Rumours and links and things: Wednesday, January 13

Corey Kluber, Taijuan Walker, the relief market, the Cubs, Andrew Benintendi, and more!

Before we get into our latest batch of Jays-related rumours and thoughts, I’d first like to draw your attention to the post below this one: a call for questions for this week’s mail bag. I only had Substack email that one to paid subscribers, because I didn’t want to spam those of you who’ve signed up for free. That’s beause, as the post says, only paid subscribers will be able to submit mail bag questions — something I hope entices some of you to subscribe or upgrade. Don’t worry though, it will be free to read when it drops later on this week.

I should also point out that if you’ve come looking for my take on the announcement of Mark Shapiro’s extension you won’t find it. And that’s because you can read that right here.

Now, on to some lukewarm hotstove action!

Corey Kluber draws interest

“Nearly 25 teams showed up at Corey Kluber's showcase today, and scouts came away impressed,” tweeted ESPN’s Jeff Passan just before noon here on Wednesday.

Kluber's fastball was only operating in the 88-90 mph range, per Passan, which is noticeably below the 92 mph he averaged in 2018, his last fully healthy season. However, Passan notes that there is "more velocity in the tank," and MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported that Kluber’s velocity “was about where it typically is at this point.”

I’ve got to say, this does absolutely nothing to dissuade me from wanting to see the Blue Jays land the two-time Cy Young winner. Clearly, though, the competition for his signature on a contract is going to be tough.

The Jays may have something of advantage here, at least. Kluber blossomed into one of the best pitchers in the game during his years in Cleveland, where he had been acquired from the Padres by then-GM Mark Shapiro in a July 2010 trade. There is familiarity there. There is also a need in the Blue Jays’ rotation and, from Kluber’s perspective, the opportunity to pitch for a team that has a chance to be very good (pending other moves, that is).

But Shapiro’s new club won’t be the only one thinking that they have an advantage. Joel Sherman of the New York Post points out that Kluber’s showcase was held in at Cressy Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Turns out Kluber’s “rehab is being done by Eric Cressey, who also is the New York Yankees’ director of health and performance.”

Still, if Kluber is continues to be healthy he’s going to have enough suitors for money to be the most important factor in his free agent decision. Sherman wrote last week that “a low-base contract with performance bonuses for innings and/or starts” is probably all that he’s going to be looking at, considering that he’s managed to throw just 36 2/3 big league innings over the last two seasons, and the Jays certainly have the means to outdo other teams in terms of both. Plus, we know (per TSN’s Scott Mitchell) that the Jays had real interest in him a year ago.

Definitely a name for Jays fans to watch as the off-season progresses.

Where’s Taijuan Walker headed?

This one doesn’t even rise to the level of a rumour, but it ties in enough with the Kluber stuff that I’m going to go with it as today’s item number two regardless.

Taijuan Walker fired off a rather suspiciously enthusiastic tweet on Monday morning, while also changing his Twitter avatar to an orange circle.

Taijuan Walker @tai_walker

Great morning!!!!!!!

He then asked his followers if they listen to music or watch movies and TV shows while on flights.

Is he about to take some kind of a flight, and if so where to?

We know that, at least as of 2018, Walker had a home in Arizona. Could a trip to Florida for a physical be in his future? The orange avatar suggests that, if that were true, it might be to the Mets’ complex at Port St. Lucie, rather than the Jays’ one in Dunedin. Of course, there are plenty of other possibilities here too.

Maybe he’s going to San Francisco to sign with the Giants! (Though apparently their preference is for a left-handed starter.) Maybe it’s all just a ruse, like that time Vlad Jr. posted an Instagram picture that was geotagged as being at JFK Airport, which got everybody thinking he might be joining up with the Blue Jays, who at the time were playing in New York. Or maybe Walker’s on his way to the Tigers or the Orioles (though, let’s be real, he’s not).

Walker going elsewhere would definitely be bad news for the Jays — personally I’d have him and Kluber as my top two picks on the starting pitching market right now — but if he were to sign with the Mets it would at least make it that much more difficult for them to make the money work with George Springer. (As I wrote on Tuesday night, it’s looking like that’s going to be difficult for them regardless. Which, perhaps, is why Andy Martino of SNY reported on Wednesday afternoon that New York had looked at Alberto Almora as an option in centre.)

If it’s the Giants, I suppose that’s less good. But the reality is that the Jays, unless they’re able to foist Tanner Roark on someone (or they managed to sign Robbie Ray without guaranteeing him a rotation spot), will likely only be able to add one starter this winter anyway. Better make it a good one!

Links!

• Over at the Toronto Star, Gregor Chisholm has a terrific, even-handed assessment of how the Jays’ off-season is going. In it he, rightly, points out that just about every decision the Jays have made so far has made sense individually, the bigger issue is that they’re still no better than they were two months ago. His solution? Start applying pressure to guys like Springer and D.J. LeMahieu by imposing deadlines. It makes a lot of sense (on Twitter, Josh Howsam offered some good thoughts as to why he agrees), but I can’t deny that it also makes me uneasy. Sometimes your take-it-or-leave-it offer works, sometimes you end up with Kendrys Morales.

• Naturally there was a whole lot written today about Mark Shapiro and his extension. One in particular that I’d like to point to is Shi Davidi’s piece at Sportstnet, because in it he makes a very good point about something he’s been saying all along with respect to the confusion over Shapiro’s contract status. “At minimum, the transparency in the length of his contract is important so fans can understand how long a period the team intends to operate under its current structure, while establishing the same standard of performance under public scrutiny players, managers and coaches face.”

• Did I mention on here at some point that Jon Morosi says the Jays have been in touch with the Cubs about Kris Bryant, albeit not in recent weeks? Well, Jon Morosi says the Jays have been in touch with the Cubs about Kris Bryant, albeit not in recent weeks. I still like the idea of going after both Bryant and Kyle Hendricks from the Cubs. Another possibility: if the billionaire Ricketts family is really so intent on having the club shed payroll, it couldn’t hurt to ask about Craig Kimbrel either. I certainly wouldn’t want to see the Jays pay the full freight of his $16 million salary for this year, because Kimbrel’s days of being the most electrifying closer in the sport are long over, but he’d be an interesting flyer to take at the right price, especially if it helped make the prospect cost of acquiring a guy like Hendricks negligible. (More likely, however, is that this is a terrible idea.)

• Speaking of the relief market, here on Wednesday evening Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Houston Astros have signed former Dodgers reliever Pedro Báez to a two-year deal. Báez has quietly been a very effective reliever in Los Angeles for several seasons, having pitched to a 3.03 ERA in 355 career appearances. Given the history between the Dodgers and Astros, it’s kind of interesting to see him heading to Team Trash Can, but more interesting, at least from a Jays perspective, is the fact that this deal may show that the relief market is actually starting to move in the wake of the Liam Hendriks signing. Brad Hand is still out there, and reportedly discussing multi-year deals with teams. Though, as Gregor Chisholm points out in the piece I linked to above, sub-par as their bullpen may be right now, it probably makes more sense for the Jays to allocate their free agent dollars to bigger areas of need.

• There has been a lot of talk in the past few days about the Red Sox potentially trading outfielder Andrew Benintendi. MLBTR had a good roundup of the latest chatter back on Tuesday evening, and while I don’t think he’s much of a fit for the Blue Jays (he’s basically limited to left field), that’s certainly an interesting turn of events in Boston. Friend of the show Matt Kory has been on “the Benintendi beat,” as he puts it (while also driving a ‘35 Plymouth?), and writes at Sox Outsider about the teams who might actually be interested such a confounding player. These are strange times in Boston indeed. You love to see it.

• Ken Rosenthal’s Wednesday morning piece at the Athletic had three rather interesting nuggets. First, he tells us that any interest the Astros might have in free agent catcher J.T. Realmuto is likely really muted by the fact that they’d have to give up a draft pick to do so, and they’re already hurting for draft picks after being over the luxury tax threshold last year and because they were stripped of picks because of that whole cheating-their-way-to-the-World-Series thing. (The Jays should very much be in on Realmuto still, by the way. Springer is a better fit, but Realmuto is awfully good too.)

• Rosenthal also tells us that a previously unreported proviso in the White Sox’ deal with Liam Hendriks would guarantee the fourth year of the deal if he is traded at any point. More weird contracts, please!

• And the third thing from Rosenthal’s piece is that the damn Padres are still out there looking for pitching help — possibly Masahiro Tanaka. And while Tanaka would be a little farther down my list than Kluber and Walker, who I mentioned earlier, I’d still prefer to see the Padres stop with this tremendously fun off-season thing they’re doing. At least until the Jays catch up.

• Elsewhere at the Athletic, Brittany Ghiroli and Eno Sarris dive into the many complexities that surround MLB’s “pin tar problem.” Pitchers all over the league are using illegal substances to get a better grip on the baseball and increase their spin rate, and a simple way to curb this would be to follow Japan’s lead and use a ball that is tacky to begin with. Simple, however, turns out to not be quite so simple.

• Lastly, and speaking of places where I no longer work, over at Blue Jays Nation, Paul Berthelot has a great run-through of how some Blue Jays pitchers look according to Baseball Savant’s fascinating new spin mirroring tool. (Do yourself a favour and read Mike Petriello’s primer on this stuff at MLB.com first!)