Gabriel

With me and my partner, unless we are really excited for something, we typically wait to see what the people we trust think (similar tastes) and/or if a second season is announced. Netflix, in particular, has been guilty several times over of cancelling a show because it "didn't do well enough", only to have it turn out to become a major hit among the people who watch it because Netflix pulled the trigger too early. It really does feel like they believe that if something isn't binged immediately, it's not delivering. My Netflix list alone is huge. Add in the other services out there, and I'm sitting on a giant stockpile of content that I'm interested in but haven't had the time for quite yet. There's probably been at least ten different shows sitting on my list that I end up just removing because they're cancelled within three months of the season dropping.

Entering year 2 with the Athletics now, still in the bottom 5 teams in regards to payroll. MLB roster is: Sean Murphy and JJ Schwarz at catcher. Schwarz had a really good season with me and ended up playing way more than I expected, given that Murphy is my long-term catcher. Seth Brown is still manning first base, having hit 20 dingers in year one, despite a low .200's batting average. I was hoping to replace him, but didn't like my other options through trade or free agency, and nobody in the system stepped up to challenge him. Cavan Biggio is my every day second baseman, with Vimael Machin having played his way onto the opening day roster as a back-up, utility guy. Machin made the roster in year one, but ended up getting demoted to AAA, where he struggled, then to AA Midland where he recovered. Let's see if he sticks with the A's this season. I traded for Matt Chapman in the off-season, to be my third baseman. I had Brandon Crawford playing short in year one, and he did well, but I wanted to spread out his $16 million and included him in a package to the Jays to bring back Chappy. Chapman is in a contract year, making just north of $9 million. I signed Charlie Culberson to a cheap deal to take over at short. Lourdes Gurriel Jr is my left fielder, having come over in a mid-season deal that also included Anthony Bass and Nate Pearson. I sent Ramon Laureano to Toronto. Cristian Pache is my center fielder. He's been serviceable, but doesn't have a stranglehold on the position. Hunter Renfroe was acquired to play in right field after I lost out on Joey Gallo in free agency. Outfielders Bubba Thompson, Cal Stevenson and Luis Barrera are my additional bench option. Barrera had a really good year one, but I needed to shore up the position after a bad season from the team. My rotation is James Kaprielian, Cole Irvin, Kwang Hyun Kim, Adam Oller and Nate Pearson. Kim was a cheap free agent add at the end of the off-season, and didn't pitch in the majors in year one. Pearson had a cup of coffee at the end of the season and performed well. I traded Paul Blackburn in the off-season, despite him being my best performing starter in year one, because he's regressing and I wanted to save some cash. Only $2.9 million, but I managed to snag a decent return in two prospects off the 40-man. Aaron Ashby, Ryan Weathers, Sam Selman, Yunior Marte, Austin Pruitt and Genesis Cabrera make up my bullpen... gone quite young and cheap there, but everyone had good years in year one, whether at the major league level or otherwise. Anthony Bass is my high leverage guy, and AJ Puk broke out with 40 saves in year one as my closer. The team only won 70ish games, so his importance cannot be understated. The fact that more than half our wins came in closing situations made me really focus on trying to add offense in the off-season, hence the additions of Chapman, Culberson and Renfroe... and the retaining of Seth Brown. All four guys should challenge for 20 homers if they play enough, while Chappy and Culberson should be able to improve on the team batting average from last season. We had a really good spring training, especially after I trimmed the roster down to the final cuts, so I'm hopeful for year 2 to see vast improvement. I'm not aiming for the post-season, but I'd like to get the record above .500 and continue the development of some of my younger stars before making a playoff push in year 3. EDIT: My rules to keep the payroll low are pretty simple. Once the season starts, I have a personal budget of $0. Every two dollars out in players leaving will add one dollar to my internal budget. So if I can trade away $10 million, my budget for additions becomes $5 million. In the off-season, I look at what remaining budget I had at the end of the year, divide it in half, and that's the money I have for free agents and re-signings. In regards to contract extensions, at the beginning of the year, I will re-sign anyone willing to take a pay cut. If I keep them, they're staying on less money. Mid-season extensions, I only choose one guy and I will sign him to whatever it is that he wants, because I've determined he's the most important potential off-season loss.

I think both teams got exactly what they were looking for out of the trade. No argument there. As a numbers guy, it's almost a no-brainer for Toronto to make that deal. You don't move your most veteran of the catchers in a year that you want to be a World Series contender. You also cannot move All-Star Alejandro Kirk. It was always going to be Moreno on the outside-looking-in. Varsho instantly upgrades the team's ability to keep runs off the board. In fact, Atkins has done a great job at focusing on run prevention. I know everyone wanted more bullpen upgrades, but the arms we had at the end of the year were better than what we started with, Erik Swanson was a huge upgrade there, and it's likely that one of the bounce-back candidates who fell out of the rotation will do so in the bullpen. Kikuchi, White, whoever. I think Kikuchi as a two-inning guy out of the pen is the best use of him. Don't let batters see him more than once a game. The subtraction of offense is hard to see happen, but it's not like Atkins gutted the team. Hernandez and Gurriel will be missed, but Varsho hasn't hit his ceiling yet as a hitter, so he may climb up above that .250 mark while providing exceptional defense. Kiermaier is what he is at the plate, but not everyone needs to be having multi-hit games, driving in runs. Someone's gotta stop runs, and someone's gotta be on base for those dingers to really sting. I think there's probably a desire for another impact bat in the lineup, but where do you slot them in? Biggio can be a super-utility guy, so maybe at second base? If there's a short-stop available, maybe move Bichette to second and see if it helps improve his defense. I'm just not sure what kind of impact bat, from the middle-infield, would be available in trade right now for an affordable cost.

The Jays finally traded a catcher, sending Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr to Arizona for Daulton Varsho. It's a really close deal, so it's hard to be angry about it. Varsho provides better anticipated value than Moreno and Gurriel combined, and had a better WAR than any Jay last season. He's a left-handed power bat that has risen through the ranks in the outfield, but can also play catcher. It just stings because it feels like we're losing more than we are. Gurriel's power is replaced in the lineup with Varsho... but they hit more than 0.060 apart last year. I think Varsho hit .231 and Lourdes was at .297... defensively though, it's a massive upgrade. Moreno, on the other hand, is a top prospect that's proven his capability at the major league level. It's really tough to project prospects in baseball. He could go on to have a killer career as the Diamondbacks number one catcher, or he could fail miserably and this might look like a genius deal in five years. Personally, I would have done Moreno+ or Gurriel+ for Varsho, but I would have dipped into the farm system for those additional players or at the very least, I might have tried to tie a bad contract to Moreno. You want our top prospect? You gotta take Kikuchi too.

I think you should make an OOTP game that consists of an MLB that is just the league from Baseketball. All 148 teams, playing 750 games to make the post-season, where they play 45 more games to make the post-post-season, which consists of 24 more games before the Denslow Cup. *above numbers are not accurate... but they might be close.

The New York Mets currently have a payroll over $100 million higher than the second highest payroll in the league.

I am still playing November's update, but I have noticed that too many broadcasters won't allow deathmatches. Fite TV Canada won't allow me, despite them airing deathmatches regularly.

I really like the Bassitt signing. I really hate that Ross Stripling just signed a 2 year deal for $25 million with San Francisco. Atkins couldn't have plated the same or better for Strips? Bassitt was a lot of money, but a rotation of Manoah, Gausman, Berrios, Bassitt and Stripling would have been well worth another $12.5 per season.

You all wait until Kiermaier breaks out with 45 homers, 150 games played and a gold glove... while Judge falls off the face of the earth, Senga and Heaney get lit up, and Carlos Rodon ends up with Tommy John surgery after someone gives him seven years of ridiculous money. I'm also hearing Don Mattingly will come out of retirement to give his side burns one last run and be the left-handed bat the team really needs. Seriously though, Jays fandom is losing their minds because of lack of movement, but I'm not looking at many of these deals and thinking anything other than "phew, that's a contract that is going to suck really bad at some point". The team needs to be mindful of the in-house extensions that will be needed over the next three seasons. They can't be handing out the term and dollars that are flying around, for guys who will likely regress and cost them younger, better players when they can't meet the demands of the young core. As frustrating as it is to watch the off-season unfold and see so many of the potential fits dropping off the free agents list, it's way more important to be aware that Moreno, Kirk, Vlad, Bo, Biggio, Gurriel and Manoah are going to either need to be traded or extended at some point soon. I'd rather be shopping in the discount bins at free agency, knowing that these guys have priority, than to be handing out some of these deals and wondering which albatross contract is going to cost us which core player come extension time.

It's just baseball, homie. My twitter feed is littered with the "top reporters". I don't think there's another sport where the big name reporters get as much wrong as in baseball. It's also just a sad fact about being a Blue Jays fan. They're in on everyone, and become the front-runners for many who end up signing elsewhere, according to reports. But the idea of touching base with Judge's camp isn't insane. Even the people talking about it are saying it's not going to happen (and I know it won't, and it really shouldn't anyways for the sake of the team), but between them initiating contact and the fact that they're still heavily interested in guys who would push them into luxury tax territory says to me that Rogers is willing to open the pocket-books.

The Jays have now lost out on Bellinger and Andrew Heaney, both of whom were supposed to have been locks for the team based on what some of these experts have said. I'm not overly miffed though. $17.5 for Bellinger, and more than one year for Heaney with his injury issues scare me. Interestingly, with both of those guys signing today and reporters walking back their comments on Judge signing with the Giants, it's now being reported by multiple people that the Jays have snuck their way into the final talks with Judge's camp. Obviously, nothing gets done there, but the idea that they're willing to exceed the luxury tax threshold on the off-chance that they can convince him to come north is pretty big. Maybe Rogers has given them the go-ahead to spend what they need to if the piece or pieces are worthwhile.

Flanagan just signed an exclusive deal with Amazon Prime. We still haven't watched Midnight Club, but friends and critics that I trust to have a similar opinion to mine have led me to believe that it is the weakest work he's done in some time. I wonder what Prime offered him as a filmmaker that Netflix wasn't. Obviously, the money is better. Netflix is cost-cutting and Amazon is all-in right now. But I feel like there has to be some type of artistic freedom that he's been given, and that idea excites me. Hill House still hits me hard at the most random times. It was a really heavy show for me, and beautifully done.

After making a concentrated effort to widen the list of things I listened to on Spotify this year... I still managed to have Cancerslug dominate my wrapped, and I ended up in the top 0.1% of their listeners for the year. My top 5 bands have all been in my top 5 before. The only change from last year (I believe), is that Ghost dropped out despite having my most played song (Hunter's Moon), and the Misfits jumped back into the top 5 after missing out last year.

They have not, to my knowledge. Leaning into the retro idea though, if creations are closer to No Mercy than WWE2k, we'll be fine without it. Just go back to the old school of going to websites for the formulas.

I finally made the jump to MLB 22. It was on sale for $12.50 for Black Friday on the Playstation Store, and my partner was very adamant that I buy myself something nice after working so hard lately. Bank account being what it is, $12.50 for hundreds of hours of gameplay was a solid deal. After skipping over 21, it definitely feels different and is taking some getting used to, but I'm really digging it so far. Everything seems slower, which isn't a bad thing, except for the pitching. Default pitch speeds had me feeling like I was right ripped out of my mind at first. Started an Oakland Athletics franchise to give myself something a little different. I am going to come up with some financial rules for myself and try to keep the budget low in Beane-town while also fielding a competitive team.

It really depends on who gets added. Free agent-wise, I'm targeting Joey Gallo, Andrew Benintendi, Brandon Nimmo and Michael Conforto as potential adds to the outfield. In case we miss out on all of them, I've got Odubel Herrera as a more "under-the-radar" signing that could be impactful for the team. Whit Merrifield is also capable of playing any of the outfield positions. Gurriel can play either of the corner field positions, but I prefer him in left. I really want Springer to move over to right to help keep him healthy. Merrifield can play any of the positions to spot an outfielder a day off whenever needed. That means that center is the position of greatest need. Brandon Nimmo is clearly the top choice there, but he's going to come at a high price tag. I believe the Jays are more likely to spend money on pitching than on positional needs at the moment, so let's go with an outfield of Gurriel, Odubel Herrera and George Springer with Whit Merrifield as the fourth. Gallo and Benintendi aren't natural centers, so Springer would need to stay there and I don't like that. They're also going to be costly. They're out. Conforto is a left-handed bat and I'd love to have him, but I don't see him in center and that makes the same Springer problem keep him from being my top target. If a center-fielder can be brought in via trade (coming back for one of the catchers maybe?), then I'm a lot happier with that idea. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure who might be available that way, but if they can swing a deal and get someone better than Odubel Herrera, I'd probably do it. The Marlins are in desperate need of a catcher. It would take Kirk or Moreno, likely... but Jesus Sanchez is just 25, plays center and has some pop. He'd be coming off a slightly down year offensively, but the Jays do love their reclamation projects. The White Sox have been linked to catchers this off-season, and they've got a similarly young stud in Luis Robert playing in center. He hits right, which isn't ideal, and it would probably take more to get him than Sanchez. TL;DR version: I'm talking to the Marlins about what it takes to get Jesus Sanchez in a Jays uniform. Then I'm tackling the cost analysis of trading for him versus signing Brandon Nimmo. Would I rather part with the pieces required to acquire Sanchez, or the money required to sign Nimmo? Ideal outfield: Gurriel in left, Nimmo or Sanchez at center, Springer in right... with a Merrifield chaser.

Look for a left-batting outfielder to be added to the team. Moving out Teo's dollars probably happened because something feels imminent on that front to Atkins. Swanson is a solid relief arm, and as much as I dig Hernandez, he's replaceable and was unlikely to continue with the team after the 2023 season anyways. What I really like about this trade, is that it dealt from an area of surplus to address a pressing need. I also like that it quietly establishes that anyone looking for one of the Jays catchers will need to ante-up. The fan suggestions online for trades involving our catchers have seemed to be pretty comical, like they think that Toronto NEEDS to trade one of them and will do it for next to nothing. Nah, bish. You want Jansen, Kirk or Moreno? Better be willing to part with something significant. I'm talking high-end bullpen arms, starters that could slot into the middle of a rotation at worst, or a left-hitting masher with big OPS and good defense. That's not to say that the Jays can't toss in some other pieces to make it work better for an offering team, whether it's bench players or prospects, but I don't think the conversation gets past "would you do..." if the initial offer doesn't include one of those types of players. EDIT: I forgot that the Jays are heavily interested in Verlander. Maybe Atkins has been given the go-ahead to make a big one or two year offer to the 39 year-old provided he could trim X amount of salary first.

My understanding is that they built the game to be played the same on all platforms, knowing that the upgrade ratio from last-gen to current-gen isn't as high as the previous generation switch. I still have yet to see a PS5 inside of a store. I have seen the Xbox Series S at London Drugs, but nowhere else.

While that's really cool news, I very much prefer playing games on the playstation. So now I have to decide between PS Plus and just buying Fight Forever outright... or cancelling my PS Plus and grabbing Game Pass and dusting off the ol' Xbone. I feel like it's probably better for me to just bite the bullet and get the game on PS4, because I don't really even have the time to play the stuff that's on Plus that I want to... and I play these games religiously if I get into them. Hell, I'm still playing MLB The Show 20 on a daily basis.

I would give season four a chance if Liam Hemsworth replaced Cavill as the protagonist, but wasn't Geralt. Cavill IS Geralt. As far as I'm concerned, the next season is the final season, so it better be damn good and I better get to see Geralt's sexy ass again.

Barbarian was really good. That said, maybe Terrifier 2 raised the bar, but I wasn't blown away by anything in Barbarian. The gore and effects were great, but of the two movies that are claiming to be crossing lines and making people uncomfortable, I've gotta give the edge to Terrifier by a landslide.

I only really have heard two quotes about Barbarian, and my interest was piqued. First one was "it's like a scary ass rollercoaster... without a safety bar". The second one was basically "when you think it's gotten as fucked up as it is going to get, they come back at you and get even more fucked up". How did you feel about it? We are going to be watching it tonight.

I feel like if you enjoyed the first movie, the sequel (even with the increased violence and gore) should be more than engaging enough to be enjoyable for you. Yeah, it's over the top and I definitely saw a bunch of people having a hard time watching some of the violence... but it's Art that makes it worthwhile, not the violence itself. If you can plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and just enjoy watching Art make art, it's a hell of a ride. The main actress absolutely fucking kills it, too. If I don't see more of her in horror, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Terrifier 2. If you enjoy over the top gore, a charismatic villain and long for the days of 80's horror... this movie is a love letter to you. We got to be one of ten (I believe) cinema's across Canada to get this release, and it's the absolute coolest thing my city has ever had. Even in limited release, Terrifier 2 has made its budget back over twenty times already. Expect an announcement for a third entry in the franchise based on that alone. Art the Clown will be the new Freddy Krueger.

Jerry Only of the Misfits has a solo album coming out next week. They announced it last month, and have said absolutely nothing since then. The feeling around it is that it's likely to be a follow up to the Misfits' Devil's Rain, which I'm totally cool with. I liked that album more than a lot of people did, but agree that Jerry should have given up the Misfits branding on the work. So it's cool to see him doing that. That said, the only reason he wouldn't be releasing this under the Misfits name is due to his agreement with Danzig. To play shows as "The Original Misfits", Glenn demanded that Jerry didn't tour as the Misfits for a certain period of time before and after. Since they've been going fairly regularly, it would make sense that if Jerry wants to put out new tunes and tour, that he'd do it under a different name. There's also a rumor that it could have something to do with them talking about a new OG Misfits album, though I don't know how likely that is. I really can't see Glenn, Jerry and Doyle all sitting down and cohesively writing anything together. They all have such vastly different ideas of what they want to do.