A relatively quick one for a Saturday afternoon, but I didn’t want to sit until Monday on Ross Atkins’ radio hit on TSN’s Overdrive back on Friday. So let’s talk about it! (And then a few other newsy things, too.)
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Atkins speaks!
As mentioned above, Ross Atkins did a quick ten minutes with guest host Gord Miller, Jeff O’Neill, and Jamie McLennan on TSN’s Overdrive on Friday. Here are the highlights!
On extending José Berríos
It's been a great couple of days, just to get that extension done. It's a significant milestone for the organization, obviously a very big commitment on Rogers Communications' behalf, and Edward Rogers, and, of course, the Toronto Blue Jays. For us to get to the point where we have the reasons to acquire, the talent to acquire, and the ability to transition a player of this calibre well into an environment that he's excited about — and don't get me wrong, it's easy to get excited about Toronto and Canada. But coming into a team that he immediately embraced, and the fans and the team embraced him, and now we have an extension, is a really good occurrence for the organization, and we're glad we're here.
They obviously had to get this one out of the way first, but there’s not a whole lot new here. Atkins comments’ hewed pretty close to the opening remarks he gave at the press conference to announce the Berríos deal, which I’ve already covered extensively.
Don’t worry, we’re just warming up.
On his not re-signing with Minnesota
An interesting question that wasn’t really asked at Thursday’s presser is why the Jays were able to get this deal done with Berríos when he’d made clear to the Twins that he wanted to test free agency at the end of 2022. Here’s what Atkins had to say:
I can only speak for what he's shared with me about his willingness to commit here, and I think the things that resonated with him were his teammates, obviously resources, the city, the country. He made that very clear yesterday. The environment the environment that has been created here over time, from Charlie Montoyo, our pitching coaches, all of our staff — the performance staff. He's hyper-focussed on his preparation, on his recovery. Obviously the competitiveness part is obvious to everyone. But we have incredible resources for him to take advantage of, from a facility standpoint, to nutritionists, psychologists, therapists, our medical staff has really grown out well. So I think he just appreciated all of the things that I've mentioned, and did feel a connection to the team and to the city and to the country.
Now, obviously Atkins isn’t going to throw the Twins under the bus, and these kinds of answers will always include some kind of cloying love of city and country, but the other stuff is pretty interesting.
The Twins are not in a great place in their competitive cycle at the moment, and though the AL Central is a weaker division than the AL East, the White Sox are good, the Tigers are ascendant, and even the Royals are poised to get stronger in the coming years. The Twins have also never had an opening day payroll above the $128.7 million mark they reached in 2018, which is a number the Jays’ opening day payroll has topped five times since 2014, including 2021. That’s not necessarily news to anyone, but based on the impression you get of Berríos and his camp from Shi Davidi’s outstanding breakdown of how the extension came together, I have to believe that he’s more aware of this stuff than most.
Of the deal, Shi writes that “the final sticking point became an opt out after the fifth season. Atkins had never included one in a contract before and the Blue Jays hadn’t handed one out since A.J. Burnett’s 2005 free-agent deal. But Berrios wanted some protection in case the club’s competitive window collapses and a Chicago-Cubs-styled teardown follows, and there’s some risk with cornerstones Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Bo Bichette eligible for free agency after the 2025 season.”
Clearly this is a competitive guy. And, of course, the “baseball paradise” that the Jays have created in Dunedin (with help from the taxpayers of Florida!) and Toronto, along with the state of the team makes this an obviously appealing place to play.
Unmentioned in Atkins’ reply, however, was anything about the financial side of the deal.
The Jays are definitely sticking their necks out a bit by signing a contract of this length with a pitcher. But as I’ve said before — including on this week’s Blue Jays Happy Hour — if you can’t make this kind of a bet on Berríos you can’t make it on anybody.
On putting a value on Robbie Ray's breakout
The thing that is so attractive about Robbie is the competitiveness, the big huge moments, how big he was for us this year. He really was a stopper for us. In times when we needed a big start, we got it from him. And man, I'm so glad that he was here for the last year and a half, or year and the time at the end of the 2020 season.
As we sort through that, he's still young, he's obviously been durable, the stuff is clearly still there, the effectiveness is clearly still there. So I think he's got a very bright future ahead of him, and how you factor in some of the volatility is — you know, obviously the pitcher or the player would always prefer that there was never any volatility, but that's what we do. That's what we do for a living, and spend a lot of time thinking about that and how to value it. And that's what will ultimately determine — not the volatility — but what what will ultimately determine if there is an avenue for him to come back here is lining up in value. That's the hard part. So we can come up with our way to place a value on your question, it's does it line up with how the market sees it, with how Robbie sees it? And then there's always personal desires and interests.
OK, so what can we say about this response? That the Jays don’t appear to be a team that’s going to value Ray like a guy who is going to win the Cy Young every year maybe?
I don’t imagine he would like us to get hung up on the volatility stuff too much, but that definitely needs to be baked into an offer here. Clearly the Jays believe in Ray, otherwise they wouldn’t have brought him back so quickly last winter, or traded for him in the first place. But it’s hard not to notice what a significant outlier Ray’s 6.7% walk rate in 2021 was compared to what he's done over the rest of his career (10.3%) and, in particular, in the three seasons preceding 2021 (13.1%). I don't think they will have missed that the less good version of Ray seemed to show up in September (10.0% walk rate, 2.12 HR/9), either.
From June 1 to September 5, Ray pitched to a 2.05 ERA and allowed just 11 home runs over 114 innings. In the periods before and after that magical run combined he had 3.97 ERA and allowed 22 home runs in 79 1/3 innings. That's a bit more like the Ray one would have expected, and while it’s a bit unfair to break his season down in this way — it was obviously a great season, as his Cy Young award makes clear — I can’t help but wonder if the Jays maybe see the “real” Ray as being closer to that than to the more dominant one.
To be clear, this is me thinking out loud, not anything to do with what Atkins said, which isn’t anything we haven’t heard him say about free agents before. But I’ll also point out here that earlier in the week over at the Athletic, Keith Law grouped Ray in with Kevin Gausman and Marcus Stroman as guys who should be upping their asks in the wake of the Tigers’ deal with Eduardo Rodriguez. He added: “I don’t know that the market will give any of these starters six years and $120 million, but if Rodriguez’s contract is a harbinger of the value MLB teams will place on starting pitchers this winter, every one of those three guys should have those parameters as their goals.”
On Alek Manoah and his future workload
Man, he's special. I was just texting with his agent right before this call, and he's been awesome. Workload-wise, I think he overcame the biggest hurdle this year. Because of the missed time in 2020 without the minor league season, only pitching at the alternate site, and then coming into this year, that was the biggest jump. So next year's jump could be absolutely manageable, and we don't expect to have any limits.
That’s definitely good news, though I don’t think it’s unexpected. Something worth pointing out here, though, is the fact that we’ve talked about how the Jays will be losing something like 10 to 14 WAR, depending on which version you use, because of the presumed departures of Ray and Marcus Semien in free agency, but they only had Manoah for 20 starts in 2021, they only had Berríos for 12, and George Springer only played 78 games (and wasn’t at his best for many of those). This obviously isn’t an argument for the team to stand pat this winter, but I do think that full seasons from those guys in 2022 will definitely help to close that gap should Ray and Semien land elsewhere.
Speaking of…
On contingencies for Ray and Semien signing elsewhere
This was framed as "Do you have a plan-B?" in case those guys don't sign, which — as I guess I made clear above — I don't think is necessarily plan-A for the Jays. Nevertheless, here's what Atkins said.
We always have to have alternative strategies. So, working through all of those, whether it's free agent or via trade, we have to understand all of those avenues. We've spent countless hours on that over the last several months, and will continue to work on which strategies fit, and which strategies are going to align with your alternatives.
We’ve seen a little movement on the pitching market so far this winter, but there are still all kinds of opportunities out there for the Jays to make themselves better. They’ll definitely do something! But, yeah, Ray and Semien may not be it.
How busy/stressful is this time of year?
This was the money quote in the interview for me. A very interesting peek behind the curtain.
It's incredible, it really is. And, of course, it's very stressful. I think the most stressful nature of it is that we're dealing with human beings. And so every time that I'm speaking on the radio, to you guys, I know I'm talking to our fans, most importantly, but our players are listening, and their agents are listening, and other teams are listening to every word that we say, as we're doing across other markets. So that's the really stressful part.
Wait, do the Jays have teams of people constantly listening to all manner of sports talk radio??? Lmao.
Atkins continued…
Obviously there's the obvious stressors of the desire to win and to fulfill that goal for our fans and for our players, but balancing all of those things is the stressful part. The excitement part is always there. It is absolutely very rewarding, very fulfilling, and the better we get the more difficult it really becomes.
I think we have done a lot of work, but taking this next step is a very, very important part of our plan and our vision. And as you do take those next steps there's so many different avenues to do that. So we have people courting us as we're courting others. We're a very attractive landing spot for free agents, and other teams are interested in a lot of our players as well, and know that we're motivated to do everything we can to take that next step. So there's not a team we're not talking to, and there's not an agent we're not talking to, which does make the workload significant.
Take those Morosi reports with a grain of salt, folks!
On Gabriel Moreno potentially making the opening day roster
He didn't get to play much in 2020 and he had an injury this year, but nothing has slowed him down. So I think it's just doing it for a little bit more sustained time. He's going to go down to Venezuela and get more at-bats there, which I'm really excited about. And really looking forward to him being in spring camp next year.
He busted our eyes wide open the last couple of years, and I think he's going to continue to do that. He's just such a pure hitter, there's not much he's lacking defensively, but the demands of that position, from a leadership and communication standpoint, will be that next hurdle for him. And then obviously with an offensive player you want to ensure that they have the ability to recover if they do struggle and fail. And what is his routine? What's his process? How does he get back to that swing path? And those will be things that we're looking to refine and finish off, but that's a good position to be in as young as he is and as little as he's played.
A cynic who has a prime seat on the Moreno hype train might wonder about potential service time manipulation going on here (if that’s even going to be a thing under the next CBA), but I tend to think this is genuine.
Yes, the Jays had Alejandro Kirk in the majors very, very early, but largely that was to prevent the catching position from being a total black hole offensively at the tail end of the 2021 season, and perhaps also speaks to the fact they don’t really view him as the long-term answer back there. This stuff about Moreno feels to me much more like they view him as a real championship-calibre piece. And, of course, based on everything he’s done in 2021 so far, that’s probably exactly how the should be viewing him.
News and notes
Here’s a quick look at a few newsworthy items while we’re all here…
• The market for Marcus Semien is reportedly heating up, as Jon Heyman tweets that the Tigers “considering” him and Javier Báez rather than spending the presumed $300 million it’s going to take to land Carlos Correa. Jon Morosi also puts the Rangers into the mix for Semien’s services. I don’t think the fact that rumblings about a reunion between the Jays and Semien have been quiet so far means a whole lot, but it’s interesting nonetheless. It would obviously be great to see the club bring him back, though as with the pitching market, I tend to suspect their preference would be to add guys with shorter commitments than it will take to get Semien.
• The Rays and A's made an interesting trade ahead of Friday's Rule 5 roster decisions, with Tampa sending former top prospect Brent Honeywell Jr. to Oakland for cash considerations. A consensus top 15 prospect in baseball heading into 2018, Honeywell has stalled out somewhat after a series of arm injures and was a victim of the Rays' roster crunch. Honeywell wasn't great in Triple-A in 2021, but he was healthy, and returned to a starting role for the final two months of the season. MLBTR suggests that he'll likely be used by the A's in a swing-type role out of the bullpen, but his presence — high risk as it is — could also help provide cover should Oakland trade some of their higher-earning starting pitchers, like Chris Bassitt, Sean Manaea, or Frankie Montas. Those guys, of course, would be of great interest to the Jays (and pretty much everyone else, too.)
• Lastly, sticking with Tampa, this whole city-sharing "Rayspos" plan seems to be... happening? Mark Topkin and John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times reported on Friday that "Major League Baseball’s Executive Council heard a formal presentation of the Montreal season-sharing plan from top Rays officials but took no action at the quarterly owners meeting that concluded Thursday in Chicago."
The reason for this, they report, was the unresolved CBA issue, and suggest that "the topic could be revisited soon."
The plan, in case you're unfamiliar with the details, would see the Rays build two new open air stadiums, one in Tampa, which the team would play in until early June, and another in Montreal, which they would use for the rest of the season. "Postseason games would be rotated between the two sites annually," the report adds.
It is, of course, insane. But hey, a TV rights deal in Tampa, plus both an English and French one in Montreal? That's got to have some real appeal to a cheapjack owner like Stu Sternberg. Just say you're moving to Montreal and be done with it, man!
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"Just say you're moving to Montreal and be done with it, man!" Seriously.
I do have to wonder that with what has been happening in the States and specifically the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis that perhaps Berrios was also motivated by how safe the environment in Toronto is for him and his family. He eluded to as much in the presser.