Re: Toronto Blue Jays
Berrios decision is what it is. I don't agree with it, but it was clearly made way before. And I bet Kikuchi not being able to quickly warm up played a big influence in it. Once he's warming up, he was going in the game.
Pete Walker LEFT the dugout once they made the decision to pull Berrios. He was pissed.
0 runs though is what did them in though. Kikuchi ended up not doing poorly. The decision to go to Kikuchi took out 2 good hitters, which was the plan. I mostly don't agree with bringing Kikuchi in mid-inning with a base runner. It was the hitting. They let meatballs go past them time after time after time in this series. It was awful.
All year the hitting game plan, the hitting approach, the lack of aggressiveness like the beginning of the year... it was awful. You are a team who struggle to get to third, they didn't attempt to steal once because they were scared. You can't hit doubles, and your approach was to produce more singles, but you don't attempt to steal....You pinch run with Whitt, but not Eden...who's on the team to pinch run.
Honestly, I think you run the majority of the core back, fire Guillermo Martinez, fire Don Mattingly (he did nothing), fire John Schneider, and have Atkins/Shapiro admit they went overkill on the singles hitting approach. Vlad can get his power back. Bo can too. They have a top 5 AL pitching staff next yr still. They have a couple of trading pieces in Manoah, and Nimmala.
They'll have money to spend with Ryu ($20m), Chapman ($12.5m), Belt ($9.3m), Kiermaier ($9m), Merrifield ($6.75m), and Hicks ($1.8375m) coming off the books. Merrifield's money essentially goes to Chad Green's team option ($9m), and Bichette, Berrios, Bassitt, and Gausman's pay raises take up about Kiermaier's money.
So Jays will likely have about $25-30m in money to replace Chapman, Hicks, and Ryu. Ryu gets replaced by Tiedemann, Manoah, or a trade piece. Hicks Market Value is 2yr, ~$7m deal ($3.5aav), so his pay raise is likely not a whole lot more than we're expecting. Maybe it's like $5m a year.
All in all, the team grinddddeddd all yr, never had fun, couldn't hit balls far enough, micromanaged things all year, and base running was not there all year. Vlad just hasn't had his head in the game all year. I'm assuming it's because he wasn't getting the power this yr, and it emotionally took him out of it.
I did watch some of the interviews post game and Vlad was still in tears. He was feeling the pressure, and I think he can't truly handle it.
12 Team, H2H, Keep 6 (in Bold)
G, A, Pts, PPP, FW, SOG, Hits, Blocks
W, Saves, S%, GAA, Game Started
2C, 2LW, 2RW, 4D, 1Util, 2G, 5BN, 2IR, 1IR+, 1NA
C: Horvat, Trocheck
LW: J. Robertson, Byfield (C), Guenther
RW: Pavelski (C), Giroux (C), Svechnikov (LW)
D: Fox, Makar, Bouchard, Morrissey, Gudas
Util: Meier (LW, RW)
G: Oettinger, Georgiev, Samsonov, Woll