Mail Bag: Meltdown May
The Toronto Blue Jays are a land of contrasts...
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The rollercoaster ride that is the 2025 Blue Jays season continues to rumble on, and while it’s been more Wilde Beast than Dragon Fyre so far (look it up, kids), at least most other teams in the American League are riding down their own rickety, wooden tracks.
We’re just about a quarter of the way through the season, and while it doesn’t feel like we’ve necessarily learned a ton about this team and where it’s going,… um… that can be both good and bad, right???
We don’t know for sure that they stink yet, is I suppose what I’m getting at. And while that’s a pretty small victory in the grand scheme of things, I think we do have to count it as a victory.
Also a victory? That I’m finally getting this mail bag out!
It’s been, like, a week since I asked paid subscribers to send me their questions, and finally I’ve managed to put them all together into the equivalent of what would normally be several posts. Thanks so much to everyone who submitted theirs, and to everyone reading, and my apologies to anyone whose question I may have missed. Now it’s on to the bag!
As always, I have not read any of Griff’s answers…
Hey Stoeten, it might be because I spent last night in a pretty empty Angels stadium drinking $17 beers and watching two teams who mostly couldn’t hit but I feel like so far this team is both disappointing and more or less what I expected them to be. Feels quite a bit like last year, not scoring enough runs which then magnifies any time the defense or bullpen isn’t perfect. Am I being overly pessimistic or is this about who this team is barring some great luck around health/players outplaying their projections going forward? — Simon F.
No, I think you’re being quite reasonable, actually. Oh, and thank you so much, Simon, for the question and the support and all that, of course. And I’m sorry about the games you ended up catching out there in Anaheim—and those beer prices. Woof!
But yeah, coming into the season it felt like if the team simply met expectations it likely wasn’t going to be good enough. Not only “felt,” actually. Literally their projections put them in the bottom half of the American League, within spitting distance of the third Wild Card spot but on the outside looking in.
Projections are obviously imperfect and quite fluid, but have we seen anything over the first six weeks of the season that would fundamentally change those expectations? I really don’t think so.
When things are going well you can squint and see a team that might be capable of reeling off some wins, pushing up above their .500-ish baseline, maybe even making some noise in the AL playoff race. And with a breakout here and a deadline addition there, who knows? But when things are going badly it really feels like they don’t have the horses—offensively, primarily, but also on the pitching side. It just feels like a team with outstanding defence, a fairly decent bullpen (um… most of the time), a rotation that’s sometimes great but sometimes just OK, and a lineup that’s below average at scoring runs.
That’s a hard profile to make work. So, if they’re going to be successful, something in that is going to have to change.
It could, I think.
Yariel Rodríguez and Mason Fluharty are finding their strides in the bullpen, and Erik Swanson could soon join them to really strengthen that unit—provided the recent wobbles from García and Hoffman come to a merciful end soon. In the rotation we saw a better version of Bowden Francis in Seattle, plus some relatively solid work from José Ureña and Eric Lauer as a tandem. Spencer Turnbull should soon also be a bulk option as well. Alek Manoah could be a factor later on in the season. And, of course, a healthy Max Scherzer could really elevate that group.
But, obviously, the biggest opportunity—as Ross Atkins might annoyingly say—is in the lineup. Unfortunately, a lot of the problems there are pretty baked in.
That’s because the issue with the offence isn’t just that guys like Bo and Santander need to be a lot better, though that is certainly true. We’d obviously like to see more from Vladdy than we have so far, too. But those guys not being at their best would be a hell of a lot less glaring if the club hadn’t been so satisfied with trading offence for defence over the last couple of years, or so reliant on little-tested late-20s minor leaguers to fill in the gaps.
To revisit a point I made on last week’s Blue Jays Happy Hour, let’s think about the 2021 team that everyone rightly views as the pinnacle of the current era, offensively. That lineup had Vlad, Bo, and Springer, who are all still around. It had Teoscar Hernández, whose production was supposed to be replaced by Daulton Varsho’s bat, though obviously that hasn't worked out so well. Varsho is basically replacing the production that Randal Grichuk provided in ‘21, and Teo’s role is now more or less occupied by Anthony Santander.
That 2021 team also had Marcus Semien, who was replaced, in a clear offensive downgrade, by Matt Chapman for a couple seasons. And they had Lourdes Gurriel Jr., of course.
In 2022, Chapman played in 151 games at third base for the Jays, and Gurriel played in 104 in left field, offering steady and strong, if imperfect, production.
Where is the Chapman of today? Who is their Gurriel?
Since those guys left, those two positions have become a real mess. Dual revolving doors of floor-raising defenders who can hardly hit and ill-suited bat-first types who, it turns out, mostly also can’t hit.
It was Varsho and Whit Merrifield in left in ‘23; Varsho and Davis Schneider there last season, with a little Joey Loperfido thrown in at the end; mostly Alan Roden to start this year, now with a handful games each from Santander, Schneider, Nathan Lukes, Jonatan Clase, and Myles Straw. At third it was Ernie Clement, IKF, and Addison Barger last year; Clement, Barger, and Will Wagner so far in ‘25.
Some of this was by design, allowing the club to mix and match to suit various lineups—part of a long-term Raysification project that’s never been close to matching its namesake on the pitching side, and offensively has really come together just as the Rays have fallen off the bleeding edge of the industry. It was also by necessity, with payroll getting bloated on the starting pitching side because of the club’s deficiencies of development there, and guys like Vlad and Bo getting more expensive as free agency crept closer.
Ernie Clement in 2024 was an incredibly dollar-efficient way to get a couple wins at third base—hang that banner!—but ideally they’d find someone who can give you a lot more with the bat there while still playing defence to a high standard. I’m not here to pick on Ernie, who has been a very nice contributor for this team, but this is a guy with a career wRC+ of 88. Right now six of the eight projection systems on his FanGraphs page expect him to produce a 94 wRC+ or below the rest of the season. There’s a reason Will Wagner was afforded so much opportunity at third base to start the season, just as there’s a reason Addison Barger is getting in there now.
Barger could very well be the guy who solves this problem—and I would have said as much if this post came out last week, though I suspect it wouldn’t have resonated nearly as much as it does now. I love the arm, the bat speed, the exit velocities, and the level of plate discipline he’s shown of late. But he’s looked primed to be an above average big league hitter for what? Four or five games now? And his power in the minors has never been great. So let’s maybe pump the brakes a little bit, even if I think it’s OK to be excited by the possibility and ready to ride the hot hand for as long as it lasts.
Hell, and maybe Nathan Lukes is some poor man’s version of the other guy they’ve been looking for, too. Or Roden gets it sorted and can be that guy.
Either way, solving even just one of left field or third base would be huge. But that’s only true because the team came into the season with those as problems requiring a solution.
And since we’re going to have to see a whole lot more before we can be convinced they really are solved, I think our earlier assessment—that this is a below-average run-scoring team—is going to be pretty durable.
I mean, heading into Wednesday night they were at 4.02 runs scored per game, which ranked 20th in baseball and was .34 runs below league average. It was .16 runs below where they were last season.
To my mind this is quite clearly a better offensive team last year’s, so that number is naturally going to improve. But by how much?
Until they start consistently showing us otherwise, one can only assume that the answer is probably going to be “not enough.”
Thanks for doing this. Your insights are the best. Aside from our hitting (which is a big ‘aside from’), I can’t help feeling that the Scherzer signing is going to be an albatross hanging over our heads the whole year. Who knows when and if he will even pitch again? I’m sure everyone, obviously including the front office, knew there was a huge health risk in signing him—for $15.5 million at that. So why did they do it when there were other starters out there that were much, much cheaper? I understand that those other starters didn’t have the pedigree and maybe didn’t want to come here. But was the main reason to sign Scherzer simply to make a bit of an exciting splashy signing to appease a grumpy fan base and get bums on seats? If so, that just seems so...desperate and short-sighted... and now we are forced to sign what's left of those other guys (Turnbull). Am I wrong? — OzRob
Thanks so much for the great question and the support, Rob! It’s obviously a very tough situation that the Jays are in with Scherzer, but I feel incredibly safe in saying that they absolutely did not spend $15 million for a temporary excitement bump.
That’s not to say that concerns about consumer confidence can’t ever be part of the equation when it comes to getting certain deals done. The Jays themselves spoke about moving beyond their comfort zone with Vlad because of how much he means to the team and to fans, and I think it’s not unfair to believe that bringing back José Bautista for one more year in 2017 had a similar component of pure fan service. Taking a flyer on Joey Votto last year likely did as well.
But Votto essentially cost them nothing, so that’s hardly the same thing. Even so, there were still clear competitive reasons to want to see if he could offer more than Dan Vogelbach was poised to give them. And it made a ton of sense in 2017 to see if Bautista would bounce back after an unusually rough 2016, even if the front office likely didn’t see the value in paying him the kind of money he was demanding and maybe even had to be cajoled by ownership into doing it.
Yes, signing Scherzer was a risk. But let’s not pretend that a healthy Scherzer didn’t offer a massive reward as well—far above anybody else on the market who’d be willing to take such a short-term deal. Or that the business case you’re suggesting makes any sense. Paying someone 6% of the team’s entire payroll, against everyone’s better judgment, because it might offer a tiny bit of February sizzle?
I certainly don’t think Mark or Ross are wired in such a way as to make a move like that, and though I suppose it’s not impossible that the owner was sick of being labelled a perpetual bridesmaid and forced the issue here, even if that were true, I’m not sure you could say that it would have been about providing any kind of meaningful boost in attendance. It would be a bit silly, honestly. I don’t think Scherzer’s name would register all that much for most casual fans, and the more knowledgeable ones would understand that he’s well past his prime. Is hearing “former Cy Young winner” on CTV News really moving a lot of units here?
So, while I do understand why it could look cynical, I think it’s a bit odd to not appreciate that the Jays aimed so high, and to try to turn it into a bad thing. And I especially find it odd to invent a reason that they signed him and then get mad at them for doing that invented thing.
For me, it’s a good thing to try to sign the best players. Even when it doesn’t work out. Or when it seems, after six weeks, to have not worked out. The Jays should act like a big market club more often, not less. I thought we wanted them to do more of this high-risk, high-reward kind of stuff, no? Get a bit swashbuckling?
And I say that without yet even addressing the actual risk that was involved here. Because I think a whole lot of context is required before we start looking at the team as though they were wildly negligent with this.
Aside from a back strain that limited him to 27 starts in 2019, Scherzer was remarkably durable throughout his career, basically all the way to the end of 2021. That was the year that his contract with the Washington Nationals was due to end, and because of that he ended up getting traded at the deadline to the Dodgers. He was his usually dominant self over 11 starts in L.A., and then into the playoffs, but pitched through a “dead arm” in Game Two of the NLCS, then was scratched from his scheduled Game Six start because of the same issue, which resulted in Atlanta winning the game and the series.
He joined the Mets the following winter and proceeded to set a career low for games started, taking the ball just 23 times because of a left oblique strain that cropped up in both May and September. The following year, 2023, was when he first felt the issue with his thumb.
He would make just 27 regular season starts that season, split between the Mets and the Rangers. But it’s not so easy to know just how much of that time missed was actually due to the thumb issue he’s dealing with now.
Looking at his Rotoworld page, we can see that Scherzer had a start pushed back in April 2023 because of shoulder soreness. “He noted that he had imaging done on the area below his scapula and said he isn’t dealing with a serious issue,” the entry reads.
Nothing in the reporting on that missed start suggests it was related to the thumb, but Scherzer has been clear that the thumb is really just the tip of the spear, and that it turns into a bigger problem when his inability to grip the ball properly starts to cause problems farther up the arm.
Scherzer got back onto the mound later that month, but was soon forced to miss time after being famously—and somewhat hilariously—ejected from a game and suspended for allegedly using “sticky stuff.” (FORESHADOWING!)
A month later, Scherzer admitted after a start that he was still dealing with discomfort in the shoulder. His scheduled start following that admission ended up getting pushed back because of neck spasms. At the time Jon Heyman wrote for the New York Post that the neck problem wasn’t considered serious, but reported that “his side/back issue (near the scapula) ... may be something he needs to monitor and manage all year.”
Three days earlier, Scherzer had talked to Heyman’s Post colleague, Mike Puma, about the issue. Puma noted in his piece on it that Scherzer had “spent several weeks on the IL in 2019 with the Nationals with a similar—but more serious—injury to the area.”
So… is that thumb-related? It was a similar injury as the one suffered in 2019, and by Scherzer’s own words the thumb wasn’t an issue back then. And again there’s no mention of the thumb in either piece. (At the time of this writing, I think it’s worth noting, Scherzer is also dealing with a back issue, which came about following a recent bullpen session. The thumb, apparently, felt good. So these again appear to be separate things, as we’ll also see below.)
Whatever the case, this was all happening just about the middle of May. Scherzer took the ball on the 14th of that month, and then continued to do so with regularity all the way until September, getting traded to the Rangers in the meantime.
In a start against the Twins for the Rangers on September 1st, Scherzer was lifted after 88 pitches, despite pitching six scoreless, because of tightness in his forearm. “I could tell that I was at my limit even though my shoulder was good,” he explained.
He made his next start, in Toronto, but was forced to exit early again—after 5 1/3 scoreless—with what was termed a “triceps spasm.”
An MRI revealed a strain in his teres major—a shoulder muscle—and he was shut down for the rest of the regular season.
Scherzer did return to make three starts in the postseason as the Rangers won the 2023 World Series, but those starts were marred by injury as well—albeit in a weird way. He was dealing with a cut on his right thumb ahead of game three of the World Series, but pitched anyway, then exited after three scoreless innings due to another issue—back tightness.
It turned out that he had a herniated disc, and so the decision was made after the season—all the way into December, in fact—for him to have surgery to correct that.
The back surgery was supposed to keep him out until June of 2024, but he recovered well and made a rehab start on April 24th. It was in that start that he reported thumb soreness, which subsequently delayed his big league return. He received a cortisone shot in mid-May, got back into a rehab start on June 9th, making it back to the majors on June 23rd.
It was around the time— as he was on the verge of making his 2024 debut—that Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post spoke to him, and he provided some clarity on his injury saga.
When Scherzer started throwing (after his recovery from back surgery), he felt discomfort in his thumb that moved into his shoulder area. He felt the same thing late in the 2023 season, when he eventually strained the teres major in his shoulder. He thought maybe that had happened again.
“When I threw a ball, even 60 feet, it felt like a triceps strain,” Scherzer said. “Every time I tried to throw, my triceps would be completely locked. The ball could not come out of my hand without pain.” So he went for imaging. But MRI exam after MRI exam — on his shoulder, his arm, his neck — came back clean.
. . .
Eventually, Scherzer’s doctors — many of whom also treated Strasburg — diagnosed a nerve issue. And fortunately, at least for now, they did not think it originated in his shoulder the way it might with thoracic outlet syndrome. The pain, they concluded, was moving from his thumb up his arm, not emanating from his shoulder down it.
Scherzer made a run of starts after his 2024 debut, but dealt with arm fatigue and was pulled from a game on July 20th. He made two more starts after that, but landed on the IL on July 31st. After some rehab starts, he made it back to take the ball again on September 15th, but then immediately went back on the IL with a hamstring strain.
Zooming out, the troubles Scherzer experienced in early 2023 may have been related to what he’s dealing with now, but he doesn’t seem to be suggesting that. The herniated disc appears to have been an unrelated injury. And the hamstring strain was apparently unrelated as well. Or, at least, these things aren’t included in Scherzer’s self-diagnosis regarding the thumb.
Speaking of that, according to Janes, Scherzer thinks he knows why all of this started happening, too. Or thought…
He knows he has been gripping the ball harder than ever since MLB decided to enforce its rules against pitchers using sticky substances in 2021. He thinks that ban has caused other pitchers’ forearms — and, too reliably, their elbows — to give out as well. He thinks many of his fellow players are scared to say so because MLB decided to recommit to rules against the age-old tradition of relying on various gripping agents.
With all that in mind, Scherzer tried to address this problem with a specific exercise regimen over the winter. “Last year I did a bunch of grip strength work, thumb work, to try to address this,” he told reporters—including Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun—after the thumb issue recurred this spring.
I think we all basically know the story from there.
So, now that we understand the entire timeline a little better, what do we make of it?
For me, I think it’s totally fair for the Jays to have felt good about the offseason work that Scherzer did to try to alleviate the problem—especially because he threw for teams in January, passed the team’s physical, and started spring without issue. It’s not like it was obvious that he was carrying this injury forward—though he noted in March that the issue came about “at the exact kind of 50-pitch mark again, (which_ kind of tells me it’s not a grip strength issue.”
It’s a little scary that it sounds like it only comes out once he gets to 50 pitches, which he almost certainly did not during that workout. So, yeah, it’s fair to wonder if the Jays did their due diligence there, absolutely.
But the thumb issue was also not the only reason he pitched so little in 2024, with the back injury and the hamstring injury also accounting for a lot of time missed. And in 2023, it seems to have been a problem mostly at the end of the year, and not necessarily related to starts missed early in the season.
This is not to say that there weren’t some red flags with the thumb, or that the other injuries weren’t major red flags of their own. This was always going to be a risky deal. But I think the context is important to understand just how much risk was really on the table. Your mileage may vary in terms of what was an acceptable amount, but for me his 2023 season provided proof of concept that he could navigate whatever issues he might have had and make a whole lot of really effective starts—again, a much bigger reward than the likes of Spencer Turnbull could ever provide—and he was still good enough to be very effective when healthy in ‘24.
I think it was a real baseball move.
But also, yeah! It’s Max Scherzer! Pitching for the Jays! It’s OK to think that idea rocks and to maybe get seduced by it. Not quite as OK if you’re an executive, but whatever!
Yes, it’s been as frustrating a start as we possibly could have seen, but the story of the deal is far from written. Let’s just see what happens. No need to be too sour about it just yet.
Mr. Stoeten, let me start with praise. You rock! Now to my question. Trade talk. Assuming the Jays are in a favorable position to enhance the lineup (power-hitting 3B or quality arms), what/who in the system could they, would they offer that could get a decent return? — BobTV
Was going to ask a similar question - maybe too early to tell, but assuming we're still in the mix near the deadline, what's a preview of some potential targets to improve the offense especially, since that still seems to be a key area of weakness? — Argos
Great questions, fellas. Thanks so much for them both, and for the kind words and support! I think they work great in tandem, so that’s how I’ll tackle them here.
In terms of who might be traded, this is an interesting year for the Jays, because they don’t really have a huge roster crunch incoming. Ricky Tiedemann will need to be added to the 40-man in order to avoid exposure to the Rule 5 draft this winter, but he obviously seems extremely unlikely to be dealt—not just because of his value to the organization but because of the uncertainty due to his health. Josh Kasevich would also be Rule-5-eligible if he wasn’t added, as will Kendry Rojas, and I’d imagine both are currently in line for spots. But other than that—unless I’m missing someone, or unless someone who was exposed last winter breaks out and needs to be added this time around—there isn’t much in that bucket.
And with several pending free agents set to vacate their current 40-man spots this winter, there shouldn’t be much difficulty in adding these guys. Um… outside another large-scale sell-off that brings in a ton more prospects, I suppose. Hmm.
Anyway, this isn’t a situation like in 2023, when the Jays took two guys who were potentially going to be exposed in the Rule 5 anyway, Sem Robberse and Adam Kloffenstein, and flipped them to St. Louis for Jordan Hicks. That’s the platonic ideal. Or, perhaps just the ideal. I never studied philosophy.
So… who else might it make sense for the Jays to offer? Well, we saw last year, as we usually do, that there’s a premium on guys who are closer to the majors. The valuable guys that the Jays moved—Yusei Kikuchi, Yimi García—brought back Triple-A players on the verge of the majors, and the less-heralded players dealt brought back a collection of lottery tickets from the low minors and guys with some talent at Double-A, but who needed something to really click to keep from stalling out as they moved up the chain—i.e. R.J. Schreck, Yohendrick Pinango, Charles McAdoo.
That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, of course. Most years you’ll see a blockbuster or two involving low minors studs. But, as has been the case for the last few years now, I don’t think the Jays are in much of a position to make those kinds of trades. I’d be shocked to see someone like Trey Yesavage or Arjun Nimmala move. Maybe one of Brandon Barriera, Landon Maroudis, or Adam Macko could whet some other team’s whistle once they’re healthy. Maybe Khal Stephen gets enough helium from his strong start to get teams offering far more than the Jays think he’s worth. But that doesn’t really feel like the way this is going to go. They need those guys and will probably have to be wowed to move them—and would be happy if they’re healthy enough for that to even be a question.
This time around, the guys that really jump out at me as potential trade chips are the ones who will be out of options next spring.
Orelvis Martinez won’t bring back what he would have prior to his PED suspension, especially if he continues to struggle at the plate. But even though at his best he’d really offer this Jays roster something they lack, pretty soon they’re going to have to make a calculation about his future. Losing him on waivers in 2026 would be a tough pill to swallow, but do they really think he’s going to hang onto a spot the whole year? Should they move him while they can? Before his prospect pedigree completely dissolves?
Jonatan Clase will also be out of options next spring, and though he's a better long-term bet than Straw or Lukes, I’m just not sure how many fourth outfielders they’re really going to need (or if Clase is going to hit enough to justify his roster spot anyway). It would be a bit weird to deal him only a year after acquiring him, but they were never going to be able to keep all those guys anyway, and he’s certainly got tools to make other teams drool.
Leo Jiménez just got back into action in the Florida Complex League. His inability to stay healthy is going to hurt his trade value, but he's in that same out-of-options bucket, and he could carve out a big league role somewhere, I think. Just maybe not here—even with Bo Bichette potentially on the way out. I think Andres Giménez probably moves to shortstop in 2026, at which point you have Clement who can backup there, and competition for reps at second and third for Jiménez from Barger, Wagner, Orelvis, Kasevich, and, I pray to god, some kind of big free agent acquisition. Another guy who might need to be moved before he’s lost for nothing.
Speaking of Barger, he also came into the season with just one option year left, but he’s actually not necessarily burned it yet. In order to do so, a player has to be in the minor leagues for 20 days. Barger was sent to Triple-A camp back on March 23rd, then called up April 15th. That’s more than 20 days, but the big league season didn’t start until until March 27th, and the minor league season started on the 28th. If the clock doesn’t start ticking until the season begins—and I’d assume that's the case, though I don’t exactly feel like taking a five-hour side quest into CBA language at the moment to find out for sure—there’s a chance he preserves his option by staying up the rest of the year. That’s far from guaranteed, but I think they’re going to give him a pretty long look unless he really starts to get buried again. So, I don’t think I see him as a trade option. But you never know!
As for who might be available, that’s a lot harder to tell. Heading into Wednesday’s action all but three teams in the AL were either in a playoff spot or within 2.5 games of one. And one of those teams was the Orioles, who, I sadly suspect, have some better baseball in them yet to play. That really hurts the pool of potential sellers at the moment, and what does anybody even want that the Angels or White Sox have?
The answer there isn’t nothing! I've mentioned Yoan Moncada already—or I’m about to somewhere later on in this sprawling mass of a post—and Luis Robert Jr. is obviously still a very good player. Unfortunately, despite Robert’s down year in 2024, his contract is team-friendly enough—$15 million this year, with two $20 million club options to follow it—that I don’t see the Jays being able to get involved. And Moncada will be a moot point anyway if he doesn't keep up the torrid pace he's started his season with.
The NL has more sellers, albeit with similar problems in terms of what they can offer. The Nationals, Marlins, Pirates, and Rockies are in the process of falling out of the race. Perhaps Miami gets a king’s ransom for Sandy Alcantara, though again that’s not a bidding war the Jays are going to win.
Looking for more realistic names... well... it's grim. Outside of Alcantara, the only good players on Miami or Colorado are, conservatively, a bajillion years from free agency. They all make no money. And, in Colorado’s case, mostly don't exist.
Pittsburgh’s done a similar thing to last year’s Jays, with a number of guys on short-term deals they’ll surely flip. Are you ready for the Andrew Heaney sweepstakes? A reunion with IKF and Tim Mayza? For the fifth year running I think they should trade us David Bednar, but that feels as unlikely as ever. Washington is somewhat similar, except their short-term guys don’t even warrant a mention. The Angels have Tyler Anderson pitching well with free agency looming. Plus Moncada, and maybe Kenley Jansen turns it around or something. And the White Sox have Sleve McDichael, Onson Sweemey, Darryl Archideld, and Bobson Dugnutt.
Going to need a few more sellers in this market, I think!
Love your work as always, fingers crossed for a more pleasant and winningful season for you to cover.
This question is a bit moot, because they obviously did the thing, but how much do you think the position of Vlad’s contract in the list of biggest contracts of all time played a role in their seeming reluctance to pull the trigger? Do you think there is pressure amongst front offices not to raise the tide too high too quickly? — giant_badger
Thanks so much for the kind words, giant_badger! And for the question and the support!
Honestly, I think those kinds of considerations were probably happening a whole lot more on Vlad’s side than on the Jays’ side.
Obviously this is all just guesswork, but I think it’s pretty conspicuous that the final number on the contract starts with a five. He’s the third member of MLB’s “$500 Million Club,” and while in no way do I think Vlad is some kind of an egomaniac who is necessarily driven by those things, I strongly suspect that was important to him. He always supposedly had “his number.” It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if that was it, and this was why. Status.
On the other hand, I suspect that the Jays’ reticence was more about not believing any first baseman could ever be worth that kind of money relative to the best-paid players in the sport, and probably not quite being ready to accept how completely over a barrel he had them.
I have no doubt that they do think about precedents, and that every front office does. A lot of financial dealings in the sport come down to precedents, and on the players’ side there can definitely be pressure from within the union to get the best possible deal. It therefore stands to reason there could be similar pressure among teams, so I think that it might have been an aspect of it. But, when you get right down to it, I also think that if you fed Mark and Ross truth serum and asked them about this, it’s more likely they’d say “we just didn’t think the player was worth that much” than “we didn’t think the player was worth that much and we didn’t want to set a precedent otherwise.”
The first one seems a completely reasonable position on its own.
Stoeten, I love your level headed approach to most things Jays. Can you get mad and ragey about something for a change though? Just something baseball you’ve always thought was kinda dumb and didn’t make sense that you've avoided making a comment on for the sake of being “sensible” and having a “brain.” Robot umps, benches clearing conversations that result in Brett Cecil finishing the year on the IL, extra runner, STATISTICS, low hanging fruit, whatever. Can you please get angry about a thing(s) and let us feel your frustration? — Graham
LOL. Thanks so much for the question, the kind words, and the support, Graham!
Apologies if this isn’t quite the response you want—especially if I’m misinterpreting where you’re coming from here—but, man, I know I’ve toned down the combativeness over the years, I guess I didn’t realize it had reached the point of coming off as being absent. I don’t think it is absent! Ask me about Don-Mattingly-hating weirdos, or people who think all-consuming negativity about the team is a reasonable replacement for actually having a personality because they actually just want everyone else to be as bloody miserable as they are, I dare you!
But it definitely feels different these days, I’ll grant you that. A near full-court press of stridency used to be a huge part of my personal online brand—a lot of it directed at fans who loved the wave or hadn’t accepted the gospel of Moneyball or were the wrong kind of boorish, or in whatever other way didn’t “get it,” which I’m still more than happy to pop off about sometimes. But some of it was about actual baseball stuff or baseball people, too. And while fun—and nutritious!—it’s also kind of an exhausting way to live. It’s an easy way to be wrong a lot. And, ultimately, it comes back around to just being plain old boring anyway. Shtick.
So… I’ll appreciate until long after I’m in the cold, hard ground that people have nostalgia for my work in those early days, and I personally have a great deal of fondness for those those times and the people who were with me in that world, and probably could even use being a bit more combative in print sometimes. But it needs a real spark. And it needs a kind of dead certainty that, while I think is useful when it comes to, say, the biggest moral questions of our age, when it comes to ones like “does Ross Atkins even know what he’s doing?” or “guillotine for Jim Wolf?” I’ve come to find is almost always foolish.
So… I’m going to pass on that particular song-and-dance. Thank you though.
Hey Andrew I already sent the question through the comments on substack. But I got another one. Do you see any value in putting George Springer back up to the leadoff spot and moving the other three top guys down? — Bob TV
No worries, Bob. And thanks again so much for the question!
I’m honestly not in a rush to move Springer back up there. Whatever he’s been doing so far, I would very much like him to keep doing it. If there’s any sort of shift in mentality when he comes to the plate as a leadoff guy, I don’t want him to make that switch. He’s done a really great job of being unbothered by his strikeout rate creeping up this season, accepting the additional power that’s come from the trade-off. Part of it might just be that he’s thinking more like a middle-of-the-order guy, but even if not, his ISO right now is the highest it’s been since 2021! And, if the season had ended Tuesday, his wRC+ would have set a career high!
I do understand the temptation, but I’d definitely leave well enough alone on that one. At least for now.
You may not get to write up responses before it happens, but any predictions on attendance for the Seattle series? Cutting down on cross border shopping is one thing but paying to cancel flights and hotels on top of the cost of unused tickets would be some real commitment to the US/Trump boycott. — Will
Thanks so much for the question and the support, Will! And great call on me not having this damn post done before the series in Seattle wrapped. I really wanted it to. Honest!
As for attendance in Seattle, it definitely felt a bit lighter and less festive than we’re used to seeing. Jays manager John Schneider admitted to reporters that it felt different and not as full as in the past. And the Athletic’s Mitch Bannon reported that “during batting practice on Friday, sections of the stadium that were packed with Blue Jays fans last season housed only small patches of blue jerseys.”
But the numbers don’t quite back-up the idea that there was some kind of massive drop-off, so you may be right that most of those who planned their weekend trip when Mariners single-game tickets went on sale back in November ended up following through rather than taking the financial hit.
Shane Lantz of the Seattle Times reports that attendance was indeed down, with the weekend average dipping from 35,880 down to 33,189. But that number might actually look pretty robust when you factor in that last year’s series was in July and this one was in May. And Sunday’s game had the second-highest attendance of any of these last two series, he notes. Perhaps, by the end of the weekend, Mariners fans felt safe enough from the be-mapled hordes to generate a strong walk-up crowd.
Or, perhaps, Mariners fans knew all along that the whole Jays in Seattle thing was running out of steam a little bit. The much more significant attendance drop for the series, Lantz explains, came between 2023 and ‘24, with the 2023 series having averaged 43,024.
That would probably be my guess—that frustrated Jays fans weren’t going to show up the way they used to anyway, that even more were turned off by the political situation, but that Mariners fans were less likely to avoid the series and ended up filling in some of the attendance gaps.
It’s an interesting question though. And if this trade war nonsense drags on into next year, it’s really going to be telling to see what happens then.
Why don't we see more 8-for-1 trades in MLB?
Wagner, Clase, Schneider, Barger, Roden, Lukes, Straw and Clement gave me a pretty, pretty dang nice return in OOTP 2024, just sayin’.
Seriously, though, I know that the Jays probably believe in some of these guys more than any other team in baseball, but the probability seems high that most of these players are/will continue to be fringe major leaguers at best.
I guess my question is, who here do you feel is most likely to be a contributor in 2025 and who is most likely to spend the rest of their careers riding a variety of busses. I like Ernie Clement the most but they still should have signed Bregman. — Conrad Bidet
Thanks so much for your question and your support, Conrad!
Man, Bregman would have done a very nice job of answering my earlier “where is the Chapman of today?” question, wouldn’t he? Ugh.
As for your question itself, I guess I touched on it a little bit above. I’m definitely most intrigued by Barger, just because he’s got those two truly elite tools in his arm and his bat speed. He hasn’t played enough to qualify for most of Statcast’s percentile rankings either last year or this, but among the ones he did qualify for, a year ago he was in the 99th percentile for arm strength, and this year he’s in the 98th for max exit velocity. And if there’s any sort of uptick to come in terms of pitch recognition/swing decisions/plate discipline—and we might be seeing it right now—that could genuinely be a special player.
I don’t think anyone could say that’s a likely outcome, even given what we’ve seen during his recent streak. But there’s at least something to dream on there. There are mostly just nice players among the other guys.
Clement and Straw are great defenders who will certainly raise the floor there, but are probably never going to hit enough, long-term, to be regulars on good teams.
Clase has some intriguing pop and enough speed to cover his defensive warts and leg out some singles, and he’s dangerous on the base paths—he stole 15 bags on 17 attempts in just 27 games for Buffalo before his call-up. But outside of his heavily BABIP-powered (.438) start to this season, he really hasn’t produced numbers that jump off the page in the upper minors (105 wRC+ at AA in '23, 100 at AAA in '24). I’d like to see him get another full-ish year in Buffalo to work out the defensive kinks a bit more and get a better sense of what his bat really is.
Wagner and Roden earned their way onto the Opening Day roster with strong springs. But even though they didn’t necessarily look overmatched from plate appearance to plate appearance, they sure did absolutely nothing with the pitches they managed to put into play. If they were established big leaguers it would be easy enough to dismiss sub-replacement level results over 70 or 80 plate appearances as random variance, but these guys are not that. They both do a lot of things right on the diamond, and showed themselves to be better defenders than certainly I was expecting, but they’re just not explosive bats. Wagner’s, in particular. And while that isn’t to say that that he won’t be able to find a way to make that profile work—because guys do—it’s honestly tough to get excited about a someone who has put up home run totals of ten, seven, and eight in each of the last three seasons.
Roden at least hit 16 out last season, and grades out noticeably better in terms of Statcast’s bat speed metrics—and that’s even if you put it up against Wagner’s 2024 data as well. He’s probably second to Barger among this group for me at this point in terms of excitement. I mean… I don’t want to suggest Statcast is the be-all, end-all, but… man alive, this team has more than enough doubles-power ‘tweener types.
Speaking of: Nathan Lukes! Don’t like the tattoo, do like the 133 wRC+ so far. He’s… fine? I don’t know. Like I said above, maybe he’s the guy they need to lock down left field until Roden figures it out. It’s just… if he ends up in Buffalo at some point that will be his sixth year playing games in Triple-A—and it certainly would have been seven had there been a minor league season in 2020. It’s kind of wild! When Lukes took his first Triple-A at-bat he was 24. He’s now two months shy of 31. There have certainly been extenuating circumstances for him—times when he’d have been the most logical call-up but missed the opportunity due to injury. But, again, we’re talking about a ‘tweener—a guy who has reached double-digits in home runs just once as a pro.
And then there’s Davis Schneider, who… I don’t even know, man. The pop is real. You don’t hit 29 home runs in a season, as he did in 2023 between Triple-A and MLB, by accident—though I don’t think I’d bet on him ever reaching that plateau again. You hear a lot about the book being out on him, and pitchers knowing to throw it where he can’t do damage, but to me that implies he’s hopeless without some sort of a major swing change. It also takes away his agency in the whole mess.
I’m not saying a swing change won’t be necessary, but I’ve just spent way more time than I should have playing around with Baseball Savant’s Illustrator tool—would have had this post up before the Rays series began if I hadn’t!—and, honestly, I don’t think the problem is quite so simple.
I’ll give just one example, otherwise this section might turn into a 10,000 word snipe hunt for Schneider’s lost bat, but let’s look at a couple of charts that jumped out to me. First, his swinging strikes and balls in play against fastballs—four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters—during the good stretch of his career, i.e. from his debut through the end of May of last year.
I’ve excluded foul balls here, because I don’t think there’s an issue with expanding the zone a bit if you’re actually able to spoil one, especially in two-strike counts. Plus it makes the graphic look messy.
And while you do see here that his reputation for having trouble with velocity at the top of the zone was pretty bang on, you also see a guy with a pretty good—far from perfect, but a pretty good—idea of what’s a ball and what’s a strike. At least in terms of fastballs. (And I should note that most of the low-and-away swinging strikes were cutters, presumably acting like sliders in those cases.)
That’s especially compared to the guy below, who is also Schneider, except this time we’re looking at June 1st of last year onward through his recent demotion.
Woof!
And yet there is, perhaps, some hopefulness in that woof. Schneider’s best month in the majors in terms of his chase rate was August 2023. In fact, his first three months were his best at holding back on pitches out of the zone. Easier said than done, and he’s always going to be a high strikeout guy, I think. But that second image looks like a guy really out of sorts, and if he can get back to being the guy who wasn’t up there hacking quite so much, that would be a very good first step to becoming useful again.
Not banking on him, either.
So... uh… sorry what was the question?
Oh yeah, which of these guys is most likely to be a contributor this year, and who has a future as some kind of minor league journeyman?
The answer to the first one for me, I think, has to be Ernie Clement. He’s versatile, he plays defence at a high level no matter where you put him, he can fill in at short, could probably play just about anywhere, and though the bat leaves you wanting, his 12 home runs last year showed that there’s a little more in there than expected, and lately it seems to be trending in the right direction.
Clement also hits from the right side, which is a big differentiator among this group, and on this team in general. There are going to be spots for him to play throughout the year, pretty much no matter what. Not necessarily every day, but whereas most of the other guys are sink or swim propositions, Ernie has a fairly solid place on this roster for now. And even as he enters his arbitration years—he’ll be eligible for the first time this winter—and the financial component maybe leads to a non-tendering eventually, I think he’s still a big leaguer somewhere for a while going forward.
Now, if Barger really grabs ahold of some playing time and starts putting things together, and then, say, Roden comes back up and starts actually driving the ball—the ideal scenario—that’s going to eat into Ernie’s playing time, obviously. But, even still, there will still be plenty of at-bats for him, I think. Especially if there continues to be anything to his hot start against lefties (.368/.419/.605, albeit in just 44 PA).
As for the other question, it’s a strong group of candidates.
Wagner’s poor-man’s-Cavan-Biggio profile is maybe the one for me that works the least, but then again Biggio has managed to last as a big leaguer with diminishing returns now for seven seasons. Straw has already had his share of being back on the bus, but the defence is good enough that he only has to hit a little to be a viable fourth outfielder for someone. Lukes is maybe a more complete version of Straw, considering what you’d expect out of his bat, and the fact that he hits from the left side, so I think big league teams could find him useful as well. Clase is a work in progress, and those routes to balls are ugly. But an uptick there, with his pop and his ability to hit from both sides, should make him a nice enough fourth outfielder for teams as well. And there’s enough upside there for him to be even more.
Schneider, though, needs to make the bat work. The defence just isn’t good enough for him to be rostered if he’s not hitting. And he’s got less room for error than most of those other guys because he hits from the right side, and the straight-up lefty masher is a bit of a dying breed. So, the onus is really on him to straighten it out against same-sided pitching—a tougher assignment.
That’s probably a hot-ish take there, though. I mean, saying Straw “only has to hit a little” makes it seem like what he’s done so far this season isn’t completely unusual. His best two seasons have produced wRC+ marks of 103 and 98, and those were 2019 and 2021. His wRC+ was 65 in 2022, 68 in 2023, and 74 last year in Triple-A.
I probably shouldn’t discard that information because of 75 average-ish PAs with some timely hits mixed in to make it feel like he's been even a little bit better than the numbers suggest, right?
So... yeah, it’s Straw. I’m changing my answer to Straw. No need to kick Davis while he's down either, eh? Three home runs in his last six games in Buffalo too! Just don’t ask what the velocities on the pitches he hit!1
As always, Stoeten, you rule. A couple questions:
1. Are there any updates on Tiedemann’s rehab? After a brief Google I can’t find anything from the past couple months. No news = good news?
2. With relatively crap performances from almost all levels of our minor system (w Nimmala and Yesavage exceptions noted) where can I find hope for the future?
3. Would you advise any of our MILB teams to take up John Oliver on his rebranding offer? I would have said Lansing Lugnuts before they left our umbrella. — Christ on a Bike
Last one, folks, and we’ll make it a fun one. Thanks so much for the question and the kind words, man! And the support!
1. I think I’d agree that no news is good news when it comes to Tiedemann. He didn’t have his surgery until July, so the expectation was never that we’d be hearing much noise about him at this point. He’s probably not going to be ramped up until the tail end of the season, likely getting a couple starts in the minors before heading off to the Arizona Fall League to make up some lost innings. And that’s barring any setbacks.
Of course, if the Jays are in a playoff race and could use some heat out of the bullpen…
2. As you’ll surely have gathered from above, I definitely think there are more bright spots here than just Yesavage and Nimmala. For one thing, we can’t forget about large number of pitchers who are on the injured list: Tiedemann, Manoah, Macko, Maroudis, Rojas, Barriera, Angel Bastardo, now Jake Bloss, and others2.
Meanwhile, Khal Stephen has pitched very well for Duendin, among several others (Gage Stanifer hive rise up!). Yohendrick Pinango has been on a tear at the plate in New Hampshire, R.J. Schreck continues to show big power, Orelvis Martinez has struggled out of the gate but is still very much a prospect, Josh Kasevich hasn’t made his season debut yet. And let’s not forget about Roden, who FanGraphs rated as the Jays’ third best prospect—behind Bloss and Nimmala, but ahead of Tiedemann and Yesavage—when they released their top 40 list for the club back at the start of April. Or the fact that they’ll be picking eighth in the upcoming draft (though they did forfeit their second-round pick to sign Anthony Santander), and might end up getting something interesting in return for a certain shortstop if things go too far south before the end of July.
Is it a system full of budding superstars? No. But things can change fairly rapidly in the prospect world. There are always guys to dream on.
3. Oh, I actually kind of didn’t hate the whole Lugnuts thing. Go ‘Nuts! For me, hands down, the answer here is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Partly that’s because I like Dunedin’s bizarro Jays look, and because the Vancouver Canadians and Buffalo Bisons are pretty much unassailable as far as branding goes. Partly, though, it’s because Fisher Cats are frauds!
Not the team, the animal! Not only are they not cats—they’re mustelids, which is a family that includes weasels and badgers—they apparently only rarely eat fish! At least, according to Wikipedia.
As for New Hampshire’s branding, I will admit to finding the uniforms fairly generic, but otherwise I’m being a bit unfair here, honestly. Because I absolutely have to give the Fisher Cats huge credit for this year’s “alternate identity” of theirs: the Barney and Betty Hill Incident inspired New Hampshire Space Potatoes.
So… maybe we’re good actually!
OK, and that’ll do it for this one! Thanks, as always, for reading, and especially for those of you who support my work. Now let’s get some prayers up for April Jeff Hoffman to return to us as soon as possible. Go Jays!
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90, 82, 84
Alek Manoah belongs on the list below as well. Though I mostly liked this exchange for the corrective about it being less an “organizational disaster” and more an industry-wide problem that’s affecting every team because of the way modern pitchers chase velocity.
In D.M.’s follow-up tweet he adds:
It’s certainly not rocket science to make the connections between guys throwing harder and more often since they were adolescents. More often than not, a blown UCL is a cumulative injury. Teams do their best to mitigate it, but it’s a very uphill battle.
Thanks for the detailed answer! I guess we'll see where we are at the deadline, but that's not a super inspiring crop of potential ads. I guess potentially good if we're out of it and selling off though lol :s