The Jays have signed Kevin Kiermaier???
What if 2022 Raimel Tapia had an elite glove but was also hurt all the time and coming off of hip surgery? The Jays may have an answer for you.
The Blue Jays wanted to land a centre fielder who hits from the left side this winter, and you can’t say that they haven’t done that. They’ve just done it in what might be the least exciting way possible — and, depending on how long one wants to hold a grudge about the silly lineup card thing, maybe even worse than that!
Kevin Kiermaier, the oft-injured, soon-to-be-33-year-old, all-world defensive centre fielder has left the Tampa Bay Rays and will now ply his trade in Toronto’s outfield. Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi had it first.
There’s a lot to unpack about this deal, and what it signals for the rest of the Blue Jays’ offseason — which is certainly far from finished yet. So let’s talk about it…
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Let’s just say off the top here that Kevin Kiermaier likely still has a pretty valuable skillset. I say “likely” because he hasn’t been on the field since before the All-Star break in July, as his season ended prematurely due to a torn labrum in his hip, which required surgery. Back in early August, MLB.com’s Adam Berry reported that the timeline for him to return was six or seven months, meaning that he’s not fully fit just yet — though nobody seems to believe that the physical he’ll need to take before his contract with the Jays is made official will pose any kind of problem — but should be in time for spring training.
The hip issue seemed mostly to be about pain tolerance, not one that was hampering his performance, as his sprint speed continued to grade out as elite. So, unless the surgery has done something that causes him to lose a step, the Jays just added an outfielder who is about as good as it gets, defensively.
In a vacuum, that’s a very nice guy to have on your roster. What will make or break the Jays’ Kiermaier experience, however, is how they make use of him.
The thing is, Kiermaier doesn’t hit. He slashed .228/.281/.369 (90 wRC+) for the Rays over 63 games last season, which is perfectly in line with what he's done over his last 1,617 plate appearances dating back to the start of 2018: .232/.296/.382 (87 wRC+). He doesn't have much of a platoon split to speak of, either. There's some variance from year to year, but again going back to the start of 2018, his wRC+ is 88 against right-handed pitchers, and 85 against lefties. He's also gone from a guy who was above average at avoiding strikeouts (18.3% strikeout rate over 1,313 PA from 2014 to 2018) to being below average, producing a 26.2% rate since 2020, and 27.6% in his half a year of work in 2022. He's still very good on the bases, but he used to be a threat to steal and among the best of the best when it came to BsR. He also gets hurt a lot — possibly not a great indicator of where his skill are headed.
They say that there’s no such thing as a bad one-year contract — which I can only assume is the length of the deal we’re talking about here, though that has yet to be reported at the time of this writing — but there’s a pretty important caveat to that which doesn’t get added to the phrase nearly enough.
The 2022 Blue Jays gave 433 plate appearances to Raimel Tapia, who used them to slash a downright Kiermaier-esque .265/.292/.380 (90 wRC+) while playing shambolic defence (10th percentile outfield jump, 12th percentile for Outs Above Average, -4 by DRS).
Overall, that makes Keirmaier a pretty big improvement on Tapia as the club's fourth outfielder. But leaping over the lowest bar imaginable shouldn’t exactly be the goal here. I’d trade a little of that defence for a bat I don’t actually mind seeing handed 400-plus plate appearances.
As the glove-first fifth outfielder who takes over defensively late, is barely asked to hit, and functions as a tidy bit of insurance? Giddy up. But as a guy who’ll presumably get genuine playing time, I think the offensive standard should be higher here. And I fear that part of the reason Kiermaier took the Jays' offer over some of the others he had on the table was probably the opportunity to play a reasonable amount. You don’t outbid the Dodgers in December for a guy who’s going to be your fifth outfielder.
The Dodgers are obviously a very smart team, and their interest should make apprehensive Jays fans feel at least a little bit better. The fact that Kiermaier will get to spend spring in the Tampa area, where he already lives, may have been as significant a factor as the playing time, too. So perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself in worrying about how often we're going to see that bat in the lineup. But right now that wouldn’t be my guess. And while the Jays were able to get away with having Kevin Pillar's glove anchor their outfield defence on great teams in 2015 and 2016, that was because they could hide his bat in what was thoroughly a beast of a lineup. Here in 2022 they've kind of already started to pivot away from being that team, trading Teoscar Hernández last month to the Seattle Mariners for a reliever.
And so far they haven’t pivoted back in the form of marquee outfield options like Brandon Nimmo, Bryan Reynolds, Cody Bellinger, or any of the Arizona or St. Louis outfielders either. Nimmo and Bellinger are off the table now anyway. Are the others? It’s harder to justify trading a catcher for one of those guys when you have yet to address your rotation and the outfield already has Springer, Gurriel, Kiermaier, and a host of lesser names theoretically in the mix.
Some of the the names we’re now hearing as possible further additions to help the outfield aren’t quite as inspiring as the one the Mets just gave $162 million over eight years to, or the former MVP.
Two more guys coming off surgeries don’t exactly get the blood pumping.
It could work, once it all comes together. There are no sure things in this sport, good or bad. And especially not in free agency. But there are surer things than others, and surer places than where the Jays’ roster appears to be headed at this very moment. And while it’s a mistake to be judging an incomplete picture, the paths are narrowing, the available plate appearances to offer are shrinking, and adding one of Brantley or Conforto plus a starting pitcher acquired from their catching surplus is likely not going to be enough to make fans feel like the last three of Vlad and Bo’s arbitration years are being done right by.
All that said, there is a fuller picture of what Kiermaier brings than I think I’ve given here. One thing that could make this a better bet than it looks is the elimination of the shift. Kiermaier was shifted on in 35% of his plate appearances in 2022, according to Baseball Savant’s definition, and in those at-bats his wOBA shrunk from .325 to .218. There could be more there with the new rule changes.
There could be more to his running game too. New rule changes will see slightly shorter paths between bases next year, and penalties for pitchers who make more than two pick-off attempts in an at-bat.
There’s also the fact that the Blue Jays are making extensive renovations to the outfield at Rogers Centre, which will change the dimensions of the outfield fence, potentially creating some tricky plays and weird hops that will make having an elite centre field defender an even bigger advantage than it is normally.
Speaking of the ballpark, he’s slashed a remarkable .287/.343/.490 at Rogers Centre over 173 career plate appearances. And he actually has produced a higher OPS than that at both Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, too. Not betting on that being his “true” baseline, but a fun fact nonetheless.
There’s also intangible stuff to like about him — provided you haven’t actually convinced yourself that he’s history’s greatest monster for having picked up a piece of trash Alejandro Kirk should have done a better job of securing in the first place.
Forgive me for a second while I roll my eyes and think of J.P. Ricciardi signing David Eckstein, but this stuff isn’t nothing. Nor is this — especially given the way some of Kiermaier’s now-former teammates treated the team’s Pride Night this summer.
I don’t think fans are going to have a difficult time cheering for him once they get used to how incredibly weird this all is. But it’s tough to get excited to go from watching Teoscar everyday to watching Kiermaier and, like, Whit Merrifield.
At least entertain me if you’re going to be bad! And if your aim is to give enough playing time to entice a 33-year-old centre fielder who has played in just 63% of his teams games since 2016, and produced a sub-.300 on-base since 2018, you kinda might be!
I mean, one player alone isn’t going to upend what the Jays are doing here, and the “run prevention” has certainly been helped — I have to believe Kevin Gausman is happy! — but I guess I just figure that if you’re going to hand someone a bunch of chances to hit, it should probably be to a guy who will actually be able to do something more with those. Yeah, he raises the floor, but this is the offseason! There are trades out there to be made. There were free agents that fit your needs.
And faced with the entirety of MLB’s trade and free agent markets and a need for a left-handed centre fielder, the Blue Jays came up with Kevin Kiermaier???
I see how he fits with what they’re trying to do. I understand that I’m probably not appreciating his glove enough. I know that there will be deals to come that will move the needle more. I’m not the type that wants to be sold the sizzle and not the steak. Wins are the most important thing here, even if getting to them may not always be as sexy as we like — those eyes, though! But I also just don’t really think “Tapia with a glove” is good enough. Especially after a week of watching teams the Blue Jays are supposed to be just as fun as loading up on talent.
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I’m withholding judgement because obviously there will be more, and bigger, additions to come (right???), but yeah man, right now I gotta say this is pretty underwhelming.
Then again, maybe come spring training he is the 5th OF and we’ll look back at this and have a good chuckle.
If he replaces Zimmer/Bradley Jr and makes a bunch of starts as well, this is fine. Maybe the team really wants to improve the defence. Can’t help thinking they soured on Hernandez for some reason. I still can’t fathom trading a batter with his pedigree so early in the off-season. Did they want Swanson that badly?