Mark Roe, Jason Strudwick and Frankie Corrado are joined by Chris Rose, Host of the Chris Rose Rotation Podcast and they discuss the start of the Blue Jays season and whether or not the Blue Jays can turn things around.
Among Toronto sports teams, I hope Gina Kingsbury, GM of PWHL Toronto, given how that team, during its recent playoff series, didn't have a solution the score goals when Natalie Spooner went down to a knee injury, will radically shake that roster up rather than follow the failed run-it-back approaches of Blue Jays, Maple Leafs and, from last NBA offseason to the regular season, the Raptors. Maybe by making those radical changes she will send a message to other Toronto pro-sports teams that just running it back won't work unless there is significant playoff success. This past Northern Hemisphere winter featured an IIHF World Juniors (under-20 men's) Top-Division tournament who's relevant Canadian team had gone from having qualified for four consecutive gold-medal games to having bowed out in a quarterfinal during which had scored 2 goals. Under IIHF rules, WJC teams must make sure that any player who, as of the year during which the Top Division tournament ends, gets to join such a team will the 15 years of age or older but no older than 20, making those 18 players born in 2004, out of 25 who had gotten to play for that team, too old to be eligible to play in relevant future tournaments. Those 18 can still compete for spots on the adult men's team because by last December at the latest they had reached their 19th birthdays and had, at least since December 2022 become eligible to compete for the senior team due to having already turned 18, and not need an underage waiver to get to participate. The regular season of a particular pro-sports league only means so much but it STILL means SOMETHING. The Jays finished their last season 89-73, ONE game ahead of the highest-ranked non-AL playoff team but after the 5th game of that season never had a winning percentage below 50.0. So far this month the Jays haven't had a winning percentage of 50.0 or better and are already 3.5 games out of a wildcard spot. Not since the 2016 MLB season have the Jays won a playoff game never mind a series. Under modern playoff qualifying standards (division leaders and in each of the American and National leagues the top-three teams that didn't finish first in their respective divisions) of those seasons during which the Jays didn't qualify for playoff action, on games back of the final playoff spot the MLB season of: - 2017 would have meant finishing 4 GB - 2018 would have meant finishing 17 GB - 2019 would have meant finishing 26 GB - 2021 would not have featured finishing a game back, but in a playoff spot albeit barely As to whether, in response to the title of the relevant segment of TSN 1050 Radio's Overdrive, this Jays' season is salvageable, only during the 2021 season, among those during which they had, before this season but after the 2016 one, missed qualifying for playoff action, would they, under existing MLB qualifying standards, have actually qualified for playoff action makes clear just how much of a failure the approach to development and roster construction President Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins have taken. Both executives should have been turfed last October after it had become clear the Jays were not going to win a playoff series after having not won such a series during any of the previous six seasons either. I remember the early 1990s fondly because those Jays won a couple of World Series. It's remarkable that considering how poorly they performed in most seasons since then they've even won a single playoff series. Why regularly watch the Jays when three of my favorite sports to watch (hockey, basketball and soccer) feature Canadian teams in action at least from September to April? During much of that time span, at least one of the Canucks, Flames, Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, Leafs, Raptors, Sens and Habs are in action, and because, from the 1990s only one season has featured none are those teams having gotten to qualify for playoff action, in most seasons have featured playoff games to watch that have featured Canadian NHL teams in action.
@@michaelingram3961 I’ve watched lots of videos by the TOsportstalk to RU-vid man to losses by each of the Leafs and Raptors. In response to so many such losses, he’s gotten blue in the face, and even before having viewed such videos, I could tell he’d been so angry to have put a garbage can over his head (at least from the video captions). In reaction to various losses by the Jays, he has done the same thing although because I don’t watch a lot of baseball games, I haven’t watched many of his reaction videos to such losses. A team that has so much talent on paper doesn’t always perform so well on the ice, field or court depending on the sport. It’s remarkable Blue Jays have even won even ONE post-1990s playoff series although have only done so in a couple of seasons (2015 and 2016). 51 games into the 2024 regular season Blue Jays have a 23-28 record, with those away from home (11-16) and against teams in the AL Central (6-10) particularly bad. At the same point last season, the Jays‘ record had been 26-25, with their overall record ending up 89-73. The difference between the last 2 records is 63-48. This season’s Jays, just to end up with the SAME end-of-season record as last season, will need to go 66-45 the rest of the way, with that 89-73 record last season BARELY enough to qualify for postseason play. Then there’s a lack of postseason success, with three posts - 20,16/ half appearances, all of them wildcard series, but none of them having featured wins of games. I hadn’t before this season, but following the 1990s, watched many baseball games but over the years have found other forms of sports entertainment. Late-September features the beginning of NHL preseason play, and among Canada’s MBA andNHL teams, I watch as many relevant games as possible, with the end of so many such games no earlier than mid-April. That’s not to mention international hockey tournaments of which there are 5, over that time span, administered by the International Ice Hockey Federation, with Canada‘s World-Junior (under-20 men’s), under-18 and adult women’s and U18 and adult men’s teams having remained in the Top Division since those teams had been founded. That ice hockey is popular in Canada doesn’t mean that every tournament a Canadian team going to get to qualify for the gold medal game; indeed, among those five teams that I mentioned earlier, things have been mixed among those tournaments that at any point this year will have ended, with the: - WJC team having been bounced in the quarterfinals - under-18 women’s team having won bronze, but at least unlike the 2023 under 18 men’s team, by a rather convincing margin in the relevant game (8-1 rather than 4-3 in OT) - adult women’s and U18 men’s teams‘ each having won gold - adult men’s team still in the running to win a medal, but due to having lost its semifinal in a shoot out, will have to win its upcoming game, just to earn a bronze medal As of this weekend, the Oilers are competing in a conference final, with that playoff series with the Dallas Stars tied 1-1 after a 3-1 loss late Saturday Eastern Time. As much as I respect the Habs for the Stanley Cups they’ve won, 10 of them post-1967, those Habs have won 5 more post-‘67 Cups than the team that has, among Canada’s NHL teams, won the second-most, the Oilers. The Flames won a Cup in 1988 but haven’t from the 1990s had playoff success in consecutive seasons. It may very well be the Oilers will win their first post-1990s Cup in June but will need to win 3 more games just to get to this season’s Cup final. Fail to do so this postseason, and the Oilers will likely only have so many more cracks at going for a Cup before a need to at least retool significantly. It may very well be that next season will be that very season, depending on whether Leon Draisaitl, under contract for slightly over 13 more months, decides to re-sign. it should be noted the Oilers drafted him and Connor McDavid, the latter their captain, in the top-10 of their NHL Draft years. Those Oilers, following their 2006 trip to a Cup final, went 10 seasons without a playoff appearance and so far have just two trips to conference finals during the McDavid-Draisaitl era. That team’s 2022 trip to a conference final featured a record of 0-4 in that best-of-seven series (as all such playoff series from the 1990s, excluding certain 2020 ones in bubbles at Scotiabank Arena and Rogers Place in Toronto and Edmonton respectively when Covid had been a pandemic that had necessitated playing those games behind closed doors). The Oilers, thru 6 post-2006 games played in conference or Cup finals, have a 1-5 record although, hopefully their win late last week won’t be the only one to take place that deep into a given postseason. The Canucks might very well have been playing in that conference final instead of those Oilers although figuring out a way to score enough goals without Brock Boeser, a blood clot of whose would end up keeping him out of the lineup for the crucial game seven of that conference semifinal, hurt the Canucks‘ ability to score enough goals to win that game. I like it very much that ice hockey is played all over the world and that players under contract to NHL teams hail from any of over a dozen countries even though some of the homelands of those players have changed over time. there was after all the time when players under contract NHL teams came almost exclusively from Canada or various US states but these days so many were born in the Schengen Area . I would say that ice hockey is as popular in Canada as soccer across much of the British Isles is. That’s although, among teams based in the British Isles, success has been mixed.
What I've noticed since last season is John Schneider seems to be babying the players when they're not performing well, these are grown men making millions of dollars, if they make one or two errors, bat .150 or whatever the case may be, call them out, you're not there to be their pale, you're there to win games, go in front of the media and call them out, and if you do call someone out, the next will think, "Oh crape, I have to get my shit together" otherwise, they'll just keep doing the same mistake if you keep hearing the manager say, "Ya, they'll come around, we'll get there, they're trying" nothing will change. That's been going on since John took over and it snowballed to what we see on the field today, and it's to late to fix, it's like having a spoiled kid. I might be wrong, but that's what I see.
Hell no, this team stinks. The farm is weak they built around a few average at best players. If any teams still believe in vladdy let them have him and rebuild a sustainable farm system then a real ball team.
System is empty, roster isn't good, window is almost completely shut with no pieces to add. Fire Shapiro and his staff. After nine years of mediocrity It's time for change. Renovations are only half your job, Mark.
