Arden Zwelling

on the season he he has won in his last 156 plate appearances uh he's tracking for around a three win season which uh again would be a significant drop off from what he did last year like those are just your biggest movers like we can get into talking about backup catchers and the bench and platoons and matchups and all that and the bullpen deployment and all that but like

Just the biggest leverage points really have been the drop off in performance and production from Vlad and Springer, who are meant to be your carriers in your offense.

And if that doesn't change, I just don't think the season is going to be successful in the end.

Yeah, the rest of the American League has a lot to do with that, obviously.

And that's really just the silverst of linings for the Blue Jays this year is that they are close to a playoff position where like the record that they have now on the production that they've had this year would not have them close to a playoff position at this point last season.

So, but ultimately, other teams in the AL are going to perform better as well.

Even if the Blue Jays perform just a little bit better, you have to assume that some other teams in the AL are going to start turning things around as well and start pushing their way up the standings.

So ultimately, like for the Blue Jays, somebody is going to win the East and it's unlikely to be the Blue Jays.

Someone's going to win the Central and someone's going to win the West.

So can you be the best among the best three teams of the remaining field?

So you have to be top three among the remaining 12.

Can they do that?

That's really what the rest of the season is going to be about, because until the Blue Jays are at least somewhere closer to the top of the American League East, it's just really not even worth talking about the division right now.

Ultimately, your best players have to be your best players and your stars have to be your stars.

And I think that on the pitching side, like the Blue Jays have seen that with Gosman and Dylan Cease before he went on the IL, but it seems like it's going to be a relatively minimal IL stint for him.

And I expect he'll come back and just continue being Dylan Cease.

So, yeah.

Like, the Blue Jays have gotten those performances on the pitching side.

It's more so on the hitting side, where you look at, like, the Blue Jays' hottest hitters of late, and we're talking about Jesus Sanchez and Johendrik Pignongo.

Maybe you want to throw Ernie Clement in there as well.