Stray Thoughts... - Juan Trollo

On Soto's troll job, Romano reactions, an Angel Yusei?, relievers, pitching prospects, bad posts, Bob Nightengale, the Rays and A's, Kevin Seitzer, Kevin Elster, Rico Carty, and a whole lot more!

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Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Juan Soto may not be sharing a clubhouse anytime soon, but the pair of off-field pals do seem to share a sense of humour.

Remember back in 2018, when Vlad—then a member of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and as hotly anticipated a prospect as we’d seen in years—posted an Instagram picture of himself at an airport geotagged as JFK in New York, just as the Blue Jays were on their way to Queens to play the Mets, implying that he was headed to the majors? He wasn’t, but the move set Blue Jays Twitter aflame for an afternoon, forcing reporters to chase statements from club officials, though not before a large scale effort of digital forensics unravelled the prank.

The timing of the joke really made it land. Vlad was 32 dominant games into his Double-A career, meaning that what would end up being a full year of questions about service time manipulation on the part of the Blue Jays had just begun. Only one day earlier, Joel Sherman of the New York Post used the Jays’ visit to put the issue in the national spotlight—and GM Ross Atkins on the defensive.

“We feel like there is a good opportunity in the minor leagues for him to become a better, more well-rounded player than in the major leagues,” Sherman quoted a typically ridiculous Atkins as saying.

All things considered, it was a deft bit of trolling on Vlad’s part. And now Soto has his own impeccably-timed “epic troll moment,” as one once might have put it.

Captioning an Instagram post here on Tuesday with “The announcement you’ve been waiting for 👀,” Soto shared a video of himself stepping out and sitting down in front of a sea of microphones.

“This has not been an easy decision, but after meeting with the team(s) it has become clear what I wanted to be.”

“That being said,” he then says, just before the video cuts to a shot of him putting on a hat. “Team Celsius,” he deadpans.

Who doesn’t love branding? I love branding. And what could possibly go wrong for Juan Soto LLC by partnering with a company that was sued for $82.6 million by Flo Rida and lost?

Ho ho ho, we have fun, don’t we?

Anyway, the Soto saga continues on, with the big news early this week being that—according to the Newark Star-Ledger’s Randy Miller (and since confirmed by MLB Network’s Jon Morosi)—he has received offers from five teams:

The Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, and Blue Jays.

One of these things is not like the others. But, though they’re clearly running with the big dogs in a way they probably don’t have any business doing here, if you want to give yourself hope, Jays fans, Morosi offers something resembling it.

“I am of the mind that the team that gets Soto will be the most desperate to get Soto,” he tells MLB Network. He adds, “We don't believe these are final offers.”

Say what you will about the state of the Blue Jays as they prepare to enter season 10 of the Shapiro-Atkins era—for example: “PUKE!!!!! OH MY GOD, PUKE!!!!!”—but they have every reason to be the most desperate of the serious suitors by miles.

The other teams will be fine if they miss out. The Jays might not be aiming for a top-tier free agent for a very long time if this winter goes sideways on them. As we’re all aware, that doesn’t need to mean Soto necessarily, but we’ve reached the point where desperation has got to be the name of the game for them.

Quite a sales pitch, huh?

Here are today’s stray thoughts…

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Et tu, Ross?

The Blue Jays’ decision not to tender a contract to veteran, homegrown, Markham-born closer Jordan Romano caused a bit of a stir over the weekend, but not necessarily with the people you’d have expected.

Now, obviously a group as large as the fan base for Canada’s lone Major League Baseball franchise is never going to react uniformly to anything. Hell, there were probably folks out there upset at José Bautista’s 2015 bat flip home run for killing what might have become an even bigger rally. But, if we're speaking more generally, I'd say my experience of the Romano reaction was in line with what I noticed others were saying.

Perhaps I’ve simply done a good job of muting the real wackos out there, or some of the more casual fans who might be more inclined to gravitate toward a Romano, I don’t know. But what I can say is that there was indeed a peculiar amount of negativity in some of the reporting on this move.

Some examples:

• Richard Griffin took the opportunity to bash “MLB’s shift towards determining roster decisions viewed largely through the unforgiving prism of analytics,” and to demean bean-counting and supposedly empathy-starved front office staffers who “have rarely ventured into a clubhouse, or have never looked into the eyes of the players whose future they hold in their hands” and therefore callously act more like fantasy league owners than people. He decries “this looming lack of big-league humanity.”

Ahh, yes. Which era do you think he sees as the halcyon days in which the business of baseball took a backseat to compassion and such a thing would definitely never happen? The union-busting 80’s and 90’s? Before Curt Flood had to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight the reserve clause? Pre-integration?

He also compares Romano’s situation to that of Chris Carpenter back in late 2002, when the future Cardinals ace was let go by Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi. Griff acknowledges that the comparison is imperfect, which is good, seeing as Carpenter was a 27-year-old starter who hoped to make the league minimum, not a soon-to-be 32-year-old reliever due to make more than the open market would surely pay. But, at least in one sense, considering one very key aspect of Carpenter’s departure that nobody ever seems to remember, it’s more apt than he gives himself credit for.

You see, at the time the Jays didn’t expect Carpenter to pitch until mid-2003, and the then-new regime reportedly offered the veteran of six seasons an incentive-laden minor league deal to stay with the organization. Accepting a minor league assignment would have prevented him from rehabbing on the big league injured list, and therefore from accruing a whole bunch service time. Such a scheme also would have given the club the opportunity to manipulate that service time, and likely would have resulted in pushing back Carpenter’s impending free agency. He called their bluff, invoked his right to refuse being outrighted off the 40-man, and elected free agency. Eventually, he was was offered a deal with St. Louis for $300,000, which would grow to $500,000 once he reached the majors. Also included was a $2 million option for 2004, with a $200,000 buyout—Walt Jocketty’s tasty reward for schooling J.P. Moneyball.

The way most seem to believe, what happened next was one of the great MLB heists of the last 25 years. Really, though, Carpenter only made eight minor league appearances in 2003, posting a 5.30 ERA. He didn’t make it back to the majors, and at the conclusion of the season had his option declined by the Cardinals, and was granted free agency—exactly as he would have been if the Jays had kept him on their 40-man in the first place. For a month in November and December of ‘03 he could have signed with anyone, but ultimately did another deal with St. Louis. And though Griff’s point is something about the empathy of the Cardinals organization therefore paying off for them, their call to send Carpenter into free agency, rather than exercise an above-market option on an injured pitcher, sounds pretty much exactly like what the Jays are doing here with Romano.

• The Star’s Mike Wilner said Romano being non-tendered “looks like it could be another of those too-clever moves, unless there’s a plan in place.” He emphasized that “no offer whatsoever was presented” to Romano, calling that a “bad look.” He also suggested that the right move for the club, “if they [were] concerned about Romano’s medicals and how long it’s going to take him to rehab from elbow surgery, was to make their closer an offer that reflects how much use they think they'll get out of him in 2025.”

But who’s to say that isn’t exactly what they did? Or if they were simply going to come in too low to bother—or that they already had arms in mind that they liked better for the price they’d be willing to go to with Romano?

I’m certainly sympathetic to the idea that this Jays front office often trips itself up trying to be too-clever-by-half, but in Griff’s piece he says that “early in the offseason, now home in Florida, the popular closer was expected to stage a throwing session to demonstrate any progress for the Jays, but it didn’t happen.” This is mentioned in some of the other reportage as well.

But why?

Wilner notes that Romano told him recently that “he feels like he has a brand-new elbow post-surgery.” So why not throw? Why, considering that it was originally thought that he might be able to return before the season ended, did that not happen by now?

Why, when a strong session could have made the Jays’ decision to pay you upwards of $8 million an easy one, give them reason to send you into free agency—and to what will likely be a substantially lesser payday?

We can’t know the answers to these questions for certain, but if the decision came from Romano’s camp, or from his doctors, it doesn’t project much confidence in the state of his arm. If it was coming from the Jays, it doesn’t say very much good about what they were seeing in his medicals.

And if that decision was coming from the Jays, how hard would it have been for Team Romano to film him throwing off a mound and lighting up the radar gun like nothing was wrong—or at least looking the part—in an Instagram story? You know, if he were capable of doing it.

Does it really have to be more complicated, nefarious, or bungled than that?¹

• There were multiple pieces that made the observation that the Jays’ bullpen “got even worse on Friday night” (Gregor Chisholm of the Star), or that the pitching staff “now looks dangerously thin” (Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet), or that Ross Atkins “has opened a gaping hole in a decimated bullpen” (Rob Longley of the Sun), all of which are far from egregious, but are nevertheless somewhat odd framings to me.

Is having $8 million tied up in a reliever with major question marks better than having that money free to spend on a couple of surer bets? Even in the volatile world of bullpen-building, I'm not sure how ditching an $8 million arm that may not be able to pitch, or pitch effectively, means the bullpen has had a hole blown in it, yet having that arm, plus all the questions that come with it, and less money to add healthier arms, means you’re better off.

• And yeah, that Sun piece was on another level in terms of heart-string pulling and rage-baiting in one particular direction. Romano wasn’t just non-tendered, he was “unceremoniously let go by the only team he has ever pitched for in the major leagues.” The “news was somewhat expected,” partly, we’re told, because “Romano is well aware of the way the Jays front office operates.” You mean exactly like 29 other front offices?

We're told of his local background and how “as a kid growing up in the GTA, Romano regularly attended games at the Rogers Centre dreaming of one day wearing the jersey.” We learn he was apparently loved by his teammates, a model professional, and that this move could “blow up in the face of management” if he has success elsewhere—“just as slugger Teoscar Hernández did with World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers” (leaving out the inconvenient fact that the Jays dealt away just one year of Teoscar, in which he produced just a 106 wRC+).

We’re told Romano had been “working in solitude for months,” but also that he’d “spent much of his off-season working out at the team’s player development complex in Dunedin.” We're given a seemingly omniscient glimpse into his mind with comments telling us that the move was “a gut punch that would have hit Romano hard,” that the news “couldn’t have been easy,” and that “in his heart, Romano felt he had earned the opportunity to prove himself.”

We're told “the Jays strung Romano along until the bitter end, before letting him know he’d no longer be part of the team's immediate future.” The bitter end, of course, being the very obvious and well-understood deadline that every team draws these decisions out until. A deadline that would have given the Jays a chance to deal Romano’s contract, had there been a market for him at that price. A deadline that would have given him as much time as possible to get on a mound and show the club they had nothing to worry about.

Now, it’s undeniable that this whole situation sucks. Potentially saying goodbye to a homegrown player who has been an outstanding closer playing for his hometown club is not something any fan is ever going to want. But, as much as I think it’s important to be pro-player and to recognize that MLB’s economic system is exploitative—Romano has been in the organization for over a decade and, had the Jays tendered him, would have still been a full year from ever getting a chance to choose his own employer—and as much as I can’t deny that it feels like Romano deserved better than this, fans also shouldn’t want their team to let emotions override what their medical staff is telling them about a player’s health and ability to contribute.

Either way, I get that this is a story. People are going to talk about it, and people are going to write about it. It’s understandable to be disappointed in the outcome, and fair to have a take. But the one-sided nature of some of what I’m reading here smacks to me of spin from a camp frustrated that this situation—perhaps even their own actions—didn’t lead to a better outcome for their pocketbooks. Presumably all that sweet Mary Brown’s money doesn’t flow to some rehabbing middle reliever in Atlanta the same way it would to a GTA kid who is the Capital-C Closer for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Obviously I can’t say for sure that’s what any of that is. Some of it could be simple flag-waving or front-office bashing. Maybe Romano is just a good quote who made life on the beat easier, or someone in his orbit is a good source. Maybe it’s purely genuine. There are plenty of ways to end up with a particular slant, especially when it’s one you’d expect frustrated fans will eagerly eat up. Perhaps I don’t need to overcomplicate things here myself. Going negative on Popular Closer Allowed to Walk for Nothing is a clear layup.

It’s just… it feels like a story of wrongdoing by the front office is being woven here, when the actual story to me is that the Jays obviously have major concerns about the health of Romano’s arm, and the industry seems to agree, at least at his projected salary. It appears like a gamble—don’t say these guys are risk averse!—and it likely speaks to the uncomfortably tight finances available to the Jays outside of their “unicorn budget.” But it’s a gamble based on information we can’t know, and that the vast majority of us would be hopelessly unqualified to assess even if we had it. That sucks, but it’s also… fine? Not much you can do. And a team handing a good chunk of their bullpen budget to a guy they don’t actually believe in anymore would be a bad story.

Yu-say what?!!?

Sadly, the Blue Jays will not reunite with former starter Yusei Kikuchi this winter, as the left-hander has signed the first major free agent contract of the winter, inking a three-year, $63 million deal with the Los Angeles Angels.

First off, get that bag, Yusei. Thank you for Wagner, Bloss, Loperfido, Lisa Loeb, being an easy guy to cheer for, for putting the haters in their place over the last two seasons, the idea of sleeping 14 hours ever night, being a Whisky Guy, the dinner with Shohei that never happened, and that hilarious moment in Oakland.

That all said, uh… the Angels, huh?

I mean, the move at least suggests that there are indeed some quite good players out there who will take anybody’s money, which I suppose is good news for the Jays in this market. And though I don’t see how a slew of mid-tier moves are going to help an Angels club that just lost 99 games claw their way back to relevance, even if there’s a reasonable chance Mike Trout beats his average of games played over the last four seasons (66.5) next year, I do like it when teams actually try.

Or do… whatever this is.

With the expanded playoff field, some big error bars, and much of the league having taken Jerry DiPoto’s 54% idea to heart, why on earth not? And if the ‘25 Angels can steal some wins from some of the actual Wild Card contenders in AL West, even better.

Quickly…

• Back to Griff for a sec, because he’s always been a better sport than I’ve deserved, and he’s just announced that he’s bringing back the Griff Bag! Be sure to give him a follow and send him a Q. Perhaps you’ll even get two answers eventually…

• Heyman has some fresh horse race bullshit regarding Soto and (mostly) the Red Sox. Money shot: “Such an expenditure from the Red Sox would be stunning for a franchise that traded away Mookie Betts rather than signing him long term.”

• Sean McAdam of Mass Live reports that “one person with knowledge of the process indicated there was a ‘very good’ chance that Soto selects his next team even before the industry assembles Dec. 8 in Dallas for the start of the winter meetings.”

I have a hard time believing that Scott Boras would be able to bring himself to pass on the opportunity for spectacle that doing it at the Winter Meetings would bring, but I am nevertheless eager for this to not drag into January if what McAdam is hearing—and others have suggested—really is the case.

• Let’s go back to the bullpen, where Thomas Hall of Blue Jays Nation looks at the retooling Cardinals, their closer Ryan Helsley (who has just one year left before free agency and projects to make $6.9 million through arbitration), and how the Jays might line up well to once again pluck a relief arm from St. Louis.

• Meanwhile, as a prelude to all the work that’s ahead of the front office, Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling surveys the current, not-great state of the Blue Jays’ bullpen.

• I liked this piece from Marc Normandin, who writes about how the stupid, dumb A’s may actually want to spend a little bit of money this winter, but are going to be hard pressed to get talent to agree to play in a minor league park in Sacramento for the foreseeable future. Whoopsie!

• The Rays are going to play in a minor league park for a while as well. This year that’s because of hurricane damage to Tropicana Field—in the coming years, however, it will have to do with their own brand of garbage ownership. DRays Bay has a good timeline of how their stadium situation ended up in the state it’s in. (Look on the bright side in all this, though: those eventual Jays road trips to Nashville are going to be a whole lot of fun.)

• The Jays at least have big league facilities to offer, though—as USA Today's Bob Nightengale suggests—they'll probably “have no choice but to overpay free agents,” simply because of the situation they're in with Bo and Vlad (and their bullpen, and their offence, and the AL East). “They will have to make easily the highest offer if they’re successful in landing in Burnes or Fried, along with outfielder Anthony Santander, whom they badly covet,” he adds.

Kinda depends on how heavily involved the A’s are, doesn’t it Bob?

But, yeah, that’s usually how it works. The fact that they “badly covet” those guys is interesting though.

• Be a hero, Edward. I know it's completely not in your nature, but at least give it a try!

• Thomas Nestico of TJStats does a great job providing analytically-minded work, particularly on the pitching side of things, and has just released his first ever list of the top 50 pitching prospects in baseball. Three Blue Jays farmhands make the list, though they're not exactly at or near the top.

• LMAOooooooooo

• Double LMAO

• While I have your ear about bad content for a second here, please, during this trying time of year it’s very important that you remember to respect yourself enough not to read articles that don't know the difference between an insider speculating about a potential fit and an actual rumour.

• Feel free to avoid content with a title that tries really hard to make you think it contains some kind of a super juicy detail you won’t find elsewhere, while you’re at it. (It’s insane that I can write something like that and not feel like I’m picking on anyone specific because so many are doing it.)

• Here’s something you won’t find anywhere else though: I noticed when scrolling MLB Trade Rumors earlier that the Mariners have hired Kevin Seitzer as their new hitting coach. This reminded me that I often get Kevin Seitzer and Kevin Elster confused, which in turn reminded me that I once heard a guy mention Kevin Elster while I was biking past him in Trinity Bellwoods in the middle of the night, and that I then wrote a blog post about it. (You can find the full text of that post from early October, 2007, salty language included, by clicking on the footnote here.² For some context as to just how long ago that was: the most recent Blue Jays game at the time had been started by A.J. Burnett. Curtis Thigpen and Ray Olmedo each had a double.)

• Lastly, RIP to Rico Carty. The era of the “Beeg Mon” was before my time, though not by nearly as much as I’d care to admit, but for a certain cohort of Jays fans he was an absolute star. Back during the pandemic, while I was at the Athletic, I wrote about his history—both before and after signing an ill-fated “lifetime contract” with the Jays, who released him in the spring of 1980, after he’d completed just one year of a five-year, $1.1 million deal that also included a post-retirement job with the front office. You know, just in case anybody’s getting nostalgic about the good old days when teams actually respected players.

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1. For what it’s worth, in Griff’s piece he writes that “Romano underwent surgery in early July, for what was diagnosed as an elbow impingement, but was actually more seriously corrected with a hybrid elbow procedure (internal brace/Tommy John) in early July.”

Now, I’ve not seen that suggestion made anywhere else, so perhaps it’s simply a mix-up (Alek Manoah had the hybrid surgery around the same time). Just a sentence later he writes that the post-surgery prognosis was six weeks, which doesn’t line up with the timeline for that kind of a procedure. Though I will note that Romano was operated on by Dr. Keith Meister, who is a pioneering surgeon when it comes to these hybrid surgeries, and that Alek Manoah announced on Twitter mid-summer that his brace had been removed after six weeks.

Could the damage to Romano’s elbow been worse than we’ve heard? I certainly couldn’t say that based on any of this, but obviously the Jays’ own actions here—one of the most concrete things about the whole thing—suggest it’s not good.

2

I have no fucking idea what context it was in, but I shit you not, I was just riding my bike through Trinity Bellwoods and as I passed a couple on a park bench the one little snippet of conversation I heard was this:

"Being the brother of Kevin Elster is... hell."

What the fucking fuck? Even if it is true, why even bring it up? Was this asshole trying to impress his ladyfriend with both his sensitivity to sibling rivalries and his knowledge of mediocre early 90s baseball players? Because that hardly ever works. But I swear to fucking God this is what I heard.

And, I mean, of course being the brother of Kevin Elster is hell. Look at him! He's got the world by the tits right there: no frills hair cut, perfect lip for a diddler stache, knows how to wear a hat. What more could you ask for really? And how could his brother-- who I assure you is most certainly not a Topps Future Star-- measure up?

Fact is, he can't.

Of course, I don't know if it was Kevin Elster's brother there in the park, if there's another Kevin Elster, if it was actually Kevin Elster referring to himself in the third person (crossing my fingers for that one!) or if Kevin Elster even has a brother. But for fucking real, that's what I heard.

I mean, OK... I'm drunk, and I'm often thinking about baseball, and... yes, I was riding past on a bike... but I am one-hundred per cent deadly fucking serious about this.

Kevin Elster.