Stray Thoughts... - Year of Roki?

On Sasaki's Choice, another potential "podium finish," Jeff Hoffman, leaky agents, Manoah, Santander, Rooker, Ohtani, Burnes, Brock, ZiPS, and more!

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A Monday afternoon that began with predictably unfunny bemusement at reports that a second team—the Atlanta Braves—had backed out of a deal with Jeff Hoffman due to medical reasons before the Jays signed their new closer on Friday evening ended with Ross Atkins and company looking like they’re running about as shrewd an operation as it’s seemed for maybe two years. Or at least since getting a haul from the Astros in exchange for 10 Yusei Kikuchi starts last summer.

Roki Sasaki, the flame-throwing, ready-made ace who is choosing to come to North America at an age that forces him into a deal restricted by MLB’s international bonus pools—meaning that he will cost his next team a mere fraction of what he’d actually be worth on the open market—reportedly began informing teams who didn’t make the grade that he would not be signing with them. Giants were told this. The Mets and the Yankees were told this. The Cubs and Rangers were told this.

The Blue Jays were not one of the teams who were told this.

I know there’s no deal to report, and probably never will be, so my statement about shrewdness above is maybe a touch hyperbolic. But the Blue Jays can feel a hell of a lot of validation from the fact that they’re being taken this seriously by dollar-for-dollar the most impactful free agent to come along since Shohei Ohtani in 2018. Despite Vlad being unsigned, despite their roster shortcomings, despite their issues with development, they’ve managed give themselves a real chance here with a guy who wouldn’t be in this position if he cared about raking in every last dollar. This is about something else.

In other words, clearly these Jays are very good at selling themselves, and have been very good at learning how best to do so when it comes to premier free agents. It hasn’t worked for them yet, but I think equally clearly it shows that they are not out here being gormlessly duped into giving bad faith agents better leverage to get the deals they want from the teams their clients actually want to play for all the time.

Stuff like that is easy to say if you’re Springer and your other suitor, the Mets, declined to top the Jays’ offer, but that Sasaki has made the Jays a finalist for his services, when it feels like they really have no business being here whatsoever, is genuinely telling. They are giving players a whole lot to think about, and it would be nice if half the fan base would sometimes simply let them cook rather than behaving like unbelievable losers about the whole operation every single minute of their lives.

Now, obviously validation doesn’t win ballgames any more than finishing second on a bunch of top free agents does. I’m not suggesting that anybody should be pleased that we’re here again, or about the potential for another near-miss. Frankly, I absolutely hate this for what I’d imagine are very obvious reasons. There is no need for anyone to know that these are the final three teams, or that there are just three teams left under consideration. The teams out of the running could have waited until Sasaki had made his final decision before they were notified. There is no “podium.”

Still, right now there are only three teams with a chance to sign Sasaki, and you’d rather be one of them than not.

Plus, though the deal that lands him isn’t going to be in Juan Soto’s stratosphere, surely there is a financial component to this that could work in the Jays’ favour.

The scale is vastly different, because Ohtani is a marketing force of nature, but many of the same reasons the Jays’ pursuit of him last winter was about a business relationship as much as it was a baseball one could apply here. A pact with Sasaki means endorsement opportunities for him across a national market here in Canada that’s as big—though probably not as lucrative—as the one that can be offered by L.A., and not nearly as crowded with other Japanese stars. And with the potential for a broadcast rights deal to show Jays games in Japan, at minimum, Rogers has incentive to make their best possible business case to him.

Whether that matters at all, whether Sasaki wants to play with other stars from his homeland or forge a path and a legacy for himself somewhere else, we’ll just have to wait and see. He’ll have to make his decision before his posting window ends on January 23rd, and the expectation seems to be that he’ll take most, if not all, of that time.

So… sorry to those understandably desperate to shield themselves from the pain of another potential miss, or the insufferable discourse that will follow it, but this is sports. The game may be happening out of view but the prize is in front of us and stakes couldn’t be clearer. Maybe the most exciting and important week the Blue Jays will have in 2025 is nearly upon us whether we like it or not. And, in a way, isn’t this what we’re all here for? Sort of? No time to get squeamish.

Still, I wish I didn’t know any of this!

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Hoffmania

“Hey, did you hear that Jays signed a pitcher who had two teams back out of a deal with him because they didn’t like what they saw in his medicals? That they actually signed a guy and still managed to somehow finish third?”

Yes, I think I did hear that, but I was too busy buzzing about how they’ve just added one of the best relievers in baseball on a three-year, $33 million deal.

You will not have to go far to find coverage of this move that instantly turned negative the moment Robert Murray reported that the Orioles had backed out of a $40 million deal with Hoffman due to concerns about his right shoulder, or that got even worse when Mark Bowman let it be known that the Braves had also backed out of a deal with him. The armchair risk assessment experts? You’d better believe they logged on.

The Blue Jays are too risk-averse, you see. But also risk is terrifying and I hate it when I even whiff the hint of it in my baseball transactions!

Anyway, here’s the thing. Or… here’s three things:

1) Bowman later added that Atlanta’s deal would have been a five-year pact that saw Hoffman move into the rotation this season, so of course they’d have been more cautious given the length of the deal and the fact that Hoffman hasn’t topped even 100 innings in a season since 2019.

2) Though it hasn’t been as much the case in recent years, the Orioles have long had a reputation for being tough with their physicals. Yovani Gallardo, Ángel Pagán, Nick Markakis, Grant Balfour, Tyler Colvin, and Jair Jurrjens are all examples of players who have had deals with the O’s fall apart because of failed physicals. We’re going back a ways, yes. But perhaps worth noting that the same medical provider, MedStar Health, has been working with them since 2016.

3) The Jays’ doctors signed off on the deal!

On that third point, though I’d prefer not to lean on an appeal to authority here, I think that’s the sensible position when we’re talking about medical stuff! Especially with the context of my other two points—which, of course, you’re not going to get from people who would rather shit on Ross Atkins for clout than learn about the industry they’re ostensibly covering.

Of course, none of this is to say that there is no risk here, or that the Jays’ doctors can’t be wrong. We all remember what happened with Kirby Yates. But these things can happen to any pitcher at any time. As was the case with the Jordan Romano decision earlier this winter—and I’d looooove to see a Venn diagram of the fans who were just as certain the Jays were wrong to have concerns there as they are that they’re wrong to be OK with this—I don’t want Ross Atkins playing doctor.

I mean, I’d imagine a top MLB executive has to, to an extent. But if your medical staff is telling you the level of risk is acceptable, it shouldn’t matter what other teams thought was acceptable or not for them.

The Jays have mitigated some risk via incentives in the deal, which could take it up to $39 million, and now they’ve had a very reasonable contract with a top five reliever by fWAR over the last two years combined fall entirely into their laps. It shouldn’t need to be said, but this is very good.

Quickly…

• Sticking with Hoffman but moving away from the risky business, Nick Ashbourne’s latest for Sportsnet looks at the differences (and similarities) between the Jays’ new closer and their old one. His conclusion aligns with the Jays’ one, which is that this is a clear upgrade for a number of reasons—not least of which being the fact that Hoffman had better numbers over the last two years and will now be moving from a hitter-friendly ballpark with a terrible outfield defence behind him to a much more favourable environment.

• Speaking of Nick, ICYMI, we talked about Hoffman—and Sasaki, though not the news that the Jays were a finalist—in our most recent episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour. Give it a listen.

• Hey, and also ICYMI, don’t forget that I’m still taking submissions for my upcoming mail bag, which should be dropping some point this week. Hit me up with your Q’s here. (Paid subscribers only, of course.)

• Circling back to Sasaki, TSN’s Scott Mitchell has been on top of the Jays’ interest for a while now, and offers a potentially crucial nugget in the form of Frank Hermann’s Wikipedia page.

Hermann was an Ivy League pitcher for Harvard who signed as an undrafted free agent with Cleveland back in 2006, when Mark Shapiro was GM and Ross Atkins was director of player development. He worked his way all the way up to the big leagues, ultimately appearing in 109 games over parts of four seasons. His career eventually took him to Japan, where after three year with Rakuten he joined the Chiba Lotte Marines for the 2020 and 2021. Perhaps it's worth noting that in his first season there he was teammates with Jay Jackson, who would go on to have a productive year with the Jays in 2023. More notable, however, is that in his second season he was teammates with then-rookie Roki Sasaki.

In early 2022 he joined the Jays’ front office, “working across multiple departments, including scouting, player development, and baseball operations.” 🤔

• I couldn’t find a way to add this to either of the sections above but wanted to squeeze in that, good lord, if you’re one of the folks who think the Jays are the ones who’ve been leaking stories about their failures as some kind of “understand that we really did try” posturing, please give your head a shake so hard the lice fly off. Teams do do things like that sometimes, but I really don’t think engineering fortnightly repeats of the worst moment in the club’s recent history is the strategy here.

Not exactly the same thing, but I thought some of the mystery around some of this stuff—and how leaks actually work, in general—was well described by the Star’s Gregor Chisholm in a recent mail bag:

I’ve wondered why a U.S. media source usually gets the scoop for trades and signings involving Canadian teams. Why don’t Canadian teams give the scoop to their media followers? In fact, the Jays are owned by media company Rogers. Is there an obvious reason I am missing?

—Carl D., Toronto

Most of the scoops you read about these days are coming from agents. There are a handful of well-connected national reporters in the States who have cultivated relationships with the big agencies and they tend to be the first ones tipped off. Some of those same reporters — the less credible ones — essentially pay for that access by writing in advance about interest in those players to prop up their market. The Jays, like a lot of teams, are obsessed with limiting the leaks, which means they rarely provide scoops, even to journalists who share the same employer.

• My old pal Justin Bourne had a great piece for Sportsnet late last week that looked at how relationships between NHLers have evolved over the years, noting in it that “most players know at least a dozen-plus guys on every team they play” because of a variety of factors including technology and the tendency to “pool in about a dozen pockets around the world to train with one another” each offseason. The same thing happens in baseball, too. Which is why we ought to be careful not to get too excited when we see something like this. (They should still sign him though.)

• I wish Brent Rooker hadn’t signed an extension with the A’s and had instead been traded to Toronto, but he remains an excellent follow on the bad website…

• Truly, truly unnecessary stuff, Ken.

• This one doesn’t feel great, either.

• The tidbit above came from a recent one by Mitchell, who also reports that Jays relief prospect T.J. Brock has had Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire 2025 season. Woof.

• This year’s Blue Jays ZiPS projections are out, and while things aren’t nearly as bad as a ton of fans have convinced themselves—especially because they came before the Hoffman signing—boy, that graphic could sure use Sasaki… and Santander… and Pete Alonso… and, I dunno, José Quintana. (That creep can roll.)

• Lastly, Baseball Prospectus released its annual list of the top 101 prospects in baseball here on Tuesday. There are no Blue Jays on it. And… yeah…

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