Drew

@drewgrof.bsky.social

I like West Ham, hardcore and baseball

My humble proposal is this entire week be recognized as a national holiday. Every single email sent with more than one recipient is returning out of office alerts, nobody’s working anyway.

As a fount of takes, I’m going to be on Hanomansing Tonight to talk about transactions. Join me on Our Nation’s Broadcaster around 8:15 or so.

Dalton Varsho was exactly as advertised for the balance of his Blue Jays tenure. League average bat and good OF defense. He’ll never get the “credit” he deserves for the Game 7 World Series loss and, unless you’re Jeff Hoffman, that’s probably for the best.

Trying to think of another player like Jacob deGrom who went from “everybody loves that guy, he’s unreal” to “oh wait he still plays? He seems like a dick.” so quickly and completely.

Every trade made with the Angels is a “buy low” situation. The Jays can probably help Jose Soriano become a better pitcher overnight by virtue of not being the Angels. Getting him to Dunedin and putting some “we’re not the Angels” player development fundamentals into place is an easy win.

The final chapter of the Kevin Gausman release point chronicles: at the risk of overreacting to a single data point, it doesn’t look great 😔

Chart showing Kevin Gausman’s vertical release point getting lower as the season progresses

If you want to understand the Dodgers success, I find it useful to consider Will Smith. The Dodgers took Smith with the 32nd pick of the 2016 draft. Law had him ranked 57, BA 74. He worked his way to being a top 100 prospect ahead of 2019 (95 on BA, 59 at BP), debuting in 2019.

The St Louis Cardinals 2026 Opening Day payroll: $ 99,274,269 (24) The St Louis Cardinals 2008 Opening Day payroll: $ 99,624,449 (12) How could the Dodgers do this?!?

My wife asked me if I want to go to the Jays game on Sunday and I flatly responded “no.” Not because the team is bad, but because it feels so expensive I could not and would not justify it. It’s too much so I go without.

Shoutout to the insanely redass guy playing Sunday league baseball. Way to enforce the unwritten rules that are so unwritten they aren’t even real. What a loser.

Understandably a lot of cope around the Blue Jays but I can’t but think “Alejandro Kirk will bounce back offensively” is the one least likely to come true. His is a gruelling job and he only really does one thing well on offense. I worry.

One last word on the World Cup: if you’re a neutral that supports Argentina you could not be more suspect. Untrustworthy and pathetic in equal measure.