The Jays are in HUGE trouble...

Toronto Blue Jays are in some serious trouble and following what was a handful of games that gave some fans optimism, they come out and not only lose the series against the San Diego Padres, but they now have some serious questions as we are officially in the all-star break. And these are questions surrounding where this team can go, what Russ Atkins plans to be at the deadline, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And recently, right after the game yesterday, John Schneider and Kevin Gosman came out and spoke out about the struggles of the team and revealed the truth. But not only that, we have the Jays making multiple moves, including calling up a very interesting pitching prospect, a former top prospect, and then making another draft pick, drafting yet another pitcher. Folks, there is a lot to discuss today. Before we get into it, a very quick reminder to hit that subscribe button. You guys have been an absolute peace with the support. Now, folks, yesterday was a sad, bad game. Again, the offense looks a little bit better. There's some encouraging signs all around, but it doesn't matter if you can't get wins. The Red Sox have won like 10 in a row. You have the Rays, the Yankees, the Jays are falling slightly behind, and I want to start the video with that because we're going to dive into the draft picks and the moves later in the video. And bear with me. I'm quite sick at the moment. But you can see with the Jays now sitting at 45 and 51 heading into the All-Star break, they are dead last in the American League East, but still somehow only two and a half games out of a playoff spot. Make it make sense. American League. And you can see, again, the Red Sox have been on a tear, the Astros, the Orioles, the Blue Jays. The Jays are only two and a half games back of a wildcard spot, which is absurd, ludicrous, whatever you want to say. And the good news is they're in a fine spot to go ahead and make some runs. The bad news is they actually have to go out. Guess what? Make a push. They have to go make a push. And Kevin Gossman and John Schneider, I mean, they're in some trouble, right? Because the offense is rough. I mean, the offense is up and down the pitch. They can never get it going at the right time at the same time. Rather, as you can see, Mitch Bannon, there's no hiding how important the first few weeks out of the All-Star break will be. John Schneider, we'll see a lot about ourselves when the break is over. It's kind of make or break. We got to start playing better. And it's true, right? I mean, this team, the epitome of this team all year has been up and down, a roller coaster, two steps forward, four steps backwards, which Kevin Gossman said there a few weeks ago, a couple of months ago now at this point, whatever it was, they haven't been able to string together wins. And I thought against the Padres, you have your perfect pitching lineup going up. You have Cease. You have your Savage. You have Gossman. Cease coming off of an insane performance. You're thinking, OK, you know, I don't know, whatever it was over the past few games, right? You had your Savage and Gossman going. You think you can win a few games in a row, get really one, three games in a row prior to this. And you go out and you just, I mean, heartbreaker after heartbreaker. John Schneider came out and spoke about it and said, not where we want to be right now. That's obvious. We've been trending in the right direction offensively, which is true, minus the Seattle series. But we definitely have to be better in some areas, whether it's on the mound, the plate, whatever it is, there's little things you have to look at. And he goes on to say more consistency from the regular guys up and down the lineup, which is true, calling out some of the players. Definitely not where we want to be. You've got to take the break to recoup and figure that out. And you've got to come ready to play after the break. And it is it is legitimately make or break after the break. No pun intended there, because good you're doing this is your two and a half games back. You're still heavily in a position to make a playoff spot. Absolutely 100 percent. The bad news is this team has not shown an ability to actually go out and do that. Right. You can see here from Chris Black, which is true. They have had the lowest or one of among the top seven, top eight, lowest first half OPS is in a franchise history. And that is horrible for a team that last year maybe started off a little bit slow offensively and picked it up. But also like contact driven team, you kind of had the high floor and heading into the issue to say, OK, even if some guys regress, maybe guys like Kazuma Okamoto, the acquisitions you make and kind of step up, Kazuma Okamoto did. And then everybody else essentially regressed outside of a handful of names. So I don't know, folks, comment down below what your thoughts are. It is a rough, rough time. The good news is two and a half games back. You'd see here Blue Jays season has been a disappointing slog, and it's remarkably easy to take the glass half full approach there two and a half games out of a playoff spot despite rampant underperformance. If the core guys actually show up in the second half, they're likely in the dance. And that's the funny thing. Right. And again, if you're close to a playoff spot, you're going to be buyers. The deadline is just the way that this team is working. If the deadline started right now, the Jays would be buyers. Ross Atkins would be buyers. So I don't know, folks, comment down below. We'll dive into the moves now. One positive thing for at least OPS, excuse me, Vlade Jr.'s OPS is back above 700 after a couple home runs over the last. Let's dive into some moves because there is some exciting stuff. Let's start with the draft pick. So they made an intriguing pick here. The Blue Jays picked Mathis Neyrol, a six foot five righty pitcher. They're going with humongous pitchers born in Montpellier, France, or I think it's Montpellier, France. In the 13th round, he began playing baseball at age 11, went to high school in Toulouse and posted a 4.96 ERA, good for nine and a third, or 9.3, rather, strikeout for nine with the Big 12 Kansas Jayhawks this year. I love the pick again. They are picking guys who have some pretty big tangible features, right, whether it's being six foot five in this case or also six foot five, the lefty Cole Carlin, whatever Carlin it is. I think it's Cole Carlin, Cole Carlin. So another good pick. I actually really like the draft that the Toronto Blue Jays had. And I mean, you look at it from the top to bottom, whether it's Cole Carlin, the guy that got a 39, who was getting rampant reviews, the more that in a couple of days went on since this draft pick, people are raving about it, talking about how it's going to be, you know, an elite pick. And if you're the Toronto Blue Jays, shouldn't have fell to them at, you know, 39, he was directed to go to 26. So I'm excited to see what Neyrol can do here and see what again, what kind of farm system the Jays continue to build. But on that note, they did make a couple of other moves here. And this is more important for out of the All-Star break, just kind of seeing where things currently stand. So CJ Van Eyck was selected in the Major League roster and will be active today, which would be good for his MLB debut. And then Chad Dallas was optioned to AAA yesterday, of course, that was simply an inning, inning management thing. Chad Dallas has been really good. And I do think that Chad Dallas is probably going to be somebody that I think he contributed to the to some of the other moves that happened over the past couple of days. But surrounding CJ Van Eyck, pretty darn interesting name, used to be really, really good. Now he's up to 27 years old, folks. You look at, I mean, back in, I don't think it was early, maybe it was 2020 at a college at one point, whenever it was, he was one of the better prospects for a little bit there. Never really a top, top prospect, but he was a very solid prospect this year, 3.79 ERA in six and 13 starts, 17 games. He's going to be an inning seeder for this team. Right. And luckily they have guys that can do that. And again, at the end of the day, they traded Tommy Nance, which I think was a big part of Chad Dallas. Like I think him, they wanted, they wanted to keep him on the team and keep his roster spot. And you would have to get rid of that. If you kept Tommy Nance around in theory, unless you move off some other guys. And Josh Schneider said they have other guys that can quote unquote, take over the role that Tommy Nance had. I think they're hoping CJ Van Eyck can do that. I think they're hoping that Chad Dallas can do that. And it'll be interesting to see what happens because let's be real here, folks. They're in a, they're in a pretty rough spot. And let's quickly look at Vladdy's first half 703 OPS in the first half of the season. Really good defensively, right? I mean, like five outs above average at first base is insane, but you don't want Vladdy for that. Now some, it's starting to look a little bit better, the baseball savant card, but you look at the way the team is in general right now. And I mean, Hoffman yesterday kind of got called out by John Schneider. I mean, he allowed his lack of being able and lack of ability to hold on runners cost them the game yesterday. That being said, Hoffman's been really good the past 10, 15 games, or I guess appearances for him. He's been really, really good. So I don't want to fully get upset, but another game costed by Jeff Hoffman, which now leaves the Jays at a 20% chance to make the playoffs, which is, you know, it's been worse. It's been worse, but team has to keep rolling. Comment down below how you'd rank this team and rate this team to the first, you know, half-ish, a bit over half of the season, what you're looking forward to most in the All-Star Break. Thank you guys for watching.