Tapia and Zimmer exit as four are added to the 40-man at the Rule 5 protection deadline
On Tuesday's Rule 5 additions, DFAs, snubs, dumb Teoscar Hernández for Chris Flexen chatter, Ryan Yarbrough, Nate Pearson, pitching prospect surgeries from months ago, and more!
Rule 5 Decision Day didn’t exactly provide the transactional fireworks that fans may have wanted — or that it had the potential to! But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a number of interesting moves, or things to talk about, to come out of Tuesday’s activity, as the project of reshaping the Blue Jays’ roster for 2023 continues to take its first steps.
So let’s talk about it!
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Rule 5 Decision Day
On a day that’s generally more about guys on the fringes of rosters, the Jays said goodbye to a player who came to the plate 433 times for them in 2022, and another who spent the majority of the season with them in the big leagues as well. Outfielders Raimel Tapia and Bradley Zimmer were both designated for assignment by the club, while RHP Foster Griffin was given his release (and will soon sign on with a team in Japan, per the club). Added were the four prospects everybody expected to be added, no more, no less: INF Addision Barger, 1B Spencer Horwitz, INF Orelvis Martinez, and RHP Yosver Zulueta.
Some thoughts:
• That Raimel Tapia has ended up off the roster is not exactly surprising. He was fun at times, had some streaks, came up with some big hits, was decent on the base paths, displayed solid bat-to-ball skills, and made some progress toward putting the ball in the air a little bit more, but it wasn't enough, as he produced just a 90 wRC+ and was poor defensively. The biggest knock against him, however, was his salary going forward. According to Roster Resource, he'd have been projected to make $5.2 million if the Jays had kept him, and while that's not a huge amount in MLB terms, it's more than teams are going to be willing to pay for a guy who has been worth just 1.3 WAR over 567 games in his career. Tapia was a non-tender candidate, the Jays have just made that decision a few days early.
Frankly, given his escalating salary and less-than-productive skillset, he's been a potential non-tender candidate pretty much since the day he arrived. And yet, it's hard not to look at his acquisiton as a win, believe it or not.
Last spring the Jays sent Randal Grichuk to the Rockies for Tapia and prospect Adrian Pinto, while also agreeing to send two instalments of about $5 million to Colorado. Tapia's 2022 salary plus the first instalment equaled just about what the Jays would have paid Grichuk anyway. Now Tapia is off the books. The Jays only have to pay about half of what they once owed Grichuk. They got a year of a lefty outfielder that, while flawed, fit their roster better than Grichuk did. And they added a prospect they liked to boot.
Not bad.
• Bradley Zimmer's presence on the Jays' roster was, of course, a topic of debate for much of the season — pretty much right up until the poitn where he lost his job to an all-but-washed Jackie Bradley Jr. late in the season. Zimmer isn't as bad a hitter as the one the Jays saw this year, and not as out of place as many thought on a big league roster in a world with limits on the number of relievers a team can carry. But the $1.3 million projected as his salary through arbitration could be much better used elsewhere, and the fact that he's been let go is probably less surprising than the fact that he was even still here.
• None of the players added to the roster were exactly surprising.
Spencer Horwitz may have been the one most on the bubble, as he’s more of a first baseman who can play in left field than the other way around, which means he’s really going to have to produce with the bat. But while his power numbers in Buffalo look pretty pedestrian, and helped lower his wRC+ to just 101 over 44 games there this summer, he was great in Double-A, slashing .297/.413/.517 with a walk rate above 15% and K-rate below 20%. Not only might a team have taken him, as a lefty with some pop, he might be a guy the Jays can use sooner than later.
Addison Barger, another left-handed hitter, was a no-brainer to add, after he rocketed up the organizational ladder this season, getting better at each level, and ending on a eight-game blast of .355/.444/.677 at Triple-A. Orelvis Martinez, despite a tough season (at a ridiculously young age for his level, it must be noted), remains one of the better prospects in the game. And Yosver Zulueta likely would have been added to the 40-man this summer, and used in a relief role in the majors, had he not experienced shoulder soreness down the stretch. He remains an incredibly intriguing arm, who the Blue Jays seem to believe will be able to continue as a starter.
• The most notable players the Jays have left unprotected are reliever Adrian Hernandez, whose unimpressive fastball seems to give the Jays pause about his potential big league future, despite an outstanding changeup and great minor league strikeout numbers, and young outfielder Gabriel Martinez, who is coming off a breakout age-19 season that started in the complex league, but saw him get to High-A Vancouver for 28 games where he slashed .324/.381/.490 over 113 plate appearances. It's definitely a gamble to leave Martinez exposed like this, because he really looks like he could be something, but he's ridiculously green, and any team taking him would be doing a real disservice to him by sticking him in the majors at this stage.
That doesn't mean a team wouldn’t do it — look at the Jays and the just-released Elvis Luciano, whose early days I touched on in my last post — but the Jays are probably right on this one.
At the very least, it should give us some measure of comfort to learn that it’s mostly pitchers who end up getting taken selected in the Rule 5 anyway. Young pitchers can get by on pure stuff sometimes. It’s much tougher for young hitters.
• Sadly, there were no other Jays transactions to report as of Tuesday evening. The wait continues.
Today in MLBTR (Morosi Loves Billing The Radio station)…
Teoscar Hernández didn't have his strongest season in 2022. His wRC+ only dipped from 132 to 129, but his unadjusted numbers took a hit, with his OPS sinking from .870 to .807 — though the issue was more pronounced in the first half (.788) than the second (.828) — and his strikeout rate rose back into problem territory (28.4%) a year after looking like he'd finally taken a step forward on that front (24.4%).
Add in a career-worst season on the base paths and his worst year in right field by Outs Above Average and his fWAR dropped from 4.3 to 2.4, even though he only played 12 fewer games than he had in 2021.
And yet that WAR total still looks awfully hefty, and those numbers awfully productive, when compared to, say, Mariners starter Chris Flexen.
Flexen didn't make the M's roster in either playoff round last month. His 3.73 ERA looks more impressive on its own than next to his FIP (4.49), xERA (4.62), and xFIP (5.04). He walked 51 batters in 137 2/3 innings, struck out only 95, saw his average fastball velocity dip by one mph down to 91.8, and made only 22 starts on the year because he was jettisoned to the bullpen after the acquisition of Luis Castillo.
Why on earth would anybody in their right mind be talking about these two players in the same breath? Well, "right mind" may not be apt. But as for the why, allow me to refer you back to the subheading above.
Now, obviously the tweet here isn’t saying that a trade has happened, or that a trade has even been discussed by the relevant parties. But, as this is the internet, and as Morosi is a big name in the rumour game, obviously the idea has managed to worm its way into the discourse.
There are reasons for that beyond just Morosi saying it, too! Seattle is relatively deep with big league calibre pitching, the Jays could use another back-end-of-the-rotation/swingman type arm, and the sense among many — including those who are certainly better connected than I — that a Teoscar trade is very much on the table this winter.
Teo for Flexen is a “possible” trade in the sense that trading any player for any other player is “possible” — “Discussed possible Otto López for Max Scherzer trade…” — but if it were to go beyond that, without more being exchanged, it would be straight up bonkos. Maybe the additional pieces that would need to be added are what was actually discussed in the segment, but that’s not how it’s framed. And I don’t think Twitter’s character limits are an excuse for perhaps inelegantly using shorthand like “possible” when you’re out here typing out things like “Article XX(B) free agent” in full. It’s hard not to conclude from this, and the longstanding pattern of tweets like it, that the deception and the pot-stirring are kind of the point.
And the weirdest thing is that Lourdes Gurriel Jr. — a player in the same contractual situation, who is much closer in value to a guy like Flexen — is right there.
Welcome to November, I guess.
Quickly…
• Before we move on from the Teo-Flexen thing, Scott’s comment about “zero extension talks” is somewhat interesting, isn’t it? I’m not sure it’s fully accurate, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported a little over a year ago that the Jays had tried and failed to extend him in 2020. But if that’s the last time the two sides engaged meaningfully on the subject, I think “no extension talks” is a fair way to put it — if Passan’s report is even accurate. Plus, it was reported earlier this year that the Jays were talking about a Teoscar trade with the Marlins prior to the lockout last fall. So, while I certainly don’t want to see him go, and would be aghast if it were for a package as light as Flexen, a Teo trade is well within the realm of possibility for sure.
• Looks like we’ve got one more for the “Today in MLBTR” file:
The beautiful thing about saying something is “expected” to happen is that you can never be wrong! Also you get to go on the radio and talk about it.
• I’m not sure how much longer Twitter is going to last with the bag of wet hair plugs currently at the helm, but I can report that it’s still able to dazzle and delight.
• The Rays faced quite a roster crunch heading into this deadline, and one notable casualty of it was noted Jays killer Ryan Yarbrough. He’s been designated for assignment — hopefully to land somewhere other than the AL East. Of course, Jays fans can be forgiven for thinking it would be a great idea for Ross Atkins to try to scoop him up. Thing is, against anybody except the Jays, he simply hasn't been very impressive. Yarbrough is homer prone, he doesn't strike guys out, his average fastball velocity is below 87 and his ERAs the last two years have been 5.11 and 4.50 respectively. Pass.
• Well these are certainly odd bits of news to be finding out several months later:
I’m completely in agreement with Tammy on this. Like… why?
• And now for some actually good news on the pitching injury front — regarding a player that you don’t usually associate words like that with!
Let’s gooo!
• USA Today’s Bob Nightengale had a nice piece this week on the end of Dan Shulman’s time calling baseball for ESPN. That this year’s World Series would be his last for the Worldwide Leader because he’s going to be calling Jays playoff games going forward isn’t breaking news — Andrew Marchand of the New York Post broke the story last month, at which time I offered my take on it (hint: I’m for it!) — but it’s a nice piece regardless.
• Lastly, sticking with media stuff, I was disappointed to learn this week that the Athletic’s Spin Rate podcast is no more. Partly, of course, that’s because it’s sorta personal for me. Spin Rate is what became of Birds All Day, which is what became of the Drunk Jays Fans podcast, so I spent like 15 years — give or take a couple of shitcannings — working on and building what was essentially that thing. But mostly it’s because Drew and Kaitlyn are friends — and Ricky is awesome, though I’ve only interacted with him online — and incredibly talented. It was a great show — always fun and insightful — and it’s a bad thing for Jays fans and fans of Shohei Ohtani alike that it’s no more. So it goes.
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