Mail bag: On Vlad's future, Biggio's role, pitcher usage, roster building, labour strife, future free agents, and more!
Ahoy hoy! Can you believe we’re already half a week into February? It seems impossible since I’m pretty sure we’ve all been reliving the same day over and over since last March, but that’s what the calendar says. And what it means, of course, is that spring training is right around the corner.
Or, at least, it will be unless MLB has their way and tricks the players union into delaying the start of the season for a month — which is totally only their preference because they’re so concerned about health and safety, and not at all because they want to stuff as many fans into the stands as possible this summer and also, while they’re at it, expand the playoffs.
But enough about all that noise. We’ll likely have a whole year in 2022 to talk about the power struggle between the league and the union, so let’s instead talk about the Blue Jays!
Just like last time, I got so many questions this week that — thanks to Substack’s limit on the length of posts — I couldn't even get to them all. I apologize for that, but I must again say that I’m heartened by it, because it means we're building a great community of paid subscribers around here. Month number one at my new home here is in the books and the response has been truly outstanding. There’s still a long way to go before I hit the paid subscription goals I’ve set for myself for the next year, but I’m right on track so far, and that is a great feeling. Thank you so much everyone.
Now on to the questions that I did get to! As always, I have not read any of Griff's answers.
Do you think the Jays have already extended offers to Walker and Odorizzi, just they are likely only one year deals (to allow the team to have more flexibility during next year’s free agency) and the players are waiting to see if anyone offers them multi-year deals? — bdog
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s likely they have already “extended offers” to them, but maybe that’s just me getting hung up on semantics.
Five winters ago, when the Jays didn’t make an offer to re-sign David Price, a lot of people took the opportunity to grouse like this was some kind of unforgiveable error. But, of course, not formally making an offer didn’t mean they had no interest in him at any cost, or that they didn’t at least have some idea of what it might have taken to keep him. In all likelihood they simply knew that making an offer at the number they were comfortable with would have been utterly pointless. They could have formally extended an offer, but doing so would have made them no more or less serious about signing him.
My guess with guys like Walker and Odorizzi (and James Paxton) is that you’re basically right. The Jays likely have interest. The players and their agents are likely waiting until Trevor Bauer lands somewhere in the hopes that whichever teams fail to land Bauer will turn their attention — and dollars — to them. The Jays likely have made their interest known and given their agents some idea of how high they’d be willing to bid. If that counts as having extended offers, then sure, they’ve extended offers. My sense is that this process is probably more informal than that at this point, but either way. Most importantly, I’d imagine that the Jays know what they think it will take to get one of these guys signed, know what their “walk away” number is and their alternatives are, and will get a chance make a final offer once the market really starts to take shape.
Could these be the kind of pieces that Marcus Semien told reporters on Tuesday the Jays are still working on acquiring? I have no idea, but that would be a pretty strong guess. (And Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet wrote on Wednesday that the Jays do indeed remain interested in Paxton and Walker, though where they’re at with Odorizzi is less clear.)
Andrew, great to have you writing again. A question about extensions for the kids. Vladdy will be 22 this year. He will be 27 by the time he reaches FA. We don't know what Vladdy would want financially or the term, but do you believe the Jays will commit to a large multi-year extension for him? His performance in the minors and majors to date mirrors Prince Fielder. He was also an all world talent. By age 29, Fielder's decline was setting in. Unfortunately severe neck injuries cut Fielder's career short but committing long term to a DH/1B big man seems to go against the type of players Atkins/Shapiro talk about. Your thoughts? — Jeff
Hey Jeff, thanks for the kind words. The thing about comparing Vlad to Prince Fielder and then stopping there is that it’s, um, not exactly very rigorous, is it? That’s one excellent young hitter with a big body who, sadly, had his career cut short by injury. There are other larger humans who have lasted much longer. And while I’m not going to deny that poor conditioning, or a natural inability to keep weight off, can certainly be a red flag, I don’t think we need to go over the top about this.
Also, though I’m not going to do a side-by-side comparison of what Vlad looks like this winter and what Fielder looked like during his playing career, let me please point you in the direction of Google and/or Vlad’s Instagram.
As for the idea that Guerrero, or any 1B/DH, may not be an Atkins/Shapiro type of player, I’m honestly not sure where that’s coming from. They offered a lot of money to Edwin Encarnación in 2015. They paid a bunch for Kendrys Morales. They paid Steve Pearce in free agency. They’ve given opportunities to Rowdy Tellez and to Alejandro Kirk. Hell, the late 90s teams Shapiro helped construct in Cleveland were built around guys like Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, and Jim Thome.
Does the industry view 1B/DH types the same today as they did in those days? Absolutely not. Are there reasons the Jays may yet be hesitant to start buying out Vladdy’s free agent years at exorbitant prices? For sure. But, especially with the encouraging signs we’ve seen with respect to his conditioning this winter, I’d think at this point those would have at least as much to do with performance and the uncertainty of what the next collective bargaining agreement will look like.
That’s not to say that I believe the Jays will eventually give him a big extension. They may not. I just wouldn’t frame the question as being one about spectre of Prince Fielder.
How serious of a look do you think the Blue Jays will give Vlad at third this spring? While it is true that his 2019 defense was very poor, could that potentially have been (at least partly) due to his being extremely young? If his bat hadn’t propelled him through the minors at a crazy rate, he likely would have had much more time to develop defensively. Having him as a viable option at third base would make him more valuable and add to the teams overall flexibility moving forward (which we all know is a favourite of the front office) but how do these considerations compare with the teams desire to win in 2021 and put the best team on the field. — Brian M.
The best way I can put it is that I think they will give him a chance to play himself out of the mix. More than that, given the commitment he’s evidently shown to his conditioning this winter, I think they have to give him that chance. He’s earned it, and it would be a terrible message to send for the future to have him put in that work and not get the expected reward.
As for how he may fare, I’m with you in believing that there could still be some improvement there. He’s young, he’s in better shape, he’s still got the arm for it.
I’m not expecting him to run away with the job or anything. More likely, the team’s desire to win — as you point out — will probably push him more and more out of that mix as the season goes on. If he even looks playable there by the time opening day rolls around. But in the spring? Absolutely give him a good run. Let him try to get his feet under him. Cavan Biggio and Marcus Semien won’t need a whole lot of reps. And they’ll be a better team if Vlad somehow proves he really can hack it at third — even if it’s just for a couple times a week.
(To that end, it’s worth noting that in terms of lowest groundball rate among starters with at least 20 innings pitched in 2020, Robbie Ray, Steven Matz, Ross Stripling, and Tanner Roark ranked 1st, 17th, 32nd, and 38th respectively. In other words, there are at least options if they want to shield Vlad out there a little bit.)
Could the Jays use piggyback starters for two/three rotation spots, like in the playoffs? A righty and a lefty to mess with the opposition's lineup. A shorter bullpen that will not be called on as often. It would minimize the innings for two young fireballers. It would satisfy the two times through the lineup narrative. It would minimize high pitch count outings for the strikeout guys. Pitchers stats are not about wins anymore. Rosters likely expanded due to lack of pitched innings last year. Fairly set lineup with versatility would minimize size of bench needed. — Jay M.
In a word: No. In three words: Well, it depends.
If rosters are expanded again that will change the calculation. But if they’re sticking with a maximum of 13 pitchers, as was going to be the case in 2020 before the pandemic hit, I have a very hard time believing that they’d limit two or three of their relievers to pitching just once every five days. It’s just too rigid. One rough outing from a starter who needs an early hook and you’re thrown into disarray.
The Jays carried 13 pitchers for their best-of-three AL Wild Card series. The strategy you can use in that situation — with all those extra arms, and extra time to setup your plan (the Jays had four days from the time they clinched a playoff spot until the start of the Rays series) — is very different from the one you use when you have only 13 pitchers and are regularly playing on six of every seven days.
This is going to be more of a Spring Training decision, I suspect, but it seems to me that the Jays are most likely to follow the Rays in having at *most* 3 starters that they trust, and for most other games follow the "an opener and some guys" approach. (Especially given that they've got rather a number of pitchers who can probably go one time through the order.) The Rays did that and got to Game 6 of the World Series, so - uh, convince me it's a bad idea? — Joe
I suppose it depends on how you define “opener,” but I don’t think we’re going to see “an opener and some guys” all that often. As I said above, teams were able to take advantage of the expanded roster size last season. The Jays, for example, had 286 pitcher appearances in 60 games, meaning that on average they used just a little under five pitchers per game. That’s a lot!
So, unless the expected roster limit changes, I think starters will be used a little more like starters in 2021. Only just a little, mind you. But not less.
I’m just guessing, obviously, but I really just think we’ll see more spot starts/bullpen games — guys like Hyun Jin Ryu and Nate Pearson will need to be managed for the long haul, and I think that will require them getting bumped back by a day at times, or maybe even skipped in the rotation entirely — and more multi-inning relief appearances. Nothing too wild.
A lot will depend on how the bullpen is composed. Right now, depending on whether A.J. Cole makes the team or not, the Jays have four or five relievers who they’re generally only going to ask to go one inning: Cole, Kirby Yates, Jordan Romano, Rafael Dolis, and Ryan Borucki. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the army of swingmen people seem to think they’re going to be looking to deploy.
As it stands right now, I’d have those five in the bullpen, plus Ross Stripling, Shun Yamaguchi, and Tyler Chatwood. Of that group, Cole and Yamaguchi are most clearly on the bubble. Everybody else is pretty close to a lock. So, again, if teams are going to be limited to a 13-man pitching staff — and if the union continues to choose not to negotiate changes with the league this winter, meaning the 2021 season will be played under the rules set out by the CBA (including the changes agreed upon in March 2019), that will indeed be the case — the Jays are looking at four multi-inning guys at the most. Maybe five if someone gets hurt, or Borucki pitches his way out of the role he looked so good in last year and gets replaced by Ray, Matz, Francisco Liriano, or Anthony Kay. But probably three.
You can’t really do anything too revolutionary with those kind of limitations, I don’t think.
On the player development front the Jays previously had 7 affiliates, which is down to 5 this year (the departures being Lansing and Bluefield). How can the system cope with having so many fewer spots to put players? Was that change pandemic-related or just that the other affiliates weren’t deemed valuable? — Christ on a Bike
The scheme has been in the works for a while, so it didn’t begin as anything to do with the pandemic. However, an ESPN report from back in September suggests that teams that were originally reluctant about the scheme ended up getting more on board because of it. That should tell you most of what you need to know about why they’re doing it: to save money.
The league works very hard to pay their minor league players as little as possible, and in eliminating a bunch of minor league jobs they’ve found great way to do that. Does the fact that minor league salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to a big league team’s operating cost? Apparently not! Not here in an era where financial ultra-efficiency has overtaken world championships as a baseball owner’s biggest prize.
The league says that they mostly have issues with some of the sub-standard facilities around the minor leagues, and I think there’s a kernel of truth to that. More likely, though, it’s that teams seem to be coming to believe that a lot of player development can be done better in-house at fancy complexes like the one the Jays (read: the taxpayers of Florida) just built in Dunedin. Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet wrote back in December about the specialized off-season camps the Jays have been running there, for example.
“The camps aren’t only a response to the lost season,” he wrote. “The organization has been laying groundwork for years to shift its off-season focus from one large camp run by a group of general coaches to a series of smaller, more specialized camps designed by instructors with specific expertise — 2020’s unique circumstances merely accelerated those efforts.”
GM Ross Atkins and director of player development Gil Kim both gushed to Arden about about what the Jays were able to do at the facility this winter. And while, whenever they’ve been asked, Atkins and Mark Shapiro have both been careful to stress that they still very much value having minor leaguers go out and play competitive baseball, it’s clear to see how clubs are starting to even view these development complex environments as potentially more valuable in-season than sending kids to ride the buses between Bluefield and Bristol and god knows where else.
But let’s not lose sight here of the fact that, on the whole, this is all about money. Those org. guys you ask about, who no longer have spots to play? They’re what’s been deemed not valuable.
Hi Andrew, thanks for doing this. The front office has always placed a high value on team culture and that has been talked about more after the Springer and Semien signings. But do you think it factored into any of the previous decisions relating to some players with prickly personalities that they sent elsewhere? I'm thinking Stroman, Donaldson and perhaps even Sanchez? And I wonder if it influenced their pursuit of Bauer? — OzRob
I can only guess about that stuff, but personally? Yes, I believe that was a factor in some of those decisions. There were baseball and contractual reasons for all those trades too, of course. But do I think the Jays wanted to make Stroman their highest paid player and a focal point in the room at a time when they had a young core about to ascend to the big leagues and were trying to implement their vision of a winning culture? No, I do not.
That may have been the case with their choice not to extend Donaldson too, but his health in 2017 and 2018, and the fact that he’s now 35 and the Jays are really only just now starting to reopen their championship window, probably played a larger role.
I couldn’t speak to Bauer, but he certainly doesn’t seem like the type of guy they’d be willing to throw big money at either.
Think of the biggest contracts the Jays have handed out in the Shapiro-Atkins era. Beyond the one to bring back José Bautista, which was a move it’s been whispered was driven by Edward Rogers, you’ve got Springer, Ryu, Semien, Kendrys Morales, J.A. Happ. They gave a bunch of money to Justin Smoak. There was Curtis Granderson, Freddy Galvis, Jaime García, Randal Grichuk, Tanner Roark, and Shun Yamaguchi. Every single member of that group may not always get high marks for being a great teammate, but actually they might! There are some pretty impeccable reputations among that group, and I don’t think it’s by accident.
(I mentioned a book called The Captain Class in my piece about Springer’s introductory press conference last week, and while I’ll spare you a repeat what I said about it then — which was itself just a repeat of what I’ve written about it previously — I’ll add that I see a lot of its influence when I look at that list of names.)
In your previous mailbag, you shared a quote from Brian Cashman, illustrating how the role of the manager has narrowed in recent years. If the job has been shaved down to basically being an translator between the front office and the players, and between the front office and the press, why did Cora and Hinch get rehired, in spite of having cheater stink on them? Seems like there should be hundreds of guys who could tick the necessary boxes and do this job.
If you need a puppet to hide your hand, why not get a clean one? — Darragh
Darragh! This is a great question, and one I can only guess at the answer to.
What I’ll say is that not only did the things that made those guys desirable managers in the first place not go away during their tainted tenures, they got better. Cora, for example, was an analyst for ESPN and ESPN Deportes for four seasons after he retired, then guided the Red Sox through the pressure cooker of the playoffs to a World Series championship in 2018. If handling the media really is, as we believe, a major part of that job, he’s got a resume that’s pretty unparalleled. He’s also, as far as we can tell, adept at analytics and able to work with a modern front office. He’s a baseball lifer who can speak the language of the clubhouse. He’s got the pedigree of a three-time World Series winner, which — tainted or not — gives him a certain cachet in the clubhouse. And he’s shown an ability to keep his players pulling in the same direction.
I’m playing devil’s advocate a bit, because I’m with you in finding it odd that both these guys have been given jobs again so quickly, but I’m not sure the job is quite as shaved down as you put it (more just different than it used to be), or that there really are so many guys who tick those boxes quite as meaningfully as that.
Would the Jays be willing to sell high on Alejandro Kirk now, possibly packaging him with Grichuk, for a starting pitcher? If they would, any takers on this out there? — CrazyCatTim
I think it’s hard to actually “sell high” on someone, especially a prospect, because other teams are well aware of who he is and that there is still a ton of risk in his profile. There aren’t going to be teams out there who suddenly believe that what Kirk did during his brief cameo last season is going to be his new normal and are willing to pay for him as though that’s the case. It wouldn’t surprise me if he opened some eyes around the league and raised his value, but the Jays aren’t going to be able to put one over on anybody, I don’t think.
And Grichuk, unfortunately, probably has negative trade value because of his contract. I’d imagine the Jays could find something for that pair, but I don’t think that’s anywhere near their best path to add a quality starter. Personally, I’d still rather see them add a free agent starter, rather than give up some of their best young talent in a trade.
If the trade package is equal, which duo do you like more?
Kris Bryant and Kyle Hendricks (Cubs)
Mike Moustakas and Luis Castillo (Reds)
Would seem the latter as there is a bigger need for starters? — Mourdsoe
Castillo is younger, cheaper, and more electrifying than Hendricks, so he’s definitely the one I would gravitate to — even though Moustakas would require a longer commitment than Bryant would.
To be honest, though, I don’t imagine either of these scenarios are on the cards anymore — if they ever were. For one thing, the Jays seem likely to be done adding starting infielders with the addition of Marcus Semien. For another, Cincinnati would require such a ridiculous package of prospects to give up Castillo that I just don’t see it happening, and I suspect the Cubs are going to muddle through with Hendricks and try to sneak into the playoffs in a weak division. (The Cardinals’ acquisition of Nolan Arenado this week may have changed that calculation though!)
Do you ever heckle at games? If so, what is your best heckle? With Dustin “Rat Boy” Pedroia retiring I yelled at him to stop gnawing on the drywall. — Didymus Henley
I don’t heckle anymore, to be perfectly honest. Partly that’s just maturity, partly it’s being happy enough to sit in the 500s instead of sneaking down to within earshot of the players like I used to, and I’d guess that it’s also partly because being in the media changes your relationship to your own fandom and the way you think about stuff like that. I’d like to believe I’d have reached that point without having had the jobs I’ve had, but who knows! It probably also doesn’t hurt that I’m now much closer to the age of players’ parents than I am the players themselves. (Ugh.)
My favourite heckles were always the ones with a bit of wit or absurdity to them, or that were just plain dumb enough to be funny. The thought of standing up and yelling “MOUSTACHE!” at mustachioed former Tigers closer Todd Jones still gives me a chuckle.
Any thoughts on what is going to happen to MLB in this era of “we can make profits whether we win or lose” finances? — Chris Hartjes
None that are particularly coherent, unfortunately. On one hand I think it’s entirely possible that they come out of next winter’s CBA talks with an economic system that better encourages teams to actually try to be competitive. A salary floor, perhaps. (Though I worry what kind of concessions the union would have to make to get there.)
On the other I think about how enormous a sport like boxing used to be and where it is currently. MLB is such a huge money-maker right now that it has nothing to worry about any time soon, but am I confident that will still be the case if we’ve got another decade of purely short-term thinking and slavish commitment to efficiency coming our way? No, I’m not.
What do we do with Cavan Biggio? I want to believe in him as much as anybody but he's so hard to read. On the one hand he has outperformed any expectation he had as a prospect. But on the other, he doesn't really excel at any position and his struggles with velocity were really exposed in the (albeit short) playoffs. I just worry when I see how readily some people are slotting him in as the leadoff man playing 3rd everyday. — pistolpetestar
What's the deal with Cavan Biggio? Just saw that Keith Law thinks he is not even deserving of a roster spot and I know there has been an ongoing conversation about his ability for some time. While he holds a .240 career BA and he strikes out a shit ton (over 159 games), what am I missing that shifts the conversation on him from not bad young guy to get him off the team? — Danimal
If Law has been saying that recently it’s news to me, but it’s true that he has historically been the low man on Biggio among the major prospect gurus — and hasn’t seemed to back down on his dismissals of him. The problems are, as pistolpetestar points out, are the fact that he has trouble with high velocity and doesn’t really have a strong defensive position. I’d add to that the fact that he seems quite susceptible to infield shifts, and that his Statcast numbers, at least in 2020, weren’t terribly impressive.
Here’s how Keith described him for ESPN.com in February 2019, when he left him off a 20 deep list of the best Jays prospects despite Biggio having broken out in 2018 to the tune of a .252/.388/.499 line at New Hampshire, with 26 home runs in 132 games.
Cavan Biggio had a superficially nice year, with more than 100 walks and 26 homers, but it's largely an illusion -- he knows a ball from a strike but doesn't hit better pitching, and word got around the Eastern League early that he was trying to pull everything he could turn on. From June 1 on, he hit .219/.363/.413 with a 27 percent strikeout rate, and he was totally overmatched in the Fall League when I saw him. He also has no position -- maybe right field, probably left or first base -- and his bat isn't going to profile at any of those spots.
Word obviously didn't follow Biggio around to his next stops, because he hit even better over 43 games in Buffalo the next year, and sports a 118 wRC+ over 159 big league games since getting promoted. Based on that alone he absolutely deserves to continue to get regular playing time for the Jays, but there have also been some changes we can see in his numbers that make him a little bit of a different player than the one Law was talking about then. He hasn't been quite as pull-heavy since his Double-A year, he's also cut down dramatically on his infield fly rate, and despite facing more and more advanced pitching has maintained steady strikeout and walk rates. (In fact, in 2020 he cut his strikeout rate down to a reasonably respectable 23%.)
Also of note: I used the Statcast search function at Baseball Savant to look at his numbers as they compare to the 222 batters who have seen at least 2,000 pitches since the start of 2019. and while his expected weighted on-base (xwOBA) ranked firmly in the bottom third against pitches at the top edge of the zone, and pitches above 95 mph, that hardly makes him some kind of a major outlier. Remove the expected part and look by wOBA at players who’ve faced at least 200 pitches over 95 mph in the last two seasons and Biggio ranks number 227 of 291. Not great! But the two guys he's immediately ahead of are Matt Chapman and Joey Gallo. Ronald Acuña Jr. is below him on that list. So are Javier Baéz, Eloy Jiménez, Paul Goldschmidt, and way down at number 287 of 291, Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
Now, I’m certainly not claiming Biggio is a similar hitter to those guys, I’m just pointing out that struggling with velocity the way he does doesn’t equal career death. There is, however, one glaring and very large difference between him and that group: power. The mean ISO over the last two years of those seven hitters is .247, whereas Biggio’s is .190.
For context, a .190 ISO isn't bad — on their Sabermetric Library page for ISO, FanGraphs list .140 as average, .170 as above average, .200 as great, and .250 as excellent. But it’s harder to make that profile work than it is, say, Acuña, who also walks a ton, strikes out even more than Biggio, but obviously is a much more dynamic offensive player with a ton more power (and whose poor showing against velocity I wouldn’t expect to last very long).
Here’s some more important context: Biggio’s numbers here are all coming from some very imperfect samples, to put it politely. When Biggio woke up on September 1, 2019, his wRC+ for the season was exactly 100. A league average hitter. He bumped it up to 114 on the season by feasting on September pitching. And, of course, 2020 is a weird season to put a lot of stock into as well.
So, in conclusion, I guess we’ll see! He’s definitely a guy who deserves a roster spot and deserves to keep getting regular at-bats for the Blue Jays. He’s probably not a guy who should be batting high up in the Jays’ lineup, though, and certainly isn’t my favourite option to be playing third base. But you can’t not like his intangibles, his production so far, and I think it says something about what the team thinks that the Blue Jays were not desperate to add another left-handed bat to their lineup this winter. They’re right-hand heavy as it is, but they’d be incredibly lopsided without Biggio. That they’re OK with that tells me that they don’t believe he’ll be playing his way onto the bench anytime soon.
(Hey and look, over at Vlad Religion, my old pal Drew just looked into the very subject of Biggio’s potential badness.)
Mark and Ross seem to be mentioning the next waves of opportunities to improve (trade deadline, next offseason) quite a bit. Could that be an indication of their pitching strategy? To hold off on a more impact add until the deadline, and first see what this current group has to offer? I also wonder if there's an injury risk component to a strategy like that, give yourself a chunk of the season to see which pitchers actually came out of the pandemic season healthy and still performing. — Brendon Kuhn
Hey Andrew,
Would waiting till the trade deadline be a more efficient way to acquire a top line starter for a better price? Thank you for years of work, the paid subscription was the least we could do! — Scott Willson
Hey Andrew! So glad to be reading your content again, you are far and away my favorite baseball writer! As far as the rotation is concerned, do you think the front office is waiting to see what their trade chips will look like come the trade deadline and next offseason? I’d imagine their player evaluations for the 2020 season were skewed by the small sample size, so they might as well see what they have in house before pursuing potentially costly trades. I’m in favor of the approach, but I can’t help but think back to the first half of 2015 when the Jays had Drew Hutchison and Felix Doubront at the back of their rotation. They need another ace or two! — Dre
Thanks for the kind words, Dre and Scott. And Brendon, thanks for breaking the Springer signing!
As for the ace talk, if only it were that easy! Thing is, Dre, I think the Jays are still looking a bit more long-term than a lot of fans are. Giving up a huge haul of top prospects doesn’t seem like something they’re going to think is worthwhile just yet, and their lack of a move for a frontline pitcher is probably more about that than anything to do with their in-house options. Maybe by the trade deadline that will change, though. You are all correct about that.
I’m also intrigued by what they might think of the pitching market next winter. There are several guys who are set to become free agents that, because of their age, won’t require an especially long-term commitment: Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and Zack Greinke.
Granted, it’s pretty hard to envision any of those guys in a Blue Jays uniform, but they’d fit awfully well on a 2022 Jays team that should have money to still spend, will likely prefer to go shorter-term with guys, and will have some very real appeal to free agents.
What do you think someone who is a 180 inning pitcher normally should be expected to pitch this season? And as a follow up, do you think some AAA pitchers (or even Pearson) will start late in the minors — even later than whatever the minor league start date is — just so that they can be starters later in the MLB when other starters are hitting the wall? Is this there year where quantity of pitchers might be as important as quality? Competitors like the Yankees might have Cole, but not as much of him as normal in a 162 game season. — Mister MEH
I don’t think a guy who regularly goes out and throws 180 innings is going to be affected that much by only getting a third of a season in last year, to be perfectly honest. Teams will manage workload and arm health carefully for sure, as they all do these days anyway, but a guy like Tanner Roark — who made 30 or more starts in each of the four seasons before last year — is probably going to get in as many innings as his performance dictates. Frankly, guys like Roark, Steven Matz, or Robbie Ray, who the Jays have no contractual obligation to beyond this season, probably aren’t going to be babied very much.
Pearson, on the other hand, will almost certainly be treated with kid gloves, for obvious reasons. But I don’t think that will take the form of starting him late, nor do I think they’ll do that with any of their Triple-A starters either. Teams are obviously going to be cognizant of the fact that pitchers are going to be needed deep into the year, but I think that will just mean managing their innings game-to-game or week-to-week. As I said in one of my responses above, I’m expecting an uptick spot starts, skipped starts, bullpen days, and multi-inning relief appearances, but I don’t think it’s going to look like any sort of major upheaval. I could be wrong though!
Can you see anything in Matz’s stats that might shed light on the “magic” that the front office see in him? Any breakout potential to move up to a mid-rotation arm? — giant_badger
I wrote a little bit about that when word of the Matz deal broke. He was definitely throwing harder and with a higher spin rate in 2020 than he ever had before. That ended up generating a better strikeout rate than he’d ever produced too. So if he can find a way to maintain that while getting his sinker to actually sink and keeping the ball in the ballpark — something he hasn’t been good at since his breakout 2016 season, and that he was particularly abysmal at in 2020 (14 home runs surrendered in 30 2/3 innings) — there could be something there. I don’t think the upside is enormous, but him being a reliable number four starter doesn’t seem at all outlandish.
“When the same eyes have seen the same pitcher for so long, it’s hard to make changes, so I think he needs new eyes on him,” former Mets teammate Brad Brach told Metzmerized last week. “He has all the stuff that you’d want in a left-handed starter.”
So, I suppose that’s at least a little encouraging.
I can't get the Rays playoff series out of my head. Rays pitched better and Jays couldn't hit good pitching. Doesn't this mean we need a #1/#2 starter desperately? — Seth
Well, every team could use another front of the rotation starter, but no, it doesn’t mean that. It was two games — one that the Jays very easily could have ended up winning, another that unfortunately didn’t feature Hyun Jin Ryu at his best.
The Rays were clearly better over 60 games, which is one of the reasons why the Jays have taken steps to significantly improve this winter. A top-end addition to the rotation certainly would help the Jays’ chances if they had to face them in the playoffs again, but team building is, first and foremost, about putting together a roster that can get you to the playoffs in the first place.
Can you see any problem with the Jays offering Matt Shoemaker an invitation to spring training? — Bob Patterson
I can see him wanting a big league deal, or wanting to go somewhere that can offer him more of an opportunity to pitch in the rotation, but I’d have no problem if the Jays invited Shoemaker back. I don’t think he really moves the needle here very much, and it sounds like the Jays are trying to leave at least a little room for guys like Julian Merryweather, Anthony Kay, Thomas Hatch, Trent Thornton, and Patrick Murphy to force their way into a spot in the rotation, but I bet someone is going to get some good innings out of Shoemaker in 2021.
If you were constructing a team, would you take the approach of having an ‘extra’ starting caliber player (allowing you to move players in and out of the line up) or try to use that extra player to upgrade a different starting role? I am curious, given this may be a roster construction decision the Jays may face in the near future, in particular on the infield. — Winnipeg Jays Fan
I think I see what you’re getting at here. Like, if Jordan Groshans or Austin Martin force their way into the Jays’ infield mix, what do you do with a guy like Cavan Biggio?
Teams love versatility — the ability to give guys rest or to tailor their lineup to various matchups is pretty huge — so I think having someone like Biggio on the roster as a jack of all trades is pretty valuable. But this is hard to answer in generalizations, because it depends who the player we’re talking about is, who he could be traded for, and which player plays at the position being upgraded.
For example, this sort of scenario is already playing out in the Jays’ outfield, isn’t it? Randal Grichuk is a starting calibre player who doesn’t have a full-time role, though his presence will allow the team to rotate guys around fairly frequently. But because his contract essentially gives him negative trade value, it probably doesn’t make as much sense to trade him as it would Biggio if Groshans and Martin were up and starting to really cut into his at-bats.
Is there a scenario where it’s becomes apparent Semien is a better SS than Bo? — Rudd
Looking at the numbers, I think it already is apparent that Semien is a better defender at short than Bichette. Yet I completely understand why the Jays are leaving the position to their franchise cornerstone and not the guy on a one-year deal.
What do you think the odds of games being played in the Rogers Centre is this year? — Alex Watson
I’m not hopeful.
What can we expect out of Ross Stripling this year? His acquisition didn't make as much noise at the deadline last year, but obviously the team likes him. — Bryan S
Ross Stripling is a nice swingman type, and I’d expect him to go back to doing Ross Stripling-like things this year. There are spot starts in his future, I’d wager.
How many teams are actually Trying to Win in MLB, and what do you think the optimal number should be? (Contrast with the Surrender Squad of CHC, BAL, COL, CLE, and PIT) — Gabe Lerman
The optimal number is 30. Is that realistic? Probably not. Teams do genuinely have to worry about where they are in their competitive window, how much future payroll they’re tying up in free agent signings, and the cost-benefit of trading prospects for proven players, etc. The offensive thing is how much of what holds teams back these days is self-imposed. And while it’s entirely reasonable for teams to care about their bottom line, the problem has become that so many care only about their bottom line, to the exclusion of everything else, including their on-field product, and that there aren’t better incentives and mechanisms to stop that.
As for your “surrender squad” list, there are really two types of teams on there. Or, OK, technically three, because the Rockies defy explanation. On one hand, shitty as it is that teams do this (and that it’s regular feature in some cities), Baltimore and Pittsburgh have decided that their prior trajectories were untenable and have basically burned everything to the ground in order to start over. It’s a problem that teams do this — especially when too many teams do this — but I’m probably more bothered by Cleveland and Chicago. In those cases the teams seem to be trying to shed as much payroll as they can while still maintaining the ability to be slightly better than mediocre and maybe make a bit of playoff revenue if they can sneak into a spot.
For years in Toronto we lived with a team that was at most only ever willing to be barely good enough to sell the illusion of hope. It sucks. But can I say those teams aren’t trying to win? Not exactly. They sort of are, but only to a truly pathetic extent.
My impression has been that Vlad's failings at first base were actually more costly to the team than his errors the previous year at third base, partly because there are many more plays at first and partly because it’s more consequential when he's out of position there. Shouldn’t this be a consideration in deciding how much of a chance to give him at third? If he’s going to play first, find a way to keep him from venturing so far toward second base. Thanks, and I’m delighted to be reading you again. — Charles Campbell
Thanks so much for the kind words! What I’d say here is that the way for him to be better at first base is to get him more experience playing first base. Yes, there were a few times last year where his instincts led to some miscues, but he’s 21 and has played fewer than 300 innings at the position as a professional. I don’t think this should be a concern at all, and it certainly shouldn’t be a reason to keep him at third if things aren’t going well over there. He’ll be an entirely passable first baseman some day.
The return of Francisco Liriano made me think: Was the trading of Drew Hutchison for (essentially) 2-years of Liriano, McGuire & subsequently Teoscar the best trade (and one of the first, mind you) of the Shapiro/Atkins era?
Good ol' Hutch pitched a grand total of 11.1 innings for the Pirates (at 0.0 rWAR), where Liriano, McGuire & Teoscar have combined for 4.8 rWAR in their Jays seasons (and Aoki had 0.2 WAR in his short stint with the Jays to bring it to an even 5.0!).
Trying to think of a better series of trades by the current FO and can't - how about you? — JasLerx
There have been some pretty good ones — getting Jason Grilli for nothing, turning Drew Storen into Joaquin Benoit, fleecing the Cardinals with J.B. Woodman for Aledmys Díaz then turning Díaz into Trent Thornton, getting Ken Giles and a couple of lottery tickets for the tainted former closer, turning a couple months of David Phelps into Thomas Hatch, getting Kay and Woods Richardson for Stroman — but I think you’d have a hard time arguing any of those were better than the Liriano moves at this point.
Liriano pitched his ass off in 2016, and the Jays probaby don’t make the playoffs without him. Now Teoscar looks like he might be legit. Win and win.
Hey Andrew, do you think the Jays will start the season with Biggio and Vladdy playing 3rd base? Or do you think the front office is waiting to see if a potential 3rd base option will have their price drop when spring training starts and they don’t have a contract? — Ron
I think it’s Biggio and Vladdy, though I wouldn’t be shocked to see Marcus Semien over there at times as well, even though it sounds like they’d prefer to have him at second base.
That said, they probably do have room to add another infielder if they really wanted to, so I wouldn’t entirely rule a move like you’re suggesting out. It’s just a bit tough to see.
As discussed above, let’s just assume that the roster rules of the current CBA remain in place. That means 13 pitchers and 13 position players. Right now I think they have ten position players who are locks: George Springer, Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio, Teoscar Hernández, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Danny Jansen, Rowdy Tellez, Randal Grichuk.
That leaves three spots, one of which has to be for a backup catcher, and one of which has to be for a backup infielder. RosterResource currently has Reese McGuire and Santiago Espinal pencilled into those roles, with Derek Fisher rounding out the roster. You could replace either McGuire or Fisher with Alejandro Kirk. You could have Jonathan Davis instead of Fisher (though Fisher being out of options and a lefty bat probably gives him the inside edge there). Or, yes, you could also put an infielder currently outside the organization in Fisher's place, or in place of Espinal.
How many at-bats are going to be there for a player like that, though? I don’t think the Jays are going to be a particularly desirable option to the types you’re talking about. And I think the club is probably going to be prioritizing pitching from this point anyway.