Stray Thoughts... - Hague Leaves, Olney Speaks

On Matt Hague, Juan Soto, Juan Soto's next contract, the Jays chances for Juan Soto, Roki Sasaki, fallback options, extending Vlad, good news from the farm, Yusei Kikuchi, rumours, rumblings, & more!

Matt Hague - Image via @BuffaloBisons

Matt Hague, we hardly knew ye. But we did develop parasocial relationships with ye!

It turns out that the Blue Jays’ coaching shakeup on the hitting side was not quite as complete as it seemed when the club announced the shuttling of Don Mattingly back into the bench coach role and the hiring of David Popkins as the replacement for Guillermo Martinez last month. Here on Wednesday, TSN’s Scott Mitchell was first to report that assistant hitting coach Matt Hauge has left the club to become the lead hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

It’s a nice promotion for a guy who seemed to be well-liked by everyone who interacted with him, from the players and media on down, and a somewhat understandable departure given the Jays’ desire to change the voices in the room, and their decision not to promote him when their own hitting coach position was vacant. I wish him the best of luck.

Normally, that would be that. There usually isn’t a whole lot else to say about the departure of an assistant hitting coach—someone whose role, let alone his contribution to whatever success his team had the plate, is basically unknowable. Hague, however, needs just a little more ink here, and that’s because among a certain subset of Jays fans he’s been the subject of a level of Backup Quarterback Syndrome rarely experienced this side of Frank Reich. You can see it quite clearly in the replies to Mitchell’s tweet, or in the Jays Journal post about his departure—“Blue Jays lose wildly popular coach to the Pittsburgh Pirates”—that verges on hagiography.¹ (Or, should I say, Hague-iography.)

An assistant hitting coach!

I don’t really want to pick on anyone specific here, and I don’t think we really need to get into the weeds of all this, as it may only be interesting to me. But it’s been amusing to watch people convince themselves that Don Mattingly broke all the Jays’ hitters when he came aboard to be the bench coach—a job that didn’t even involve him in the offence—in 2023, while elevating Hague in their minds as The Only Guy Who Knows What He’s Doing, and becoming really, really serious about it.

Like, really annoying. But also amusing.

I can’t say I’ll miss it.

Anyway, enough of my petty personal grievances, it’s time for today’s Stray Thoughts…

---

⚾ A year’s paid subscription to the BATFLIP costs less than 18¢ per day, and gives you access to all my paywalled videos, lets you submit questions when I do mail bags and post comments on articles, and allows me to keep my written work free for all to read. It’s the only way I make a living, so please consider upgrading if you haven’t already. ⚾

---

Olney Speaks!

ESPN’s Buster Olney made an appearance on TSN Radio’s First Up with Aaron Korolnek and Carlo Colaiacovo here on Wednesday, and since they touched on all the big Jays-related topics of the day, I think it’s a great jumping-off point for all kinds of stuff.

Here’s what he said…

Will Soto leave New York, and are we falling into the same trap again?

Don't do it. I mean, don't be Charlie Brown with the football, OK. Now, a couple things. First off, I had a fascinating conversation with an executive in baseball who was at the general manager meetings next week, and he—before I even got a chance to ask him about specific teams—he goes, ‘Well, I can tell you this, there's one team that absolutely reeks of desperation, and that's the Blue Jays.’ He said, ‘They are gonna do some big stuff.’ And he went on to talk about—which totally took me by surprise... and I know the Blue Jays obviously want to get better after what was an incredibly disappointing year—but he sort of ran through it, and a couple have agents have said that the signal they've gotten from the Jays is, ‘Well, we might not necessarily have a lot of money.’ And this executive blasted that and said, ‘No, that's a smoke[screen],² they are going to do some stuff. They are definitely going to go out and make some moves.’ He goes, ‘I don't know exactly what they're going to do, but they are going to go and do some stuff.’

Alright, a few things here. First of all, yes we all followed the rumours, but Jays fans tried incredibly hard last winter to avoid actually believing that the Shohei thing was going to happen. I reject the premise of the Lucy holding the football analogy, because it wasn’t until two members of the BBWAA said that the deal was done/he was on the plane that anybody started to think that it genuinely might be happening. Olney’s far from the… er… only person to depict it this way, but it wasn’t a silly, delusional, worked-up Jays fans thing, it was an abject failure by your colleagues to do their fucking jobs thing. Let’s be clear about that.

Secondly, I absolutely buy the bit about the Jays reeking of desperation. I’m less sure about the doing big stuff bit—but certainly not because I think they don’t want to. Ross Atkins may publicly say things like “you could make the case that we have 10 wins within our roster right now to close (the gap)” followed by 45 seconds of consultant-speak word salad and donkey noises, but there’s no earthly way that he isn’t thinking to himself “but obviously we need a hell of a lot more than that” followed by 45 seconds of consultant-speak word salad and donkey noises.

The thing is, we’ve heard this kind of stuff about the Jays aiming high before. I’d wager it wouldn’t take very long to find examples from any of the previous four or five winters. So… it’s better than not hearing it, but you can have all the want in the world and still end up with KK, IKF, and Justin Turner.

That said, I think a lot of pessimistic Jays fans would do well to remember that other times you end up with Kevin Gausman, Yimi García, Yusei Kikuchi, and Matt Chapman, while also signing a major extension with José Berríos.

Moving on…

Now, specifically about Juan Soto. You know. It feels like the places where Scott Boras likes to leak things...

*COUGH* Heyman *COUGH*

...every day there’s a new team involved with Juan Soto, and to some degree it feels silly, because he's got the Mets, he's got the Yankees, he's got the two big dogs. He's got the richest owner in baseball in Steve Cohen, who desperately wants to pry him away from the Yankees. He really doesn't need more than that. I do think that Juan Soto, who's a really smart guy—this is someone who learned English in two years well enough to do interviews in a second language when he was 19 years old. He is a really smart guy. He's playing this great. He's talking about, ‘Hey, I’ll talk to all 30 teams.’ So if the Blue Jays call, he'll take the meeting. If the Red Sox call, he'll take the meeting. If the three of us put together an offer to have him play on our Wiffle ball team, he'll take the meeting. OK? Juan Soto will play that. But I will tell you, I haven't talked to anybody who really believes that he's going to sign with any team other than Yankees or the Mets.

I do think if you're working in a front office, whether it's the Red Sox or the Blue Jays, or the Phillies or the Dodgers, you've got to do the meeting, because the one thing you don't want to do is go to spring training, and you know, an idiot like me is going to say, ‘Hey, did you guys call on Juan Soto?’ and your answer is ‘No, we didn't make the call.’ I mean, why not make the call? Why not have a meeting? But, I agree with Carlo, what you're saying: don't get sucked into it the way that it feels like a lot of people got sucked into Ohtani last winter.

Hell, even just taking the meeting to impress Boras, who might take some of your selling points back to his many other valuable clients, would probably be worth it.

But anyway... yeah... let’s go Mets, I guess.

What do you expect Soto's contract to look like?

So it's going to be 14 or 15 years, OK? And the team that signs him to the deal is going to use that structure to sort of spread out money over the course of the deal. I think that it's going to be for around $45 million a year. So something in the range of $650 million—and this is not, speaking of smoke and mirror show, the Ohtani contract that was reported at $700 million, it really isn’t. Because there's so much deferred the actual present-day value is $461. Soto's is going to be worth over $600 million, without deferred money in the same way. It's going to be a monster contract. Because he's a great hitter, an all-time great player who hits the free agent market at age 27. That just doesn't happen very often. Alex Rodriguez back in 2000.

So, he's going to get a monster contract, and I'm going to give you guys one sliver of something to dream on: Among players I've spoken with—because, let's face it, through the years the Blue Jays have had trouble getting players to sign in Toronto, right? Well, Juan Soto has enough perspective where he would be one of the few players that I've talked to, elite free agents, to say, ‘You know what? I love Toronto. I love multicultural cities. I love a place where it feels like—it's a great experience to have, there's a lot of great stuff going on in the city.’ Like, for Juan Soto, I don't think it's only about money. Do I think that he's going to wind up taking the biggest money? Absolutely. But I'd say this: Juan Soto's going to be a lot more open-minded than a lot of players would.

Ohtani a bargain: confirmed.

As for Soto... I mean... sure? OK. I'll take that. And hey, maybe he really hates America or something. Couldn’t blame him, and that could really work out for us!

On fallback options…

I absolutely would expect that they're going to be in the mix for Santander. The one thing I would say is that if the Yankees lose out on Soto that means the Yankees are going after Santander. They need power in their outfield. They're going to need some. And he's clearly—Santander is clearly the number two free agent option in the outfield. So, if you're hoping for Santander, not believing the hype on Soto going to the Jays, so then you probably should be wishing for the Yankees to get Soto back, so that they're not competing for Santander. Because I do think the Yankees will pivot really hard if, in fact, Soto winds up taking a huge, monster deal from the Mets. And that's what I think is going to happen.

I assure you, Buster, that I am in no way wishing for the Yankees to get Soto back. Furthermore, going on Toronto radio and calling Santander the best free agent option to add power to the outfield is awfully bold. Soto to the Mets, Santander to the Yankees, and Teoscar to the Jays works perfectly fine for me, thanks. Simple as.

Now, about Alex Bregman, the Astros' owner Jim Crane has made it clear to all the players who've been free agents, whether it's George Springer, Carlos Correa—‘Look, I'm not going more than six years.’ Alex Bregman wants more than six years. He wants a $300 million contract. I don't think he's going to get it. But I think between the Phillies, maybe the Yankees, maybe the Jays—some other team... the Red Sox?—some other team, I think, is going to be aggressive. So it's going to be a hard sell to land him. But he, to me, is one of the domino guys who follows Soto. The Soto decision has to come down first. And, oh, by the way, Bregman, like Soto, is represented by Scott Boras.

Bregman's a great player and I'm not going to act like it wouldn't be a coup if the Jays ultimately signed him, but you can kinda miss me with another long-term deal for an over-30 Astros player whose best seasons just so happened to come right before Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic really blew the lid off the sign stealing scandal in November 2019. 

Now, Bregman has been very good since then, averaging 4.67 WAR over his last three seasons, but this isn't the guy who put up a 7.9 in 2018 and an 8.3 in 2019. Coincidence or not, handing upwards of $300 million to a guy who walked just 7% of the time in 2024, down from 13% the two years previous, and enters free agency coming off a 118 wRC+ season is not something I'm eager for the Blue Jays to do. Especially if that might have some kind of impact on what they do with Vlad.

Like, I'd absolutely take him and be happy about it. But there are other paths I sure do like better.

On Roki Sasaki...

So, everybody in baseball—it feels like the question is every day, ‘Have you heard anything about Sasaki? Do you know when he's going to be posted by the team? Do you know when that bidding process is going to start?’ And if you guys have followed this, one of the interesting things is that when he initially comes over here is that he has to sign a minor league contract. So this is not going to be a case, because of the timing of his departure—and I'm not going to get into the weeds on why this is—the timing of his departure is that, like Ohtani, when Ohtani came over here, he isn't in line to make a big free agent splash the way that Yamamoto was last year. Any team in baseball can afford Sasaki in a way that not every team could afford Yamamoto last winter.

However [laughs], if you were to give truth serum to 30 teams, all 30 believe that he's going to go to the Dodgers. He has a family connection to Guggenheim, and Guggenheim is the group that owns the Dodgers. And I don't know if there is a conspiracy here, but I can tell you this: there are 30 teams that believe in conspiracy theories right now about Roki Sasaki, and they believe that he's going to wind up with the Dodgers.

I did have one official with another team say yesterday, he said, ‘Nope, I don't necessarily believe it with this kid. I think he's going to be open-minded going through the process.’ You know, we'll see. The Dodgers, right now, are definitely considered to be the destination ground for a lot of players coming over here.

*…immediately Googles “guggenheim sasaki”…*

Well, that’s a new one. Nothing—and I mean nothing—came up about this, even though I tried several different searches looking for something that might suggest anything remotely like what Olney is saying here, and posed the question on both my Twitter and Bluesky feeds. This could be a skill issue on my part, of course. Curiously, though, I tried using Chat GPT to see if it could find an answer (I know, I know), and after giving me nothing useful in response to “What is Roki Sasaki’s connection with Guggenheim Baseball Management?” I asked it, “Is there a connection between a family member of his and Guggenheim?”

Here’s what it spit out at me:

Aha! Or so I thought. But then, not being a total and utter rube, I asked it for a source, at which point it completely walked this all back and insisted that not only was Sasaki’s father not working for Guggenheim, but that he isn’t a scout, and that it’s unknown what he actually does for a living.

How or why any of that text was generated in the first place, then, is a mystery.

Infernal machines!

On Vlad…

And one more thing I want to tell you guys about the Blue Jays. To me—and I mentioned the executive saying they reek of desperation: Go sign Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Get that in the books. Because I do think that getting him locked down would present a measure of good faith with their fans, much in the same way that last winter the Kansas City Royals did Bobby Whitt Jr. It meant a lot to the fan base, and I think it would mean a lot the Blue Jays fan base if they locked down Vladdy Jr. Spend the money. Rather than throw money around to other places and wind up getting backed into a corner because you feel like you don't have enough to spend on Vladdy Jr. Get Vladdy Jr. done first, I think should be the priority.

Hear, hear.

---

---

Quickly…

• The Jays’ farm system has been rightly maligned in recent years, and while a lot of the focus of fans’ ire has been on their inability to develop pitching, it’s fair to say that they haven’t done a great job on the hitting side either. So that’s why the newest MLB Farm System Statcast Hitting Rankings from Baseball America makes for some pretty good news.

You may recall these from last year, when the Jays graded out extremely Jays-ily. They were in the top 10 for contact rate and chase rate, but were second-last in 90th percentile exit velocity, which led them to rank 18th by BA’s age-adjusted all-encompassing metric. This year, however, they're up to sixth overall—buoyed by several trade deadline additions that grade out quite well (surprisingly led by R.J. Schreck, who came over from Seattle in the Justin Turner trade)—while jumping to 11th for exit velocity, and landing in the top 10 in all the other categories measured as well.

Hope? Question mark?

• Great catch from the great @matttomic, who spots a post from Yusei Kikuchi, reflecting on his time in Toronto—and not entirely in such a great way.

The Google translated text via Matt:

He struggled in his first year and was even demoted to relief pitcher.

On the days when he pitched, the entire stadium would boo him nonstop. And every day, he was subjected to jeers from passionate fans around his house, which was a five-minute walk from the stadium.

As I watched my wife pushing the stroller, being careful of her surroundings so as not to be recognized by her fans, I felt a tightness in my heart thinking, "I'm causing her so much pain..."

However, in the second and third years, I gradually gained the trust of the team and the fans, and the team planned a ceremonial first pitch for my son and created a "Bobblehead Day." (In MLB, the presence or absence of a Bobblehead Day is one of the elements that indicates the team's expectations.)

I love the bobblehead thing so much. The first bit, on the other hand...

And... look, I'm not going to pretend that my problems with fans who get ridiculously, incoherently angry about the team has anything to do with player safety, fears that it may boil over in nasty ways like this, or anything that doesn't simply boil down to my own personal dislike for that stuff. But I'm not wrong that it does suck. Chill out!

Also: BRING HIM HOME!

• Back to Buster for a second, as his latest looks at potential destinations for White Sox flamethrower Garrett Crochet, who sources at the GM Meetings last week told him they fully expect will be dealt this winter. The Jays aren't listed among the potential destinations, and you'd figure that they probably don't have the prospect capital to make a deal like that anyway. But I did find Olney's description of what Chicago will be looking for somewhat interesting.

Getz wants a package of prospects constructed around at least one high-ceiling youngster to anchor the deal. Chicago's preference is for that main piece to be a position player, but sources say that depending on the depth and quality of the prospects offered, it would consider taking a pitcher as the centerpiece.

Do you think they’d be interested in one of those if he was coming off a PED suspension?

• Sticking with the White Sox for some reason, Francys Romero tweets that the Jays are among the teams that have been monitoring free agent Yoán Moncada, who recently had his $25 million club option for 2025. Still only just 29, Moncada only managed to appear in 12 games this season, suffering from a strained adductor in April that kept him out until September. His last full season, 2021, as him post a 120 wRC+, albeit only with 14 homers. And he's been fairly pedestrian since. But hey, the Jays are in on everybody!

• Pete Alonso is also a free agent that the Jays might eventually look to, should they whiff elsewhere. There are certainly some red flags there, though. Mike Axisa of CBS Sports takes a look at those, and gives four reasons why the slugger may not get the contract he’s hoping for.

• Jon Heyman was on (?) B/R Walk-Off today—assuming that’s the name of the show, or maybe it’s the app? I honestly don’t know because I’m old enough to have been ignoring Bleacher Report since it was a content farm. Anyway…—and he had some things to say about the Jays and Juan Soto.

Some very, very typical things to say at this point. To wit:

Do the Jays have a real shot? Look, any of these teams, I think, has a real shot. Do they have a great shot? Ahh, you know, I don't want to say that. As I said in the New York Post, the Jays are a threat to beat out the Mets—the favoured Mets—and Yankees. So, if I'm saying that two other teams are favoured, you know that the Jays' chances, at least in my mind, are no more than 33%, probably less than that.

I do think they are going to make a big run at him, I'm not sure what they're saying up there in Canada, but I have heard they are playing big, trying hard. They did this with Ohtani, didn't work out. Obviously there are some complications in Canada, with the tax, with the Canadian dollar, with the team, even. I mean, I think they had a good team on paper, they didn't perform great, obviously we know Guerrero and Bichette only have a year to go.

He’s not wrong that it feels like it would be considerably harder to sell players on Toronto as a destination without Vlad signed to a long-term extension though. Eh, Ross??? *COUGHHHHHHHHHHH*

• And, lastly, the Jays made it official today that Marc Tramuta has been promoted and will now take over Shane Farrell’s old post as the club’s amateur scouting director. I wrote a little about him—and plenty of other things—in Tuesday’s edition of Stray Thoughts…

---

Twitter ⚾ Facebook⚾ Bluesky ⚾ Podcast ⚾ YouTube

⚾ Want to support without going through Substack? You could always send cash to stoeten@gmail.com on Paypal or via Interac e-Transfer. I assure you I won’t say no. ⚾

1. “Hague worked with wonders with some of the young guns on the Blue Jays, it's scary to think about how good he can make this Pirates offense with some of the studs on their roster.”

2. I swear to god, after multiple times listening to it, I’m pretty sure he actually said “that’s a smoke… shit.”