Rumours, thoughts, links: Monday, February 1
What's might be happening on the pitching front? Who might take Randal Grichuk? What's up with that Bill Madden column? What's this labour strife? And more!
Before we get into today’s links and things, a little housekeeping. First, I skipped the mail bag last week because I usually put out the call for questions on Wednesday, but with the George Springer press conference and then the Steven Matz trade, Wednesday turned out to be a little bit busy. But don’t despair, the mail bag will return later this week for sure!
Secondly, just to remind anybody who didn’t catch it the first couple times I’ve mentioned it, I’ve got a Facebook page for the site up and running. While I’m not a Facebook user myself anymore, I do go there and make sure everything I write here is posted just as soon as it’s written. So give it a follow if you do still live over on that hellsite, and be sure to react and share!
Now on to the few scraps of Jays-related content floating around out there!
Are the Jays really still looking for pitching?
“The Toronto Blue Jays are not done,” wrote Robert Murray of Fansided back on Saturday. Well, that’s good, because they should be! How realistic it is that they will add the sort of number two or three starter they seem to really need is, of course, another matter.
Still, the rumours have persisted, even after Mark Shapiro’s suggestion that the club’s big moves have been made. Murray says that they’re still on the lookout for either a high-leverage reliever of “a starting pitcher to slot behind Hyun Jin Ryu.”
If true, that’s obviously great news. Yet, as I noted in my breakdown of Shapiro’s comments to the media last week, the team is very concerned about preserving their flexibility to make additions again next winter. Whether that would preclude them from signing anyone to a multi-year deal would depend, I’d imagine, on the player and the price, but the expectations of a move like that have certainly been lowered with the additions of George Springer, Marcus Semien, Kirby Yates, Tyler Chatwood, and Steven Matz. (Though, as I’ve somewhat hopefully noted previously, maybe that’s as much a message to agents and potential trade partners as it is to fans.)
Murray doesn’t say much about who the Jays may be targeting for the rotation. He does, however, point to a Jon Heyman tweet from back on Thursday that called the club one of the runners-up on Masahiro Tanaka. That sounds promising until you remember that Tanaka announced his decision to return to Japan on Thursday morning, and the Jays made their moved for Matz on Wednesday night. It’s entirely possible that the two moves were related, and that the club preferred Matz at the cost of $5.2 million (plus Josh Winckowski and a pair of DFA candidates) to Tanaka at whatever price he commanded.
MLBTR notes a Kyodo News report that “suggests Tanaka will earn roughly $8.6MM per season, although NPB expert Jim Allen noted in looking at the signing that even that reported sum is ‘subject to speculation’ because of the near impossibility of verifying NPB contracts.”
In other words, this may have been an either-or situation, and if the Jays viewed Tanaka similarly to the other non-Bauer free agent pitchers remaining — Taijuan Walker, Jake Odorizzi, and James Paxton — then perhaps the Matz deal really was their main foray into this market.
That’s not what Murray is saying though. And on the relief front he even provides us with a name that the Jays are interested in: Trevor Rosenthal.
Rosenthal is a hard-throwing right-hander who most will remember as key reliever for some good Cardinals teams in the early 2010s (albeit not the 2011 team that won the World Series). As relievers often do, however, he ended up getting hurt. He had Tommy John in late 2017, missed all of 2018, then was a mess in 2019. He walked 26 batters that year, over just 15 1/3 innings split between the Nationals and the Tigers, posting a 13.50 ERA and a 6.87 FIP.
Last winter he inked a minor league deal with the Royals looking to bounce back, and he did! His fastball averaged 98 mph, which is about as hard as he's ever thrown. Over 23 2/3 innings he struck out a very impressive 38 batters while walking just eight, earning himself a mid-season trade to the Padres for good measure.
His Statcast numbers were, um, very impressive.
Thing is, short as it was, Rosenthal’s great “year” in 2020 seems to be driving his price up.
“I think Trevor Rosenthal is shooting for the stars with what he wants and in no way does that fit what the Twins want,” wrote Dan Hayes of the Athletic in a Twins mail bag published Sunday. “I can tell you that Rosenthal will not be a cheap guy unless his market falls apart. The demands for him are very high even at this point,” he added.
Could Shapiro’s posturing about the Jays’ major moves being complete be a signal in the direction of Rosenthal’s camp, then?
I think that would be reading into things quite a bit, but maybe! And if he’s healthy, and his prices come down to somewhere the Jays are more comfortable, adding Rosenthal would make a new-look Jays’ bullpen positively electric. Maybe even so good that it wouldn’t be so bad to watch them pass on one of the remaining starters available.
Obviously adding both would be even better.
Crunching the number crunch
I wouldn’t necessarily hold my breath on the “adding both” front. Back on Wednesday afternoon, after the Springer conference call but before the Matz trade, GM Ross Atkins held his own call with the media, and had this to say about where things stand.
And with that we return to the question we’ve been scratching our heads about for nearly a week: Is Steven Matz a “major” piece?
Here’s what I wrote in my piece on the Matz deal when it was first reported last Wednesday night.
If we assume that the league is going to limit the number of pitchers a team can carry to 13 (as they were going to do for 2020 before the pandemic changed their plans), things are getting a bit crowded on the pitching front.
The five-man rotation right now looks like: 1. Hyun Jin Ryu, 2. Nate Pearson, 3. Robby Ray, 4. Steven Matz, 5. Tanner Roark.
The eight-man bullpen would then look something like this: 1. Kirby Yates, 2. Rafael Dolis, 3. Jordan Romano, 4. Tyler Chatwood, 5. Ross Stripling, 6. Ryan Borucki, 7. Shun Yamaguchi. 8. A.J. Cole.
Cole is on a minor league contract, so maybe he doesn’t make the team, but it’s not like it will be terribly difficult to replace him in that spot. In this scenario Julian Merryweather, Patrick Murphy, Thomas Hatch, Anthony Kay, and Trent Thornton would all then be slated for Buffalo.
There are certainly appealing names to subtract from that group if the Jays could find a way to make it happen — *COUGH* Roark and Yamaguchi *COUGH* *COUGH* — but it will be difficult for obvious reasons. And already it appears as though the Jays are going to make it difficult for their young arms to force their way into the big league mix, at least at the start of the season.
A potentially interesting option for clearing the decks came up in a tweet from Jon Heyman back on Friday afternoon.
Now, the Pirates being the Pirates — and, frankly, the Jays being the Jays — I don’t think it’s very likely anything like this will happen. However, Toronto certainly has a veteran starter in the form of Tanner Roark that they could certainly improve on, and a veteran outfielder in the form of Randal Grichuk who appears to be surplus to requirements.
The Pirates don’t exactly rank among the lavish spenders in MLB, but it’s worth noting that their payroll right now is comically low, even for them. Cot's projects them to spend $40.5 million this year, down from $74 million in 2019, and $86 million in 2018.
That is all, obviously, by design. And with a go-nowhere roster it’s not like the Pirates are going to be looking to add expensive players for the sake of it. But could they ease at least some of the Jays’ burden on one or both of those deals? Perhaps if the Jays sweetened their offer with a low level prospect or two? It’s not like Pirates GM Ben Cherington doesn’t know the Jays’ farm system incredibly well.
I can’t imagine that the Jays, for the sake of freeing up a couple roster spots, would give up money and young talent just to get out from under the contracts of a couple players they liked enough to hand those deals out to in the first place. But a boy can dream, can’t he?
Bill not-Mad-actually-laughing-den
I’m honestly surprised that Bill Madden was able to write a column for the New York Daily News on Saturday, because I entirely expected that he would have thrown his back out carrying so much water for some crybaby owners. (See what I did there?) The gist of the column is that some owners are upset that the Jays spent money this winter when they're all pretending to be poor, particularly because "there is speculation" that Rogers "forgave the rebate owed them by the team for the loss of all the games" that should have been broadcast on Sportsnet. Those unnamed speculators believe that this should count as revenue for the Jays, which should then be taken into consideration when MLB calculates which teams pay out revenue sharing dollars.
Fair questions to ask, I guess, though I’m not sure why anybody had to run to the media about it. Except, well, there’s one point in the piece where I think I may see some motivation lurking.
“I’m told the six years/$150 million the Jays gave Springer particularly consternated other clubs since, despite bidding against themselves once Steve Cohen and the Mets reportedly dropped out at six years /$120 million, the Jays still gave Springer the number he was asking for,” Madden writes.
Those dastardly Blue Jays have been out here raising salaries instead of being “disciplined” like just about everybody else!
Hey, and bringing up Cohen here is pretty amusing, seeing as the entire narrative about him purchasing the Mets was that finally they had a deep-pocketed owner who could plough a bunch of his own money into the club.
But I digress.
Madden tells us that “because there were no revenues in 2020, it was decided revenue sharing for 2021 would be based on the average of the clubs' revenues for the ’17-’18-’19 seasons. However, other teams are said to be asking for a review of the Blue Jays’/Rogers situation."
One might say to those teams: "Them’s the breaks, junior. Sounds like this shit was already decided."
One might also say about the piece as a whole: "It sure would be easier to take this seriously if it weren't for things like the suggestion that teams were ‘forced’ to scale back this winter, that bigger teams 'could be feeling they have subsidized all this Blue Jay spending this winter' (which elides the fact that the Jays do not receive revenue sharing payouts themselves), or the claim that 'just about every team in baseball lost about $100 million' in 2020 (which mistakes falling short of expected revenue for a loss and conveniently forgets that clubs' biggest expense by far, player salaries, were prorated)."
Hey, but if, as Madden implies, the Jays are getting $75-$100 million from Rogers for every 100 games Sportsnet broadcasts, they’re likely doing more than well enough to take whatever hit may be imposed on them, unlikely as that seems.
Links!
Returning for just one more second to Murray’s piece, I should note that Ross Atkins may not even have to get as, uh, “creative” as I suggest in order to move Grichuk. According the report, Grichuk has actually been “drawing interest from rival teams.” I must say I find that somewhat surprising, given the three-years and $29 million remaining on his contract (not including escalators that could net him up to an additional $2 million), but I’m certainly not going to try to stop them!
And here’s a little more on the pitching market: Jon Morosi tweeted here on Monday evening that Jake Odorizzi “is drawing broad interest, and his market could crystallize once Trevor Bauer signs.” He adds that the Jays are one of several teams who “have been in contact,” which could be entirely true yet utterly meaningless. One, it would certainly be in an agent’s interest to make it seem like the very aggressive Blue Jays are in on their client. Two, was that contact two months ago, or since they added Steven Matz?
The upcoming labour war between MLB and the players union, and the ongoing posturing from the league, deserves a whole lot more words than I’m willing to give it at the moment. The last thing we’ve heard is that the league has proposed expanding the postseason and delaying the season by a month, which would allow more time for COVID-19 rates to (theoretically) come down and more people to get vaccinated — and thus allowing more fans in the stands this season, which, in addition to added playoff revenue, is good for the only thing the owners care about: their bottom line. The conversation around the sport seems to have moved on from the big ethical questions of last summer about whether they should even be trying to play during a pandemic, which is not great. They shouldn’t! But it’s clearly going to happen one way or the other, which I think makes that an interesting point.
These, too, are good points, I think:
It is top prospect season, and because 2020 was such a difficult year to evaluate, there is some real disparity among the lists that are starting to circulate. MLB Pipeline had Simeon Woods Richardson on their list as the fourth and final Jays prospect, for example. Keith Law of the Athletic had five Jays on his list, and one more that just missed, none of whom was Richardson. Meanwhile, SWR was at number six on the Jays list at Baseball Prospectus — a list that had C.J. Van Eyk at number seven, ahead of Alek Manoah and Gabriel Moreno, and Austin Martin ahead of Nate Pearson at number one. “I’m obviously no scout,” writes J.P. Breen in his fantasy take on Martin for BP, “but the above description (and pre-draft scouting reports) make Martin sound like an early-career Anthony Rendon—a guy who could play across the infield, hitting .270–.290 with 20 homers and 15 steals. If the average becomes late-career Rendon or his speed allows him to steal 20-plus bases, we’re talking a potential elite five-category fantasy producer. He’s a top-20 dynasty prospect for me.” That works!
Dustin Pedroia had a great career, especially considering his size and the way he swung the bat. Just a truly unique and uniquely talented ballplayer in this era. And it’s genuinely unfortunate that injuries have forced him into retirement. You’d better believe that I have no love for the Boston Red Sox, but I’d have taken a player like Pedroia on the Blue Jays in a heartbeat. That said, you cannot tell me that if he’d played in a different city today’s news would have received nearly the same response as it has. The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry matters deeply to the game, and that’s OK, but he’s basically Ian Kinsler, not Derek Jeter. (Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m trying to remove it.)
Sportsnet’s Jeff Blair feels good about the Jays’ recent splurge in free agency, and feel like this time really might be different than all the other times the Jays have spent big. In the piece, however, he says something that I didn’t get the sense of at all last week. “President and chief executive officer Mark Shapiro views the Springer deal and the deal given out to Marcus Semien as part of a continuum,” he tells us, “with suggestions another significant add could materialize this week and that the team will have enough flexibility to be active at the trade deadline and next winter.” Another significant add? Sign me up, but that wasn’t exactly what I was hearing.
Elsewhere at Sportsnet, Nick Ashbourne took a look at what the Blue Jays’ ideal batting order might look like. (Hint: No matter how you slice it, it’s good.)
Friend of the pod Drew Fairservice has a fresh one up at his always outstanding Guerrero-focused corner of the internet, Vlad Religion.
Bob Elliott tweets that the Jays have lost a member of their front office to the Los Angeles Angels. David Haynes, who spent four years as the Jays’ pro scouting coordinator, then three more years as their manager of baseball operations and professional scouting, is now the director of player procurement in Anaheim.
Jays Journal has decided that the Jays must not be interested in signing Taijuan Walker, which is absurd but makes fine grist for the ol’ content mill, I suppose. The Jays liked Walker enough to trade for him last summer, he pitched well here, and Walker, like the rest of the mid-tier pitchers left on the market, seems rather reasonably to be waiting for Trevor Bauer to sign somewhere in the hopes that the teams that miss out will then throw their dollars his way. But OK!
And, lastly, great stuff from David Quadrelli over at Blue Jays Nation, who kicks off a series of Blue Jays prospect profiles with a look at the club’s top Canadian prospect, outfielder Dasan Brown.
Top image: "Trevor Rosenthal picks up a save" by five til noon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Any thoughts on Kevin Goldstein returning to baseball writing? The Up and In podcast and BP were really important in helping me understand new analytics and scouting. Did you have a chance to read his re-introduction and take on what happened with the Astros and his role?