22 homers, 56 RBI, .346 batting average.  He's leading in homers by 4, RBI by 6 and average by 9 points.  He's the only batter in the league with over 1.000 OPS (actually he's over 1.100 at 1.148).

He's homered in 4 straight games, quite frankly I'm not sure if anyone can catch him in homers.  Matt Olson is 2nd, and his career high is 36 homers which he did in 2019.  Brantley is second in batting average at .337 and he's a .298 career hitter but his career high in batting average came way back in 2014.  

Vlad Jr. just seems to be on a completely different planet right now though.  He's also leading in hits, on base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS+, total bases and intentional walks.

 

 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

Vlad Jr. is hitting out of his mind so far this season with a 211 OPS+. Even when the inevitable correction happens Vlad Jr. is still going to be awesome. 

[Frobby]

On 6/15/2021 at 1:39 PM, Moose Milligan said:

Vlad Jr. just might **** around and win the Triple Crown.  22 homers, 56 RBI, .346 batting average.  He's leading in homers by 4, RBI by 6 and average by 9 points.  He's the only batter in the league with over 1.000 OPS (actually he's over 1.100 at 1.148).

He's homered in 4 straight games, quite frankly I'm not sure if anyone can catch him in homers.  Matt Olson is 2nd, and his career high is 36 homers which he did in 2019.  Brantley is second in batting average at .337 and he's a .298 career hitter but his career high in batting average came way back in 2014.  

Vlad Jr. just seems to be on a completely different planet right now though.  He's also leading in hits, on base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS+, total bases and intentional walks.

 

 

 

On 6/15/2021 at 6:14 PM, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Vlad Jr. is hitting out of his mind so far this season with a 211 OPS+. Even when the inevitable correction happens Vlad Jr. is still going to be awesome. 

I remember how when he struggled a bit last year some people were gloating about how he’d been an overhyped prospect.   Errrrr, not so much…

[Moose Milligan]

21 minutes ago, Frobby said:

 

I remember how when he struggled a bit last year some people were gloating about how he’d been an overhyped prospect.   Errrrr, not so much…

Yep, I gloated.  Two reasons:

1:  He's in the division and he'll be terrorizing us for years.  I don't want that, I'm pretty sure you don't want that either.

2.  I love seeing people who are lofty in their predictions, especially industry insiders, turn out to be wrong.  Everyone in the industry was practically ready to give him the ROY trophy before his rookie year.

You will also recall, Froberto Duran, that I also said it would be too early to write him off.  

[Frobby]

7 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yep, I gloated.  Two reasons:

1:  He's in the division and he'll be terrorizing us for years.  I don't want that, I'm pretty sure you don't want that either.

2.  I love seeing people who are lofty in their predictions, especially industry insiders, turn out to be wrong.  Everyone in the industry was practically ready to give him the ROY trophy before his rookie year.

You will also recall, Froberto Duran, that I also said it would be too early to write him off.  

I actually wasn’t referring to you.  Frankly, I don’t remember specifically who said what about Vlad, I just remembered some people being pretty delighted that he hadn’t lived up to expectations in 2019-20.   I did find this remark that I made last offseason:

“It would be very foolish to count young Vlad out.  He’s 21 and already a solid major league hitter. But I’ll say this — he’s far more useless defensively than I’d appreciated two years ago when I started this thread.   He’s already had to move off 3B, and from what I’ve seen he’s a very poor defensive 1B.    He’s going to have to be Miggy Cabrera with the bat to be one of the ten best players of the ten year period in question.”

https://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/index.php?/topic/33920-ten-for-10-years/page/4/&tab=comments#comment-2618924

Well, he’s doing a pretty good impression of Miggy in his prime right now.

 

 

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

I actually wasn’t referring to you.  Frankly, I don’t remember specifically who said what about Vlad, I just remembered some people being pretty delighted that he hadn’t lived up to expectations in 2019-20.   I did find this remark that I made last offseason:

“It would be very foolish to count young Vlad out.  He’s 21 and already a solid major league hitter. But I’ll say this — he’s far more useless defensively than I’d appreciated two years ago when I started this thread.   He’s already had to move off 3B, and from what I’ve seen he’s a very poor defensive 1B.    He’s going to have to be Miggy Cabrera with the bat to be one of the ten best players of the ten year period in question.”

https://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/index.php?/topic/33920-ten-for-10-years/page/4/&tab=comments#comment-2618924

Well, he’s doing a pretty good impression of Miggy in his prime right now.

 

 

Yep, he's doing a bang up job of being Miggy.  But if you're going by OPS+, not even Miggy finished a year over 200.  Of course there's a lot of baseball to be played, but Vlad is over 200 right now.  For the record, Trout hasn't finished over 200 for a year either.  Whether Vlad Jr can or not remains to be seen but there's certainly a chance that he could.

They've moved him off 3rd but he also put in a tremendous amount of work to lose weight this offseason.  I'm not sure if Miguel Cabrera was ever interested in that.  If he can be an average first baseman defensively, that'll be good for the Jays.  But it ultimately really doesn't matter, the bat appears to be that special.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yep, I gloated.  Two reasons:

1:  He's in the division and he'll be terrorizing us for years.  I don't want that, I'm pretty sure you don't want that either.

2.  I love seeing people who are lofty in their predictions, especially industry insiders, turn out to be wrong.  Everyone in the industry was practically ready to give him the ROY trophy before his rookie year.

You will also recall, Froberto Duran, that I also said it would be too early to write him off.  

A lot of players who start in MLB at age 20 need a year or two to really start dominating. Ken Griffey Jr. was good as a rookie, but it took him a couple year before he was one of the better hitters in the league. 

With Vlad Jr. I was hoping maybe he wasn't as good as advertised, but I knew by year two or three that would change and it did.