Late Night Notes: March 10th
Oh, hello. On the Field Cam (TM), Waguespack, Odorizzi, prospects, piss Rangers, piss missiles, Shapiro speaks!, links, and more!
Hmm. Seems like I haven’t done one of these for a while. I’ll be honest, I intended to write about Sunday’s game against the Tigers, but it was such a slog — just six hits between the two teams, but 16 total walks over eight innings — that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. We’ve finally reached the point of spring where the excitement of big league baseball being back has worn off, I suppose. Or at least I have.
Anyway, not writing Sunday led pretty seamlessly into not writing on Monday’s off-day, then I decided to push my luck and skip writing Tuesday and much of Wednesday as well. It’s the kind of thing I’d like to think I can get away with here at a time when the games don’t count. But we’ll be moving back to a more robust amount of coverage around here going forward.
Especially since the Blue Jays announced this week that they’ve expanded the number of games fans will be able to watch this spring! Sort of.
The Jays and Phillies played Tuesday afternoon in Dunedin, and unlike Wednesday’s contest against the Orioles in Sarasota, there was actual visual evidence that the game took place. That’s right, it was the debut of Blue Jays Field Cam, “a new way to watch spring training home games on BlueJays.com.”
Was this a reasonable substitute for a proper TV or radio broadcast of these games? Nope!
It was, however, pretty funny.
Funny that the Blue Jays would have been put in position where they felt a need to take such a step. Funny that they actually did it. Funny that lawyers and the league likely needed to be contacted about this, just to make sure that they could do it. Funny that they have no problem making so clear to fans that they’re not happy with Sportsnet’s lack of coverage. Funny that the soundless, stationary feed made for such an inadequate viewing experience that fans who a week ago were shouting “Just give us something to watch! Anything!” had good reason to begin rethinking their position on that.
Funny that it looked like this:
But limited as it was, I can’t bash the effort too much. This was an honest attempt at making the best of a bad situation that was upsetting the team’s most loyal fans. It’s appreciated. It’s just also, y’know, absurd.
We really don’t need to rehash this all again, I don’t think, but it truly does amaze me that Sportsnet is choosing to do competing outlets a such a favour by not providing blanket coverage of the team they essentially own, and that the Jays have been unable to convince the right suits at Rogers that this is important for both arms of the parent company.
Obviously the Jays aren’t the only team in this sort of situation, as has been impossible not to notice given the dearth of TV and radio feeds Sportsnet has been able to pick up from Jays opponents over the last week, but the unique partnership they have with their broadcaster makes it all the more galling that the Field Cam is the best that can be done here.
The Jays have nine home games left in the Grapefruit League, and Sportsnet is only going to be broadcasting three of them, so you’d best believe that I’ll be watching this ridiculous thing when it returns on Thursday. It’s better than nothing. Just maybe not by a whole lot.
Jacob’s Wagues-back!
OK, technically Jacob Waguespack didn’t go anywhere. But earlier in the week it sure looked like the veteran of 95 2/3 major league innings was on his way out of the Blue Jays organization, as he was designated for assignment in order to clear a spot on the club’s 40-man roster after they claimed reliever Joel Payamps from the Red Sox for the second time in a month.
At the time you could have tried to make the argument that the Jays made the wrong move in giving Waguespack’s place to Payamps. Though he’d been roughed up in two outings this spring, Waguespack was actually throwing a bit harder than usual, intriguingly averaging 94.8 on 34 fastballs compared to 92.4 over 17 2/3 innings in 2020. That point, however, is moot now, with the Jays announcing on Wednesday that Waguespack had passed through waivers unclaimed. He’s been outrighted to Buffalo and invited straight back to the club’s big league camp.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Jays try to sneak Payamps through waivers again at some point this spring as well. The former Diamondbacks and Rockies prospect obviously has some admirers around the league despite not really having eye-popping velocity, or minor league numbers, or elite spin rates. But I see his roster spot as more likely ending up in the hands of someone like A.J. Cole, Francisco Liriano, or Tim Mayza.
If he hangs around, though, much like Waguespack, Buffalo will be in his future. Payamps has a minor league option year remaining, so could definitely be a taxi squad kind of guy, or one of the multitude of arms we can expect to see this season.
“I think it's a year where depth is going to provide a major competitive advantage to the teams that have alternatives, because we're going to have to have a lot of guys in there,” Mark Shapiro told the Fan 590’s Lead Off with Mike Zigomanis and Scott MacArthur on Tuesday. “I think it's not so much the creativity you're going to see (in terms of usage), but you're going to see a lot of people in and out.”
Odorizzi come, Odorizzi go
Clearly the Jays know they need pitching, and yet they keep passing on opportunities to add established veterans to their rotation. Another one of those came and went this week, as Jake Odorizzi signed a deal to join the Houston Astros.
That pretty much finishes the high-end pitching market for the winter, leaving Robbie Ray as the club’s only major addition on the starting pitching front. It seems weird, especially seeing as the Jays evidently remained interested in Odorizzi — who they had courted heavily after the 2019 season — all the way to the very end.
For a long time it has seemed as though the Jays were only willing to add a starter at their specific price. Houston’s desperation to add Odorizzi in the wake of Framber Valdez’s potentially season-ending finger injury clearly moved his price tag out of the Jays’ comfort zone — likely less because of dollars than it was because of term. The Astros will get Odorizzi on a three-year deal, at least as far as their competitive balance tax number is concerned, though it’s much more likely that they’ll only have him for two.
Here’s how MLB Trade Rumors broke down the financials.
Odorizzi is guaranteed $23.5MM. That takes the form of a $6MM signing bonus, a $6MM salary in 2021, a $5MM salary in 2022, and a $6.5MM player option for 2023. The option comes with a $3.25MM buyout. Performance escalators can max the option out at $12.5MM while also bringing the potential buyout figure up to $6.25MM. Combining to make 30 appearances from 2021-22 will bring Odorizzi to just shy of $24MM over those two seasons in salary, while incentives could push the deal up to $30MM.
As MLBTR notes later in the same piece, the complex nature of the deal is to minimize the CBT tax hit, and the small difference between the buyout and the player option in 2023 means it’s almost certain to be just a two-year pact.
If Odorizzi goes back to being the guy that the Jays were so excited about a little over a year ago — before injuries, ineffectiveness, and COVID-19 conspired to limited him to just four 2020 starts, over which he produced an ugly 6.59 ERA — the Astros could have themselves a great deal here. The Jays almost certainly could have chosen to beat Houston’s offer, just as they could have with James Paxton and the Mariners or Taijuan Walker and the Mets, but they seem very much intent on having cash to spend and roster spots to offer for next year’s free agent bonanza.
They also — and this is the interesting bit, I think — really like what they’re seeing from their internal options. Here’s Shapiro, again from his Tuesday appearance on the Fan.
We're not blind that (the rotation is) the area of least experience, and probably least certainty. But we never claimed to go from a team that lost over 95 games two years ago to a perfect team in two years.
Last year our players, with their belief in each other and their young talent, sped up the time frame, and we tried to reinforce that and bolster that. It's far from a perfect team — we're going to have to make adjustments as we go. There are opportunities ahead; the trade deadline, next offseason.
I think what's most exciting is that we're entering into an era of championship calibre baseball, one where every spring for the foreseeable future we feel like we have an objective chance to be a championship calibre team. We're in the process of doing that. It's still far from a perfect team. We'll still have to make adjustments. We know that. But there are some young pitchers and starters who have come in throwing exceptionally well, like Kay and Hatch and others who we feel like — and Manoah, obviously, Simeon Woods Richardson — have been extremely exciting. Se we feel like there's opportunity ahead for us to add, but we also feel like we've got good young pitching to bolster the current rotation.
Granted, there’s not much else that he can say here about his own players. And I’ll admit that there’s a part of me that wonders if the Jays got a little more cautious with their dollars after the Springer and Semien signings as they looked and saw less of a path toward ticket revenue for themselves here in 2021 compared to just about every other team in the league. But the brief “look” we’ve had at Manoah and Woods Richardson has been exciting.
Shapiro also made clear that service time is not going to be something that holds either Manoah or SWR back.
“Zero service time consideration,” he said. “I think we've proven that with Nate Pearson and Vladdy, when we made decisions on them.”
I may have gone with Alejandro Kirk as my second example there instead of Guerrero — who the Jays were absolutely going to hold down to start 2019 before he picked up a spring training injury anyway — but hey, that’s me. *COUGH*
Shapiro did warn about getting too excited for prospects, however. And sadly, he’s probably right here.
I also think those two guys are cautionary tales. A guy may appear to be ready, but there's no simulating what ready is in the major league environment. Not only that, when you're transitioning up here in a non-contending environment, it's a lot easier than transitioning up here with championship expectations and the expectation to win.
It can be a distraction to listen to media clamoring to see young players, and then they get there, and they struggle, and there's a quick give up on the player, (thinking) he's not going to be any good. It is a process of transitioning major league players that requires a lot of patience. Almost no player, especially starting pitchers, just arrive at the major league level and become instant impact guys. Very tough. That gap between Triple-A and the big leagues, both and talent and in pressure, anxiety, what's at stake for a guy, is enormous. So we think very carefully about when to bring guy and when to put them into that situation. We factor in a lot of variables, including their personality, make-up, maturity. Can they handle some setbacks and failure? And then you've got to be patient and believe in the person, the talent, and know that over time it's going to be great.
Ross and I have both seen too many examples where everyone around us is kind of throwing up the white flag on a guy, and ultimately the reasons for bringing him to the big leagues get rewarded. But it requires patience.
Thing is, if wanting to watch Alek Manoah throw baseballs in the big leagues as soon as possible is wrong, well, then I don’t want to be right.
Links!
• Speaking of hard throwing prospects, the Jays sure have one in Pearson, who has produced the highest fastball velocity (minimum 10 pitches) of any prospect to have been seen by Statcast so far this season, according to a piece from Tuesday by Sam Dykstra of MLB.com. More interesting than that, however, is that the Jays have a couple more Statcast darlings in their midst: Joey Murray — he of the invisiball — led the way for both curveball and fastball spin rates. And then there's Gabriel Moreno, who the Athletic's Keith Law called the Jays' real catcher of the future this week, despite acknowledging that Alejandro Kirk may be their catcher of the present. He is the prospect catcher who has shown the best arm strength so far this spring, pumping an 81.1 mph throw to second base in an attempt to throw out Detroit's JaCoby Jones back on Sunday. "That one toss was equal to the Major League-best average catcher arm strength put up by Brewers backstop Manny Piña last season," Dykstra writes.
• Locomotive Kirk is still very much a big part of the Blue Jays’ plans, of course, as evidenced by the fact that the club had him catch Hyun Jin Ryu in a sim game on Tuesday.
• Kirk was instrumental in helping bring along Anthony Kay’s cutter last season, calling for several of them in a game against the Yankees last September, despite the fact that the pitch was a work in progress. Kay is still working on the pitch, and Arden Zwelling looked at it, as well as new pitches from Thomas Hatch (curveball) and Ryan Borucki (changeup) in an excellent piece for Sportsnet earlier this week. (He also had a good one after Robbie Ray’s very Robbie Ray-ish start back on Sunday.)
• Elsewhere at Sportsnet, Nick Ashbourne tried to put to rest our fears about Randal Grichuk cutting into the at-bats available for Rowdy Tellez by mapping out how the Jays might set their lineup through their first two series. Expect the matchups to be played!
• Speaking of that second series the Jays will play in the regular season, it will take place at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. And remember earlier, when I mentioned gate revenue in the section above, and how the Jays may be in tough to match what other teams are going to be able to produce in that regard in 2020? Well one of the teams they’ll definitely be way behind is those very Texas Rangers, who announced on Wednesday that they hope to allow a full-capacity crowd at their home opener against the Jays on April 5th. And, presumably, all their subsequent games as well. Seems weird!
Anyway, I’m just going to leave these here:
• Though this back and forth between a fan and a former big league third baseman has little to do with the Rangers, or their inability to win a playoff series, I’ll leave it here too:
• The Jays are certainly not going to go to the same extremes as Texas, but they will indeed be selling tickets of their own. The team announced on Wednesday that tickets to their first homestands at TD Ballpark in Dunedin will go on sale next week.
• Speaking of TD Ballpark, Pitcher List tries to make sense of how the Jays’ temporary digs will impact them and their opponents this season.
• As I mentioned last week, Alexis Brudnicki is no longer with MLB.com, but before she left she managed to get in an excellent profile of Marnie Starkman, the Jays’ executive vice president of marketing and business operaions.
• Speaking of great profiles, Lukas Weese of the Toronto Star has one on a truly great Blue Jays fan, and autism advocate, Matt Harvey.
• Elsewhere in the Star, Mike Wilner makes the case that versatility isn’t always the answer, and that Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who has found a home in left field it seems, shouldn’t be getting reps at first base. I agree, he should be getting them at third!
• Dayn Perry of CBS Sports previews the Blue Jays season by taking a look at three key questions the team faces. (Though not before blaring an autoplay ad at you!)
• The always excellent RJ McDaniel of FanGraphs gets nostalgic for baseball on the radio, weaving a history of the medium through the details of Sportsnet’s choice to simulcast their TV booth on radio this season (a decision that, as RJ points out, hurts blind and visually impaired fans the most).
• TSN’s Scott Mitchell takes a look at the very exciting Orelvis Martinez.
• For you Blue Jays coaching staff completists out there, the club announced its 2021 minor league appointments this week.
• Jon Morosi tweets that former Blue Jays prospect Anthony Gose is having a good spring so far for Cleveland, and could end up in the majors this season for the first time in five years.
• The story behind the infamous Fenway Park pizza throw? The story behind the infamous Fenway Park pizza throw.
• Lastly (for this section), a touching tribute from former Jays pitcher Dan Pleasac for his friend Rheal Cormier, the former member of the Expos and Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer who passed away this week after a long battle with cancer.
Shapiro speaks!
We’ve already taken a look at a few of the things Mark Shapiro had to say during his appearance on the Fan 590’s Lead Off this week, and so here are the rest of the highlights.
• On depth…
We're still young, but I think the most exciting development — the most exciting observation I can give you, not assessment — is that the depth of young talent is just exciting. I'm enjoying watching the entire game. It's not ‘four-A’ players that are coming in late in games, it's Austin Martin, Orelvis Martinez, Hiraldo, Jimenez. There's guy after guy coming into the game that's a prospect for us that's exciting to see and watch. Certainly far from perfect, but really encouraged about the depth of talent and where we are as a team in general.
You heard it here first, folks, the end of spring training games is usually a waste of time!
• On Stripling, Pearson, and Merryweather…
Right now Ross is in the rotation, with Pearson going through some groin challenges. I think that kind of says his role, his role is either pitching out of the bullpen or giving us depth in the starting rotation — the same thing he did with the Dodgers is kind of his role with us. But he's going to get a chance, most likely, because it's hard to see Nate getting built up, although it's possible still because we're so early in camp.
And Merryweather, I mean, again, for Julian it's clear the stuff is there, the weapons are there, the ability to attack hitters is there, he's just got to stay healthy, and if he stays healthy he's going to be a good major league pitcher. I'll hold off on the role, and I'll let Ross and Charlie update that as we go, but our primary goal for him is just to remain healthy and he'll be dominant.
I will take the over on the amount of caution the Jays are going to use when it comes to Pearson this season.
• On where the team will play…
I've said all along, Dunedin is not a full-season fit for us. We look at it somewhere between what we've already announced, the first three homestands, to maybe the first two months of the season, possibly a little longer. But that's probably about it for the reasons you've mentioned.
The solution to our season, our home site, lies in some combination of Dunedin, Buffalo, and Toronto. And we're working feverishly on updating Buffalo again. What our business group did last year was absolutely incredible, but it was also very temporary, so we're looking at more permanent solutions in Buffalo, if we have to be there long-term. I guess the only other statement I’ll make is there should be no doubt of where we want to be and where we want to get back to with a sense of urgency. It's the name that's across our chest. We want to be in Toronto.
At this point I’d be shocked if the Jays didn’t play at least some portion of their season in Buffalo. Will they get back to Toronto this year? Obviously nobody knows, but it doesn’t feel impossible at this point, and that’s pretty hard to wrap my head around. Whenever it takes place, that first game back is going to be bonkers, but just imagine it taking place in the middle of a real pennant race!
• On expectations…
They have championship expectations. I would say our expectations are to build a sustainable championship team. So it's not to place too much emphasis on any one moment in time or any one season, but, again, I think that's what's most exciting, is that all signs point to that we are moving into an era of championship baseball, not a season of championship baseball.
That’s outstanding! I sure hope there’s nothing about the state of the game and baseball culture and this front office’s potential complicity in any sort of scandal that could spoil this mood…
• On how he addressed the Jays organization regarding the Mickey Callaway situation that has engulfed his former workplace in Cleveland…
My message is the same internally and externally, and that's that I tend to be someone who wants to be challenged to constantly reconsider and rethink what it means to be open minded, progressive, empathetic. Over the past year, Scotty, not just this instance, but everything we've gone through from, you know, Black Lives Matter, thinking about equality in an enhanced way has caused me to think more about the reasons I moved to Toronto and Canada, and wanting to build a team and a culture and an organization that reflects the culture of our country and our city. What I said is that, one, there's a zero tolerance policy, but two might be more important, we have to create a culture where people feel safe to bring forward any of those circumstances. So we want to build a place where that never happens. But based upon the history of society it's likely that isolated events will occur, and most importantly people need to feel safe bringing them forward that we're going to act quickly with no tolerance. So, putting into place protocols and opportunities for people to do it. But, more importantly, creating a culture where, no matter who they go to, they feel comfortable bringing it forward and that we aspire to collectively own and collectively take accountability for being in a truly open, compassionate, empathetic organization that's striving to be the best not just in baseball, in any arena. The second part of that is: I'm not good enough now as a leader, and we're not there as an organization. We need to get better and I need to get better.
Those look like the right sorts of words, at least.
Great article! One thing I'd like in Spring Training (but with Sportsnet surely won't get) is a version of their 'Jays in 30' show where they condense the previous days game into 30 min, but for a Spring Training game there would more focus on development and who's who and what's really important more than the game itself. Give it to someone like Ben Wagner for the 30 minutes, who's used to working with limited video and is also adept at getting into the nuts and bolts of what the Jays are doing, but still able to point out important plays he saw. (Of course, a full game would be better, but if they're going to pinch pennies...)