Bluebird Banter Feb 18, 2021
Digging into ZiPS player comps: pitchers
And a few more hitter to round things out When Dan Szymborsi’s 2021 ZiPS projections came out for the Blue Jays back in November, one of the interesting things in addition to the actual forecasts themselves is the #1 player comp. In particular, especially for some of the younger players, some of the comps really stuck out to me for various reasons. I thought I’d dig into them a little deeper, and having looked at core hitters yesterday, we’ll finish with pitchers and circle back to a few other hitters as well. Hyun-Jin Ryu — Herb Pennock This is an interesting comp,...
Bluebird Banter Feb 15, 2021
On the timing of making a contending push
Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/ Revisiting the Blue Jays of the mid/late 1990s and perhaps a cautionary tale On the cusp of Spring Training, the future for the Blue Jays looks bright. An exciting nucleus of young players appears poised for bigger things, and adding George Springer and Marcus Semien among others on top of Hyun-Jin Ryu last winter has further accelerated that timeline. The time to win is now, with an urgency that wasn’t necessarily there prior to laying out almost $200-million this winter. I became a baseball fan and Blue Jays fan in the summer of 1997, and...
