Missing BJ

Why are the Jays hitters so bad?

2019-04-05T23:05:00.001-04:00

Swingannamiss

No question, the Blue Jays are off to a slow start with the bats. But, why? Here’s an analysis based on a ridiculously small sample size (8 games). Hey, if this is too small a sample to analyze, it’s too small a sample size to warrant all the handwringing about the hitting, too. Right?

Anyway, after Thursday’s game (April 4), the Jays were 17^th in walk rate and 15^th in strikeout rate. Very average, in other words. But as a team, they’re batting just .190, and among teams that have played as many games as they have (8), they’re 2^nd last with just 24 runs scored.

The Jays aren’t striking out too much, and their walk rate isn't bad, but bad things happen when they put bat on ball.

First, the good news. The Jays are 11^th in line drive rate. That’s great! Line drives lead to hits more often than any other batted ball outcome (fly ball and ground ball are the others). Trouble is, they aren’t hitting the ball hard (26^th in hard hit percentage, 10^th (i.e., 10^th worst) in softly hit percentage). They’re popping up a lot (6^th in infield fly ball rate). They’re not turning fly balls into HR (21^st in HR/FB ratio). And they’re not pulling the ball excessively, which, depending on your view on the effect of infield shifts, could be a good or bad thing.

Add it all up, and the Jays have a .228 BABIP, which is 28^th in MLB (third worst). The Jays hit the ball and the other team, usually, catches it. However. The Jays have a roster loaded with guys who hit the ball hard (Grichuk, Hernandez, Gurriel, etc) and are a much faster team than they were in 2018. So the BABIP should regress to the norm, somewhere in the .280-.300 range, over time.

What would be more worrying would be a huge spike in K rate or a drop in walk rate, which hasn’t happened.

And in case you’re wondering, the Jays have been dramatically better with runners on base or in scoring position, than they have been with the bases empty. So… clutch!

April 2: Impressions from the Ballpark!

2019-04-03T22:56:00.001-04:00

Your 2019 Blue Jays… plenty of good seats still available

Tuesday night was my first Blue Jays game of 2019. And these are my impressions.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here again: There are plenty of things to hate about the Skydome, but it was as warm and dry as a high school gym last night. The roof is very welcome in early April, when the weather can be (and usually is) miserable. I can’t understand why they didn’t put a roof on the new field in Minnesota.

We had great seats, just behind and to the left of the Jays’ dugout. Maybe I missed noticing this last year, but the new netting over the dugout has the dual effect of protecting those seats from screaming line drives and very slightly impeding the view of home plate. I mean, the wire screen looks bad in a photo, because most cameras automatically focus on the nearest object. But in person, it’s barely noticeable, for me anyway. I can’t believe there are people for whom this is a major complaint.

The concourses felt bigger, but that’s probably because there was nobody in them. Cosmetically, the Dome looks a bit different, but the renovations made over the winter didn’t make a big impression on me.

Food? Hey, it’s Loonie Hot Dog night!

[2 hot dogs later]

Don’t have the loonie hot dogs. Or, do, if you are nostalgic about the boiled 12-to-a-pack hot dogs you ate as a kid. Beyond that, I had the smoked sausage (not bad) and pretzel (same as always). I didn’t dare try the crazy new things like the bulgogi tater tots, sorry.

On the beer side, Goose Island has apparently discontinued the Honkers Ale, but the Midway is a decent substitute (lighter, but similar (citrus fruit hints) to the Honkers).

Cheap food, good beer, great seats, Stroman on the mound against a beatable opponent… where is everybody? Probably they read my last night’s post, saw themselves as fans who come out for winners, and stayed home. And I respect that; teams need that kind of fans in order to keep revenues tied to winning, as much as possible.

Speaking of winning, the Jays didn’t. Stroman was mostly fine; the team didn’t hit. I saw somewhere that through 6 games, the Jays have 1 hit during the first time through the batting order. That’s one hit in 54 plate appearances. For the season, the team batting line is .182, and they’ve scored just 18 runs in 3 games. Call up Vladito!

To summarize the above: Do you remember 2011? This season is going to feel a lot like that, minus the 8 WAR performance by Joey Bats.

***********

So since I’m here, I might as well comment on Randal (“Handsome Randy”) Grichuk’s new contract, a 5 year, $52MM deal that runs from this year to the end of 2023. Grichuk is 27; this deal carries through what should be his prime years. He can play defense, run a bit, and hits for power, and has been about a 2-WAR player per season despite not getting on base enough and missing time every year due to injury or stints in the minors. $10MM/yr is not a bad deal for a 2 WAR player; the Jays obviously think he can be more than that. Question the deal if you want, but it seems like a reasonable bet; athletic guys who hit the ball as hard as Grichuk does don’t grow on trees.

But beyond that… wow, what a slap to Kevin Pillar. Trade Pillar to the Giants for low-end prospects and then give Pillar’s CF heir apparent $50MM? O U C H.

Pillar traded

2019-04-02T17:25:00.000-04:00

Lego Pillar > bobblehead Pillar

Did anyone not see that coming? Pillar to the Giants has been rumoured for a while, and today, the two clubs finally pulled the trigger. Unlike in the Morales and Martin trades, I don’t think the Jays have had to eat any money – Kevin Pillar is “just” 30, doesn’t make a ton of money, and still has some value for a little while longer. But like those trades, this move is addition by subtraction – by trading Pillar, the Jays open up a roster spot for an outfielder. Expect a call-up of Anthony Alford or Dalton Pompey, when Pompey’s concussion DL time is up. My money is on Pompey, since he is out of options.

The Jays did get some players back, but it wasn’t anything like a premium haul. Derek Law is the most prominent name – he’s a righthanded reliever who had a pretty good 2016 (55 IP, 9 walks, 50 strikeouts, 2.53 FIP) but hasn’t done much of note since then (so he’ll fit right in on the Jays! *rimshot*). Alen Hanson is a worse version of Pillar (bad OBP, no power, meh defense, can run) except that he can play 2B. That would be good if the Jays didn’t already have Lourdes Gurriel, Cavan Biggio, Devon Travis, and maybe Bo Bichette in line to play 2B. Don’t expect to see much of Hanson in the long term.

Juan De Paula is kind of interesting… but Marc Hulet at Fangraphs says it best:

The 2019 Lottery Ticket: Juan De Paula, RHP: This young right-hander has potential but has also spent four seasons in short-season ball and is with his third organization after being traded twice. He has the potential for three average or better offerings and shows good athleticism on the mound. But he also exudes a high level of energy that needs to be channeled effectively. De Paula has seen his walk rate increase each year and with Staten Island (last summer), he looked like he was trying to guide the ball rather than trusting his athleticism and delivery. He was also slowing down his delivery and tipping his pitches when he threw his off-speed stuff. The raw potential is here for something promising but De Paula also has a long way to go despite his success in short-season ball in 2018.

There. Now you know what I know about Juan De Paula. You can never have too much pitching, I guess.

So that’s the baseball related analysis – the Giants get Kevin Pillar, who can patrol their freakishly large outfield, and whose bat will look even worse in that park. The Jays get marginal onfield return, save a few million bucks, and get to see if Alford/Pompey can do anything of value.

The other analysis? Well, it comes down to this: The Jays don’t care if Kevin Pillar was a fan favourite. The Blue Jays didn’t routinely sell out the Skydome when fan favourites Roy Halladay and John McDonald were playing here. They routinely sold out the Skydome when they were in a playoff chase. Let me repeat that for emphasis: Most fans don’t come to games because they know and like the players, they come if the team wins. And if the team wins (most likely in 2020 or 2021), people will learn names like Jansen, Bichette, Guerrero, and Alford damn fast.

Anyway, Kevin Pillar and his declining defense (-2 DRS in 2018) and 86 career wRC+ wasn’t getting the Jays back in the playoff hunt. Alford might not either, but in a rebuilding year, unknown quantities are better than known mediocrities.

Fixing baseball... again

2019-03-06T21:10:00.000-05:00

The Blue Jays are busily trying to alienate me by signing "Greasy" Clay Bucholtz and Bud Norris… so I’ve spent my time trying to solve the bigger problems facing MLB. A fool's errand, perhaps, but it’s that or start a pool on Vladito’s call-up date (April 28, fyi).

So let’s get to it, shall we?

Length of games:

Oh, the games are too long? Never mind pitch clocks, limits on reliever use, roster size, mound visits, automatic walks… just cut to the chase and make regulation games end after 8 innings. You want shorter games? Bam! – games are now 11% shorter!

Some will decry this idea as being too radical, and a fundamental change in the way the game is played – it’ll affect reliever use, roster makeup, and so on. Starters may get pulled an inning earlier. Maybe so, but making one big change is better than the death of a thousand cuts that baseball is dealing with now, each with the aim of shaving a minute or 2 off of game time. Bonus: 2 fewer commercial breaks!

“Tanking”, a.k.a. deliberately fielding a young and bad team with the aim of losing now and hopefully benefiting later.

A few suggestions…

a. Balance the schedule.

b. 2 divisions, 4 wild cards per league, for 12 playoff spots total

c. Teams forfeit competitive balance picks, revenue sharing, and other perks if their current-year payroll is less than 50% of the previous year’s average of the top 5 payrolls in the league. Do it a second time, and more perks get removed. Call it a ‘salary floor’, if you will.

Teams “tank” for 2 reasons. The first is freely expressed, and it’s the argument that that they don’t have a reasonable chance of winning now and need to lose in order to collect high draft picks and prospects. And to be fair, this makes some sense, the way baseball is currently structured. If you’re the Jays, playing in a division with NY and Boston and a 90-win Tampa club, you know it’s going to be hard to win the division. And it’s also going to be hard to win the wild card, competing against teams that don’t play 1/3 of their schedule against NYY/BOS/TAM.

There’s also a not-expressed reason: Tanking is cheap! You aren’t spending money on expensive free agents because you aren’t trying to win, and in fact, any veteran players you have are likely on the trade block, in the hope of getting younger prospects back. You’re going to spend a couple (maybe more) seasons being bad and fielding a team made up of reclamation projects, pre-arbitration youngsters, and a handful of other guys you picked up in the hope of being able to flip them at the deadline. Teams that are middling have a vested interest (saving money) in a tank job, even if things aren’t nearly bad enough on the field to warrant a full teardown.

The salary “floor” for point c. would be $99MM in 2019. It would have been between $100MM and $110MM between 2016 and 2018 (source: spotrac.com). Roughly 6-10 teams have been falling below this threshold annually. This year, it’ll be Tampa, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Miami, ChiSox, Oakland, San Diego and Kansas City. Baltimore, Miami, and KC are clearly tanking, Tampa, Oakland and Pittsburgh are just cheap, and Chicago and San Diego are coming out of tank periods. Assign a penalty for having a consistently low payroll, and while you may not end the practice of tanking, you’ll make it less appealing.

Point a. puts the Jays on a level playing field with all the Central Division teams that benefit right now from playing a third of their season (or 45%, if you're Cleveland) against crap teams. There’s less reason to tank if you don’t have the added handicap of competing against teams with patsy schedules.

And point b. … wait, more playoff teams? Yup. I don’t really like it, but more playoff berths means fewer teams having the excuse of “we have no chance to make the playoffs with our middling team” and using that excuse to justify a teardown. For reference, 3 teams in the NHL have playoff droughts of more than 3 years, and the longest drought is 9 seasons. In the NFL, it’s 4 and 16 years; in the NBA, it’s 7 and 13 years. In MLB, it’s 9 and 17, with 4 teams (versus 1 in the NBA) having 10+ year dry spells. Put a team in the playoffs and it’s much harder to sell then fanbase on a teardown (see: 2017 Toronto Blue Jays).

Lack of market for free agents:

If you think this is a real problem, point c. (above) will go some ways towards solving it. If spending a few million on a free agent gets a team above the salary floor and keeps the club eligible for draft picks and revenue sharing, they might be more inclined to do that as opposed to just filling the roster spot with a rookie. Beyond that, teams will be less likely to cut players loose if there’s a cost to doing so. If teams aren’t cutting pricey players loose for other teams to pick up for the MLB minimum, there are that many more jobs available for free agents who might have got the roster spot being filled by the veteran on the MLB minimum.

If you really want to fix this, though, you need to make bigger changes. Shorten the pre-arbitration or arbitration periods. Raise the MLB minimum salary. Or, my personal favourite: make the 6 years of team control a 2-way street. In other words, teams can prevent the player from leaving as a free agent for 6 years after being added to the 40-man roster, but are also obliged to pay the player the MLB minimum for the same 6 years, whether he is in the majors or not.

Which brings us back to Vladito. Call him up and pay the kid, already.

A believable Jays 2022 roster

2018-11-07T21:53:00.001-05:00

The Jays are (or should be) in a full-on rebuild.

The Jays have traded away a lot of the core players of 2015-18.

The Jays have a lot of exciting young players and prospects.

Taken together, these things create temptation among baseball fans, writers, and broadcasters to put together projections for an opening day lineup two, three, or four years down the road. And by and large, these projections are ridiculous. Like this one:

LMAO WHAT IS THIS pic.twitter.com/IKZUX9LXHm
— Emily (@emilydawnlove) November 4, 2018

Stroman, Sanchez, Grichuk, Giles and Pillar are all free agents after 2020. I’d be stunned to see more than 2 of them returning. More to the point, Kevin Pillar (to use a glaringly obvious example) is in his second year of arbitration and is expected to make around $5.3MM in 2019, more in 2020. Why would the Jays keep a declining Pillar around through his age 33 year, when Randal Grichuk is younger, marginally cheaper, a comparable defender and a better hitter? And where is Anthony Alford in all this?

The more ridiculous thing about these projections, though, is that they don’t factor in outside acquisitions. I’d be willing to bet that the Jays can find a better 1B-DH combo than Rowdy Tellez and a 35 year old Justin Smoak. Teoscar Hernandez might stick in LF, but probably not. And while Sanchez and Stroman still have tons of upside, they’re both injury prone, and expecting all of Pearson, Borucki, Zeuch and Reid-Foley to be worthy of a starter’s role in 2022 is fanciful, given the failure rate on pitching prospects.

So here’s a REAL look at what we might see on the field in 2022, in order of most to least likely:

3B Vladimir Guerrero Jr ($8MM)

Baby Vlad will likely be in his first arbitration year in 2022, unless the Jays extend him or bring him up before the end of April 2019. $8MM seems like a fair guesstimate of what he will be paid by that time. Vladdy’s 3B skills seem adequate at this point, but there’s a shot of him being somewhere else by 2022, either 1B or DH.

2B Bo Bichette ($1MM)

Bichette figures to wind up at 2B, according to most projections. 2022 would be his last pre-arb year.

C Danny Jansen ($6MM)

Jansen likely takes Russell Martin’s job for good in 2019. This is either year 1 or year 2 of his arbitration eligibility.

CF Anthony Alford ($4MM)

The Jays have a glut of almost-there outfielders near the MLB level, but relatively few lower in the system. If Alford isn’t here, then figure the Jays to have signed a CF, rather than running an ever-more-expensive Kevin Pillar and his 87 career wRC+ out there. This would be Alford’s first arbitration year.

SS Kevin Smith ($0.5MM)

Alone among the Jays’ middle-infield prospects, Smith has the glove to stick at SS and had a bit of a breakout year in 2018. Logan Warmoth could be here as well. Both will be cheap at this point.

DH Teoscar Hernandez ($9MM) or Lourdes Gurriel ($5MM)

If Teoscar hits, he could stick here. If not, he gets traded or nontendered (2022 would be his second arbitration year) and Gurriel, who can play multiple positions and is cost controlled through 2023, could be here.

RF Cavan Biggio ($0.5MM)

Like father, like son – Biggio’s 2018 breakout with the bat suggests that he could plausibly switch to the outfield and avoid the logjam in the Jays’ infield. He’d be pre-arb in 2022.

LF Free agent/trade pickup. ($18MM)

Can I interest you in a Tommy Pham, Starling Marte, or Kyle Schwarber, here?

1B Free agent/trade pickup. ($8MM)

The market for 1^st basemen will continue to be depressed, so a Justin Smoak type player (not Smoak himself – he’s 35, remember?) could be got here for about $8MM. If you want to aim higher, Carlos Santana, Freddie Freeman, Brandon Belt and Anthony Rizzo are all free agents after 2021.

SP Nate Pearson ($0.5MM)

I was planning to write “TBD” for every starting pitcher, because 2022 is a long way away and pitchers break all the time. But that’d be boring. So I’m putting Pearson here because he’s the consensus top pitching prospect, the Jays don’t have a reason to trade him next year, given the rebuild phase they are in, and if he’s healthy and not terrible he should be on the team in one way or another. He’d be pre-arb in 2022.

SP Free agent ($18MM)

Some crafty veteran guy fits in here, a step down from the top tier of free agent pitchers. Greinke, Kluber, Scherzer and Syndergaard are all free agents in 2022, but I can see the Jays aiming lower and getting one of Chris Archer, Vincent Velasquez, or Mike Foltynewicz. Actually, who the hell knows? Those guys might be broken or re-signed in 4 years. Think of this as your 2022 version of Jay Happ.

SP Ryan Borucki ($10MM)

If Borucki doesn’t break, he could be here. Or Reid-Foley. Or Pannone. Or Zeuch or Pardinho… you get the idea. This would be Borucki’s 2^nd arbitration year if he gets this far.

SP Maaron Strochez ($18MM)

More likely than not, neither Sanchez nor Stroman will be here in 2022. Consider: Both are free agents after 2020. Both have an injury history (blisters, mainly). Both become solid trade chips if they rebound in 2019 or 2020. But I suppose I can see the Jays taking a shot at keeping one of them, as a “veteran presents” figure. A lot depends on how Reid-Foley, Zeuch, Pannone, etc. do in 2019-20.

SP free agent ($8MM)

The alternative to paying $8MM here is Sam Gaviglio or someone like that. Or maybe it’ll just be the best of the guys who didn’t nab the slot I assigned to Borucki.

Closer ($??)

Jeez, I don’t know. Except that it won’t be Ken Giles. Nothing against Giles, but that’s 4 years from now. Want me to guess? Fine… Kelyn Jose.

The New Guy: Billy McKinney

2018-09-06T21:30:00.002-04:00

He has the "power hitter" pose down pat.

I didn’t write about a lot of things this past month and a half, because there were so many things to not write about: The Donaldson trade, the non-callup of Baby Vlad, the Atkins-to-Mets rumours, the Gibbons-to-ash heap of history rumours, etc, etc. Mostly, this was due to my being too annoyed to put fingers to keyboard. Yes, this season has been disappointing. Yes, the CBA is set up to reward teams for keeping good prospects in the minors. No, you can’t expect a great prospect haul for 3 weeks of a former MVP with chronic leg problems coming off a 3 month layoff. Yes, many of the same people who are screaming that the Jays should have traded Donaldson after 2017, are the same ones who would have been screaming if the Jays had actually done that.

Anyway, aren’t you glad to not have to read about all that stuff? Me too.

So: The (only) fun part about trading away veteran players during a lost season is that you can sometimes get interesting players back. Back in July, the Blue Jays traded Jay Happ to the Yankees, and one of the players they got back was Billy McKinney. And he’s been pretty interesting, to the tune of a .360/.450/.700 (that .700 is slugging, not OPS!) line since being called up by the Jays in mid August. Obviously, a tiny sample size (15 games) is involved, and Billy’s not going put up a 208 wRC+ over the long term, but is this guy going to be an asset?

Well, he might. The interesting thing about McKinney – to me, anyway – is how his walk and strikeout rates haven’t changed much since he was in the minors. With the Jays, McKinney’s walk rate is 13.3%; it’s been consistently around 10-12% through his years in the minors. He’s striking out 21.7% of the time as a Jay; his K rate in AAA was about 22%. We all love the power Teoscar Hernandez has, but his BB and K rates are 7.5% and 30.8%, and they have always been that way. McKinney looks a lot more likely to be a guy who carries a high OBP, something the Jays don’t have a lot of.

The .360 batting average is unsustainable, of course, but it’s not an empty number, either. A .412 BABIP helps, but that BABIP isn't the product of a Colabelloesque run of luck – McKinney sports a 34% line drive rate, and he makes a lot of hard contact; just 5.3% of his batted balls are characterized as ‘softly hit’. Batted ball measurables agree – McKinney is 44^th of 480 players (minimum 40 events) in exit velocity (91.0 mph) and 49^thin barrels/PA (7.8%). There’ll be regression, of course, but the point is that the .412 BABIP isn’t just luck – he’s hitting everything hard and on a line.

And even if he does regress, McKinney is a lefthanded bat, something the Jays don’t have in the current outfield with Granderson gone. Smoak and Solarte are switch-hitters, but McKinney’s a pure LH hitter, something that will probably keep him in the mix for a roster spot on a team with RH bats Grichuk, Hernandez, and Pillar in the outfield. And McKinney plays acceptable defense in RF or LF, which puts him ahead of Hernandez on the defensive depth chart at least.

So… all in all, not a bad return for 2 months of Happ, IMO.

You can please none of the people none of the time, apparently.

2018-07-31T22:51:00.000-04:00

I almost saw this on Twitter last night:

DJT@CLOACA*
Once Again, our so-called "friends" dump their bad Hombres on America, taking advantage of our Country! Canada didn't want Osuna and so they Shipped him down to America, and we took him! We must get Smartrer! And it will be easy, Believe Me!

(Sorry)

So anyway, the Blue Jays traded Roberto Osuna to Houston and got back Ken Giles and 2 others. The prospect is Hector Perez, a 22 year old RHP with a high ceiling and lots of control issues. The other guy is David Paulino, who looks like a 2019 bullpen candidate. As for Giles...

(Fangraphs)

By FIP, he's basically an older version of Osuna. High K rate, low walk rate. Giles has had much publicized issues locating his slider this year, but he's been somewhat unlucky with BABIP and strand rate, too. 2018 is the aberration; he could very plausibly bounce back and be a high-leverage reliever again.

And more importantly, he's not Osuna. The prevailing sentiment among baseball reporters has been that the Jays did well to get what they did for Osuna, considering what he did.

Not in Toronto, though. There's a loud group who are insisting that Osuna deserved a second chance, that the Jays didn't get enough for him, and that he's "innocent until proven guilty" (my guess is that most of these people are not judges). And there's another group that feels that the Jays didn't do enough to show their distaste for Osuna and his crime - that the front office should have cut him months ago, instead of publicly insisting that Osuna had a place on the team when his suspension was up.

Being a baseball GM is hard, and Shatkins were in an impossible dilemma. They're paid to build a winning team. The entity paying them is Rogers, a publicly traded media company eager to avoid being held up as an enabler of abusers. I've felt all along that the Jays would publicly announce that they were leaving the door open for Osuna's return, while trying to trade him behind the scenes. If they DFA'd him on May 8, they'd be walking away from about $20MM in surplus value. If they publicly announced he'd never play for the team again, they'd destroy what little leverage they had in trade negotiations.

And if they kept him, they'd come under intense scrutiny for doing so. Most players suspended for domestic abuse - e.g. Chapman, Reyes, Olivera, Norris - get traded or aren't re-signed after the suspension. Marketing the team to women and families - exactly who the team is trying to reach out to - would be exponentially harder with Osuna on the team, especially given the severity of the incident.

So, I'm okay with how the trade turned out. The Jays didn't give Osuna away for nothing, and I don't have to watch an abuser play for my favourite team. What's left is, hopefully, justice being served when Osuna does return to Toronto to stand trial.

* CLOACA - Crazed Leader Of American Country, AMERICA!

The Outlook.

2018-07-19T14:14:00.003-04:00

The Blue Jays are not going to make the playoffs this year. The fact that Boston and New York are a zillion games above .500 doesn’t matter – the Jays would be 10 games back in any other division, too.

Why? The usual reasons. Injuries (Donaldson, Stroman, various others at various times). Ineffectiveness (Martin, Travis, Morales, most of the rotation). Throw in some slow starts (Grichuk) and general assholery (Osuna) and you have a team that’s 9 games below .500 at the all-star break.

So what to do? Tear it down, of course.

But before doing that, let’s debunk the idea that Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins (hereinafter “Shatkins” - not out of disrespect, but because it’s amusing) can’t be trusted to rebuild the team. Most of what they have done so far has turned out pretty well! For instance, the Jays were heavily criticized for signing JA Happ instead of David Price. Since that time, Happ has more fWAR, a lower ERA, and more innings than Price. And more wins, if you like pitcher wins as a stat. Justin Smoak’s contract extension was ridiculed, and all he’s done during the extension (2017-18) is hit 54 HR with a .358 OBP, worth 4.8 fWAR over a year and a half. If a fWAR is worth about $8MM, the $4MM/yr the Jays are paying is an absolute steal. Maile? Worked out, improbably. Getting Teoscar Hernadez for 3 months of Liriano? A steal. Outside of the puzzling Pearce/Morales signings and the disappointing Jaime Garcia, have any of the Shatkins deals been that bad, really?

So with that out of the way...

It’s looking a lot like the Jays aren’t going to be able to get much for Josh Donaldson at the trade deadline. By most accounts, Donaldson isn’t going to be playing MLB games before the deadline – it’s already July 19 and he only “resumed baseball activities” last week. 2016 Josh Donaldson would be worth a Manny Machado-sized package at the trade deadline; 2018 Donaldson is an unknown. Can he stay on the field? Can he hit and field a position? Nobody knows. It’s looking more and more like the Jays will keep Donaldson, see how he plays (or IF he plays) in August and September, and decide after the season whether to offer him a QO. A QO will be about $17.5MM, which is actually a $6MM savings or so from what the Jays are paying him in 2018. He might take the QO if the Jays offer it, in which case the team has him at a slight discount for another, hopefully healthier, season (and if 2019 sucks, they can try again to trade him at the 2019 deadline). If he plays really well, he might decline the offer and the Jays would have a shot at a compensatory draft pick if he signs elsewhere. And if he continues to be hurt… well, the Vlady Guerrero Jr era will begin next April.

Kevin Pillar is someone else I would like the Jays to consider trading. Pillar continues to be what he’s always been: a plus defender who doesn’t get on base enough or hit for power. The Jays have Grichuk and Hernandez embedded in the roster, plus guys like Dwight Smith and Anthony Alford in the minors. Trading Pillar would create space for younger, more dynamic players.

There are plenty of other obvious trade assets...

Guys on 1 year deals or expiring contracts who are playing well (or at least decently)? Seeya later, J.A., Curtis, Aaron and Tyler.

Guys on multiple year contracts or under team control who will be superfluous shortly? Been nice knowing (if not spelling) you, Yangervis and Aledmys.

Guys who should never play in this town again? Good f*cking riddance, Roberto.

Guys who would bring back value now but probably won’t be here for the team’s rise in 2020-21? Farewell, Messrs. Smoak, Ho, and (maybe) Stroman or Sanchez?

Not all of these trades will happen. Based on experience of past trade deadlines, most of them won’t happen. And a trade of Tulowitzki, Martin or Morales, almost certainly won’t happen. These are 3 guys who the Jays will be paying in any case, regardless of whether Toronto will pay them to play for the Jays or for someone else. Might as well see if they can provide leadership to next year's young Jays club.

And as for the future, and what the team will look like? One thing that drives me crazy are those projections that show “what the team will look like” with all the expiring contracts gone and the roster constructed entirely of players who are currently in the system. Of course the Jays are going to replace Estrada/Happ/Morales/Smoak/Martin when they leave the team! Maybe we won’t agree with the players they bring in, but it’s idiotic to say “OMG NOOO the 2020 Jays will have Rowdy Tellez at 1B and Joe Biagini as the closer LOL”. If Tellez hits, he may be at 1B. If not, they’ll get someone else. Of course.

So with that in mind, and regardless of whether the trades posited above happen, the core of the 2020 Blue Jays will hopefully look something like:

C: Jansen

2B: Bichette or Travis

SS: Warmoth or (sigh) Tulowitzki

3B: Guerrero Jr

OF: Grichuk, Hernandez, Alford

SP: Borucki, Pearson

That’s not a model of a championship team, of course. But that roster will likely cost under $40MM! So figure on the Jays having about $120-140MM to find 3 more SP, a 1B and DH and maybe an OF, and a couple of veteran bullpen/bench pieces. And if Shatkins can acquire some longer term assets at this year’s deadline, the 2020 club will look that much better.

In other words, it's 2011 all over again. Better times are ahead, even if it doesn't look like it now (or in 2011).

It's time to cut bait on Kendrys Morales

2018-05-14T20:59:00.001-04:00

And no, this isn’t about Morales’ .154/.250/.275 batting line, although that doesn’t help matters.

The Jays have a bunch of hitters off to ugly starts this year. Devon Travis and Randal Grichuk have been awful. Russell Martin is hitting .172, even if his walks and slugging make him more valuable at the plate than the .172 average looks. Aledmys Diaz has fallen off after a hot start. And fill-ins Dalton Pompey, Anthony Alford and Lourdes Gurriel have mostly struggled.

What separates Morales from this group is that the other struggling hitters can do other things besides hit. Martin is a renowned defender and game-caller behind the plate and can play 3B in a pinch. Grichuk, Pompey and Alford are plus defenders in the outfield and run well. Travis, Diaz and Gurriel are middle infielders who also run well. Morales? He’s primarily a DH, plays a below-average 1B when the Jays let him on the field, and is well below average as a baserunner.

The Jays are paying Morales $11MM this year and in 2019. They signed him to be a replacement for Edwin Encarnacion, who was an elite hitter (.380+ wOBA in his last 5 years as a Jay). Edwin couldn’t run or field much better than Kendrys does, but that didn’t matter: His bat provided more than enough value on its own. For the record, I was okay with the Morales signing; Morales has had elite batted ball numbers for years and he looked to hit the ball hard enough to have upside. Unfortunately, time has shown that this faith was misplaced. Morales isn’t on the level of peak Encarnacion – he’s an above average hitter when he’s right, but so are guys like Pearce, Martin and Travis. Morales is being paid like a 1.5 WAR player, and he’s been worth that much just once in the last 5 years. For his 9+ year career, he’s been worth 7.4 fWAR. Total.

There’s something called the sunk cost fallacy at work here – the Jays owe Morales about $19MM for the rest of this year and next, so they feel obliged to keep him on the roster as opposed to letting him go and paying him to play for someone else (or sit at home). But they will owe him that money, regardless, and in a little over 1 full season, Morales has provided negative value for the Jays. Meantime, the Jays also have on their roster guys like the newly injury-prone Josh Donaldson and all-hit/no-glove outfielders like Curtis Granderson and Steve Pearce. When Pearce and Granderson get off the DL, they’ll need to rotate through the DH spot (with Donaldson), and they can’t do that with Morales ensconced in the DH job. Worse – whether you like him or not, Randal Grichuk deserves a chance to show his worth when he gets off the DL, and he should be in an outfield mix that includes Kevin Pillar, Teoscar Hernandez, Granderson and Pearce. That’s too many outfielders, unless you can call one of Granderson or Pearce the DH.

The Jays can’t trade Kendrys Morales. He’s costing the team $11MM, providing negative value (and even in a good year, he’s not worth $11MM) and zero roster flexibility. He’s 34, meaning he’s more likely to get worse than get better. And very soon, his presence will force the Jays to keep better players on the bench or in the minors. It’s bad enough that they’re paying him $11MM this year and next; the only thing worse would be to keep him on the roster and hurt the team on the field as much as he hurts its payroll.

Series Preview: Red Sux @ Blue Jays

2018-04-24T20:14:00.000-04:00

Topical.

The Jays were successful over the first 3 weeks of the season because they hit with runners in scoring position, and their bullpen was unhittable. This past weekend, the bullpen was still good (11.1 innings, 3 runs) but the offense was just 7 for 41 (.170) with RISP, and 3 for 30 (.100) in the 3 losses. That’s obviously a crappy, 2017esque performance. Like I said in my last post, the Jays are not going to hit .355 with RISP all year. The performance over the last 4 games was some overdue regression to the mean; presumably the club will hit better against the Red Sux.

Or maybe not! Oh yes, the Jays get to play the Beaneaters now. Boston is 17-4 (but losers of their last 2!), and they are 2^nd in the AL in runs and OPS, third in ERA. Pitching matchups are:

Happ vs Porcello

Sanchez vs Rodriguez

Estrada vs Sale

Porcello shouldn’t have won the Cy Young award in 2016, and he shouldn’t have a 1.40 ERA now – he’s benefiting from a too-low HR rate and a too-high strand rate. Happ, by contrast, has been unlucky with HR – his xFIP is actually lower than Porcello’s. Lets see some normalization of stats tonight! Aaron Sanchez matches up pretty well with Eduardo Rodriguez, although it would be nice if Sanchez could reduce the walks while still getting that nice 56% groundball rate. And Estrada… well, good luck against Chris Sale. Hey, the last guy to face Sale threw a no-hitter!

Offensively, a bunch of unlikely heroes are getting it done for the Jays. With Donaldson and Tulowitzki on the shelf, Teoscar Hernandez is busy stealing Grichuk’s job, Yangervis Solarte is an OBP machine, Kevin Pillar is BABIPing his way to success, and Curtis Granderson has been a pleasant surprise. And then, there’s Luke Maile. Take a look at this.

fWAR, Luke Maile, 2018: 0.6

fWAR, all non-Martin catchers, 2015-17: -2.0

Maile has been worth 0.6 WAR over 8 games and 33 PA. 7 backup catchers (including last year’s version of Luke Maile) were worth -2.0 WAR over 257 games and 755 PA in the 3 previous seasons. Take that, small sample size!

The Red Sux are hitting on almost all offensive cylinders… so let’s not talk about them. It'll be fine. #ItsFine

Series Preview: Blue Jays @ Stankees

2018-04-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

Yup, using this image again.

We woke up on March 31 brimming with confidence that April would bring nice weather (ha!) and much less confidence in the Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays had just lost their first 2 games of the season to New York, at Skydome, by a combined score of 10-3. Before that series started, I was thinking that a split might be a good result. After game 2, I was hoping they'd win at least once.

And as we know, the Jays went out and earned a split with the Yankees, and are 10-3 since then. Granted, the White Sox and Royals are terrible, the Orioles and Rangers are trash even in years that they're good (which is not this year), and the Jays only played 1 game against an actual good team, Cleveland, in that 13 game stretch. Meh... details. If you want to dissect team records, the Red Sux's strength of schedule is just as weak (7 with Tampa, 2 with Miami, 3 with Baltimore) and the Yankers have had 9 games with Tampa, Detroit, Miami and Baltimore. The lesson, I guess, is that there are a lot of bad teams out there.

But in any case, the Jays are 12-5, own a +38 run differential (3rd best in MLB) and are 4-1 without their best player (Donaldson). The starters have been more 'good enough to win' than 'overwhelming', but the bullpen has been solid, and the club sits 5th in the AL in wOBA, a huge improvement over 2017. The fly in the ointment is the "clutch" hitting of the team - as great as it is that the Jays are hitting .355 with RISP, .347 in "high leverage" situations, and .314 with runners on base, those numbers are not remotely sustainable. Even the 2015 Jays, the team that pounded opponents into submission, hit 'just' .286 with RISP. Last year's Astros led the majors with a .294 average with RISP. It's not like they can't continue to be good... but they have been a liiiiiiiiittle too lucky of late. The Jays are scoring runs at a rate that isn't supported by their overall offensive numbers.

(However, I must add: Who needs Ryan Goins and his .333 mark with RISP in 2017? Not us!)

The Yanks, meanwhile, have been scuffling a bit, with cracks showing in supposed areas of strength. Giancarlo Stanton is striking out at a colbyrasmusian rate. Gary Sanchez is hitting .190 and has 1 walk all year. Parts of the unhittable bullpen, Betances, Robertson and Kahnle to be specific, have been hittable. Of their starters, Severino has been great, Sonny Gray has been unlucky (BABIP and sequencing have killed his ERA) and Tanaka, Montgomery and Sabathia have been poor with gusts to okay. All that said, Didi ("Derek who?") Gregorius has been amazing, and Aaron Judge and his Rhode Island-sized strike zone has been getting on base at a .480 clip. They still have Aroldis Chapman, and they still get on base at an annoyingly high rate.

Pitching matchups are...
Sanchez vs Sabathia
Estrada vs Gray
Stroman vs Montgomery
Garcia vs Severino

So, yeah... all in all, going into NY, even as hot as the Jays are... I'd be happy with a split.

Series Preview: Royals at Blue Jays

2018-04-16T21:08:00.000-04:00

A face only a Schrute could love.

~~Fresh off~~ Three days after a convincing comeback win over the Clevelandians, the Jays return home to the ~~dryness and warmth of the~~ leaky Skydome to take on their other recent playoff nemesis, the Kansas City Royals. (The Skydome leaves much to be desired as a baseball venue – the turf, the concessions, the soulless corporatism, the effing DJ – but the location is great, and the roof is definitely welcome in weather like this. If it worked.)

Unlike the Clevelandians, the Royals are in full rebuild mode. Lorenzo Cain is gone, Eric Hosmer is gone, Mike Moustakas is not gone (but both he and the team wish he was), Sal Perez is hurt, and their most expensive player, Alex Gordon, has been terrible for a couple of years now. Their pitching might be kind of good – Jakob Junis in particular – but the club is 3-10 and has scored a league-low 39 runs.

The Jays, meanwhile, have been playing pretty well, but they’re without both of Josh Donaldson and Kendrys Morales for the next few games. Teoscar Hernandez is up to replace Donaldson in the batting order; Yangervis Solarte will fill in at 3B for the time being. Hernandez gives the Jays another slugger that strikes out too much, to go with Messrs Grichuk (4 walks, 16K) Diaz (0 walks, 6K) and Travis (1 walk, 15 K). Diaz has been hitting home runs, but that .256 OBP won’t fly in the long term, while Grichuk and Travis have had no redeeming qualities so far. The Jays offense is made up of a bunch of guys with OPS scores above .795 (great!) and below .600 or even .400 (concerning). Late game rallies and hitting with RISP has been the story so far this year.

The pitching matchups are:

TUE Garcia vs Skoglund

TUE Happ vs Duffy

WED Sanchez vs Kennedy

All three of Garcia, Happ and Sanchez are sporting ERAs below 4.00. That’s great, but the ERA masks some weaknesses for each – Sanchez has been walking too many hitters, Garcia has gotten by with an unsustainable strand rate, and Happ’s given up a ton of HR. BB/K ratios for Happ and Garcia have been great, which bodes well for the future, and besides, this is a sample size of 3 starts or fewer for each! Everything will be fine. #ItsFine Anyway, Skoglund was terrible in his single start, Duffy has an ERA of 5.40, and Kennedy has a 1.00 ERA that is backed by a 97% strand rate which clearly won’t last. All 3 Royals starters have given up a ton of fly balls… so let’s hit some homers and forget our OBP troubles, shall we?

Series preview: Blue Jays @ Cleveland

2018-04-12T21:12:00.000-04:00

Booooooooo… - wait, do we boo this guy? Who has the guideline on when to boo returning ex-Jays?

Three straight series wins! A 8-5 record! Everything is working!

Yeah, but now the Jays go to Cleveland, a team that, unlike Chicago, Texas and Baltimore, is actually expected to be good. And has real pitchers. The Jays face Mike Clevinger (2 starts, 0.71 ERA) and Corey Kluber (3 starts, 1.57 ERA, 27 K in 23 innings) in the first 2 games. We’re not dealing with the White Sox and their rotation of has-beens and might-be’s anymore. And once you get past the starters, there’s still Cody Allen and Andrew Miller (both with a 0.00 ERA) to deal with.

Cleveland is 7-5 as I type this, but they’re 5-1 against doormats Detroit and KC, and just 2-4 against decent teams (Seattle and the Angels). And man… has their offense sucked. As in, a team of Ryan Goins level-bad. As a club, they’re batting .170, with an OPS of .552. Lindor has a .219 wOBA. Encarnacion, .282 (boosted by 3 HR). Kipnis, .171 wOBA. Uuuuuuuugly. Of course, no team can hit this badly forever, so it’d be great if the Jays could take advantage of the Clevelanders and kick ‘em when they’re down. Because they’ll eventually be good. Probably.

Of course, the Jays are playing much better than Cleveland is right now, but you knew that. Stroman had an ugly start in Texas, but both Happ and Garcia have been pretty good, keeping games close (ERAs under 4) and pitching into the 5^th inning or later in each start. The hitters have been hitting late and in the clutch, and the relief corps has been mostly solid. And, bonus: The Jays get to face Josh Tomlin in the series finale, and Tomlin (2 starts, 8 IP, 4 HR, 3BB, 4K, 9.00 ERA) has been pretty poor.. like he was in 2017 and 2018.

Series Preview: Jays @ Orioles

2018-04-08T23:26:00.002-04:00

Kind of speaks for itself.

After winning 2 of 3 versus Texas despite some shaky bullpen work, the Jays jet off to "the Pearl of the Chesapeake"* for a 3 game set versus the OriLOLes.

The O's are 4-6, and fresh off winning 3 of 4 against the Yankees in New York. Two of their last 3 games went to extra innings (with Baltimore winning both, in 14 and 12 innings) so maybe their bullpen will be taxed? Hopefully a slight edge to the Jays there, at least in Monday's game.

For much of the offseason, it looked like Baltimore was considering a rotation of Dylan Bundy, Kevin Gausman, and AAA filler. Rather than continue being a laughingstock, Dan "stop calling me at home, Eddie Rogers" Duquette picked up Andrew Cashner and resigned Chris Tillman. And they haven't been that ba- wait, no, aside from Bundy, they have been bad. Gausman, Tillman, and Mike Wright each have ERAs around 8.00. Annoyingly, the Jays get Bundy (0.69 ERA) and Cashner (4.09 ERA) in the first 2 games, followed by Gausman on Wednesday.

The Orioles bullpen is still Zach Britton-less, but the rest of the holdovers (Brad Brach, Mychal Givens, and the ever-present Darren O'Day) have been decent.

Offensively, the LOLes looked good against the Yankees, but they scored just 14 runs in 6 games versus Minnesota and Houston**. Overall, it's a mixed bag. Caleb Joseph and Colby Rasmus are Baltimore's answer to the Jays scuffling duo of Travis and Grichuk, and of the regulars or quasi-regulars in the lineup, only Machado and Adam Jones are performing decently. Chris Davis is 3 for 30, Tim Beckham has struck out 18 times in 10 games, and Jonathan Schoop is hitting just .217.

The Jays send Happ, Sanchez and Estrada up in the 3 games - Happ and Sanchez have ugly ERAs after 2 starts, and Estrada has been homer prone (3 in 13 innings). The bullpen (no, not you, Aaron Loup!) has been pretty solid, though. And offensively, the Jays have been two teams, really, as the wOBA leaderboard shows:

wOBA
0.471
0.460
0.415
0.414
0.402
0.360
0.354
0.353
0.336
0.159
0.149
0.144
0.134

The 4 guys at the bottom are Morales, Grichuk, Ngoepe and Travis. But everyone from Kevin Pillar (.336) on up... well, that'll do just fine, boys.

* - nobody calls Baltimore that.
** - to be fair, 3 at home vs Minny and then 7 on the road against the Astros and Yankees is a brutal start to the schedule. I'm not here to be fair, though.

Series Preview: Blue Jays at Rangers

2018-04-05T23:31:00.001-04:00

Road trip! Road trip!

The Rangers have Adrian Beltre, who is pretty cool unless you touch his head.

And they have Bartolo Colon, who will pitch longer than the Niekros (Phil and Joe) did, and is basically the eighth wonder of the world.

Otherwise, they continue to be managed by crybaby Jeff Bannister and are a giant bag of suck. Go Jays!

The Fans get smart.

2018-04-03T22:44:00.000-04:00

Now don't ruin it by insisting that guys like this should be lineup regulars.

In the wake of the Jays’ 3^rd consecutive late-inning win, Richard Griffin wrote an article today describing Jays fans as “wary” and showing “disdain and disinterest”.

And I couldn’t be more proud. No, not of Griffin’s apparent lack of awareness (“disawareness”?) of what “disinterest” means. I’m proud to be a part of a fanbase that doesn’t automatically reward a team for putting an unimpressive product on the field. I’m proud to be part of a fanbase with its eyes open. One that seems to possess a healthy amount of skepticism. One that puts pragmatism before blind loyalty - because loyalty in sports is the furthest thing from a two-way street.

I don’t want to make too much of this – it’s just 5 games, the weather is crap, the White Sox are crap, the local hoops ‘n shinny shows are doing well, and the Jays are seldom a big draw in April. But I have heard rumblings that the Blue Jays' season ticket base dropped by 7,000 between 2017 and 2018, and obviously, the crowd last night was the smallest in almost 3 years. For years and years and YEARS, Jays ownership told the fanbase that they would spend money if the fans came out. The fans came out for the last 2 ½ years. And this offseason, the Jays followed up a losing season with a payroll cut of about $5MM… and lo and behold, attendance is down. Ownership told fans that spending was tied to attendance, and the fans absorbed this and seem to have responded with “Attendance is tied to winning”.

Remember, in this town, people go to see the Leafs no matter how crappy they are – a trait that allowed the Leafs to be embarrassing-with-gusts-to-tedious for 4 decades with no financial consequence to ownership. And in places like Tampa, people ignore the baseball team no matter how good they are, which makes sustained contention impossible and relocation rumours an annual ritual. But here in Toronto, Jays fans as a whole seem to have hit on the coveted Goldilocks solution: Prove that you’re good, and we’ll reward you financially, Rogers. Until then, we’ll keep our money and stay away.

This isn’t to say that I think this year’s Jays team is necessarily going to be bad. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the line Shatkins is trying to walk – they want to give the team a shot at contention this year while avoiding taking on (more) (potentially bad) contracts running from 2020-2023 that would make a rebuild difficult. The guys who the Jays already had at the end of 2017 – Stroman/Sanchez/Donaldson/Martin/Smoak/Happ/Estrada/Osuna – don’t need more superstars around them in order to contend. They just need to be supported by guys who aren’t replacement level (thank you Fangraphs for agreeing with me). Sure, more superstars would help, but they’re no guarantee of contention either (see: 2013). Randal Grichuk, Jaime Garcia, Yangervis Solarte, Aledmys Diaz, Seung Hwan Oh… these are all fine supporting players for the short term. They won’t be painful to watch. None of them will be All-Stars, but the Jays have lots of other guys who could be.

I'll go to games anyway, because I always do. Some of you are probably the same way. But to the less-invested fans who have voted with their feet... here's to you.

Series preview: White Sox at Blue Jays

2018-04-01T23:09:00.001-04:00

Second banana in their own city and in sock shade.

Hey, I said a split would feel like a good outcome, and it does! The Jays got to the NY bullpen repeatedly in the last 3 games of the series, right after I confidently asserted that it was the strength of the team. I plead small sample size.

So after facing a team projected to be among the league's best, the Jays now host the Chicago White Sox, projected to be among the worst. The Pale Hosiers are in full tank mode, having traded away most of their best players (Adam Eaton, Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, David Robertson, Todd Frazier, Tommy Kahnle) since the 2016-17 offseason. Hey, the Jays beat up on Kahnle and Robertson this past weekend, so this ought to be easy!

Yes, it ought to be. The WSox still have Jose Abreu and Avisail Garcia, who are pretty good (and soon to become free agents), and they picked up C Wellington Castillo, who always seems underrated, to go with them. Some of the returns for the 2016-17 trades include 2B Yoan Moncada and P Lucas Giolito, former top prospects in the Boston and Washington systems. Both should be good, but aren't yet. So it's probably just as well that the Jays are playing Chicago now, before any of the future mainstays have time to round into form.

What else do the Sox have? Their best non-Giolito starter, Carlos Rodon, is hurt. For some reason the White Sox have Joakim Soria, a former elite reliever who is now expensive and inconsistent. And that's pretty much it.

The Jays, meanwhile, send their own Garcia, Jaime, out for Game 1 of the series, followed by Happ and Sanchez, who were both shaky against NY. Nobody on the team is hitting much, other than AL RBI LEADER (!!) Justin Smoak and Kevin Pillar. Let's hope that the big bats, Donaldson, Martin, Travis - jeez, are those all the big bats? - get going soon.

Series preview: Yankees at Blue Jays

2018-03-29T20:55:00.001-04:00

Gonna keep it classy in ’18.

The Blue Jays opened up their 2018 season at Skydome this afternoon, playing the first of 4 games against the Yankees of New York. The Jays have gotten off to slow starts for as long as I can remember, and the Yankees are annoyingly supposed to be good (or is that annoyingly good?), so in the back of my mind, I’m already resigned to a series split being a good outcome. Last year, the Jays started 2-10 against the likes of Baltimore, Tampa, and Milwaukee, in case you had blocked out that memory. Don’t get swept, damnit!

As mentioned, the Yankees look pretty good this year. Last year’s team won 91 games, went to the ALDS, and added Giancarlo (don’t call him Mike) Stanton. So they’re going to hit a ton of homers in their bandbox stadium and their bullpen will turn every game into a 5-inning affair. Right? Well, probably… maybe. Stanton had a career year in 2017, but the phrase ‘career year’ suggests regression risk in itself. He’s missed significant chunks of time in 2012, ’13, ’15, and ’16 due to injury, too. Aaron Judge was great last year, but he’s not going to BABIP .357 again, and if a 30% K rate is alarming for Randal Grichuk, it ought to be alarming for Judge, too. Consider this: Judge hit .284 last year. That’s the 2^nd-highest BA ever for a player who struck out 30% or more (out of 45 players, the average BA was .233). Judge was worth 8.2 fWAR last year, which is the highest WAR total for the 30%K club. In an era where not making outs is key, massive K totals are a problem. And with this being Judge’s 2^nd full season, pitchers aren’t going to be caught by surprise again.

Beyond the two sluggers, the Yankees have lost, or are missing, a few key pieces. Brandon Drury is no Todd Frazier (although he might be, later). Greg Bird is hurt, again. Neil Walker is a nice replacement for Starlin Castro, but he should never see a lefthander. And of course, the Yankees did something which only the Yankees ever seem to do – they fired Joe Girardi after a playoff season that was almost a World Series appearance, and replaced him with a guy who has no managerial record to speak of. It probably doesn’t matter much, but we can always hope for Aaron Boone to be Bobby Valentine 2.0.

Pitching wise, the Yankees are counting on Luis Severino to continue to be good, sort of like the Jays were counting on Aaron Sanchez last year, y’know? Beyond him, I see question marks – Sonny Gray wasn’t the same pitcher in NY last year as he was in Oakland, Masahiro Tanaka is pitching with an iffy elbow and has become homer prone, CC Sabathia is 37, and even Aroldis Chapman was less overpowering last year than he has been normally. However, know this: Even if Chapman declines and Dellin Betances continues to hand out too many walks, the rest of the bullpen is the real deal.

And the Jays? I didn’t do a season preview because there’s about 40 of them floating around the Toronto area right now. If you’re paying attention, you know the score – swapping out guys who added negative value last year (Goins, Bautista, etc) for players who ought to be at least league average (Diaz, Grichuk, etc) ought to be a 5-WAR swing on its own. Beyond that, we cross our fingers for good health for the rotation and for Osuna, Donaldson, Travis and Martin, and have faith in the depth that might keep things going if something happens to anyone but Donaldson and Martin, who are basically irreplaceable right now.

Fangraphs posted something to the effect that the Jays play the Yankees and Red Sux 19 times in their first 66 games, with the implication that we’ll know by June whether the team will be selling at the trade deadline. To which I say: If the Jays struggle against New York this weekend, the calls to blow up the team will start… Tuesday.

The cognitive dissonance on player salaries

2018-03-02T20:26:00.000-05:00

This was an unusual offseason, to put it mildly. Spring training has started, and there are still a lot of high-profile free agents left unsigned. By ‘high profile”, I’m talking about players with clear value to almost any team, as opposed to near-replacement level players of the type who annually struggle to find teams. Yes, in years past, we’ve occasionally seen a few valuable players go unsigned because of some specific issue. For example, Barry Bonds was effectively blackballed after the 2007 season because of credible PED allegations (Bonds had a wRC+ of 157 in the previous year and was a 3.2 WAR player). Guys like Kendrys Morales and Stephen Drew didn’t sign until June of 2014 because teams didn’t want to surrender a 1^st-round pick to sign them. But this year, while the QO drag on signings is still there for players like Mike Moustakas and Alex Cobb (who are better players than Morales and Drew, fyi), there’s no clear reason why guys like Jonathan Lucroy and Neil Walker are still free agents.

No clear reason, unless you count “teams have figured out that long term deals for players in their 30s are a bad idea”, and “teams are no longer willing to pay players for past performance” as reasons. There’s also the “teams are saving their money for Harper/Machado/Donaldson/Blackmon in 2019” issue, but IMO that’s a red herring; only 10 of MLB’s 30 teams will realistically consider signing any of the top free agents next year.

Regardless of the issue, this is a problem for baseball, and not just for the MLBPA. And it forces fans to reconcile two competing sets of logic:

1. It is pretty much irrefutable that long-term, 9-figure contracts to aging players are a huge risk for the teams handing out such deals. Pujols and Fielder are the poster children in the “Say no to bad contracts” campaign, but you could toss the contracts for Stanton, David Price, Mauer, Chris Davis, Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez, and others in the ‘buyer’s remorse’ pile, too. Closer to home – Jose Reyes, anyone? Will Troy Tulowitzki’s contract be proven definitively regrettable this year? Bottom line, you don’t want your team to sign or trade for an expensive albatross.

2. Despite older players being (up to now) chronically overpaid, MLB players have the smallest share of team revenues in the four major North American leagues. NFL players are guaranteed 47 per cent of defined revenue, while NBA players receive 49 to 51 per cent of basketball related income and NHL players get 50 per cent of hockey related revenues (Globe and Mail). MLB has no hard salary cap, unlike those leagues, and it doesn’t have a salary floor, either. For whatever reason, players are getting a smaller and smaller piece of the revenue pie. Bottom line, the players are the ones who drive league revenues, and they deserve a fair share of the increased profits.

To the latter point, here’s a graph:

That trend hasn’t reversed itself since 2014 – league revenue in 2017 was described by Forbes as “Over $10 billion”, while total league payroll was just over $4 billion.

So again, on the one hand, there was widespread disbelief when the Padres gave Eric Hosmer more than $140MM over 7 years (and nobody should want to give him even that much), because he’s replacement level or worse every other year, and not really elite in even his good years. But on the other hand, MLB players should be making about 20% more than they do now, relative to the way revenues are shared in other leagues. Who are we supposed to root for, here?

It’s been well documented that whenever MLB and its players disagree on player salaries, fans side with the owners. I’d be willing to bet that fans do this not because they prefer billionaires to millionaires, or because they don’t like players, or even because they feel that owners are entrepreneurs who should be rewarded for assuming all the risk that goes with owning a team. Fans root for the owners because they feel that if the players win in a labour dispute, the teams that fans root for will be less able to retain key players. It’s probably selfish, but I know I’m guilty of this too. This isn’t a zero-sum game; if player salaries were mandated to go up 20% across the board, the owners won’t suddenly be fine with reduced profits. Instead, they’ll raise ticket prices or deliberately refrain from bidding on the top players. Either way, the fans’ interests wind up with the owners in these disputes.

So it’ll be interesting to see what the next offseason looks like. The top players (Harper and Machado) will get paid, but I expect the middle-class players, the Lucroys and Cobbs’s and Lance Lynns, to continue to get squeezed. The players are mad because for years, the implied agreement was that the players would spend their 20s playing for less than market value, but when they hit free agency at about age 30, they’d get (over)paid. Teams are now backing away from that model and the players see it. There are lots of potential solutions here – raise the MLB minimum salary, reduce the years of team control from 6 to 5 (or 4), create a restricted free agency process to replace the current arbitration system. Trouble is, the owners won’t like any of those. I don’t think the players have the stomach for a strike, but don’t be surprised by a pre-emptive lockout by the owners next fall, when the World Series is over.

The Jays finally sign a pitcher!

2018-02-15T23:47:00.001-05:00

Garcia pitched all of 6.2 innings for the Twins in his career, but theirs is the least objectionable jersey he's worn.

At the very end of a long, frustratingly uneventful offseason, in which the Jays were linked at various times to pitchers Chris Tillman and Andrew Cashner, the Jays finally inked someone else entirely, lefthander Jaime Garcia. Garcia figures to slot into the #5 spot in the rotation ahead of Joe Biagini and gives the Jays a little more credibility as a 2018 contender, and a lot more pitching depth. Biagini, who might not have been ready to be a full time starter, is now able to fill in in case of injury to a starter, or in long relief.

If you don't know who Garcia is, he's not without his merits. He's lefthanded, just 31, and has averaged a little over 2 WAR per season over 6 years as a fulltime starter. The Jays have him for 1 year and $8MM, with a team option in 2019. If Garcia's 2018 performance is anything like his past work, the Jays have themselves a bargain.

Garcia's main asset as a pitcher is his ability to get groundballs. That's a plus when you play in the Skydome and the AL East, although perhaps not as much of a plus as it was two years ago when the Jays' infield featured a non-hobbled Troy Tulowitzki and better versions of Ryan Goins and Darwin Barney than the ones the Jays had last year.

So all that sounds good, but that kind of begs the question - if Garcia is good, why did he go unsigned until now and fall to the Jays for just $8MM? And I'm not sure how to answer that, other than to say that he's not spectacular. Garcia will give you 150 innings but not 200; he throws 91mph, not 96. He projects to about a 4.50 ERA, which is fine for a 5th starter.

The Jays obviously had alternatives to Garcia, the way this offseason has gone, but I don't think the alternatives would have provided better value for money. Alex Cobb and Lance Lynn both come with qualifying offers, so you'd forfeit a draft pick by signing either one - and they both have significantly higher salary expectations than Garcia. Tellingly, neither one projects to be materially better than Garcia, per Steamer's projections.

It's illustrative to compare Garcia to the aforementioned Cashner, who was signed by the Orioles today for 2 years and $16MM. Cashner is a hard thrower and had a sparkling 3.40 ERA in 2017, so on the surface, this seems like a great signing for the Orioles. Looking at him more closely, though, that ERA looks to be built on a .266 BABIP and a career low home run rate. Meanwhile, despite being a hard thrower, Cashner threw less hard in 2017 than in years past, and his strikeout rate plummeted last year as well, to just 4.64 K per 9 innings. Those are serious warning signs for 2018. Could Cashner bounce back? Sure - he's a guy who always gets the attention of scouts because of his 'stuff'. But his ceiling remains elusive, and his floor sure looks to be lower than that of Garcia.

So to sum up - Jaime Garcia fits the Jays in the short term. He makes the team better in 2018, but doesn't represent a commitment beyond this year, allowing for flexibility should the Jays struggle this year and let key players (Donaldson, Happ, Estrada) walk away next offseason.

If there is a plan, it seems to be coming together.

2018-01-23T21:20:00.001-05:00

Unremarked on at the time, Ryan Goins and Darwin Barney low fived their last low fives as Blue Jay teammates.

#poignant

Fun piece of news: Baseball America released its top prospects list for 2018. Baby Vlad is #3, Baby Bichette is #8.

So the future’s looking bright. But what about the present?

The Jays traded for Randal Grichuk on Friday. I won’t dwell too much on what they gave up – Dominic Leone had a nice year, but reliever performance is fickle, and Connor Greene is a 100mph lottery ticket. New Blue Jay Randal Grichuk is a right-handed hitting centerfielder with good speed and defense who can’t take a walk. Does that sound familiar at all?

The first thought I had when I heard that Grichuk could play CF was that Pillar might be on the block. Pillar is 3 years older than Grichuk, he costs a bit more, and his range in CF declined noticeably last year, to the point where he’s not demonstrably better defensively than Grichuk. And Grichuk has been a better hitter, by wOBA:

(From Fangraphs)

The chart above illustrates that Kevin Pillar has been pretty much the same hitter for 4 years running. He’s a .300 wOBA guy with an OBP that’s also in the .295-.310 range. Grichuk’s been a bit better, but he’s done it differently: While Grichuk’s OBP is even worse than Pillar’s (neither of them walk), he makes up for it with prodigious power. And he also strikes out a lot, as in 'way too much', i.e. 30% of the time.

So offensively it seems like the two outfielders are a wash, except for two things: Grichuk is younger and might have a better chance of suddenly figuring things out, and 2015. What did Grichuk do in 2015?

I wish I could figure that out. The .365 BABIP helped, obviously, but the K rate and walk rate aren’t that different from 2016 and 2017. Batted ball rates don’t help either – Grichuk actually hit more balls hard in 2017 than he did in 2015, and his FB and LD rates were better in 2017, too. Maybe the Jays think they can fix Grichuk the way Smoak got fixed (as in “don’t swing harder than you need to, and you’ll strike out less”) in 2017. Or maybe they see something I don’t, which is something they ought to be able to do.

Can or will the Jays trade Pillar now? I guess they could, but (presuming that Grichuk is an upgrade on Pillar, which is why you trade the latter) you’re not likely to get more for Pillar than you traded away for Grichuk. So Pillar isn’t, on his own, going to bring back a viable 5^th starter, for example.

Overall, though, it’s starting to be clear what the Jays are doing. Consider the 6 players in this chart, and what they did in 2017:

	Def/2017	wOBA/2017	WAR/600/2017
Goins	0.7	0.278	-0.4
Barney	1.1	0.263	-1.0
Pearce	-10.4	0.323	0.0
avg/avg/tot.	-2.9	0.288	-1.4

Solarte	1.6	0.311	1.3
Diaz	2.2	0.291	0.4
Granderson	-2.2	0.330	2.4
avg/avg/tot.	0.5	0.311	4.1

This is not to say that swapping in Solarte, Diaz and Granderson will make the Jays 5.5 wins better (the equivalent of replacing 2017 Jose Bautista with 2017 Bryce Harper!). Pearce is still here, and it’s not expected that the new guys will each get 600 PA in 2018. But even though it’s not expected, the two players Solarte and Diaz will back up, Tulo and Travis, combined for 457 PA last year. So it’s easy to see how having Solarte and Diaz instead of Goins and Barney could add up to +2 WAR, if 2018 turns into a repeat of 2017. Similarly, Granderson will play a lot in LF against RHP (.343 wOBA vs RHP in 2017) instead of Pearce (.327 wOBA vs RHP in 2017, .322 career).

Raising the floor isn’t sexy, and the Jays will still live and die with the health and performance of their stars and starting pitchers (JD, Smoak, Martin, Osuna, Stroman, Sanchez, Happ, Estrada). But if those top 8 perform well, having better-than-replacement-level replacements for the injury-prone supporting cast gives the Jays a better chance to contend in 2017.

Curtis Granderson: Not the worst idea.

2018-01-16T19:56:00.000-05:00

At age 37, Curtis is finally old enough to get some clothes that don’t make him look like a clown.

The Jays signed free-agent outfielder Curtis Granderson last night. Removing context, there’s a lot to like about this signing. In context, maybe less.

Like the Solarte and Diaz trades, acquiring Granderson sets the floor higher at a position that was a weakness in 2017. Of last year's outfielders, Kevin Pillar was terrible against righthanded pitching last year, the departed Jose Bautista was a little better than terrible, but not much, and Steve Pearce was barely average. All of those players are righthanded, and as for the rest of 2017's lineup, the lefthanded bats consist of Justin Smoak (switch hitter, actually) and Zeke Carrera. Carrera was good against RHP last year, but has had reverse splits in previous years. So the Jays desperately needed to get more balance in their lineup, and Granderson (.343 wOBA vs RHP last year, and .349 in 2016) fits the bill for that.

Outfield defense also was a problem last year, with Carrera, Bautista and Pearce finishing in the bottom quartile defensively, in the AL . Granderson is an upgrade on that front – he can’t really play CF anymore, but has graded out decently in RF despite a noodle arm. And if you’re looking for a plausible leadoff hitter, Granderson might be your man; he walks a lot and projects to a .339 OBP, the same as his career number.

Naturally, Granderson has flaws. He’s 37. He doesn’t hit lefthanded pitching that well, so he will likely get platooned against lefties. He also hasn’t hit for average in years (curiously for a player who runs well, he has posted low BABIPs in 3 of the last 5 years, including .228 in 2017).

Is the team better with him than without him? It sure looks like it. The problem for many people (the "context" I alluded to earlier) seems to be that Granderson isn’t likely to be an impact player. The Jays have lost a ton of offense in the last 2 offseasons to aging and free agency, and people want to see that production replaced. Granderson isn’t going to put up a .370 wOBA like Encarnacion used to, and for that kind of impact, the team would need to sign JD Martinez. And they’re not going to do that. But what about signing the other free agent hitters?

Lorenzo Cain? Actually has the same offensive rate stats over the last 3 years as Granderson.

Hosmer? About the same.

Jay Bruce (already gone to Mets, but a Jays trade rumour fixture)? A bit worse than Granderson.

Of course, these guys are going to get a lot more money and more years than Granderson got from Toronto. They’re all at least 5 years younger than him! But the Jays aren’t signing Granderson for 5 years; they only need him to be decent for 2018. And with that in mind, there’s nothing wrong with this deal.

Talking to myself: (201)8 questions and answers

2018-01-04T20:41:00.000-05:00

Nothing happening on the transactional front? Time to ask and answer a bunch of rhetorical questions!

Q: What could the Jays get for Josh Donaldson if they traded him?

A: Same thing as when they traded for him – an interesting prospect, a couple of fringy back of rotation/bullpen types, and Brett Lawrie. They’re not getting somebody’s can’t-miss, top-50 prospect, in other words.

Q: Okay, should the Jays try to re-sign Donaldson?

A: If by ‘re-sign’, you mean give him a 6-year, $150MM contract, no. If you wanted to get creative and offer, say, 2 years and $75MM including deferred money, then yes. Josh Donaldson turns 33 next year; any contract over 3 years is probably a bad idea. And besides, the Jays have this guy in 2019 or 2020.

Q: Can the Jays count on Vlady Jr. to be good?

A: Of course not, he’s a prospect. Prospects fail all the time. But when multiple analysts, projection systems (e.g. KATOH), and publications say a guy’s going to be a star, that’s as much of a guarantee as you can get.

Q: But Donaldson is already good – why not sign him and find a place for Guerrero at 1B, DH, or outfield?

A: Donaldson has been good, but the Jays have already had his cheap years, and probably his peak years, too. The Blue Jays were able to absorb contracts like Reyes’, Buehrle’s, and Tulo’s because they were getting a ton of cheap value from Donaldson ($171MM market value, $33MM salary), Bautista ($257MM value, $83MM salary), and Encarnacion ($167MM value, $49MM salary) for years and years. If you pay Donaldson, you run the risk of getting what the Jays got when they signed Bautista in 2017 – a declining (ok, declined) player at high cost. In baseball as in investing, you try not to pay for past performance.

Q: Okay, fine. So if you trade Donaldson or let him leave as a free agent, do you trade off Osuna, Stroman, Pillar, Sanchez?

A: That’s situational. If you believe that the top prospects – Guerrero, Bichette, Alford, Zeuch, Warmoth, Pearson etc – are going to be impact players and start arriving in 2019-20, then you have to wonder whether the current young Jay stars will still be around when the youngsters hit their stride. All four of Osuna/Stro/Pillar/Sanchez (plus Devon Travis) will be free agents after the 2020 season, and will be getting expensive as they hit their Arb-2 and Arb-3 years in 2019 and 2020. I really doubt that you could get anything really impactful for Kevin Pillar, but with Alford, Pompey and Hernandez around, he seems the most replaceable of the current young players. And if someone asks the Jays for one of Osuna or Stroman and offers the club a package of high-ceiling players who will be controllable and ready to contribute in 2019-20, then I think you have to at least consider a trade. But if that great package isn’t offered, no worries – you keep those guys (well, maybe not Pillar) and enjoy the next 3 years of cheap value from them, the way you did with Donaldson, Bautista, and Encarnacion. A lot can happen over the next 3 years; sometimes rebuilding schedules get accelerated.

Q: Is this John Gibbons’ last year as Jays manager?

A: If the team misses the playoffs, yes. Like him or hate him, Gibbons was AA’s guy. Shatkins have already told us that the team’s contending in 2015 and 2016 forced them to put off a planned retooling process. It’s a safe bet that if and when the club does rebuild/reload/retool, they’ll bring in a new manager of their choosing.

Q: How much money do the Jays make in a year?

A: There’s an interesting chart from 2016 that shows revenue by team here. And there’s a few observations to be drawn from this chart.

1. That’s revenue, not profit, and presumably does not account for taxes and other fixed expenses.

2. In 2016, the Jays led the AL in attendance per game (41,880), they slid to 39,554 last year. So while ticket prices have gone up since 2016, ticket revenue has probably risen a bit less.

3. Ticket revenue accounts for less than 1/3 of total revenue from MLB.

4. Holy crap, the top 5 teams have a huge revenue advantage. #5 San Francisco is further ahead of #6, Los “Ageles”**, than the #14 Jays are ahead of the Devil Rays (#30)

Q: Even if they’re 14^th in MLB, US$278MM in revenue is a lot of money. Why would Rogers sell the Jays?

A: For no reasons that you would like. From the Jays’ perspective, there could be some benefit to being an independent entity owned by Rogers (or whoever). They could borrow or spend without worrying about their internal accounting having unwanted consequences for their parent company. They could negotiate TV rights and naming rights at arms length, or with some more transparency at the least. But if Rogers did sell now, they’d be doing so for one reason: because they feel that this is the moment when the value of the team has peaked. So if Rogers does sell, whoever buys the team may be doing so at the top of the market, and when revenues decline (due to attendance slipping, the team struggling, or both) the new owners will be hard pressed to run the team profitably (see: Marlins, Miami). There’s also been rumours that if Rogers were to sell the team, they’d want to retain TV rights, which (for me anyway) defeats the purpose of having the Jays sold.

** Sadly, ‘Ageles’ does not apply to Albert Pujols

The Blue Jays Christmas wish list

2017-12-25T00:31:00.002-05:00

Take that, Rogers!

Does anyone know what’s going on with the Blue Jays?

A Rogers executive hints that the team may be sold, and then those hints get walked back by the same executive and the CEO. The club says that Josh Donaldson isn’t on the trading block, but the Cardinals keep getting linked to him. The Yankees got Stanton, the Angelinos got Ohtani, and the Jays get older. What to do?

Well, the good news is that the Jays can make moves to help them contend this year. The hard part is making sure that these moves can help in 2020, or at least not hamstring the team in the future.

The Blue Jays’ “Contracts” page on baseball-reference is illustrative. The Jays have 8 starters (position players and starting pitchers, counting Pearce and Zeke as 1 player) over age 30. Their only key players under age 30 are Osuna (23), Sanchez (25), Travis (27), Stroman (27), and Pillar (29). Regardless of whether the Jays extend Donaldson, and whether or not they contend in 2018, the team has to get younger sooner or later.

If the team decides on ‘sooner’, it could trade Donaldson (and perhaps Happ, Estrada, Pearce and/or Martin) now, collect some prospects, and reload in 2019-20 when the only long-term contract on the books would be Tulo’s. But that’s no fun in the here and now, so we’ll assume the team wants to be competitive now without tying their hands in 2019-20.

From the same BBR page, the Jays have an estimated payroll for 2018 of $140MM. This includes all estimated arbitration awards (for Donaldson, Stroman, etc). The club had an opening day payroll last year of $163MM. So if we take that number as a baseline for 2018, they have at least $23MM to play with, and perhaps more ($30MM total?) if you assume a modest inflationary increase from 2017. They need at least one outfielder, a starting pitcher, a LOOGY, a backup catcher, and perhaps another middle infielder.

(salary estimates are dollars per year/years, and from MLBTradeRumors)

Outfielder: The top options look to be Carlos Gonzalez (12MM/1yr) or Jay Bruce (13MM/3 yrs). Neither of them can field especially well, so you likely keep Pillar if you sign either guy. Gonzalez and Bruce are both lefthanded, so they fill an area of urgent need for the Jays. Gonzalez in particular kills RHP but struggles against lefthanders. A 1 or 2 year deal for either guy would be palatable, and as lefthanders, you could easily platoon them with a RH bat already in the system (Teoscar Hernandez or Steve Pearce)

In a perfect world, Lorenzo Cain (estimated $17.5MM/yr, 4 yrs) might be another option. If you plug Cain into CF, you add a plus defender who can actually hit. Cain is 32 on opening day, just 3 years older than Kevin Pillar. This signing means that you can deal Pillar and his estimated $4MM arbitration award, freeing up additional cash. This won’t happen, though, because Cain comes with a qualifying offer, bats righthanded, and likely wouldn’t age well on the Skydome’s turf.

Money spent per season: Between $12MM (Gonzalez) to 17.5MM (Cain)

Starting Pitcher: Lance Lynn (14MM/4 yrs) or Alex Cobb (12MM/4 yrs) or Andrew Cashner (10MM/2 yrs) or Jaime Garcia (8MM/2 yrs). Lynn and Cobb are both 30, Cashner and Garcia are 31. Lynn and Cobb come with QO’s, so they’d each cost a draft pick to sign. But Garcia is cheapish, lefthanded, and a groundball machine, and Cashner is a potential buy-low option. A Lynn or Cobb (I prefer Cobb over the flyball-prone Lynn) signing could ease the transition when the Jays cut ties with one or both of Estrada and Happ (aged 34 and 35) after this season.

Brett Anderson is an option of last resort, although a lot of his struggles can be attributed to a terrible strand rate, which might (maybe? possibly?) regress to the mean.

Money spent per season: Between $20MM (Gonzalez and Cashner) to $29.5MM (Cain and Cobb)

LOOGY: Tony Watson (6MM/2 yrs) or Boone Logan, Robbie Ross, etc. The Jays aren’t going to be in on a top lefthanded reliever, who will cost $8-10MM+/yr. But I can see them signing a second tier guy, for about half that per year. There are lots of them floating around.

Money spent per season: Between $26MM (sure, I can see that) to $35.5MM (ehhh, probably not)

Catcher: Alex Avila ($8MM/2 yrs), Geovany Soto, Chris Stewart. Avila will likely cost too much, but Russell Martin is 35 in February – the Jays might want to be cautious about penciling Martin in for 120 starts behind the plate. Soto, Stewart, and others could easily pass over the low bar set by Maile, Salty, and the other failures from 2017. It’s probably not worth investing much here, with the Jays having catching options in the high minors (Danny Jansen, Reese McGuire) that won’t be much worse than your average backup catcher.

Money spent per season: Between $28MM (a cheap catcher) to $43.5MM (Avila and all the other top options above? Keep dreaming)

Infielder: Eduardo Nunez (7MM/2yrs) was thought to be a good addition to the Jays before the offseason started, and at $7MM/yr, he’s probably worth it. Nunez has been a league-average or better hitter for the last 2 seasons and can play multiple infield positions. That said, the Jays already acquired Aledmys Diaz, who is cheaper and can fill in at the same positions. Another acquisition in the infield would push Travis to the outfield or the trading block – and the Jays also have guys like Lourdes Gurriel, Richard Urena (and Bo Bichette in a couple of years) who could fill in.

Money spent per season: Between $35MM (party like it's 2013!) to $50.5MM (now we're just being silly)

We’re talking about multiple additions here, so some players (beyond the departed free agents, like Bautista and Barney) will be exiting. In particular, Kevin Pillar and his estimated $4MM contract can be traded if the Jays acquire Lorenzo Cain, and Ezequiel Carrera ($2MM) will likely go on the block if Jay Bruce or Carlos Gonzalez come on board. If the Jays were to get everything on the list above, Steve Pearce could be traded, as well. A lot depends on whether Teoscar Hernandez can win a job this spring, or if someone else (Alford?) can step up and play outfield.

Money deducted: $2MM (Carrera), $4MM (Pillar) or $6MM (Pearce).

Total outlay: Between $33MM/yr and about $45MM/yr.

Will the Jays do all this? Probably not, but they could. So consider this my gift to you: A way for the Jays to stay competitive without breaking the bank on Stanton, JD Martinez, Yu Darvish, and the like; a positive sentiment to make your holidays more merry. Although it does speak to where we are as Jays fans, that I know better than to even wish for a $150MM signing.

Happy Festivus!

The problem (??) with Christian Yelich

2017-12-13T20:59:00.002-05:00

The uniform doesn't help

The Blue Jay Hunter posed a great hypothetical today: Would you trade Bo Bichette to get Christian Yelich?

The answer, from a value/talent perspective, should be “yes”. Yelich is a 4 WAR outfielder who is under control for 5 more years at a little over $12MM/yr – a bargain. He’s 26, so he's likely got several years before he declines. He hits for average, has 20-HR power, walks, doesn’t strike out too much, runs well, and plays decent defense.

Bo Bichette, meanwhile, is a 19 year old infield prospect. He shredded A-ball last year. He’s a top-20 prospect and with Vlad Guerrero Jr, gives the Jays two top-flight hitting prospects who can play infield, potentially providing replacements for some of Donaldson, Tulo and Travis as they age/hit free agency/break. He’s a great prospect, but prospects fail all the time. Travis Snider was a top-10 hitting prospect and failed, as we all remember. Out of recent top pitching prospects Aaron Sanchez, Noah Syndergaard, Justin Nicolino, Daniel Norris, and Jeff Hoffman, three have been decidedly mediocre so far and the other two have had injury issues.

So, yeah, you absolutely trade Bichette for Yelich, if the Marlins would take it (they won’t – other teams would certainly offer more, and the Jays would need to, too). You take the proven major league top producer on a below market salary over the guy who might be good, every single time.

But.

The reason the Yankees are suddenly good is because they got younger fast, due to the maturation of top prospects: Judge and Sanchez, obviously. Severino. Green and Kahnle, to a lesser extent. These 5 guys basically cost the Yankees nothing – less than $3MM combined, and they all produced at a high level. When you have elite players playing for free and making up 20% of your active roster, you can afford to take on a $270MM contract, or make expensive mistakes like Jacoby Ellsbury.

Now look at the Jays’ roster. Their only MLB-minimum homegrown players playing at a high level are Pillar*, Osuna, and Sanchez… and they’re all about to get more expensive as they hit arbitration this offseason. Almost all clubs need to get cheap wins from somewhere; trade away Bichette (or Vlad) and you make it that much harder to find them.

Getting Christian Yelich for Bo Bichette would be a tremendous coup for the Jays (fyi: it’ll never happen). But in the long term, you can’t be successful paying all your 4 WAR players $10MM/yr, when your competition is paying equal or better players $535,000 each.

* Arguably, you could exclude Pillar from this group.