Hasn't he been their regular leadoff hitter for a couple of years now?

It's good not to get too worked up about the middle relievers that got away and had some success with rival clubs. They are too inconsistent & fungible to try to waste roster spots forever to collect 'em all.

Looks like Cabrera was victim to a roster crunch. MLBTR had him pitching 2 innings after the Mets emptied their pen after an early rain delay took out the starter. Without having options, he was the one to go to bring up a fresh arm.

Merryweather seemingly got cut just a few days before hitting 5 years service time where the Cubs would owe him his full 1.25 mil arb salary for being released. He has been awful, but it seems there was some strategic pennypinching timing there.

Reid-Foley seems like a pure baseball move. He's 29 running an ERA over 7 in AAA as a reliever.

Half a decade later, the most valuable asset from the Steven Matz deal ended up being a sinkerball swingman in Josh Winckowski.

Unexpected.

Shoulder impingement is not a good prognosis. That's a likely long IL stint with a decent chance of ending up with surgery.

Silver lining is that Schulz on the roster to replace Garcia gives the pen more length.

Garcia going down also frees up a 26-man spot for either Swanson or Burr who are reportedly only about 10 days out.

Yimi being hurt also likely keeps one of Urena or Fisher around a while longer. Although IIRC Swanson & Burr will still need 40-man spots, so a few Steward Berroa-like cuts may still be be coming.

I think "baseball sense" is probably something that can't be improved much even in youngish prospects like Clase, much like batting eye or first step quickness in outfielders & infielders.

Clase has been playing affiliated ball since age 17, has almost 500 games & over 2k plate appearances between the minors, MLB & winter ball.

If he's still making boneheaded mistakes like bad outfield routes, poor swing decisions or throwing to the wrong base, it can hardly be blamed on not enough experience.

In the recent Addison Barger Sportsnet piece where a 14-year-old Barger traveled to a prospect showcase in the DR due to his homeschooling, he was quoted as saying that the very young Dominican teens were solely focused on maximizing tools to get noticed & signed by 16. While even a very young Barger without an organized HS or travel team talked about how the US system was much more focused on developing "baseball skills" rather than raw physical tools.

There’s probably some room for coaching & improvement wrt to defense for Clase. Teoscar Hernandez stands out as a guy coming to Toronto around age 25 as a DH-caliber butcher in the field despite the physical tools to at least play CF in the minors & winter ball. But Teoscar in the end improved enough in his late 20s in RF that he was playable as an everyday outfielder that no one made fun of anymore (becoming a Silver Slugger on offense also helped).

OTOH, you have someone like Varsho who player catcher throughout his college career in a northern cold weather, shortseason state. He makes the Diamondbacks as a catcher. The Jays make him the centerpiece of their 2023 defense first overhaul, and he instantly becomes a Gold Glove CF (or at least once Kevin Kiermaier was dispatched) purely based on his routes & his first step instincts without actually possessing top percentile footspeed.

It's funny because I checked out Matz' BBRef page not that long ago, but you appear to be correct.

Though this does seem to be a little bit of deadcat bounce for Steven as there's no room him in the Cardinals rotation in Year 4 of his 4/44 deal because he was awful & hurt in Years 1 & 3 (and managed only 17 starts in his decent 2 bWaR Year 2).

His usage in 2025 is strange as a swingman. He has an ERA of 1.74 over 30+ innings but only two starts. He has a couple of more traditional longman type outings. But he's mostly pitching 2 innings at a time for the 6th through 8th.

He's only striking out 7.3K/9, isn't walking anyone 0.9 BB/9 and hasn't given up a dinger yet.

So he's been quite good, but definitely due for some batted balled regression.

That disastrous Bottom 5 is going to kill George's fielding stats for a long time.

His lack of range/positioning had him miss 3 balls to more or less the same spot.

the roster has only one elite player, but good average depth

I agree the Stars & Scrubs designation doesn't fit perfectly.

It's more of an extension of our discussion in past thread re: all the hitters in the order behind Santander "fighting for their MLB lives" (ie. Not being MLB regulars).

On any given night, the Jays are only running out 3-6 MLB regulars at the top of their lineup in Bichette-Vlad-Varsho-Springer-Kirk-Santander. Followed by a string of bubble guys in Lukes, Clase, Straw, Clement, Barger, Heineman, etc.

When Varsho, Springer or Kirk sit, or Santander gets banged up, suddenly your bottom 6 is completely bubble guys (Clement is probably pretty close to a regular at this point, but isn't an MLB regular offensively this year).

Care to elaborate on this point?

I feel somewhat similar as I felt that giving into Vlad was a mistake but am also content that all the "Will he or won't he?" drama is finally over. To me the Vlad signing was literally very expensive fan service rather than an astute baseball move.

Does the Vlad extension lead to long-term mediocrity because it allows Vlad personally to subconsciously not try as hard/get fat/fool around more/lose that competitive edge/get too complacent, etc?

Is it simply because it chews up too many budget resources inefficiently for two decades on a team where ownership until very recently hasn't had the stones to spend to put the team over the top like the big boys? Like the Carlos Delgado, early JPR era?

Or is it simply that overpaying Vlad was the safe corporate thing to do, so now you expect them to sit on their laurels for years to come without making any hard decisions either way?

• Bo is gone after this year (a foregone conclusion, IMHO) - maybe trade him for a prospect?
• Santander is a complementary piece who so far is way, WAY below expectations. It's not there yet, but starting to feel like it could be Kendrys Morales part 2
• Springer had a small resurgence, but is still mostly "dead money" for 1.5 years
• Bassitt (our best pitcher so far) is gone after this year, Gausman gone after next
• Berrios is not a staff ace
• Scherzer is looking like he may never pitch again
• Gimenez had a moment, but is looking like ~$20M down the drain for many more years (contract varies)
• Varsho is Varsho - we control him for one 1.5 more years - but it all depends on his hitting - his defense will fall off some, his arm isn't great
• Hoffman has either been overused or over-advertised. He has negative WAR right now - and we have him for 2.5 more years
• We are paying market value+ for all our bigger pieces - we have almost no "surplus WAR" contracts, other than part-time pieces
• Berrios is the only starter we have after 2026 who we can count on for "average" innings
• Francis is looking pretty bad right now

• some of the 'scrubs" are playing ok. Heineman in limited action has been great, Kirk seems like a solid value player, but possibly his game calling is off / becoming predictable? Certain teams / players seem to be able to "hit at will" against us.
• Straw is probably worth his $6-7M so far, which is unexpected
• Lukes is a solid player, and I think we control him for some time?
• Barger looks promising
• A couple of relievers look good this year - they may flop next year
• Manoah may have a resurgence? We have a couple of prospects that are looking good?

Thanks vw_fan17 for the detailed reply.

Pretty much agree with all the above.

So it's less about Vlad himself or the terms of the deal. Or even ownership.

It's more about making a huge commitment at the wrong time in the team's competitive cycle instead of making more unpopular but necessary difficult & creative decisions.