Atkins Speaks!: Pre-deadline, post-Manoah words from the Blue Jays' GM (who just made a trade!)

Many words — Ross's and mine — on the trade deadline, pitching depth, Mitch White, Ryu and Manoah, dreams of Teoscar, Ohtani, the AL East, Chad Green, Arjun Nimmala, the Génesis Cabrera trade, & more!

The RABT-2000

Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins met with a number of reporters in the home dugout at Rogers Centre on Wednesday afternoon, prior to his team’s second straight loss to the San Diego Padres. Sportsnet provided a link to watch the scrum live online, yet for some reason didn’t upload the video after the event ended, which I completely expected they would and therefore didn’t capture a recording of it myself. As such, today’s version of Atkins Speaks may not be quite as comprehensive as usual.

Fortunately, a good deal of what Ross said was ultimately made available in shorter clips, which can be found on the video pages at TSN and Sportsnet, so there’s a lot for us to sink our teeth into — and on some pretty important Blue Jays topics as the team approaches a lowkey critical juncture in the life of the entire Shapiro-Atkins project.

The focus, of course, was the trade deadline, which is now just 11 days away. But Atkins also had comments on first-round draft pick Arjun Nimmala, Alek Manoah, Hyun Jin Ryu, Chad Green, and more. Plus, while I was working on this piece he made a trade for us to discuss.

Let’s get to the words…

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Deadline stuff!

On the club’s deadline approach…

Thinking about how to potentially upgrade is really difficult when you also believe in the people that are here and that they are going to continue to have progress and make strides. We certainly don't need significant upticks — you've seen recently with just some of the more timely hitting, which we know in some cases can be very much luck driven. But you can't fall back on that, of course. So, we believe in this group so much that making it better, we have to work to do. Hard to do without some level of subtraction, but we do think there's a way to add a little bit of offence to the team without having to subtract anyone.

Of course, one way to add offence without subtracting anyone would be to get Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk, and Daulton Varsho hitting the way that we know they’re capable. A pair of home runs from Vlad and Kirk in Thursday’s finale with the Padres is at least a step in the right direction for two of that trio.

Varsho’s status is more interesting, though.

The Blue Jays have played 97 games so far this season, and to this pint Varsho has featured in 95 of them — all but a handful as a starter, too. His defence has looked every bit as good as advertised, but with a wRC+ of 74, he's been significantly less productive with the bat than Raimel Tapia was for them last year (90 wRC+).

Hell, he's been less productive at the plate than Tapia has been this year (84 wRC+) — a season which began with him only able to get a minor league contract, and also saw him get released by the Red Sox in June!

Not great. And yet Varsho’s defence and baserunning have been good enough to keep him a reasonably productive player overall. However, the degree to which isn't exactly clear.

FanGraphs' version of WAR uses Outs Above Average for defence, and while OAA has liked Varsho's centre field defence this year (+5), he's graded out below average in left (-2). As that's been his primary position his fWAR has taken a hit from it, sitting currently at 0.8. Over the course of a full season, that would work out to about 1.1 fWAR. Baseball Reference, on the other hand, uses DRS for defence, which likes Varsho in left quite a bit more (+7). His 1.8 rWAR puts him even with George Springer, and on pace for 2.5 wins over the course of a full season.

Naturally, it's harder to effectively replace a 2.5 win player than it is to replace a 1.1 win player. I would tend to believe that Varsho is a better defender in left field than OAA is suggesting, meaning that I think he's more the former than the latter, and that it's probably not worth taking away a bunch of his playing time in order to add a better offensive player. But boy, that sure would be a satisfying thing to see them try, wouldn't it?

And, despite all this, it might make sense.

Varsho probably won't struggle as badly as he has of late for much longer. I have to believe his wRC+ for the year will go up, not down. But he’s not exactly an easy player to believe in right now. His ugly wRC+ didn't come about from him hitting similarly poorly week in and week out. He struggled in the first couple months of the season, looked briefly like he had figured things out at the start of June, and has been going absolutely miserably ever since.

Over his last 83 PA, Varsho's wRC+ is just 11. He has just 13 hits since June 16th, only three for extra bases, and is 5-for-40 with just one walk in the month of July.

Atkins can believe in his guys all he wants, but I think he has to give the club at least the option to push Varsho to the bench if he continues to look lost. That sort of exists now — Jordan Luplow may be about to get some run, and looked the part for at least one game on Thursday, and there are guys like Santiago Espinal, Cavan Biggio and, in the minors, Davis Schneider, Addison Barger, and maybe even Orelvis Martinez, who could theoretically give the team an offensive lift if they get hot at the right time — but you’d like to see a more reliable option there. Or at least I would! And, I think, ideally another bat on top of that.

Maybe that’s getting greedy. Even if not, it will be exceptionally tough to pull off if Ross is getting squirrelly about subtraction. But, of course, it’s not like he’s going to come out and say that there are major league guys he’s expecting to move. Plus, there’s a way to add two bats without subtracting anyone from the organization, though not necessarily the active roster. Biggio, Espinal, and Luplow can all be optioned to the minors, and if it means the Jays can bring in two offensive upgrades, that has to be a consideration. Unfortunately, with the changes to September roster rules in recent years, the number of spots on the active roster only rises to 28 in the season’s final month, and with the club certain to carry the maximum number of pitchers (14), only one of that pair would be able to come back. But… well… sorry?

You can’t assume that this core is going to get a better chance for a championship than this in 2024 or 2025, and as we all know it gets even more dicey after that because Vlad and Bo have yet to receive contract extensions. Especially with the AL East seemingly back in play with the way the Rays have stumbled of late, I think there’s a much stronger argument to really go for it than a lot of the chatter has maybe appreciated to this point. And offence has to be the priority.

Atkins continued.

And, on the pitching side, every team in contention is trying to add a reliever, and every team in contention is trying to add some level of starting pitching depth. There's different ways to do that. I think we're in a relatively strong position. But we need to work to improve upon it as well.

Clearly he’s not about to tip his hand if there are any internal concerns about Hyun Jin Ryu and Alek Manoah. But I do think that, even with those two and Mitch White as massive question marks, they probably do have the bodies to get to make the rotation work the rest of the way. Zach Thompson has rebounded in Buffalo, pitching to a 2.01 ERA with 33 Ks in 40 1/3 innings since the start of June. And Bowden Francis acquitted himself fairly well when in the majors earlier in season (though xERA and FIP didn't look so kindly on his work).

Could they do better? Of course. Would a top-end guy be great, and a huge help in the playoffs? Absolutely. A playoff rotation of Gausman-Bassitt-Berríos and whoever takes the fourth spot over the season’s final two months does feel light! But I don’t think that winning the kind of bidding war a move like that would require is terribly realistic. There are more teams that could use a frontline starter than there are going to be frontline starters available, and most of them probably have more appealing prospect pools to deal from and the Blue Jays.

And a reliever? Well, it turns out they’ve already added one.

A brief diversion on Génesis Cabrera…

On Friday, news broke out of St. Louis that the Cardinals had traded recently DFA’d left-handed reliever Génesis Cabrera to the Jays.

A guy who couldn't hack it in the Cardinals' bullpen is not anything to get overly excited about, but there are certainly some intriguing dimensions to this move.

Cabrera can be optioned to the minors, for one. So, at worst, it's just the addition of a little bit of walk-heavy depth to be stashed at Buffalo. At best he's a reasonably hard-throwing left-hander (81st percentile fastball velo; 96 mph on average) who is above average at generating swing-and-miss.

In 2021 he was really effective for the Cards, largely because he wasn't surrendering home runs. Over 70 innings that season he allowed just three home runs, and in the 76 2/3 innings since he's allowed 14.

There's something to work with here. In fact, back in early May, Ben Clemens of FanGraphs was pretty excited about what he was seeing from him — changed results that appeared to be driven by changes under the hood. After 11 outings, Cabrera — throwing with lower arm slot than previous years — was getting more horizontal movement on his fastball, cutting down on non-competitive four-seamers, and throwing more strikes when behind in the count. "He’s so deceptive and so hard to square up that he’s recorded more called or swinging strikes than he has balls this year, by a count of 68 to 60," Clemens noted at the time.

Cabrera's results trended much worse from that point and the excitement dissipated such that he was designated for assignment and available to the Jays for 19-year-old catcher Sammy Hernandez, who was a 14th-round draft pick last year and has struggled in A-ball recently after having a hot start to his year in the Florida Complex League.

Can the Jays get him back on track? Well, obviously we'll have to wait and see. But something else Clemens noted, and ascribed some of his success at the time to, was the fact that Cabrera had come out of the gate as a slider-first pitcher, rather than using the fastball as his primary pitch. He'd barely thrown the slider in 2022, and hadn't had one at all previously. This was part of what made it the step forward in results seem more real at the time, but Cabrera then moved away from the slider somewhat — his four-seamer has been his most frequently used pitch since.

One has to think that the Jays are looking at a thing like that, and the fact that it seems like Cabrera throws too many pitches overall — fastball, slider, sinker, changeup, curve — and thinking that some refinement there is in order and could very well unlock something.

“Throw your best pitch as often as you can” is a philosophy that's worked wonders for Trevor Richards, and while that's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution — and I'm not even sure it's easy to say which pitch is Cabrera’s best — there are at least some things to try. And with the minor league option, and a bullpen that's fared very well with Tim Mayza as its only lefty (thanks largely to Erik Swanson's effectiveness against LHB, though Jordan Romano, Nate Pearson, and Trevor Richards have fared well also), it’s a smart little addition.

Trent Thornton has been designated for assignment in order to make room on the 40-man roster for Cabrera. In terms of asset management… meh. Sure. We’ll always have a bunch of OK starts in 2019, I suppose. And perhaps the Jays will manage to include him in a trade within the next 10 days.

(Also: No, I don’t think essentially turning Nick Frasso, etc., into post-DFA Génesis Cabrera would have been good asset management.)

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Do the returns of Ryu and Manoah change your deadline priorities?

It's a good alternative that we have, or a good option that we have some depth internally that we feel very strong about — their track records, some of the playoff experiences, some of the just overall experiences as very, very good performers. But we have to — and we're certainly optimistic that we have them as options, but we also have to plan for in the event that we don't. If someone has a setback, performance or injury. But that's the case for everyone. You can never have enough pitching, as they say. So we have to contingency play. But having that as a starting point is a good place to be.

Like I say, he’s not exactly tipping his hand here. Which, honestly, I can only see as a good thing.

As much as we may love them, a strong verbal and very public commitment to the guy throwing in the upper-80s coming off of Tommy John, and the guy whose stuff seems to have completely abandoned him, would not be very smart. No one wants to think about the very real possibility that those guys simply are not going to be viable down the stretch, but Atkins has to. And clearly he is.

That said, his use of the phrase “contingency plan” is probably telling. And it likely goes a long way toward answering the next question.

On whether they’ll target SP depth or immediate help…

I think it obviously depends on the price. When you start to define depth then the ability to option someone also becomes exceptionally valuable, and in some cases can be as valuable as that higher-end more rental market. So, price will be important. The state of our rotation closer to the deadline will have some relevance. How we're feeling about guys recovering that are new into the fold, like Chad Green and Hyun Jin Ryu. So, all of those pieces matter, but we're open to either.

Um, yes, I can think of one depth guy, specifically, who had an option left — just one though! — that the Jays paid a pretty high price for at a very recent deadline, in fact. Great point!

And, of course, part of the reason adding more SP depth is a conversation right now is because that guy — Mitch White, obviously — has been such a disaster so far.

As for the main thrust of what he’s saying here, it’s been my experience that Ross has never met a door he’s wanted to quite close all the way. He’s open to anything, this guy! In theory.

Actually though, I suppose it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Jays could dislike the market for offence and double down on the whole pitching-and-defence thing they’re already mostly doing. WHO’S READY FOR MORE TIGHT GAME ANGUISH?

What type of offensive addition are you looking to make?

Right now, as we're constructed, we are better suited for a right-handed bat. We are open to any way that we can make our team better, but I think there might be a slight lean to a right-handed bat. And we have the benefit of not necessarily thinking that has to play a certain position, because of the versatility that we have with Cavan, Varsho, Whit, obviously.

Really, right now, as things stand today there might be a slight lean towards a really accomplished right-handed bat, but it's not a significant one. There's a lot of different ways we could improve our team. What we don't want to do is subtract from it. We believe in the group that's here, we believe they've earned that right. We can't say that we absolutely won't, but we would prefer not to.

Given that the Jays currently have the majors' seventh-best offence by wRC+ against right-handed pitching (109), and the league's 15th-best offence against lefties (102), that lean should maybe be more than slight. But, as I was saying above, one of the two "big left-handed bats" they thought they were adding last winter simply hasn't materialized, so I wouldn't be at all displeased if they went and found another one. A lefty-masher who can still do damage against RHP sure would be perfect though, wouldn't it?

One Teoscar Hernández, please!

(Side note: Yeah, the Jays have had exactly a Teoscar-sized hole in their lineup all year, but anyone grousing about that deal is fuggin' insane. Erik Swanson has been excellent and will be here another two years after this one.)

What does the trade market look like right now?

You know, when you're in the buy mode it never feels robust. Especially as you start to peel back the layers and look under the hood. You're looking for perfect at this point, and if you are going to strike on perfect you are going to pay a huge premium. So, what we see are ways to make our team better. We've identified those, we've expressed interest to other teams, we feel like there will be opportunities to do so.

What can I say? The man loves opportunities.

And it sort of sounds here as though those opportunities — other than a minor one like Cabrera — might not come until we’re right up against the deadline. It should be a couple of interesting weeks, regardless.

Are you more likely to pay for a pure rental player than in the past?

ATKINS: Well, I mean, we've always been willing to move on a rental, depending on whether it's two months or a year-and-a-half.

WILNER: I'm talking like a pure rental.

ATKINS: So, just a two month? We've done that, obviously in years past, and had some success there. So, absolutely open to that. Paying the absolute premium for two months of a player? To say yes or no on is too difficult to do. I mean, yes, we're open to it. But are you referring to, would we trade from the top of our system for two months of a player?

WILNER: Well, you can't answer that specifically.

ATKINS: Right. But we're open to it, sure.

I don’t get a sense here that a run at Ohtani is seen as feasible, do you?

I also would guess that, as we’ve seen in the past, the pure rental market likely isn’t going to be the Jays’ top target. For me, one of the intriguing things about this deadline is the possibility that they could add in such a way as to help themselves now and in the future — much like they did, or tried to do, with White, Whit Merrifield, José Berríos, etc. And even, in a way, with Varsho last winter, who they likely see as their future centre fielder, but found a way to use him for a year with Kevin Kiermaier already promised the gig for 2022.

Keirmaier, Matt Chapman, and Brandon Belt are all slated for free agency this winter, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see Atkins try to get some of his offseason heavy lifting done early by bringing in someone with term who could help the team now and also be pencilled into one of their roles for next season.

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Other stuff!

On Alek Manoah…

The interesting thing about sport is we can all tend to fixate on the recent outcomes and, I think, just like in any process and any team-building environment, it's really important to step back and think about the body of work, which has been so good for Alek. So that's what we're focussed on.

I, too, would prefer not to focus on the most recent start from the guy who went to the minors for a month in large part because his stuff simply wasn’t good enough and has returned looking like… his stuff… simply… isn’t good enough.

That’s probably being overly harsh, and there was certainly a mental aspect to Manoah’s exile that seems to have helped. But on the pitching side it hasn’t exactly been easy yet to see what the Jays saw in making the decision to restore him to his place in the big league rotation.

As I noted earlier this week, Manoah’s 16.3% rate of called+swinging strikes grades out as poorly as it looked. He simply couldn't put guys away, and the fact that his CSW% for the game ranks 2,952nd out of 2,980 performances of 50-plus pitches this season underlines it. But I don't want to overstate that too much.

The game that ranks one spot better than Manoah versus the Padres on that leaderboard was a mid-June start in Texas against the Rangers by none other than Chris Bassitt. There's a Chris Sale game at this end of the leaderboard. Julio Urias, Cristian Javier, Taj Bradley, just to name a few. A game like that doesn't doom a pitcher by any stretch. But because of the fact that his stuff isn’t trending any better, I think it has to have been a bigger concern than Atkins is letting on.

Was Manoah’s performance against the Padres a blip and do you expect better going forward?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, just thinking about how hard he has worked — and over the course of his entire career. And then making some significant adjustments as he was back in the minor leagues and working from a development aspect where the competitive environment was pulled back for some time. His commitment to that process, how authentic it was, and then to see the first outcome of Detroit being so positive. And yesterday we do see as a blip and are extremely encouraged by the body of work.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pulling for Alek!

How much more is the division back in play?

I think you could look, statistically, at that. I think we benefit from our schedule. Albeit not easy, and it will never be easy in the AL East, with a lot of AL East ahead of us. But we had a rough run at the start with a lot of games on the road. We're going to be home a ton. Very much looking forward to that. And feel like that is realistic. Now, it's not going to come without some exceptional things coming together individually and collectively.

I mean, he’s never going to say anything else, but the stupid Rays coming back to the pack — being surpassed, even, by the stupid Orioles — certainly seems to have helped change the mood and redefine Jays fans’ impressions of what is possible this season. They’ll have to win a few more games against AL East opponents to really do that, of course. But if you’re into foolin’ yourself, the information needed to believe that the division is there for the taking is out there.

MLB.com’s standings page has the Jays and Orioles with virtually the same expected record (we’ll ignore any Pythagorean stuff involving the Rays for a minute!), and FanGraphs projects the AL East teams to the following winning percentages for the rest of the season:

Blue Jays: .544
Rays: .538
Yankees: .525
Red Sox: .500
Orioles: .482

Though FG gives Baltimore a better chance (87%) of making the playoffs than the Jays right now (77.5%), there are only four teams (Atlanta, Tampa, L.A., Texas) their projection system thinks have a better chance of winning the World Series than Ross’s boys. No, really!

Is a six-man rotation possible once Ryu returns?

We'll see. Depending on the schedule there is some reason to consider that. Without the off-days I think we have 17 in a row, so that's something that we're talking about. So there's a lot of variables. But having that as an option would be a good thing.

The stretch of 17 games in a row that Ross is referring to begins in a week. After the Jays get back from their Seattle-L.A. road trip that begins here on Friday, they'll get next Thursday off, then host Anaheim for three (as Ohtani rumours potentially heat up to approximately the temperature of the sun), Baltimore for four (including Trade Deadline Tuesday), then go to Boston for three and Cleveland for four, before they come home for three against the Cubs (including José Bautista's induction to the Level of Excellence 😭). Only then do they get a one day break, followed by a pair with the Phillies, and then another day off.

Anyway! Yes, it would certainly be a good thing if the Jays have six must-start starters in the very near future.

What's the timeline on Chad Green?

He is really progressing exceptionally well. He has had a really solid recovery over the course of his rehab, and I think he's going to be in a game on Saturday. Everything, every step of the way we've just seen progress. He feels really good, he's recovering really well. The stuff is there. And I think it's going to continue to trend positive. I think the difficult thing is putting concrete timeline on it, but the fact that he's going to be in a game, and facing hitters, with umpires, on Saturday is the next step.

Here’s another thing that Atkins basically has to say, but fair enough. Also, a reminder: in his last healthy season with the Yankees, 2021, Green struck out 99 batters in 83 2/3 innings with just 17 walks, posting a 3.12 ERA — all entirely typical numbers for the 96 mph-throwing right-hander.

He was down a tick in 2022, prior to his surgery, and even if he ends up looking more like that guy — 3.00 ERA in 15 innings with 16 Ks and five walks while averaging 95 on the fastball — he could be an incredibly important weapon out of an already strong bullpen down the stretch.

What did you like about Arjun Nimmala as a draft pick?

As much as you can learn about someone from reading about them, from watching them on video, from hearing about them, from having some distant interactions, there's nothing like being in person. And for me, the first time was when he was here. And I've been, for well over 20 years, 23-plus years, been in an environment like this where you bring a first round pick into it, and seeing how they interact with other players, see their ease in and around the environment, is very telling for me. It's one of the thing that's so attractive about Vladdy and Bo and Cavan, that have been around the environment for some time.

It was clear that he was very comfortable. Appropriately comfortable. Very respectful. He seems to have all of the foundation for what's ahead of him — for all of the challenges that are ahead of him. And the talent is clear. So that was — we were as excited as we could be, but then taking another step and having that experience with him here in Toronto was exceptional for me.

Some interesting, if not necessarily new, insight into the Jays’ thought process re: “bloodlines” here. Otherwise? “GM says glowingly positive things about the first round draft pick” isn’t much of a story.

What's unique about Nimmala's swing?

The high finish that has a little bit of an abruptness to it at the end has some unique nature to it. I think that there are some other players like that. I'm not comparing him to these guys, but Julio Rodríguez, Mookie Betts have a little bit of a higher finish, with a little bit more an abrupt finish. But the most unique thing to me is how quick and powerful it is.

You heard it here first, folks. The next Mookie Betts!

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