Blue Jays rumours and links: Wednesday, February 10th
Blue Jays rumours and links: Wednesday, February 10th
Another day, another chance to speculate about which starting pitcher the Blue Jays may add before spring training begins next week while the team stays frustratingly silent. Fun stuff isn’t it?
Though, actually, to be fair, there genuinely are some interesting things to talk about here in today’s round-up of all the Jays-related chatter happening out there on the internet. And, honestly, it does feel like a some moves have to be coming soon.
In the meantime, we’ve got the idea that the Jays may actually end up in Buffalo to chew on, a look at what might be in store for Cavan Biggio, some impressively high farm system rankings that just came out, and a whole lot more.
Before we get to that, though, let me please direct your attention to the post below this one. This week’s call for mail bag questions is out! So head on to that link and send some Q’s my way.
Remember, though, that as always, it’s only open to paid subscribers.
Now on to the rumours and links!
The Return of the Buffalo Blue Jays?
I don’t know if this is just a reflection of the Blue Jays doing due diligence and keeping their options open, or if there’s anything more to it than that — I only know what’s said in the Tweet below! — but apparently Buffalo has yet to be ruled out as the potential home of the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays.
On one hand, this is a bit of a surprising development. Just about all of the chatter we’ve heard in the lead-up to the 2021 season has suggested that the Blue Jays will play in Dunedin, if Toronto is unavailable (as expected). It would mean moving away from their beautiful new high-tech training facility (which isn’t located at TD Park, but is close enough to still be useful), and moving back to Buffalo would displace the team’s Triple-A club, the Bisons.
On the other hand, there’s a reason that both of MLB’s Florida-based teams play in stadiums equipped with a roof. Florida’s rainy season runs from late May to mid-October, and though downpours generally blow out just as quickly as they blow in, they’re still disruptive. The St. Petersburg/Clearwater area that Dunedin is in receives 72% of its rain on average between the start of June and the end of September.
When the Marlins moved to their new ballpark in 2012, fans and players alike rejoiced for many reasons — their former home, once called Joe Robbie Stadium, currently named Hard Rock Stadium, was cavernous and built for football — but the roof was a big one of them. Craig Davis of the South Florida Sun-Sentinal wrote in March of that year that over 19 seasons at their former home, the Marlins had experienced 200 rain delays averaging close to an hour each. That’s “only” 10.5 per year — a number I would imagine doesn’t sound so bad until you actually have to sit through that many.
Then there’s the heat and humidity.
Back in another lifetime, Drew Fairservice wrote for theScore.com about how often teams open their retractable roofs, and found that, according to the Play Index at Baseball-Reference.com, “the game condition at Marlins Park was only classed as ‘open’ 15 times in 2013 and eight times in 2012.”
TD Ballpark, of course, does not have a roof. I’d still think that the good of staying in Florida — closeness to home for a lot of players and staff, the new training facility, the fact that the team won’t have to move to a third city if playing in Toronto is eventually allowed, the (remote) possibility that Toronto could actually become an option before the Florida weather gets too bad — outweighs the bad, but I suppose we should maybe not just assume that the Jays staying in Dunedin to start the year is a slam dunk.
Biggi-uh-oh
I wrote a little bit back on Monday about MLB’s desire to deaden the baseball a little bit, and make the balls being used throughout the league a little more consistent in their composition. To wit:
I included a tweet from Joshua Howsam in that piece which suggested a ball with less jump could spell trouble for certain hitters, Cavan Biggio among them. Here on Wednesday, Chris Towers of CBS Sports expanded on that premise in his look at the various fantasy baseball options at second base. Using the format he’s used for other fantasy previews this season, he zeroed in on three players in particular: one he thinks will be a sleeper, one who will have a breakout, and one who will be a bust.
Biggio was his bust.
Why, you ask?
Towers explains that because Biggio's raw power is average at best, he has to really sell out to hit the ball over the fence. Doing so adds a whole bunch of swing-and-miss to his game, which is why, despite the excellent eye at the plate and patient — or, as Towers suggests, "passive" — approach, he has a 26.5% strikeout rate for his career.
All those walks and a solid number of home runs have made him a very productive hitter so far. Biggio, as Towers acknowledges, “more than maybe any other player in baseball, gets the most out of his limited physical tools.”
“As long as the ball is clearing the fence, the profile will play,” he explains. “But he had one of the lowest average home run distances in the league in 2020, so he could be the poster child for what even a slightly deadened ball could cost hitters.”
That's not untrue. Baseball Savant keeps track of some interesting home run and "expected home run" data, and in 2020 only one of Biggio's eight home runs was classified as a "no doubter" (a ball that would have cleared the wall in every park in the majors). His average home run distance of 379 feet ranked 201st out of 206 batters with at least five home runs last year. (Fun fact: D.J. LeMahieu ranked last.)
I think it's important to point out here, though, that if we look at both 2019 and 2020, things look a little better in this regard. Half of the 16 home runs Biggio hit in 2019 were classified as no doubters, and if you look at his average home run distance across both seasons the number jumps to 388 feet and his ranking among hitters who went deep at least 10 times total goes up to 277th of 312.
Not a huge improvement, but certainly better..
I think we need to be careful not to bury Biggio before he’s had anything even close to an unproductive year as a professional ballplayer. But I also think it’s fair to acknowledge the fact that a deadened ball really is a concern. Turn four of his 2019 home runs into outs, for example, and his OPS that season drops from .793 to .738. He really does seem to be out here living on the margins in terms of making it all work. (And that’s without even touching on his trouble hitting elite velocity — though, interestingly, Paul Berthelot of Blue Jays Nation took a look this week at how players with similar troubles at the start of their careers have been able to improve somewhat.)
Links!
• Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet takes a look at the remaining problems on the Blue Jays’ roster and how to fix them. I did something similar in a piece yesterday, but I must admit, I like what ol’ Benny Fresh is saying here. For one thing, he brings up free agent Brad Miller, who would be a better option as a lefty bat off the bench than Marwin Gonzalez, I think. For another — and most interestingly, I think — he touches on the opportunity cost of adding a starter like Taijuan Walker and James Paxton, mentioning that it would take opportunities away from potential rotation candidates like Trent Thornton and Tyler Chatwood. Personally, I’ve viewed Chatwood more as a reliever, but I’m happy to be wrong about that. He’s a multi-inning guy either way, at the very least.
Ben also adds that, if the Jays do add someone like Walker or Paxton, “a trade involving Tanner Roark might also become more likely.”
• Sticking with Ben, he’s got the latest on an old friend who also is going to be a useful pitcher for someone, as long as he stays healthy.
Staying healthy has, sadly, always been the question when it comes to Shoemaker, and because of that I think he just doesn’t quite move the needle enough for the Blue Jays — who are right here to, presumably, still be aiming higher. But he’ll help someone out for sure.
• Sticking with starting pitching, and speaking of Paxton (weren’t we?), though there has been some uncertainty the last few weeks about what to make of where his velocity is reportedly at, he’s convinced at least one person that he’s got a big season in store: Tigers starter Matthew Boyd.
“Whoever gets him is going to get a steal,” Boyd said. “He's pumping the ball now, too. He looks better than he ever has. We dove into some stuff, breaking down fastballs and understanding spin direction and all that and his ball just takes off.”
Now, an important caveat here: Boyd, the former Blue Jays starter who went to the Tigers in the 2015 trade for David Price, is represented by Scott Boras. Paxton’s agent is also Boras. That explains why the two would be getting ready for the season together, but it also provides us with a reason not to take what Boyd is saying at face value.
That said, um… I’m sold, how about you?
• On Wednesday morning, both Baseball America and Keith Law of the Athletic released their farm system rankings for 2021, and both had the Blue Jays come in at number three. Oh, and the Jays have a real chance to make the playoffs this season, just had their best off-season in years, and something like $60 million is coming off the books next winter? Well, then I guess it’s a pretty great time to be a Blue Jays fan.
• Several Blue Jays are going to have new numbers for the 2021 season, and, naturally, Minor Leaguer of Bluebird Banter is all over the changes.
• Kaitlyn McGrath of the Athletic asks whether the Blue Jays’ big off-season has primed the front office for public approval, and it turns out — at least judging by the comments from some of the readers over there — that Betteridge’s law of headlines has once again held true. No. No it hasn’t.
• Lastly, Scott Mitchel of TSN.ca has been counting down his list of the top 50 Blue Jays prospects in chunks this week, bringing us a whole lot of words on guys like Peniel Brito and Jackson Rees on Tuesday, and Adam Kloffenstein, Yosver Zulueta, and Sem Robberse on Wednesday. Look for his top ten before the week is out.
• UPDATE: A small move from the Jays happened just after I published this, as they claimed right-handed reliever Joel Payamps from the Red Sox. The move was a precursor to a bigger Red Sox deal, as they sent outfielder Andrew Benintendi to the Royals in a three-team deal also involving the Mets.
Though the Red Sox losing Benintendi is a good thing for the Jays and the rest of the AL East, one of the players headed to Boston in the trade is right-hander Josh Winckowski, who was very recently traded from the Jays to the Mets in the Steven Matz deal. That shouldn’t really change how anybody feels about the Matz trade — which was fine! — but it’s undeniable that it would hurt just a little more if Winckowski ended up turning into something in Boston rather than in Queens.
As for Payamps, it’s a bit of a puzzling move. The Jays’ 40-man roster is full at the moment, and it’s not exactly easy to see who is going to lose his spot for a guy who first reached Triple-A (in the Diamondbacks system) in 2017 yet only has seven big league innings to his credit here in 2021.
His walk rates suggest he can throw strikes. His deployment as a starter suggests he can go multiple innings. He threw harder on average (94.2 mph) in his three big league innings in 2020 than he did in his four big league innings in 2019 (92.9). But there really isn’t a whole lot in his statistical profile that stands out. He, uh, pitched rather well in his second and third cracks at Double-A?
Yeah, I don’t know! So unless the Jays have a trade of their own up their sleeve, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Does someone like Derek Fisher lose his spot for a guy like this? I know people really have irrational dislike for Fisher, but I really don’t think so — a left-handed bat who can play all three outfield positions (albeit poorly) is not exactly nothing, especially on this roster. And clearly the Jays do like him a bit.
But I guess we’ll see! I don’t imagine Payamps will last long before being back on waivers again, but who knows? Maybe the Jays see something they like there. Stranger things have happened.
• UPDATE UPDATE: And we have our answer.
Top image: Screengrab via WGRZ-TV/YouTube
Agree, there's no way they can play in the Florida climate for most of the year