Monday rumours: LeMahieu interest, Bryant rumblings, the third base market, and more!
Happy Monday, everybody. Here’s a look at all the Jays-related rumours and rumblings from yet another lukewarm hotstove weekend.
LeMahieu do you think you’re fooling?
Have you heard? The Blue Jays have interest in free agent infielder D.J. LeMahieu! “Very real” interest, even, according to a report Monday morning from Pat Ragazzo of the Mets blog Metsmerized.
Oh? You, have heard? Well, it turns out we apparently need to hear it again. Or, more to the point, LeMahieu’s camp has seemingly decided that the New York Yankees need to hear it again. They’re not even being particularly transparent about it.
On Sunday night, Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports reported that "a source close to his family" revealed that LeMahieu "has become dismayed by the slow-play tactics of the Yankees, along with other clubs."
"The 32-year-old LeMahieu has, therefore, asked his representatives to re-engage with teams that have previously shown the most interest, the source said, among them the Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets, and to reconnect with teams that reached out early in the free agent period, including the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox and others."
The reigning A.L. batting champ (and leader in on-base and OPS) wants a bigger contract than the four-year $92-million deal Josh Donaldson signed with the Twins last winter, according to Brown. "The Yankees, LeMahieu's preferred club after two successful seasons in the Bronx, have not met those terms," he writes.
One can rather easily understand why the Yankees haven’t felt the need to budge.
All of which is to say: maybe don’t get your hopes up about these reports just yet, Jays fans. Best to wait until a despondent LeMahieu finally, begrudgingly, actually takes their money officially before believing anything about him potentially coming to Toronto.
Which isn’t to say that the Jays shouldn’t be bidding his price up to put the screws to the Yankees!
An infielder would be nice though
George Springer remains the free agent prize that Jays fans still have their eyes on, but the LeMahieu talk certainly makes sense in that it would help a Blue Jays infield that is still short on bodies at the moment.
One possibility is a trade for the Cubs’ Kris Bryant — something Jays fans have dreamed on somewhat all winter, but that until recently hasn’t actually had much written about it until recently. Specifically, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale noted in his Thursday piece on the Lindor trade that the Mets were still engaged with Springer, Liam Hendriks and that they “have had trade talks” with the Cubs regarding Bryant. Then on Saturday, SNY’s Andy Martino reported that those talks had actually ended weeks ago, but that “industry chatter” was suggesting that a Bryant trade to another club was imminent.
That obviously hasn’t happened yet, but Martino’s report, if we buy it, is an interesting one from a Blue Jays perspective. He insists, and not for the first time, that the Mets “prefer to stay under the $210 million luxury tax threshold.” That would certainly make it difficult for them to add Springer, which could give the Jays the advantage they need to get that deal done.
According to the estimations at Cot’s, the Jays are due to dish out just about $76.1 million on player salaries this year (including arbitration raises, pre-arb players, and the like). We obviously don't know how high they'll be able to take that number, but Cot's also tells us that the Jays were in the $130 million range for Competitive Balance Tax purposes in both 2019 and 2020 after being in the $160 million range from 2016 to 2018. If they could get up that high again, adding Springer and Bryant would seem to be a legitimate possibility.
Is it the best possibility, though?
I said this on Twitter on Sunday, but Bryant worries me a little bit, and I’d much prefer to see him as the poison pill the Jays are forced to swallow in a trade for Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks. Now, I don’t really think Bryant is mere ballast, but his value is pretty low at this point. With the exception a slight uptick in an incredibly small sample of innings in 2020, his DRS and UZR have both been underwater since the start of 2017, and his 2020 season at the plate was atrocious — though by “season” I mean just 34 games, over which he battled shoulder and wrist injuries.
The most likely outcome for 2021 would seem to be that he’ll bounce back as a hitter while going back to being a below-average defender at third. But there’s risk in that, which is amplified by the fact that he’ll make something in the neighbourhood of $19 million through arbitration and is due to hit free agency next winter. If the Cubs expect a trade partner to assume all of that salary, they’re likely not getting a whole lot else back.
Tying him to Hendricks, who is owed $14 million per season over the next three years (plus a 2024 option), would certainly improve the package the Cubs could get, while saving them a whole lot of money (which seems to be the Ricketts’ main goal this winter). But could the Jays make their $33 million work while also adding Springer and also finding a little more relief help? It would certainly be tight, and maybe it’s asking too much, but I think Jays fans — despite all the gnashing of teeth about inaction we’ve heard to this point — would be pretty thrilled if the off-season turned out like that.
Of course, there really hasn’t been much chatter at all about the Cubs looking to move Hendricks, so this could all be just a pipe dream anyway.
Update: Just after I published this piece Jon Morosi threw some cold water on the Bryant idea anyway.
Some potential alternatives to Bryant at third
Justin Turner is older than Bryant and not a great defender either, but he certainly looked a whole lot better at the plate in 2020 (as well as 2017 and 2018, though he was slightly behind him in 2019). Problem: he’s a free agent and seems to be looking for Donaldson money of his own. Meanwhile, just last week, Jim Bowden of the Athletic wrote that “the analytics scream that his performance decline is at the high-risk level.” T.C. Zencka of MLB Trade Rumors added to that, noting that in “Turner’s whiff rate on fastballs jumped from 15.4 percent to 20.4 percent, and that’s a concern,” and that “Turner’s .153 ISO was his lowest isolated power mark since his first season in Los Angeles – and it wasn’t close.”
If you could somehow convince free agent shortstops Didi Gregorius or Marcus Semien to play third they could be fantastic additions. Didi had a bounce back year with the Phillies in 2020, showing that he was his old self at the plate. However, his defence at short hasn’t bounced back quite as well, so a position change may indeed be in order. Semien, meanwhile, is coming off of a down year at the plate after his 137 wRC+ breakout in 2019. Intriguingly though, there was more good to his 2020 than his 97 wRC+ suggests. “A slow start had an oversized effect on the overall numbers,” wrote Craig Edwards of FanGraphs back in November. “After 14 games, Semien had a 24 wRC+ and -0.2 WAR. Over his next 46 games, he put up a 133 wRC+ and 2.0 WAR — nearly identical to his great 2019 performance. His Statcast numbers back that up, with a .347 xwOBA after his first two weeks. In a normal season, maybe Semien has a rough couple weeks but gets hot in the middle of June and, with 100 games to go, is looking at a 4–5 WAR season heading to free agency instead of reaching it as the three-win player the market might treat him as.”
Tommy La Stella has been a good hitter from the left side, posting a wRC+ above 120 in three of the last four seasons against right-handed pitching, and (though the sample is small) has been about average at third when called upon, which is more than one could say about his time at second base. He’d need a platoon partner, and maybe that’s where Vlad gets his third base reps. Seems unlikely, though. Because, you know, that’s probably a really bad idea.
Jon Heyman tweeted on Monday afternoon that the Reds and Nationals discussed a deal that would have sent third baseman Eugenio Suárez from Cincinnati to D.C., but that the Reds really want one of Washington’s top pitching prospects in return, “making a deal pretty unlikely.” Suárez had a rough 2020, but a lot of that was down to batted ball luck (his .214 BABIP was, as MLBTR points out, almost 100 points off his career average). In 2019? He hit 49 home runs with a 133 wRC+. He’s owed just $45.5 million over the next four years (including the buyout on his 2025 option), hence the steep price. Because the Jays don’t need to be so cost-conscious, and because Suárez’s defence also seems to be slipping, they’re likely looking elsewhere.
Cavan Biggio isn’t quite as good at third as he is at second, and he’s not especially good at second either. One way the Jays could go, however, is to sign a second baseman and move Biggio to third. Kolten Wong is still out there as a free agent, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better defender at second base in the game. Better still: add Wong and Bryant and Hendricks and Springer, then let Biggio really be a super-utility guy. Let’s gooooo.
Links and things!
It seemed for a minute over the weekend that the Padres were again living the dream, as reports surfaced that the club was on the verge of a massive contract extension with young shortstop Fernando Tatís Jr. Here on Monday, however, Bob Nightengale of USA Today is reporting that the two sides have yet to begin negotiations. I tend to believe the latter report, personally, because the numbers being reported initially -- that Tatís was going to sign for eleven years and $320 million -- didn't make a ton of sense on first blush. But we'll see. It's a good thing for teams to lock up their young stars, and the Jays would still do well to get some extensions on the table for theirs.
The Jays did do a little bit of business over the weekend, however. In addition to their re-signing of reliever A.J. Cole, which I wrote about on Friday night, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reported that the club has extended the contract of hitting coach Guillermo “G” Martinez for another two years (though, as Shi notes, this is hardly unexpected, as Ross Atkins already had said that Charlie Montoyo’s coaching staff would be back in 2021).
The club also officially said goodbye to right-hander Walker Lockett, who was claimed on waivers from the Mariners in early December. He has officially signed a $1 million deal with the Doosan Bears of the KBO. His exit frees up a spot on the Blue Jays’ 40-man roster.
Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun takes a look at whatever the hell it is Trevor Bauer is up to, and how it might impact the Jays’ interest in him.
John Parker of MiLB.com has a nice profile up on one of the more mysterious Blue Jays prospects in recent memory, Jordan Groshans. The talented young infielder is one of the best prospect the Jays have, yet because of COVID-19 in 2020 and the fact that he was limited by injury in 2019, he has just 71 pro games under his belt, only 23 of which are above rookie ball. Currently the number 70 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s top 100, this could be the year his stock really skyrockets.
Lastly, over at Future Blue Jays, some projections for this year’s rotation at Double-A New Hampshire.
Top image: Screenshot via MLB.com/YES
Bauer wants his new team to work with him in building his brand. Hopefully that will be enough to put the Jays off any ideas of signing him.
Morosi tweets that the Jays had checked in on Bryant but no active talks in weeks. Gotta get that Trololosi bit going again.