Missing BJ

Grass, man

2012-02-11T12:52:00.000-05:00

It’s unclear whether a grass field would die in the Skydome. But what is clear is that the notion of adding grass to the ‘Dome won’t die. To quickly recap: Paul Beeston, in responding to a fan question at the State of the Franchise event, indicated that the Jays are exploring the idea of replacing the Skydome's artificial surface with a grass field. Then, Stephanie Findlay of the Star pooh-poohed the idea here, indicating that the problem was lack of light (and all this time, I had assumed that lights could be brought in, or for that matter, that there would be ample light with the roof open through the summer months). And now, Dave Perkins comes out with this, suggesting that the idea of a grass field is something the Jays are taking very seriously.

Now, I must admit that I’m pleased to see that someone else (i.e. Perkins) has recognized one hidden cost of artificial turf: Players like Carl Crawford may flat-out refuse to play on it, which leaves the Jays at a competitive disadvantage. If players don’t want to play on the Skydome carpet, this will force the Jays to accept inferior free agents, or to overpay in order to compensate for the negative that the artificial field amounts to. Throw in the depressing cocktail that comes from mixing player knees, fake grass, and long term contracts (i.e. more injuries, of the debilitating kind, to expensive players), and you could potentially save the team millions by installing a grass field. Those savings would likely amount to more than the revenue the Skydome gets from concerts, Argos, and tractor pulls, and Perkins makes allusion to this point at the end of his article.

Interestingly, the Perkins article didn’t even address the not-enough-light issue. I suppose the answer there is to install some kind of high-powered overhead lighting system for when the dome is closed, or leaving the roof open at all times save during game times when it rains, or even putting down new grass every spring. But even if those steps solve the lighting problem, there’s still the need to tear up the floor of the Skydome in order to install drainage pipes and sprinklers, and to install pumps so the whole assembly will drain properly.

So I’ll say it again: I’m a big fan of the Jays putting in a real grass field. It’ll look better, it’ll make the players happier and probably healthier, and will likely save the team money in terms of player salaries, over the long term. And yet, I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen. This is a big undertaking involving a lot of moving parts (drainage, lighting, construction, groundskeeping) that must all come together in the course of an (optimistically speaking) 5 month offseason. And there’s always the risk that the entire project may fail despite best efforts, and the grass dies. Besides, doing nothing is always easier than doing something, and doing nothing also happens to come with less obvious risks, and a revenue stream (the aforementioned concerts, football, and tractor pulls) which disappears with a grass field. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Rogers take this easier route, and given the complexity of this project, I wouldn’t blame them for doing so.

But if the grass field comes to pass, I can’t think of a more telling sign that Rogers is serious about making the Jays successful. So I’m crossing my fingers, and hoping to see sod in 2013.

Prince ...and all the other stuff

2012-02-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

It doesn’t make sense to me: Lose your all-star DH (Vic Martinez) for a season, and replace him with 9 years of Prince Fielder at almost $24MM a season… at a position where you already have an all-star??

Obviously, it’s not all bad for the Tigers, who now have two young power hitters at the corners of their infield, both in their respective career primes. That’s a scary middle of the order, no question. But Miguel Cabrera – the Tigers’ all-star 1B who Fielder will displace to 3B – hasn’t played third regularly since 2007, when he put up -1.1 defensive bWAR at the position. And sure, you could DH one of the two (though apparently, the Tigers plan to play both of them in the field), but where does that leave Martinez, who is on the books through 2014 at $13MM a season or so?

I get that Fielder makes the Tigers better – he’d make any team better, of course. But the thing is, the Tigers have added a player at the position they’re strongest, and now need to put a player into a position where he’d be less valuable than he currently is. Not the best use of $200MM, when the Tigers still have big question marks behind Verlander in their rotation. Oh, and incidentally: that rotation lives and dies by inducing ground balls, which Cabrera will regularly butcher at the hot corner.

The Jays appear to have rounded out their bullpen by signing Francisco Cordero to a 1-year deal. The pen now features Sergio Santos as closer, with Cordero, Frasor, Janssen, and Darren Oliver handling the setup roles in some configuration, and presumably Carlos Villanueva, Luis Perez and Jesse Litsch fighting for the last 2 spots. This assumes the Jays aren’t bluffing when they say they’re prepared to carry 5 outfielders, which would mean a 7-man bullpen. If it’s an 8-man pen, throw Carreno and Beck into the fight for the final spot as well.

Candidly, I have somewhat mixed feelings about the Cordero signing. On the one hand, his presence makes the Jays’ pen deeper, and provides something of a fallback option should Santos falter – Cordero has saved 30+ games for the past 5 years. The ‘pen looks at least as good as the 2011 relief corps did, going into the start of last season – Santos, Cordero, and Oliver replacing Francisco, Rauch, Dotel, and Rzepczynski (with Camp out as well, his innings will probably go to Litsch). But on the other hand, where is the young blood? Santos counts, but I had been looking forward to seeing Carreno in 2012, and there may not be room for him at this point. So, once again, it would not surprise me to see some trades made out of a fairly strong pool of relievers.

As for Cordero himself, his strikeout rate took a big dip last year (to 5.4 per 9) but his hits/9 and walks/9 dropped as well, leading to his putting up a career best 1.019 WHIP in 2011. And I have no idea what that means for 2012. An optimist might say that Cordero’s K rate could bounce back, while a pessimist could counter that the .215 BABIP against Cordero last year is bound to rise, and take the WHIP with it. All in all, Cordero probably makes the bullpen better, but I don’t see him as a key piece.

The acquisition of Omar Vizquel reminds me a lot of the acquisition of Ben Francisco, in that it doesn’t really make sense to me. Vizquel isn’t going to start at shortstop; that’s Escobar’s spot. He’s not going to play 2B or 1B. The Jays have a young middle infielder who can back up second base and shortstop in Luis Valbuena, and they also have Mike McCoy in the fold, who can play just about anywhere. And we’ve been over this before – the Jays can carry 13 position players at most, which means 9 starters (including DH) and 4 backups. One backup will be at catcher, and that leaves 3 spots to be shared between infield backups and outfield backups. Anthopoulos has already made noises about carrying 5 outfielders this season (presumably Bautista, Rasmus, Davis, Francisco and one of Thames/Snider) which means there’s only one spot for Valbuena, Vizquel, and McCoy (Mikey Mac has added value due to being able to play the outfield).

Personally, I have trouble believing that the team will carry 5 outfielders, or that they’ll go with just a 7-man bullpen. But regardless, I can’t see there being a spot for Vizquel – or Francisco, for that matter – on the team, unless someone (Valbuena, Kelly Johnson, Eric Thames, Mikey Mac, Rajai Davis) or multiple someones, is/are traded. Or perhaps Vizquel is just being brought in to teach infield defense during spring training, which would be fine, too.

And I was going to say something about the Morrow extension, wasn’t I? OK, here it is: I like it. 3 years and $20 million (plus an option for a 4^th season at $10MM) sounds about right for Morrow, who has great stuff and could become a great pitcher, but hasn’t gotten to that point yet. If he never makes it, $20MM over 3 years isn’t a backbreaking sum to have thrown away, and if he does turn into something good, $10MM will be a bargain for 2015. I don’t think it would make sense to lock him up for longer than that, based on what Morrow has accomplished to this point… and by 2015, I hope the Jays will be awash in young starting pitching (for reference, see this post) anyway, making even a successful Morrow expendable.

Stat(us quo) of the Franchise

2012-02-03T21:02:00.001-05:00

If you look carefully, you can see me, way back on the right side of the aisle... actually, nevermind. I'm there, but you can't see me.

Given that the State of the Franchise event was Monday, and today is Friday, I thought it would make sense to put down my impressions before they become hopelessly stale, overtaken by signings (Cordero), other events, or at the rate I have been posting lately, Opening Day...

I was able to attend the State of the Franchise (SotF) thanks to an invitation from a friend who is a season ticket holder (thanks again, Chris). This was a first for me - I have been a regular purchaser of Flex Packs in seasons past, but the best perk that came with those was a bobblehead and a free game or two. Nice, but not at the level of the SotF.

For those of you who haven't been, and are curious: the event was held at Skydome, on the 100 level. Invitees entered at 5:30, mingled, enjoyed free snacks and beverages (I particularly enjoyed the jerk chicken sliders, myself) and waited until about 6:30 before being ushered into a couple of sections behind third base. There were about 900 attendees, apparently a pretty good turnout (although this would pose a problem for your correspondent, later). There was a small stage set up above the third-base dugout, on which Beeston, Anthopoulos, and Farrell fielded questions, emceed by Albert "Buck" Martinez. Questions were taken for a little over an hour before a brief raffle for Jays gift bags, after which the attendees retired back to the concourse for more snacks.

A nice evening, to be sure, but the Q&A session was obviously the interesting part. For the most part, the questioners fell into two categories: The supportive, and the irrationally angry. I don't mean to imply that there aren't reasons for Jays fans to be angry, but demands to sign Carlos Beltran (who wasn't going to DH, didn't want to play on artificial turf, and would leave both Snider and Thames without a position if he played LF) or Prince Fielder "or else I won't be a fan anymore"* came across as irrational to me. The overall theme, then, was that the team is going to wait to see how the young players and prospects develop over the next season or two, that there won't be any big free-agent moves, and the fans are, by and large, supportive of this approach. Business as usual, in other words.

Beyond the general theme, there were a few highlights...

1. Paul Beeston, and not the cautious Alex Anthopoulos, was the one to go out on various rhetorical limbs. Beeston expressed an expectation that the Jays, over the next 5 years, would be in the playoffs "at least 2 or 3 times". Be assured that this statement will come back to haunt him in 2014 if things don't go well this season and next.

2. Beeston, again, commenting that the team is exploring the idea of replacing the artificial turf in the Skydome with natural grass. I like the idea of the team playing on grass for several reasons, but I am dubious about this idea going anywhere. As I understand it, drainage is the issue. Skydome's field level is apparently at or below the level of Lake Ontario, so it wouldn't drain naturally... meaning that the concrete foundation the field sits on would have to be ripped up, drainage pipes installed, and pumps put in place to take excess water out, before re-concreting the surface. That doesn't sound like something that could be accomplished in a single offseason, does it? That said, if it can be done, it should be done, in my view. Rightly or wrongly, players have the impression that artificial turf is harder on their bodies than grass is, and many are reluctant to play on the fake stuff. This means that the Jays will have to spend more to attract free agents, or to retain their own free agents... and if a multi-million dollar player misses time due to turf related injuries, the loss of value will far exceed the cost of installing and maintaining real grass. Not incidentally, that loss of value will also exceed any income Rogers gets for leasing out the Skydome to the Argos, concerts, and monster truck shows. The opportunity cost to the team of turning a Vernon Wells-type position player into a DH due to wear and tear accumulated from playing on artificial turf would run into the tens of millions of dollars, for example.

3. The Jays have a 5 year limit on contracts - i.e. they won't sign a free agent to a longer deal than that. Fair enough - we saw how badly the team got burned by the Wells deal. Trouble is, if the marketplace as a whole begins handing out longer contracts as a matter of course, the 5 year policy becomes a convenient excuse for failing to land any free agents at all. I'm not too concerned about that right now, but I would hate to see the 2013 Jays, perhaps fresh off a 90-win season and looking to add one final piece, fail to land (for example) a Cole Hamels-type pitcher because they wouldn't go past 5 years. At the end of the day, some players are worth more than a 5 year commitment, and it's up to the Jays' brass to do their homework and determine who those players are.

As I mentioned, there was a large turnout for the SotF, and as a result, I didn't get to ask a question, despite having my hand up throughout the question period. Felt like I was in 4th grade, again (yes, that was me in the middle aisle). Anyway, here's what I would have asked:

"Paul and Alex, you've mentioned how some players would avoid coming here because of the turf, or because they don't want to DH, or because they want a longer contract than the Jays will hand out. Fair enough, there are some things out of your control that will keep players away. But I often read about how Toronto is a less desirable destination for free agents because of things like going through customs, or perceptions about how much tax they'll pay. Do you feel that these are significant issues? And have you taken steps to mitigate these objections, perhaps by having a tax consultant on staff or through an ongoing fast-track arrangement with Canada customs?"

I'm not sure what AA and Beeston would have said to that, but I have had the impression that a) customs is pretty painless for first-class travelers, and b) the overall tax burden in Toronto isn't any worse than in, say, Chicago or Cleveland, where there are federal, state, and city taxes to be paid. I'm curious to see whether the Jays have addressed the (mis)perceptions US-born players have about Canada.

(I also would have liked to know what Beeston would expect the Jays' broadcast rights to be worth if the team was dealing with an arms-length television network, as opposed to cable network of their parent company, Rogers. Apparently the Angels TV rights are worth $150MM annually, which is how they signed Pujols, and Texas's are worth somewhat more than half that. I would think that the Jays, with the GTA as a market and all of Canada as a potential market, would be worth at least $50-75MM to a broadcaster annually... but that's sheer guesswork on my part)

So all in all, no real surprises. The slow-and-steady, Devil Rays style building process continues.

* Dude, you're at this event because you're a season-ticket holder. The Jays already have your money for the upcoming season. Threats to stop supporting the team ring hollow in these circumstances.

Stuff is happening...

2012-01-31T15:18:00.000-05:00

... and MissingBJ is MIA. Sorry about that. Bear with me!

The Prince-Fielder-to-Detroit thing? I've got something to say about that. Ditto the Brandon Morrow extension, the invite extended to Omar Vizquel, and last night's State of the Franchise event, which I was fortunate enough to attend.

Rest assured, opinions will continue to be expressed here, and I'm not going anywhere. For me, the biggest thing happening is my becoming a dad last Wednesday afternoon (Jan 25).

Little Alexander (no, not for Doyle, and definitely not for Rios!) is already a Jays fan. He's got the gear, the hat, and outings to Skydome planned for May-June. Sure, he may not understand the infield fly rule or appreciate the greatness of BJ Ryan's 2006 season... but he will.

How the Blue Jays can win the World Series in 2012

2012-01-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

Every offseason, baseball fans across North America compile, in some form or another, a wish list of players for their team to go out and acquire. Pick up this guy and that guy, and maybe one of those two players, and they'll be a playoff team - that's the thought process.

However, big offseason pickups don't always lead to championships. Sure, the Yankees won the World Series in 2008 after acquiring Teixeira and Sabathia, but the Phillies flamed out last year and in 2010 after adding Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. The Red Sox spent a fortune in the last offseason, and missed the playoffs entirely. Meanwhile, the Cardinals and Giants won the last 2 world series without huge offseason moves (Lance Berkman was a key for last year's Cardinals, but his acquisition wasn't considered a major move when it was made).

On a related note, no matter how many offseason moves are made, no team is without weaknesses. Last year's Yankees had a pretty thin rotation, and the Cardinals were fine until you went past their number 3 starter. The 2010 Giants had Rowand in CF with 0.3 WAR, Schierholtz at 0.8... and Sandoval had a poor season on top of that. Recognizing that no team can be perfect, and that perfection is therefore not necessary, is important. Too often, we get caught up thinking that every mediocre player has to be improved on... and that's neither possible nor true.

As for how the Jays can win the 2012 World Series, it’s pretty simple: A lot of things need to go right – which can be said of about 25 other teams, incidentally.

Want more than that? OK, let’s start here (thanks to Orioles Nation for compiling this table and saving me a lot of work). The Blue Jays had a total of 33.9 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as a team in 2011, which was 19^th in the majors (incidentally, when I refer to WAR in this post, I mean Fangraphs WAR or fWAR). The 2011 champion Cardinals had 48.6 WAR, and the average playoff team had 51.8 WAR (to save time and effort, we’ll assume that that average is representative of a typical playoff team and that 2011 wasn’t some sort of aberration). So the Jays need to add about 18 WAR to last year’s total to be in playoff range.

The Orioles Nation chart breaks down the WAR totals by batting and pitching WAR. Most of the playoff teams have around a 3:2 or 2:1 ratio of batting to pitching WAR, with the exception of the Phillies (who had more pitching than batting WAR – the only team even close to 1:1). The Cardinals had almost a 5:2 ratio of batting to pitching WAR. The Jays were at a bit less than 2:1. We’ll assume that any ratio between 3:2 and 5:2 is fine, which for our purposes means that the additional 18 WAR could come almost entirely from batting, or roughly equal parts batting/pitching).

So where do the Jays find 18 additional WAR next year? I count 10 places:

1. No significant injuries can occur to key players. A week or two here and there isn’t significant, but if any of Morrow/Romero/Santos/Bautista/Lawrie/Escobar are gone for a month or more, look out. The Cards won last year without Wainwright, but a lot of things had to fall into place for them.

2. No significant regressions by the key players listed in point (1) above. It’s unfair to expect Bautista to put up another 8.3 WAR like he did in 2011… so a slide to 4-5 WAR wouldn’t be the end of the world. A drop to 2.5 WAR (which would still be 4^th among last year’s position players!) would be a major problem. We’ll assume J-Bau drops to 5 WAR or so. (-3 fWAR)

3. Extrapolated numbers have to turn into real numbers. The Jays added Brett Lawrie (43 games, 2.7 WAR), Kelly Johnson (33 games, 0.8 WAR), and Henderson Alvarez (10 starts, 1.0 WAR) last season. Seasons of 5-6 WAR from Lawrie, 4 WAR from Johnson, and 3 WAR from Alvarez would add about 7 WAR to last year’s team totals (and yes, I am assuming zero value for the third baseman that Lawrie replaced, and for Aaron Hill, who was replaced by Johnson). If those three don’t play they way they did late last season, it will be that much harder for the Jays to make a playoff run in 2012. (+7 fWAR)

4. Bounce-back seasons from at least 2 of Cecil, Rasmus, and Lind. Those three combined to produce 0.4 WAR in 2011. However, Cecil was worth 2.6 WAR in 2010, Lind was a 3.7 WAR player in 2009, and Rasmus put up 2.8 and 4.3 WAR in 2009 and 2010. It’s not unreasonable to expect these 3 to be worth closer to 5.5 WAR in 2012. (+5 fWAR)

5. Continued development of Arencibia and/or a breakthrough by D’Arnaud. Arencibia was worth 1.5 WAR last season, despite nagging thumb injuries. He’ll need to build on a strong rookie season just to compensate for the absence of Molina (1.3 WAR in 2011) and the presence of Jeff Mathis (who ought to be worth about -0.4 WAR due to a reduced workload in Toronto). (+0 fWAR)

6. A breakthrough by one of the young pitchers (Drabek, Hutchinson, or someone else) or a strong comeback from McGowan. A 2.5 WAR season from one of these guys would be a huge boost to the rotation. (+2 fWAR)

7. Better play from the bullpen as a whole. Last year’s ‘pen was worth 2.5 WAR. The Yankees had the AL’s best bullpen last year with 7.1 WAR. Somewhere around 5.5 WAR shouldn’t be an unreasonable expectation, especially when you consider that the new closer, Santos, was worth 1.6 WAR last year, and Rauch/Francisco were at about 0 WAR between them. Having Frasor back and a season of Darren Oliver should help, too. (+3 fWAR)

8. A decent year out of the left field position. Thames, Snider, and various warm bodies combined for something less than 1.5 WAR last year. One of them needs to step up and put up 3 WAR next season. (+2 fWAR)

9. A breakthrough by somebody. Maybe Morrow puts it all together, starts getting double plays and his ERA drops by a run and a half, maybe Romero takes the next step and ascends to the Sabathia/Hernandez level of performance. Maybe Yunel Escobar wins a batting title and an OBP title in the same year. Nobody thought Bautista would improve on his 2010 season… until he did just that in 2011. I wouldn’t count on him getting even better, but if he avoids regression, that’s a big plus, with what should be better hitters around him in 2012. (+3 fWAR)

10. Equivalent performances from the bench and DH (likely Encarnacion) in 2012. Which shouldn’t be terribly hard to do. The bench play last year wasn’t spectacular, and EE put up 1.5 WAR in 2011, which is pretty much his career average. (+0 fWAR)

Hey, look – that’s 19 fWAR, which ought to put them in playoff territory. Of course, I did promise to tell you how the Blue Jays would win the 2012 World Series, but once you’re in the playoffs, that’s easy:

11. Get hot at the right time. The Cardinals won 90 games - the fewest of any playoff team last year - and the World Series. Wild card teams win about ¼ of the World Series, meaning that there’s no need to worry if you don’t win your division. Once you make the playoffs… as the cliché goes, anything can happen.

I expect to be able to see the parade route from my office window, this year.

Mid-winter thoughts of football, concussions, and a baseball resurgence

2012-01-19T19:49:00.000-05:00

For a long time, football has been gaining fans and public interest at the expense of baseball. Baseball’s nickname, “America’s pastime” was derived in a time before the NFL merger, a time when NFL games were scheduled on Sundays so they wouldn’t have to compete with college football, and a time long before networks would compete for the right to throw billions of dollars at the NFL for the right to televise games. There are a lot of hypotheses as to why the NFL has stolen so much of the public's attention from baseball. Some say it’s because the NFL has a more level playing field due to revenue sharing (debatable), some say baseball isn’t fast-paced enough (welcome back, Jason Frasor!). I think – to some extent, anyway – it’s the hitting that brings people in. Football is physical in a way that baseball isn’t. At the risk of turning this post into some kind of social commentary, our entertainment has been getting more and more violent over the last 2 generations, and the rise of the NFL’s popularity at baseball’s expense may reflect this.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I like football. With the baseball season a distant memory at this time of year, I get my sports fix from the NFL and NCAA football. And if you don’t follow football – or haven’t followed it in a while – there have been some big changes lately. Scoring is way, way up in the NCAA – points records are being shattered left and right, and one game (the Alamo Bowl) featured almost 1400 yards of offense between the two participating teams. The winning team in the Orange Bowl scored 70 – seventy! – points against a nationally ranked opponent. Defense is almost a lost art (yeah, the BCS title game does weaken that point a bit, but still). Meanwhile, the NFL has become a pass-first league. Up until this season, Dan Marino (probably my all-time favourite NFL player) had held (since 1984) the single-season record for passing yards, with 5084 yards. Until last season, he was the only player to ever throw for 5000 yards in a season. Last year, though, Drew Brees threw for over 5000 yards and narrowly missed setting the record. This season, Brees got the record, and two others (Brady and Stafford) exceeded 5000 yards, with another (Eli Manning) coming just short of the 5K standard.

What brought about these changes in how football is played? In my view, it’s the injuries.

NFL (and NHL, for that matter) players have gotten dramatically bigger and faster over the last 3 decades. If you want evidence, take a look on pro-football-reference.com and check out how big NFL linemen were, back in 1980 (and take a look at a DVD of hockey playoffs from the 70s). Perhaps coincidentally, these sports seem to have hit a tipping point – that point being catastrophic head injuries.

I don’t know if concussions are more prevalent now than they were 20-30 years ago, or if the medical trade just understands them better. It’s possible that NFL and NHL players were always more prone to dying young, or becoming addicted to painkillers, than the average person is. Whatever the reason, we’re starting to see greater awareness of these problems in football and in hockey, and both games are changing – and may change more – as a result. Receivers can’t be hit in the head, or when ‘helpless’, anymore. Quarterbacks can’t be hit high (above the shoulders) or low (below the knees) and defenders can’t tackle helmet-first anymore. The aim of these changes is to protect players from injury, but there is another consequence, perhaps intended and perhaps not: The passing game has become easier, with defenders forced to rein themselves in.

And those violent tackles that made up a big part of football highlights may soon be gone. Ditto for the crushing checks and periodic fights that are a big part of a hockey highlights program. Part of the draw of these sports – huge fast men colliding with each other – is being eroded. Meanwhile, baseball, a non-contact sport, is pretty much the same as it ever was. Players are bigger than they were 40 years ago, but not much bigger. We’re not seeing a wholesale inflation of the home run totals, strikeout totals, stolen base totals… or any other stat.

An NFL fan from 1981 wouldn’t recognize the league, now. A NCAA football fan from 30 years ago would be stunned at the way offenses are run now, too. But a baseball fan from 1981 wouldn’t see a whole lot of difference in the way the game is played today, I don’t think. And that, I think, is a positive for baseball, considering that hockey and football have been heading the wrong way for a while, and are paying for that with dramatic rule changes already in place, with surely more to come.

Bah

2012-01-17T19:14:00.001-05:00

Another day, another article (this one by Cathal Kelly) suggesting that the fans are impatient with AA, that they want a front-line starter added and a middle of the order bat, yadda yadda.

It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. The Toronto sports media says the fans are impatient, and the casual fans say “by golly, yes we are impatient” and fill up online comment sections to that effect… and thus generate more articles. But isn’t it just as reasonable to say that Leafs fans and Raptor fans – and I guess, TFC fans – are just as impatient, if not more so? Not one of those teams has had a sniff of playoff success for some time.

I’ve been trying to understand why the Jays get this kind of grief from the media and casual fans, while the Leafs have been the talk of the town. Besides the obvious (that the Leafs are beloved by most, no matter how bad they are).

The Leafs currently stand 9^th in their 15-team conference, one spot below a playoff berth. Looking back, they have finished 10^th, 15^th, 12^th, 12^th, 9^th, and 9^th since their last playoff berth in 2004.

The Jays finished 7^th in their 14-team conference (or league, to be pedantic about it). That didn't get them a playoff berth, because there are only 4 playoff teams per conference in MLB (conceivably, you could make the playoffs in the 7^th position, if you play in a weak division. See below). The Jays have finished 7^th, 10^th, 7^th, 7^th, 7^th, and 8^th over the years since the Leafs last made the playoffs.

See where I’m going here? If MLB playoffs worked like NHL playoffs, the Jays would have been in the playoffs 6 years of the past 7.

This, and only this, is the reason why Jays fans are “impatient”, and Leafs fans are excited. Context is ignored, when the sole yardstick for success is making the playoffs. The Jays play in a league where few teams make the playoffs, and in a division that includes 3 of the top 5 teams in the league. The competition the Leafs have for playoff berths doesn’t compare with facing off against the Yankees, Red Sox, and Devil Rays.

Is it unfair to the Jays to compare their playoff outlook to that of the Leafs? Yes… but that’s just how it is. The Leafs can succeed by being mediocre. Mediocrity for the Jays doesn’t bring success. But it does breed impatience... or so we are told.

Yankees being Yankees

2012-01-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

As you probably know already, the New York Yankees signed free agent pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to a free-agent contract, and traded for Michael Pineda. Logical moves, both of them - the Yankees, despite winning 97 games, were a bit thin in the starting rotation last year. CC Sabathia is great, Ivan Nova had a good season but is no sure thing, Phil Hughes was hurt and struggled much of the year, and everyone else (Colon, Garcia, Burnett) is either old or not very good. Adding Pineda and Kuroda adds a lot of depth and talent to their rotation.

I have seen a lot of handwringing from Jays fans following these moves, but I'm relatively unmoved. To begin with, I haven't really been looking at 2012 as the year when the Jays go all-out to win the AL East. The '12 Jays will be better than last year's model, but there are a lot of question marks and still a few holes (middle of the rotation, specifically) on the team. So - I don't see this move as a threat to an expected 2012 playoff run by Toronto. The Jays are still a year or two away.

Secondly, this was bound to happen. This is Yankee-like behaviour. Of course the team was going to trade prospects for pitching, and cough up big bucks for a 37-year-old pitcher. Jesus Montero has been rumoured to be on the move for months - no, years - and that's another sense in which some kind of deal was inevitable. We see this kind of activity from the Yankees every year; this is business as usual.

Thirdly... is this really that bad? Really? Yes, Pineda is a great talent, but he's a flyball pitcher moving from spacious Safeco Field to Yankee Stadium. Strikeouts are great, but a lot of those fly balls will be home runs in Pineda's new home. And, as I mentioned, Kuroda will be 37 by opening day, and he comes from another pitcher's park, Dodger Stadium. The 3.07 ERA looks good, but his FIP (fielding independent pitching) was 3/4 of a run higher. Bottom line, his skills may not play as well in the AL East as they did in the cavernous NL West parks. Yeah, I'm probably overstating the weaknesses of the two newest Yankees - they will make New York better - but it's not as if the Yanks just added Cliff Lee, like we were worried about this time last year.

And finally, I have a lot of good memories around the Yankees making moves such as these. Trade away your top prospect to improve today? Check. Sign an aging pitcher at the expense of developing players you already have? Check. These moves may be good moves... but the "win now, at all costs" approach the Yankees take is bound to come back and haunt them eventually. Take it from someone who was there for the 1980s Yankees.

2012 Jays = 1983 Tigers?

2012-01-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

ESPN’s site has a retrospective on the early-80s Detroit Tiger teams – the Morris/Trammell/Whitaker Tigers, probably prompted by the renewed debate over Jack Morris’s Hall-worthiness – and the article concludes by comparing the 1978-82 Tigers to the 2005-2011 Blue Jays.

It’s a nice thought, considering that the 1984 Tigers won 104 games and the World Series, and the 1987 Tigers won the AL East (both times over the 2^nd-place Jays). However, I’m not sure I see that those Tigers compare with the current Jays team. To begin with, the article opens by listing the young players – Whitaker, Trammell, Morris, Parrish – who debuted with the 1978 Tigers, and adding that Dan Petry and Kirk Gibson joined the team in 1979. There isn’t a comparable group of young players on the 2005-6-7 Jays. Sure, there’s Lind… and Romero in 2009, and I guess you could have said Hill, before he was traded. But the Jays’ young core - call it Lawrie-Romero-Escobar-Rasmus, and throw in Arencibia, Lind, Morrow, Alvarez, Santos and Thames if you like – debuted later than that, and hasn’t been together for even a year. So if the premise is that the young Tigers needed several years to ‘gel’ as a team… the Jays aren’t really a comparable.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting thought. The Jays have been accumulating win totals in the low to mid 80s for the last several years. They are maturing, and with the exception of Bautista (who will start to decline at some point, and that’s a whole other subject), they can be expected to improve with time. That’s just the nature of young teams – but it’s not necessarily a linear progression. Whether they take a big leap (the ‘83 Tigers won 92 games, and the aforementioned ’84 team won 104) in the next year or two remains to be seen.

Question

2012-01-11T19:37:00.000-05:00

Alex Anthopoulos says the Jays may "be done" with their offseason team makeover. Of course, that doesn’t mean AA couldn’t take advantage of opportunities that may come up between now and April, and it sure isn’t a bad negotiating strategy to claim to have no further interest in the free agent market. Or he could really be done, and the team is better than it was a year ago, anyway. In any case (and as I have mentioned before) it’s debatable whether the shopping list Anthopoulos rattled off back in October was anything more than some sort of misdirection ploy.

Regardless, that isn’t my question.

My question is… why is Anthopoulos leaving the impression that the team will have a bench that includes both Rajai Davis and Ben Francisco? Really, 5 outfielders? Or six, if McCoy makes the team (Mikey Mac has played the outfield in the past)?

I’ll believe it when I see it on opening day.

Morris vs Stieb. Morris vs Hall of Fame.

2012-01-10T18:46:00.000-05:00

Jack Morris was on 67% of Hall of Fame ballots this week. Time is running out, but Morris is now in striking range of being elected, and sparking a huge argument between the traditional and sabermetric schools of baseball thought.

(Yeah, the same schism seem to come up every year when the HoF vote is announced, but bear with me)

Looking at non-traditional stats, there is a good argument that Morris was no better than the Jays’ own Dave Stieb, who never got within glaring-at-your-middle-infielder-after-an-error distance of the Hall of Fame. Specifically:

Morris: 56.9 Fangraphs WAR, 39.3 BB-Reference WAR

Stieb: 49.5 Fangraphs WAR, 53.0 BB-Reference WAR

Rate stats:

Stieb: 3.44 ERA, 123 ERA+, 1.245 WHIP, 3.2 walks/9, 5.2 strikeouts/9, 1.61 strikeout/walk ratio, 230 IP/162 games

Morris: 3.90 ERA, 105 ERA+, 1.296 WHIP, 3.3 walks/9, 5.8 strikeouts/9, 1.78 strikeout/walk ratio, 242 IP/162 games

I hear a lot of people say that Stieb was better than Morris, and I understand their argument. ERA, ERA+, and WHIP clearly point to Stieb as being better. And on a per-game basis, Stieb was better – Sir David accumulated about the same WAR that Morris did, but did so in about 75% as many innings.

But there are a couple of flaws in an argument that one or the other of the two should be in the Hall of Fame. To begin with, look at those strikeout rates, and strikeout/walk ratios! That’s a lot of walks, and not a whole lot of strikeouts. A K rate below 6 doesn’t look that impressive, when measured against the Halladays, Sabathias, and Becketts of the current day. Maybe pitchers focus more on strikeouts and reducing walks than they did in the 1980s… but I tend to think of elite pitchers as guys who strikeout about 7 batters per 9 innings, and walk less than 3 per 9. Those Stieb/Morris numbers are ugly in comparison.

Secondly, I was surprised to see that Morris pitched so many more innings than Stieb did, per full season. I remember Stieb leading the league in complete games and innings pitched a couple of times, so I figured he would have the edge in the ‘workhorse’ category. Not so.

Stieb’s Hall of Fame candidacy never got off the ground because he didn’t have the counting stats to garner attention. 176 wins, 1600 strikeouts, and just 12 full seasons don’t measure up when the Hall of Fame benchmark used to be 300 wins… which means 15-20 seasons, minimum. Morris gets attention because he stuck around, got to 254 wins (against 186 losses, a respectable winning percentage… if you believe in that stuff), 3800 innings and almost 2500 strikeouts. Trouble is, those were 3800 pretty ordinary innings. 105 ERA+ is nothing special. Combine Morris’s counting stats with Stieb’s rate stats and you have a Hall of Fame pitcher, but as it is, durability alone doesn’t make Morris a special player, a Hall of Fame player.

Of course, Morris had a special game – game 7 of the 1991 World Series, a 10-inning shutout performance (although I'm not sure that 7 hits and 2 walks with just 8 strikeouts is a truly overpowering performance). Morris’s supporters point to that game as the icing on the cake of Morris’s HoF case, and frequently cite it in arguing his candidacy. However, although that WAS a great game, if you want to hang his HoF candidacy on one playoff performance, why pick that one? Why not the game against the Twins in 1987 where he gave up 6 runs, or the 19 earned runs he gave up in 23 innings (ERA 7.43) in the 1992 ALCS and World Series? Morris was about as un-clutch as it gets in those games, and his career playoff ERA was 3.80 – about the same as his regular season number.

It’s funny, but while Morris adherents remember his 1991 performance vividly, that game isn’t so clear to me… I had to look up his 1991 stats for the preceding paragraph. My lasting Morris memory came a bit later.

It was October 1992. Game 5 of the World Series, Toronto up 3-1 in games. Cursed with a roommate who hated baseball, I had gone to a campus pub with a couple of friends to watch 21-game-winner (with a 4.04 ERA?? How??) Jack Morris close out the World Series for the Jays. It was a tight game until the 5^th, when Morris blew it open, serving up a grand slam to light-hitting Lonnie Smith which made the score 7-2, Braves.

I watched the Jays win the final game of the 1992 Series alone on my couch, convinced that my hubris in going out to party had jinxed the team in game 5. But it wasn’t me… it was Jack freakin’ Morris who had cost the team the game.

Good guy to have on your team? Yup. Innings-eater? You bet. Clutch performer? Not really.

Hall of Famer?

I say, no.

Teahen out, Oliver in

2012-01-09T20:54:00.001-05:00

As we all expected – it was everything but official – the Jays signed Darren Oliver today. The ancient (he’s 41!) reliever will get $4MM in 2012 to get left-handed batters out, and the Jays have a $3MM option on him for 2013. To make room for Oliver on the 40-man roster, the Jays DFA’d Mark Teahen. Teahen had been occupying a roster spot since coming over from Chicago last summer in one of a series of trades that eventually brought Colby Rasmus to Toronto.

Should we be lamenting the loss of Mark Teahen from the 2012 Jays? Not really. Teahen was never very good, and wasn’t even half-decent, most of the time. Baseball-reference WAR puts him at below replacement value for all but one of his seven years in MLB, and Fangraphs WAR has him at below replacement value for the last 4 years. I’d feel bad for Teahen, but he seems okay with it. And why shouldn’t he be? Teahen is now free to try to land a starting role somewhere else – as primarily a third baseman, he wasn’t going to play here – and he gets paid $5.5 million no matter what happens.

More importantly for Jays fans, though, the dismissal of Teahen signals that the Jays may be more serious about contending in 2012. I have seen it written that the Jays’ willingness to eat Teahen’s salary (if someone else signs him, his new team pays Teahen the major league minimum salary and Toronto is on the hook for the rest, about $5MM) is a sign that the team isn’t cheap. That’s not quite true – the fact that they were willing to take on Teahen’s salary in last year in order to get Rasmus, showed that they weren’t cheap. Whether he’s here or not in 2012, the Jays were going to have to pay him. The key point, for me, is that the team isn’t keeping Teahen around in the hope of him turning himself into an asset, or some kind of trade bait. Recall, last offseason, that the Jays picked up Juan Rivera as an unwanted trade throw-in and carried him around for a while, hoping he’d contribute. They did the same thing with Jo-Jo Reyes. Reyes was a project; Rivera, an expensive mediocrity. Keeping those guys was a gamble, the sort of gamble that teams that plan to contend don’t take on.

The easy way out for the Jays would have been to stick Teahen at the end of the bench and play him at 3B, 1B, or LF periodically. It would allow them to say they were paying him for something, and maybe even, at some point, allow them to trade him for value. To the team’s credit, they didn’t take the easy way out – they cut him, making room on the 25-man roster for someone potentially useful – a Valbuena or McCoy or even a Ben Francisco, who is a much better defensive outfielder than Teahen is.

Simmer down; this doesn’t necessarily mean the Jays are about to go get Fielder or Oswalt. But it’s nice to see the team making cuts based on ability, not on salary. The bench for 2012 already looks better.

Trade Bait. Part the Second

2012-01-06T22:39:00.000-05:00

Finishing off the trade bait gallery (note: don’t do a Google image search with the words “bait” and “gallery” in it. Yeah... despite my saying that, I know a lot of you will, anyway).

Shortstop (minors): Hechevarria/Thon/Pierre. For a long, long time, shortstop was a problem spot for the Jays. In the last half decade, the team tried names like Adams, Scutaro, Eckstein, Clayton, McDonald, and Gonzalez in that spot, and none of them (with the exception of the 2009 Scutaro, who the team let leave as a free agent) made the position a strength for the team. So, it made sense for Anthopoulos to target Adeiny Hechevarria in 2010, sign him, and anoint him the shortstop of the (sometime in the) future.

And then – I can’t remember if it was just weeks later, or weeks earlier – the Jays managed to get Yunel Escobar from the Braves at a fire-sale price. Escobar is now signed through 2013, with team-friendly options for 2014 and 2015. And he’s pretty darn good. So where does that leave Hechevarria? For that matter, where does that leave the even younger Gustavo Pierre (just 19) and the recently drafted Dickie Joe (Billy Bob Jeb) Thon?

There are a couple of sticking points before we can label any or all of those three players as expendable. For one thing, Hechevarria is progressing very slowly as a hitter, so there’s no guarantee that his trade value would be high – and Alex Anthopoulos hates selling low. Beyond that, there is a lot of speculation around the idea of Escobar possibly moving to second base at some point. If that happens, presumably the team will want to have Hechevarria to slot into the shortstop position… and they’ll probably want one or both of Pierre and Thon as a hedge against the possibility of Escobar leaving in 3 or 4 years. Still, if the team acquires another middle infielder in a separate trade, there are surplus shortstops available for trade.

Pitching (minors): Wojciechowski/Sanchez/Jenkins/others. There’s a double meaning behind the word ‘minors’ here – these are the Jays’ second-tier minor league pitchers. Highly thought of and valuable, but with ceilings a step below those of the group mentioned below. These players could contribute, and even become stars – but they aren’t counted on as the jewels in the organization’s crown. You don’t want to give these guys away for nothing… but at the same time, you wouldn’t lose too much sleep about dealing one of them for a needed player if the opportunity came (the way Anthopoulos reportedly lost sleep over dealing Nestor Molina). By dealing one of these guys, you make an addition without giving up one of your elite prospects. And while the Jays won’t get as much in return for this group as they would for players in the next group, the great depth the team has in pitching prospects makes it practical to trade 2 or more of these pitchers at once. That’s something you’d try to avoid doing with the pitchers named below.

Pitching: Syndergaard/Nicolino/McGuire/Norris/Hutchinson/Drabek/Cecil/Alvarez/Morrow. A.K.A., the best of the minor-league crop of pitchers and most of the big club’s starters. I’m excluding McGowan from this group due to his injury history – I don’t think anyone’s going to give up much for him until he proves himself in 2012. And I’m excluding Romero because he’s cost controlled and I can’t see the team trading its best pitcher, even for another #1 starter. Buuuuut… I absolutely can see them trading Morrow, Cecil, or Alvarez, if they can get something better back. Trading one of those players for someone else’s ace (like in the BS Felix Hernandez rumour referenced in my last post) would give the Jays a solid 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation. Bottom line – the Jays should only deal one of their starters if the return is another starter who makes the team immediately better.

The other 6 guys named are the most highly touted pitching prospects in the organization. All of them have been projected, by various authorities at various times, to be front-of-the-rotation material. But the Jays will, sooner or later, find themselves on the horns of a dilemma (or several dilemma) when it comes to these players. There won’t be room for all of them in the rotation at any one time, and not all of them will turn out to be major-league caliber pitchers. The team will want to trade some of them for value… but which ones? If management waits until they can tell which ones will be stars, the other ones will be worth a lot less in trade. But if they trade now, they risk dealing away a future ace. I suppose that’s why Anthopoulos has surrounded himself with a huge number of scouts – in the hope that their collective wisdom will help him make the right choices in the coming trade decisions. Expect some of these players to be traded… and expect screams of anguish from the fanbase when that happens, no matter who they’re traded for. Yep, we loves us some prospects, we does.

Now, there are other players in the organization who could be traded, to be sure – McCoy, Davis, Litsch on the big club, Mastroianni, Cooper, and others in the minors. But these guys won’t bring back much on their own, as stated yesterday. They might be throw-ins – third or fourth pieces of a bigger trade – to slightly sweeten an offer for some crucial piece of the puzzle. And that is more than fine… players of that nature are replaceable. Real “trade bait” isn’t, and that’s why it’s in high demand.

Trade Bait: Part I

2012-01-05T20:29:00.000-05:00

It’s becoming apparent that Alex Anthopoulos and the Jays prefer – by a pretty wide margin – to acquire top talent via trades, as opposed to through free agency. And this is something I am on board with – as I’ve blogged many times already, you’re almost always going to overpay for a top free agent, who is usually a guy coming off a career year and who may already have peaked... and you'll be bidding against desperate and irrational GMs on top of all that.

Proponents of free agency acquisitions will point out the major advantage of signing free agents: You only have to give up (too much) money for (most of) them. To make a trade, you have to give up something in return… and that’s going to be a sticking point for some Jays fans, no matter how lopsided the trade is. There were people who were mad about trading Alex (.298 OBP) Gonzalez for Yunel Escobar. There were people angry about Marcum leaving town for Lawrie. And so on. In a perfect world, the Jays would be able to trade unwanted, overpaid, out of favour players for talented, cheap players… but the real world doesn’t work that way.

(Although, you might have an argument for the real world working that way if the Jays had held on to Mike Napoli.)

Anyway… in the real world, the best trades involve your team trading something it has a surplus of, for something they have a shortage of. Marcum for Lawrie (the Jays had no third base prospects on the horizon) was one of those. Sure, Shaun Marcum was a good pitcher – but the Jays have a lot of candidates for the rotation, and Marcum wasn’t an elite pitcher. Lawrie, on the other hand, might become an elite third baseman. The trade was made, and at this point, most fans are happy the Jays pulled the trigger on that one.

So, in the wake of speculation that the Cubs wanted Gose or Marisnick, among others, for Garza, and the almost-certainly-fabricated rumour that some kind of deal for Seattle’s Felix Hernandez was going down, with Kyle Drabek, Travis Snider, Henderson Alvarez, Anthony Gose and JP Arencibia (far too much! no, wait, maybe not!) on the way to Seattle in exchange, it seemed to make sense to take a look at who in the Jays' system could be called "trade bait". When I use that term, I'm referring to players that would bring something good back in return, on their own. For example, Nestor Molina was trade bait - he brought back a young, cost-controlled major-league closer on his own. Players like David Cooper and Rajai Davis are certainly surplus and therefore expendable... but I wouldn't call them trade bait. Nobody's going to give up an A prospect or frontline starter for Cooper and Davis.

There are a few areas in which the Jays have surplus players who could be trade bait, and I’ll look at them in turn:

Left Field (major league level): Snider/Thames. This is the glaringly obvious area of surplus. Colby Rasmus is pretty much guaranteed to be the CF next year, and Jose Bautista is similarly locked in at RF. LF, at this point, looks to be either Eric Thames or Travis Snider. If and when the team decides which player they prefer going forward, the other is surplus.

I go back and forth on the relative merits of Snider and Thames. The general consensus is that Snider is the better defender, he’s faster, and he’s considered to have a higher ceiling than Thames. Thames, on the other hand, is better offensively right now, and at age 24, there’s no real reason to assume he can’t get even better offensively (and maybe even defensively). Of the two, Snider is the one who I’d be worried about turning into a perennial all-star if he was traded away. That makes me want to keep him around – but presumably, that also means he would have somewhat more trade value than Thames (despite Snider’s stock having fallen a good deal in the last 18 months). Bottom line is, I’d hate to see either one go, but one of them probably will go. You could also add minor-league OF Moises Sierra in this category, but I don't think he wouldn’t bring as much back as either of Snider or Thames would.

Centre Field (minors): Gose/Marisnick. In the wake of the Brett Wallace-Anthony Gose trade, I had visions of Gose patrolling CF in place of Vernon Wells, three or four years down the road. Then Wells got traded, and I figured that Gose would be up in a year or two, with Rajai Davis as a placeholder.

Last season, of course, saw the acquisition of Colby Rasmus… and that made Gose somewhat expendable. I say “somewhat”, because you can never have too many fast, athletic centrefielders (just ask the Angels!). But realistically, the team doesn’t need all of Rasmus, Gose and Jake Marisnick. One of the latter two is expendable. Gose seems like the most likely trade candidate – he’s a little older (5 months), a little further along in his development, and the team will need to find a place for him sooner. And as of right now, he’s blocked by Rasmus.

Catcher: Arencibia/D’Arnaud/Perez/Jimenez. Do the Jays have some promising catchers, or what? JP Arencibia just set a Jays record for HRs by a catcher, Travis D’Arnaud is considered one of the best, if not THE best, prospects in a loaded Jays system, and both Carlos Perez and AJ Jimenez are highly thought of (Jimenez more so) and very young.

Major league teams carry 2 catchers, but that doesn’t mean the Jays need two star catchers to compete. Ideally, a team will have one first-string catcher who plays 110-120 games a season, one who can defend his position, call a good game, hit for power and get on base. Of course, you’ll want a solid backup for the other 40-55 games, but it’s overkill to hold onto another 4-or-5-tool catcher for that relatively minor role. There's no point in taking a potentially great player and have him sit out 70% of your team's games - it's an inefficient allocation of resources. A decent journeyman – a Tom Wilson or Jose Molina or, yes, even a Jeff Mathis – will do just fine for those games in which the #1 catcher is resting.

Travis D’Arnaud is coming up fast, and he may well be ready to play with the big club in 2012. Does that mean the team trades Arencibia and makes do with stopgap measures until D’Arnaud is ready? Does the impending promotion of the 23-years-old-next-month D’Arnaud make Perez and Jimenez surplus? Or does the team feel they have the catcher of today and the near future in Arencibia, and trade D’Arnaud in a blockbuster deal? Beats me, on all counts. But one of or more of them has got to go, sooner or later.

Up tomorrow (or soon): The rest of the trade bait.

Mission Accomplished?

2012-01-03T20:21:00.001-05:00

The Jays went into the 2011-12 offseason with three holes to fill: Closer, second base, and backup catcher. These holes were created by the departure of Frank Francisco and Jose Molina, and the anticipated departure of Kelly Johnson. And those holes have been filled, with Sergio Santos (probably an upgrade on Frank Francisco), Jeff Mathis (probably a slight downgrade on Molina), and Kelly Johnson (obviously the same guy as the one who finished 2011, but probably better than Aaron Hill would be). You could also say that the bullpen in general needed to be restocked, but the signing of Darren Oliver and trade for Jason Frasor (on top of the Santos acquisition) have pretty much done that.

And yet, the perception is that the 2011 offseason has been a disappointment. Blame for that perception can be pretty much laid on the doorstep of Alex Anthopoulos, who, back in October, said he was looking for a second baseman, closer, and starting pitcher. The second baseman and closer were necessary to fill existing holes on the team… but the starting pitcher was not as obvious of a need. The Jays haven’t lost a starter to free agency, or traded one away. If anything, they already have more options for the rotation going into 2012 than they did a year ago: McGowan is back in the mix, Henderson Alvarez is probably already penciled into a spot, and the only other change is that Jo-Jo Reyes has moved on to better (they could hardly be worse) things. Pick the best three of McGowan/Alvarez/Cecil/Drabek/minor leaguers to slot in behind Romero and Morrow, and there’s the rotation.

But the thing is, the expectation – thanks to Anthopoulos – is that the team would be adding a front-of-the-rotation type pitcher. And so, there was the hysteria over Darvish, the speculation over names like Latos and Gonzalez (before they were traded to other teams), Garza, Oswalt, and others. If one of those players – or someone else of equivalent stature – doesn’t find his way onto the team by March, the offseason will be a bust, in the eyes of many. And never mind that none of the Jays’ AL East rivals have improved themselves, or that much of the Jays’ roster can be expected to get better just by being a year older, unlike the aging Yanks and Sox.

I find it really odd that Anthopoulos would set himself up for criticism the way he did. It was pretty obvious that the team needed a 2B and a closer… but by saying the Jays were looking for a starter, he tipped his hand, something he just does not do. Just about all of AA’s big transactions – the Wells trade, the Escobar trade, the Morrow trade, the Rasmus trade, the Lawrie trade, even the Santos and Frasor trades – came absolutely out of the blue. But this time, Anthopoulos has let it be known that he wasn’t happy with the way the rotation looked for 2012, and in doing so, may have put himself in a tougher position in the market – whether it comes to bidding for Darvish, or making offers to potential trading partners. Was this a slip of the tongue? A misreading of the market?

Or… a red herring?

A lot of us, myself included, can occasionally overhype AA’s abilities, making him out to be some GM/ninja/Jedi/assassin. It’s a fun meme to play with, and sometimes, I catch myself believing that AA is a miracle worker – Mike Napoli notwithstanding. And as memes go, it’s a lot more positive than the Ricciardi GM/loudmouth/condescending jerk/in-over-his-head one we had to work with, 3 years ago. But realistically, Anthopoulos is going to make mistakes, like all GMs sometimes do. And at this point, telling the world that finding a starter was a priority looks to have been a mistake.

Unless it’s part of some elaborate, unfathomable scheme that has yet to play out. In which case, the man's a ninja, again. Stay tuned.

Deconstructing left field, Star-style

2011-12-30T16:09:00.001-05:00

From today's Griffin blog: “The Jays have eight players that can handle left field -- Travis Snider, Eric Thames, Rajai Davis, Ben Francisco, Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Teahen, Mike McCoy and Kelly Johnson -- giving them a pool with depth from which to trade.”

This isn't "depth". This is two young players who may or may not get better, two 4th outfielders, two guys without an infield position, a utility player, and the Jays' starting second baseman. Two of the players named haven't played left field in 5 years, or ever. And you might get something useful in trade for perhaps 4 of those guys, tops - assuming you're ok with finding a second baseman and/or a DH somewhere else. Just come out and say Snider and Thames could be trade bait, if that's your point, Dick.

I agree that the team has too many outfielders, and someone is likely to be moved... but throwing Mark Teahen in there as any kind of trade asset is just stupid.

By Griffin's logic, the team also has 10 potential closers: Sergio Santos, Kyle Drabek, Casey Janssen, Shawn Camp, Jesse Litsch, Carlos Villanueva, Luis Perez, Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil... and don't forget Mike McCoy. So I suppose they have a pool of depth from which to trade there, too.

What’s that? Oh, I suppose it is a bit misleading for me to say that all those guys could close. But in fairness, they all finished games for the Jays last year… so they technically can close, if you ignore the fact that three of them will be unavailable for that role due to their being starters (Romero, Cecil, Drabek), and that some others (Camp) aren’t very good, and others (Janssen et al) are penciled into other roles in the bullpen.

Happy New Year, peeps.

A belated Christmas wish

2011-12-28T20:37:00.000-05:00

Enough with the spend-or-else ultimatums. Seriously. Exactly what do you think those will accomplish, anyway?

The ultimatums started – well, they started a long time ago, but they got more and more strident around the time Alex Anthopoulos mused about salary constraints. Dick Griffin started it off with this article when the Santos trade happened, and then got really insistent when the Jays didn’t win Darvish. And most recently, Cathal Kelly's hopefully-tongue-in-cheek (I mean, if you’re that cynical about sports, perhaps you should find another vocation) article that insists that the Jays must make a ‘substantial roster addition’ by March.

Or else what? Or else you’ll all keep on whining about the Jays not giving up the farm for overrated players like Gio Gonzalez, or about how they balked at committing more that $25MM/yr on an unproven Japanese pitcher, and how they aren’t throwing money at the 2012 versions of AJ Burnett, Frank Thomas and Corey Koskie? Please.

There are times that I wish that baseball writers would stick to covering the games, and not play at being general managers. This is one of those times.

Sure, Yu Darvish would have made the team better. Probably not $125 million worth of better, though. Like every team in baseball, the Jays have a budget, and they were outbid on Darvish by a desperate (Texas having lost a key starter to their division rival… who also happened to have picked up Al Pujols) team. Bidding wars with desperate teams have a way of ruining anyone’s budget.

And sure, Gio Gonzalez would have been better than last year’s 4^th and 5^th starters. But there comes a point where a mediocre outside option like Gonzalez isn’t really an improvement over internal options. Remember 2007, the year the team ran Tomo Ohka out for 10 starts before deciding on Marcum/McGowan instead? Gonzalez is better than Ohka, obviously, but he walks a ton of batters (led the AL in walks last year) while playing in a very forgiving park in Oakland (road ERA a run higher than at home). Add in a lot of struggles over his career versus Boston, New York and Tampa Bay… and I get the feeling that we’d be see a different Gio in Toronto than we saw in Oakland.

But that isn’t even the point. The point is, you can’t expect to be successful if you announce your negotiating limits in the media, if you make deals so you can say you made a deal, if you behave desperately (think of the Angels after missing out on Adrian Beltre last year), or if you let the media (and yes, fans and bloggers) dictate your personnel moves. The Jays under JP Ricciardi used to do all of these things, and paid dearly for them. Now they do none of them, and get excoriated for their trouble.

Would I like the team to make another move – for a Carlos Pena, Edwin Jackson, Hiroki Kuroda, or something similar? Sure. Would I be enthused if they traded for Matt Garza? Yuppers. But I don’t want to see key pieces traded for 1 year of Garza, and I don’t think Pena/Jackson/Kuroda are so much better than the team’s existing players to make any of them a must-have. As things stand right now, the 2012 Jays will have full seasons of Rasmus instead of Davis/Patterson, Santos instead of Francisco/Rauch, Johnson instead of Hill, Alvarez instead of Jo-Jo Reyes, Lawrie instead of Nix/Encarnacion/McDonald/McCoy. Those changes are worth 7-9 more wins over last year’s total of 81, on their own. This team is already better than last year’s team – and any Jays team since 2006 – and we have the current management team led by Alex Anthopoulos to thank for that.

And it would be nice if someone in the media mentioned that, too.

Rogers Apologism

2011-12-21T18:03:00.001-05:00

I’m not going to pretend that I’m not disappointed by the Jays failing to land Yu Darvish. Sure, like any other big-ticket free agent, Darvish is a major risk. The Jays may have missed out on a young, front-of-the-rotation starter or they may have avoided paying premium dollars for a replacement-level player, and everything in between. If you consider that Darvish will be seeking a 5 year contract comparable to CJ Wilson’s, the total expenditure pro-rated over 5 seasons would be close to $25MM/yr. That’s Cliff Lee or CC Sabathia money, and those two gents are past Cy Young award winners and proven playoff performers. It’s unlikely that Darvish would be better than those two players, and he could easily be a lot worse. Two things are near-certain, though: Darvish would have made the Jays better, and it’s not my money. Acquiring Darvish would have been the converse of the Vernon Wells trade: Trading Wells gave the team tremendous financial flexibility, but it also made the Jays worse, in the immediate term.

So outside of the trade market, what impact players are still out there? Well, there’s Edwin Jackson (maybe, but a Type A), Jeff Francis (no), and Hiroki Kuroda (mmm… possible, if not for too many years). Lower risk than Darvish in all cases, but much lower rewards, too. Francis is too fragile to be anything more than a shot in the dark. Kuroda’s pitching may not play well in the AL East. Jackson has great stuff, but he’ll cost the Jays a first-round pick. Still, I would consider signing on to a “Bring back Edwin Jackson” campaign.

For position players, there’s Fielder, Carlos Beltran, and perhaps Carlos Pena. Fielder would be an extravagance and he doesn’t come without risks, but if the Jays could get him to sign a 4 or 5 year deal, I would be on board. The conventional wisdom is that ballplayers want contracts for as many years as possible and as many dollars as possible, but doesn’t that really make sense for just the 30 year olds and up? Fielder is 27. If he signs a 4 or 5 year deal, he can re-enter free agency at the same age Pujols is now. By contrast, players like Pujols want as long a deal as possible, to ensure they’re getting guaranteed money well into their decline years. I’m not sure why Fielder would necessarily want an 8 year deal, unless he plans on retiring at 35. Another big contract at age 35 would be a tough sell.

And speaking of older options, there’s Carlos Pena as a fallback. Pena is 33, and would likely cost between 10-15MM a season for 2-3 years. Much cheaper than Fielder, and still an upgrade (though not as big an upgrade as Prince would be) over Lind/Encarnacion, particularly when it comes to OBP. Pena hasn’t walked fewer than 87 times in the last 5 years, and once you get past his crummy batting average (which may be due to bad luck with BABIP… or possibly the product of a reduced line drive percentage), you have a 2-3 oWAR first baseman/DH. Pena is a Type B free agent, so he wouldn’t cost the team a draft pick, and acquiring him would allow the team to trade Lind or Encarnacion (maybe as part of a package to acquire a pitcher?).

Beltran, on the other hand, seems pretty doubtful. He’s a Type A, and the Jays already have a LOT of outfielders. The .900 OPS looks great, but Beltran is coming off his first healthy season in 3 years, and was making almost $20MM per year. And he’s 34. And he's not really a centre fielder anymore. If the Jays were to package off one or more of their young outfielders (Snider/Thames in particular) in order to acquire pitching, Beltran might be an option. Still pretty unlikely, in my estimation.

The Darvish Countdown

2011-12-19T18:21:00.002-05:00

The latest is that the winning bid for Yu Darvish’s posting rights will be announced around 8:00-9:00 EST this evening (yes, my aim is to have this posted before then). And it's also rumoured that the Jays, contrary to previous rumours(!), did not win the bidding. It’s funny – I am not completely sold on the idea of Yu Darvish (yes, he’s young, bigger than Matsuzaka was, a hard thrower… but he’s also unproven in MLB and has thrown a lot of innings at a young age) and haven’t completely decided on whether signing him is a good idea. Despite that, I’ll be disappointed if he winds up in Texas, Chicago, or somewhere else that isn’t Toronto. Funny how an excess of hoopla and conjecture will do that.

Anyway - an article in the National Post has been making the rounds today, and causing a bit of a stir in Jay-land. In a nutshell, the article pours cold water on the idea of Darvish-to-Toronto, citing the cautious approach Anthopoulos has taken with unproven players, and the fact that it’ll take about $50MM to just talk with Darvish about a contract - $50MM from a team that had a total team salary outlay of just $70MM last year.

There’s some logic to that reading of the situation, but I don’t quite buy into it. For one thing, the Jays have thrown money at relatively unproven players before. Think of Hechevarria, think of the array of Venezuelan teenagers signed over the last 2 offseasons, and all the over-slot draft picks. Anthopoulos was reportedly also in big on Aroldis Chapman – who wound up costing the Reds $25MM. So, it’s not quite accurate to say that the Jays don’t take financial risks on unproven players. Darvish is a much bigger financial risk than any of those players (he ought to wind up costing about $120MM, all-in), but he’s a lot further along in his development than any of the Latin American prospects cited. Darvish would likely be the Jays’ #2 starter behind Romero, if he signed here.

A couple of other indicators that point to the Jays taking a serious run at Darvish would be the nature of the new CBA, and perhaps, psychological factors. Consider that for the last few seasons, the Jays’ braintrust has been investing heavily in the draft, and in international free agents. You could argue that those were underexploited areas in which the team could disproportionately improve with a little increased spending, and the Jays did, in fact, increase spending in those areas and thereby improved themselves. Now, the new CBA prevents the team from overspending on draft picks and in Latin America. It’s possible that the funds that would have gone to those areas in future offseasons have been redirected to Darvish.

As for the psychological factor: $120MM is a big number, but ‘only’ $70-80MM of that is actual salary. That means his salary would be roughly comparable to what CJ Wilson is getting from Anaheim. In case you’ve forgotten, here are CJ Wilson’s stats for the last 2 years… 2010: 3.35 ERA, 1.245 WHIP, 204 innings, and 2011: 2.94 ERA, 1.187 WHIP, 223.1 innings. And Wilson is 31, and came with draft pick compensation attached. So I’d rather have Darvish than Wilson, frankly. The other thing about that $120MM number is that the posting fee doesn’t count against the salary cap, and is gone before Darvish ever throws a pitch in MLB. Unlike a back-loaded contract like Wells’, the up-front nature of the commitment to Darvish means that he’ll be fairly tradeable if he performs anything close to the expectations for him. If he overachieves, the contract is a steal, even with the $50MM posting fee considered as part of it. And if he underachieves, the only drag on future team budgets will be his salary, which will be a relatively manageable $12MM-$15MM a season. It’s those $20MM/season commitments that start to look scary when drawing up future team budgets.

Bottom line, we won’t know if Darvish was worth it (to Toronto, Texas, the Cubs or whoever) until he pitches next season. And maybe not even then. If he’s Daisuke Matsuzaka Jr, I wouldn’t pay a $20MM fee to get him. If he's the pitching equivalent of Ichiro... hell, yes.

Public Service Announcement

2011-12-16T18:21:00.000-05:00

We are pleased to announce, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, that MissingBJ will be a Yu Darvish pun-free zone for the remainder of 2011.

There will be no Yu-hoos, Yu-go-girls, Yu know what I means, or Yukeleles in these pages. Similarly, there will be no references to whirling (or hurling) Darvishes, or strategic Darveshtitures, or playing ones cards close to Darvesh…t.

You’re welcome. Carry on with refreshing your twitter feed waiting for confirmation that the Jays did or did not win the posting for Mr. Darvish.

Musical outfield chairs

2011-12-14T20:51:00.001-05:00

The Jays now have 6 outfielders. Looking at it realistically, there are probably 4 outfield spots on the 25-man roster – yes, I know Anthopoulos says he plans to carry 5 outfielders, but I don’t see it, considering McCoy (and maybe Encarnacion, Johnson, or even Lind?) is an infielder who can play outfield at times. Plus, now that Valbuena is in the fold, that’s another bench spot gone (unless McCoy is left off). And it looks like the Jays will still have a fairly young rotation in 2012, so they may well carry 8 relievers, which would mean only 3 bench spots (catcher, infielder, outfielder).

But regardless of whether they carry 4 or 5 outfielders into the 2012 season, it’s clear that the team has a surplus. Cue trade speculation! Will it be Snider or Thames that gets moved?

Well… hold on. The thing with Snider and Thames is that you don’t have to move either of them. Thames can be parked in AAA Las Vegas, and I believe that Snider has another option, too (although he has to be running out of those). That’s not necessarily the best use for either of them – Thames has shown he can play in MLB, and Snider has nothing left to prove in AAA. Leaving them in the minors does not add to their value nor (in the case of Thames, anyway) aid their development. But more on that in a moment.

It’s really unlikely that the team would trade Bautista or Rasmus. They’ve coveted Rasmus for a long time, and trading him now would be selling low, anyway. Trading Bautista would be a blockbuster move, but we’ve seen no signs that such a move is imminent. That leaves Rajai Davis.

Davis did one thing really well last year: Stealing bases. Unfortunately, he didn’t play great defense, and he didn’t hit at all – no OBP, no power. With Rasmus in the fold, Davis becomes a 4^th outfielder… and given his defensive (and offensive) shortcomings, he’s not really suited to being even that. So basically, he’s an expensive pinch-runner. The newly acquired Ben Francisco, on the other hand, CAN get on base a bit, although he doesn’t have the stolen base credentials Davis has. Defensively, they seem roughly comparable. So – what’s the purpose of getting Francisco, who’s basically similar to Davis, if one of them isn’t being traded? Yes, they’d be selling low on Davis… but Davis isn’t going to get enough at-bats in 2012 to rebuild his credentials as a hitter. Therefore, the “Anthopoulos doesn’t sell low” rule may not apply here.

So, expect Davis – and maybe one of Snider/Thames – to be on the move sometime before spring training. And as AA doesn’t sell low… my money is on Thames joining Davis as the odd men out when the music stops. Argue all you want about which of Snider or Thames has a better future with the Jays, or which is a better trade chip… but you’d have to think Thames’s value won’t ever be higher. Just like Nestor Molina’s value peaked a week ago.

On the Pujols deal

2011-12-08T22:10:00.001-05:00

I can’t imagine why anyone would think this is a good idea.

Pujols is 32 (or maybe 34) and he just got handed a 10 year, $255MM contract. The only comparable deal out there is Alex Rodriguez’s contract. Say what you want about the deal Texas signed with A-Rod back in 2000, but Rodriguez was 24 at the time, coming off a 5 year stretch during which he had OPSed, in consecutive years, 1.045, .846, .919, .943, and 1.026. As a shortstop in his early 20s. A reasonable expectation would be that Rodriguez could still have his best years ahead of him, and sure enough, he did. Rodriguez OPSed over 1.000 in his first 2 years with Texas, led the AL in total bases those years, and won the MVP. Then he went to New York, and won two more MVPs in the next 4 years. And then things went bad. Not Alex Rios-bad, but… not $25MM per season good, either. Starting at age 32, A-Rod’s OPS has gone from .965 to .933 to .847 and last year, .823. He had played in 154 games or more per season for 8 years, but hasn’t played more than 138 games since turning 32.

Let’s look at OPS by age, shall we?

Age	Rodriguez	Pujols
20	1.045	n/a
21	.846	1.013
22	.919	.955
23	.943	1.106
24	1.026	1.072
25	1.021 1^st year in Texas	1.039
26	1.015	1.102
27	.995	.997
28	.888 1^st year in New York	1.114
29	1.031	1.101
30	.914	1.011
31	1.067	.906
32	.965	?
33	.933	?
34	.847	?
35	.823	?

Pujols has already had his peak years. Because of that, I would understand this deal better if the Cardinals were the ones giving it to him. Pujols has had many great years in St Louis, won MVPs for them, won 2 World Series. Had he stayed in Missouri his legacy there was assured, and I don’t think the fans there would resent his underperforming his contract, because of what he had already done for them at below market rates (the same goes for A-Rod’s extension in New York – the Yankees got 2 MVPs out of A-Rod, so the extension could be said to be earned. Plus, the Yankees have limitless supplies of money and can afford to pay worn out 40-year-olds $27MM a year).

Pujols will not get the benefit of the doubt from the fans in California. Unlike A-Rod, Pujols doesn’t play a premium defensive position, so you can’t rationalize a dip in offensive output by comparing him with his peers at his position. Nobody in Los Angeles will have fond memories of his glory years to look back on, if he struggles. And frankly, he will struggle. It’s practically inconceivable that Pujols will be able to maintain the performance he demonstrated during his 20s and early 30s, through his mid-to-late 30s and 40s.

I get that the Angels have money to spend; good for them, I guess. I just don’t see why they would feel they have to overspend to that magnitude on a player whose career arc has already peaked.

The Kelly Johnson dilemma, and more winter meetings awesomeness

2011-12-08T18:41:00.001-05:00

So, to round up the recent transactional doings…

Al Pujols is an Angel, CJ Wilson an Angel, Mark Buehrle a Marlin. Both teams will come to regret those signings, so don’t fret overmuch about the Jays not getting any of those players. Sing along with me: ‘Tis the season for overpaying for already-declining talent…fa la la la la, la la, la la...'

Yu Darvish has decided to be posted for bids by MLB teams. The Jays are (as always) rumoured to be one of the interested teams. I blogged a few weeks ago about the pros and cons of getting Darvish, so in brief: He’s youngish, bigger/stronger than Matsuzaka, hasn’t been overworked, and costs the team nothing in the way of draft picks… BUT he’ll cost the team dollars in terms of both posting fee and salary, and the track record of Japanese players in MLB is spotty at best. So… we’ll see soon enough if there is any real interest there. The Jays are also rumoured to be in on Jon Niese, a young (25) lefthanded starting pitcher from the Mets. He’d be a lot cheaper than Darvish in terms of dollars, but more expensive in terms of what the Jays would have to give up to get him.

Remember the big decision facing the Jays with respect to Jon Rauch? Rauch - big reliever, free agent after the 2011 season. The Jays wanted to get a draft pick for him, but they’d have to offer arbitration… and with the awful season Rauch had, he might have just accepted arbitration, putting the Jays on the hook for about $4MM for a pitcher they didn’t want (or they could cut him in spring training, I guess – but no draft pick). Well, a hearty THANK YOU goes out to the New York Mets, who signed Rauch this week. It’s not as if Rauch can accept an offer of arbitration while under contract to another team, so… add a supplemental draft pick to next year’s pile!

And in related news, the Mets also signed Frank Francisco, netting the Jays another draft pick in the same fashion as the Rauch signing did. Of course, because it’s the Mets, Rauch and Francisco got ridiculous contracts – Rauch 1 yr/$3.5MM, Francisco 2 years/$12MM. Compare and contrast those numbers to the $8MM the Jays will be paying Santos – a player who was more valuable than Rauch and Francisco combined – over the next three years.

But just as draft picks can fall from the sky (as with Rauch), they can disappear, as seems to be the case with Kelly Johnson. Johnson, it was assumed, would decline arbitration if offered to him, and explore free agency. And why not? – after all, Aaron Hill got a 2-year, $11MM deal from Arizona despite having been dead weight offensively for 2 seasons. Johnson had a much better 2010 than Hill did, and was somewhat better in 2011 (.717 OPS, versus .655 for Hill). Yes, Hill is the better defender, but you’d have to think Johnson would have been getting offers in the 3-4 year range at $6MM/season or so.

Well, throw that reasoning out the window, as it is now confirmed that Johnson will be accepting arbitration. And that leaves the Jays with an interesting decision: sign KJ to a 1-year deal (arbitrated or otherwise), versus signing him for 2 or 3 seasons.

Here’s my thinking: The opportunity cost of keeping Johnson is 2 first-round draft picks (the ones the team would get when Johnson signed with someone else). Draft picks are going to be an increasingly scarce commodity, and we know that the Jays valued them highly, even before the new CBA was unveiled. I think Anthopoulos and company would attach more value to two 1^st-round picks than they would to 1 season of Johnson. So with that in mind… if you are, in effect, forced to give up 2 picks for the right to have Johnson on your team, wouldn’t it make sense to give up those picks for 2 or 3 seasons of Johnson, as opposed to just one? (And it's not as if the Jays have a second-base prospect who will be major-league ready by 2013, in any case) To me, it’s analogous to the reasoning around possible trades for Brandon Phillips or (sigh) Joey Votto. Both Votto and Phillips will be free agents shortly – Phillips in 2013, Votto in 2014. Both come with expensive salaries, and trading for either would mean parting with significant talent (prospects or current players). And so the argument against trading for either player is that it’s not worth giving up controllable prospects for 1-2 years of Votto/Phillips. If you can lock up the player for 4-5 years at a decent price… then it starts to make more sense to surrender talent for him.

The counter to that argument, of course, is that Kelly Johnson isn’t as good as either Votto or Phillips. Having Johnson’s rights for 2 or more years isn’t automatically a good thing, the way it would be to own, say, Votto’s rights. Still… it’s an interesting dilemma that Alex Anthopoulos faces: Sign Johnson for 1 year and almost certainly get nothing for him if he leaves after the 2012 season… or sign him for 2+ years, meaning that the Jays have that many years of serviceable second-base play, plus (assuming his production doesn’t fall off a cliff) some trade value if they decide to move him in the first year of a 2-year deal (or the second of a 3-year deal, etc).

Beyond all that, here’s something that’s been on my mind for a few days. Alex Anthopoulos has publicly talked up Nestor Molina and bemoaned how difficult it was to give him up. AA has also bemoaned the financial straitjacket that Rogers has placed on him. Now maybe, just maybe… those things are being said for the benefit of an audience beyond Toronto Blue Jays fans? Telling the world how much money you have to spend isn’t the best way to begin negotiations with a free agent… and talking up Molina costs the Jays nothing now. I’m half convinced that the glowing reviews of Molina that came out after last season were part of a campaign to drive up his value in the eyes of possible trade partners.

And finally, if you want detailed, up-to-the-minute updates on the Winter Meetings (the kind I can’t really give you while at work), check out the Drunks. Stoeten has done an admirable job of documenting the happenings, as they happen, over the past few days. Great resource.

Back to Back (posts)! The Molina-for-Santos trade

2011-12-06T20:15:00.000-05:00

Surprise! I’m not an infielder anymore!

Ha, true story: I meant to publish my previous post last night. But you know how it is… I came in late, I didn’t get around to making the final edits, and so it sat until I got home tonight. Really, I’m prescient. Swear.

But whether you believe in my clairvoyance or not, Alex Anthopoulos proved true to his past form, swapping Double-A pitching prospect Nestor Molina for the White Sox’s Sergio Santos. Santos is a righthanded reliever who saved 30 games for the Sox.

Some facts about the deal:

- both Molina and Santos are former position players who were converted to pitchers

- Santos spent almost 3 seasons in the Jays’ minor-league system as a shortstop/3B prospect

- Santos saved 30 games last year, his second season in the majors. His 2011 line was 63.1 IP, 3.55 ERA, 1.105 WHIP, 13.1 strikeouts/9, 4.1 walks/9, 30 saves, 6 blown saves, 2 holds, 4-5 record

- Santos was the setup man for Chicago in 2010 (14 holds in 16 opportunities) before closing in 2011.

- Santos is 27. He’s under contract for 3 more seasons at an average of $2.75MM/season, with 3 option years after that (for $6-8MM/season)

- Santos throws a mid-90s fastball, with a plus slider and a so-so changeup. As a closer, of course, he only needs 2 good pitches.

- Nestor Molina was rated anywhere between #2 to #9 among the Jays’ prospects. His strengths are his control (very few walks) and command of several pitches, albeit without a single overpowering one.

The keys here, in my view, are the strikeouts, the contract, and the comparables. Santos is an inexpensive ‘proven closer’ who looks better and better as his numbers are more closely scrutinized. For example, he has the same ERA as Frank Francisco, but a much better WHIP (1.105 vs 1.32). His defense-independent ERA (DIPS, on espn’s site) is 2.77. That’s 10^th among AL pitchers with 40 or more innings, and better than relievers such as Daniel Bard, Andrew Bailey, Koji Uehara and Brandon League. Yes, he walks more batters than I’d like, but the high strikeout rate keeps his WHIP low – and in any case, 4.1 walks/9 isn’t that different than Frank Francisco’s 3.4 walks/9 last year, or Kevin Gregg’s 4.6 walks/9 in 2010. And Santos’ strikeout-to-walk ratio went from 2.67 in the first half of 2011 to 4.50 in the second half, always a positive sign. If Santos can reduce the walks and keep the ball down (his groundball/flyball ratio of .73 is a bit high) he can go from being a good closer to an elite one.

I’m not thrilled to be giving up Molina, a pitcher who was highly regarded as a prospect, one said to have some chance of breaking camp with the 2012 Jays. But at the end of the day… he’s a prospect, until he proves his a big-leaguer. Molina had some success in AA last year, but over just 22 innings. Yes, he was outstanding in single-A ball, but the same could be said of any number of pitchers. Molina has an awkward delivery and he’s not very big. He could be a star, he could wash out. Remember how good Tim Collins looked in the minors, and how ordinary he has been in the majors (yes, he’s just 21, but still)? The key point here is that the Jays have other prospects comparable to Nestor Molina, which makes him somewhat expendable.

And is this better than spending $45MM on Papelbon, or acquiring Heath Bell at almost any price? Ohmygodyes.

Winter meetings stuff

2011-12-06T20:03:00.000-05:00

The starting gun has been fired, and the free agent silly season is underway. For example, the Florida Marlins were not content after throwing 30-odd million at Heath Bell, a 34 year old closer with declining abilities – so they committed $18 million a season for 6 years to Jose Reyes, the oft-injured (hasn’t played more than 133 games the last 3 years) shortstop. Punchline: The Marlins already HAVE a shortstop, Hanley Ramirez… and there’s no guarantee Ramirez will happily switch to 3B.

The Jays have been fairly quiet, despite having been ‘linked’ to all kinds of players, from Bell to Prince Fielder to Hiroyuki Nakajima, a Japanese 2B. They grabbed Luis Valbuena, a no-hit, decent-field 2B candidate from Cleveland, and they swapped lefthanded pitcher Brad Mills to California for catcher Jeff Mathis (to those of you who are wondering why the Jays would give up anything for Mathis, my response is: why would the Angels give up anything for Brad Mills?).

Neither of those two deals could be considered a high profile transaction, but they’re interesting in that they establish a fallback option in 2 areas the Blue Jays have needs in – second base and backup catcher. The Jays could still wind up with Kelly Johnson at second base if he accepts arbitration – I can’t see why he would, but I suppose it could happen. They might end up with Martin Prado, Gordon Beckham, Howie Kendrick (hat tip to the Tao of Stieb for those last 2 names) or someone else. But if none of those things happen, they have Valbuena as a low-cost option at second base, and one that is still fairly highly thought of, in some parts.

Mathis? Terrible hitter, but a good defensive catcher by reputation. If you’re still disappointed, remember that it’s not as if he’s expected to have a big role on the 2012 Jays, anyway. He can tutor Arencibia defensively, serve as a defensive replacement, and share his catching game-management Jedi wisdom (that has to be the reason Mike Scioscia was so attached to Mathis) with the Jays’ young pitchers. Assuming Arencibia starts 110 games, 52 remain for Mathis. And assuming that the scouting report on Travis D’Arnaud is accurate, D’Arnaud could be called up as early as June… which means Mathis’s lousy hitting might only be a factor in 20 games or so. In other words, Mathis is not worth stressing out over. And considering the pitching prospects the Jays have, Brad Mills amounts to nothing more than organizational filler.

Bottom line: Neither player really costs the Jays anything, but if nothing else, having them on board means that the team won’t be forced to overpay for a second baseman or backup catcher in February due to not having one on hand. And there remains the outside possibility that Valbuena and/or Mathis might have been acquired to be part of a future trade, the way Edwin Jackson was last summer.

My big-picture observation – which I will get onto the record now, before things start happening, hopefully – is that free-agent season is about the abandonment of discipline. Teams decide they need a player, and they overpay. Fans (and sportswriters and, yes, bloggers) forget about their teams’ priorities and organizational philosophies and get caught up in the free-agent hype, convincing themselves that their team has to make a big free-agent acquisition to be successful. That just isn’t the case, especially if you’re the Jays.

The Toronto Blue Jays are already ahead of where they were before the start of last season. They have added young, talented players at 3B and CF. They’ve turned Aaron Hill into what will likely be 2 draft picks, and the way Hill was playing, finding equivalent production to replace him may be as simple as handing Valbuena the 2B job. Adam Lind is expected to be better conditioned in 2012 and to play better as a consequence of that. And the mere fact that the team has so many young players means that improvement is almost the default option. If you have a team of 31-year-old players, they’re probably about as good as they’re going to be, on average. A team of 25-year olds can be expected to improve, even without any other changes.

And as for those changes? Well, expect those to come via trade. The Jays have at least 10 highly regarded young pitchers in their minor-league system. They’ll never have 10 open rotation spots. Some of those prospects will succeed, some will fail, and some will be traded. If you’re expecting to see a new 2B, closer, starting pitcher or 3B join the Jays, be prepared to say goodbye to some of those young pitchers. That’s the Anthopoulos way.