Today in Alek Manoah/Today in MLBTR
On Alek Manoah, Max Castillo, Drew Hutchison, Luis Castillo, Gabriel Moreno, Daniel Bard, Chris Martin, Joe Musgrove, and more!
The Jays got two scares on the pitching front on Friday night. So let’s talk about it!
Today in Alek Manoah…
The first of the two scares that the Blue Jays and their fans got on Friday was when a 92.7 mph comebacker off the bat of Jonathan Schoop caught Alek Manoah on the elbow, forcing him from the game — and to an X-ray machine.
Fortunately, the X-rays came back negative. Manoah downplayed the incident after the game, saying he hopes to make his next start, and suggesting to reporters that he wanted to keep pitching until trainer Jose Ministral asked him, “Are you crazy?”
“Someone has to be the smart one,” Manoah quipped about his conversation with Ministral.
On Saturday, manager John Schneider told reporters that Manoah is feeling even better a day later, and that he feels the club has “dodged a bullet.”
However, hopefully just out of an abundance of caution, the Jays announced on Saturday morning that they had optioned reliever Max Castillo to Triple-A, bringing up Trent Thornton to take his place. Castillo threw an inning on Friday night, so ostensibly the club is simply bringing in a fresh arm. But it’s certainly noticeable that Castillo is currently the Jays’ top spot-starting option, and that this will allow him to line up with Manoah’s next start, should the big fella not be able to answer the bell. (Monday’s off day means they can shuffle a bit if they have to as well.)
That being the case, Castillo wouldn’t have been useable in relief these next few days anyway, so they’ve switched him out for someone who can. (To recall Castillo early would mean sending someone to the injured list, but they can sort that out if the need actually arises. If it wasn’t already, I think the recent Yusei Kikuchi business has made it abundantly clear that phantom IL stints are very much a thing.)
Anyway! The Jays inexplicably lost to the Tigers on Friday, Manoah’s performance was slightly disconcerting, and though we already knew that the Jays’ starting pitching depth was thin, this was a very real reminder of just how fragile this whole enterprise is.
Which isn’t unique to the Blue Jays, of course. Any team losing an All-Star pitcher would be in a heap of trouble. Some certainly have more depth than others — and the Jays right now are firmly in the “others” category at the moment.
So, too, are the Tigers, who aren’t playing for anything anyway at this point, as evidenced by the fact that they’re sending old friend Drew Hutchison to the hill at Rogers Centre here on Saturday afternoon.
Hutchison has started for the Tigers in his last six appearances, and actually fared decently at first, before hitting bumps in the road in his last couple of outings. We can see that rather clearly in the game-by-game earned runs chart below from Props.cash — player prop research made easy!
Is he ripe for a Blue Jays feast after their tough night on Friday? Maybe. But maybe not! He’s had success here before, as you know…
It was six years ago Monday that Hutchison left the Blue Jays organization, in a deal that brought back Francisco Liriano in a trade that felt somewhat bewildering at the time, but turned out to be quite a home run.
In the deal the Jays moved Hutchison in order to take on Liriano, and the $18 million owed to him for the remainder of 2016 and 2017, plus then-prospects Reese McGuire and Harold Ramírez. As I recall it, what irked Jays fans was the apparent commitment to add Liriano, who at the time was sporting a 5.46 ERA and walking 5.5 batters per nine innings, to the rotation for 2017. McGuire and Ramírez were interesting prospects, and both of whom have had some success as big leaguers — particularly Ramírez, though it took him stops in several other organizations to get there.
Liriano, of course, dramatically turned his season around at that point, pitching his ass off down the stretch and helping the Jays get to the ALCS for a second straight season. Fans were correct to worry about that 2017 commitment, as he struggled for much of that year, but he ended up being flipped to Houston that summer for future All-Star Teoscar Hernández.
Which future All-Stars will be on the move in the next few days? Some may have new homes already…
I mentioned two scares on the pitching front for the Blue Jays on Friday night, and the second had to have been sticker shock when it emerged what the Seattle Mariners had given up to land Reds starter Luis Castillo.
OK, maybe the front office, who have been involved in all kinds of trade talks over the last several weeks, weren’t especially shocked. But you know what I mean.
Here are some thoughts on all that, followed by Today in MLBTR…
The Mariners land Castillo
Flags fly forever, and even if it may come with some trepidation, I’m sure it’s a good day to be a Mariners fan. In fact, I know it’s a good day, as this is the seven-year anniversary of the Blue Jays’ trade for David Price. No Jays fan, save for Mark Shapiro, would ever want to take that deal back.
Sure, there’s the benefit of a lot of hindsight in that one. The Jays became unstoppable after that trade, and the prospects they gave up barely amounted to anything. But even if it had blown up in Alex Anthopoulos’s face — which it easily could have — I think there would still have been a very good case to be made for the deal, simply because it meant something. I know baseball executives aren’t paid to “mean things,” but it did.
It also completely changed the tenor of the clubhouse, as was plainly evident to anyone watching. The players that year had earned an upgraded roster, and part of the reason I think they were so rewarded was because of the friction created at the 2014 deadline, when the Jays all but stood pat. There’s an analogue to these Mariners in there, too. Just last year the team upset its clubhouse by trading closer Kendall Graveman to their rivals in Houston, despite still being in playoff contention at the time.
That’s the kind of stuff that I think is going to compel Ross Atkins to make a really significant deal here in the next couple of days. To do so would put clubhouse harmony at risk — not to mention be complete dereliction of duty in terms of trying to win a championship.
To do so, however, is going to take some pain. Going to the Reds for 1.5 years of Castillo are prospects Noelvi Marte, Edwin Arroyo, Levi Stoudt, and Andrew Moore.
To put this in Blue Jays terms, MLB Pipeline currently has Gabriel Moreno as the number five prospect in the game, Marte and number 18, and Orelvis Martinez at number 36. They have Ricky Tiedemann at 62, Jordan Groshans at 63, and Arroyo at 93.
Other sites have different views, of course, but more importantly, so do front offices. Tiedemann's jumped significantly on Pipeline's list, for example, but my sense is that there's a lag when it comes to these things and recent performance. Orelvis may be young for his level, but outside of his power he's had a fairly unimpressive season, both offensively and defensively. I certainly wouldn't take his being ranked ahead of Tiedemann as being anything close to gospel at this point. In fact, while I'm sure the Jays do like him very much — it was an aggressive promotion, as was the fact that they brought him to the alt site in Rochester in 2020, we all saw how impressive he looked in the spring, and assistant hitting coach and minor league hitting coordinator Hunter Mense had some very positive things to say about the work they're doing with him regarding swing decisions in a recent FanGraphs piece — I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if they were much more inclined to hold onto Tiedemann at the moment.
Based on Groshans' performance this year — just one home run from 290 PA — I have a hard time believing he'd be as highly rated by the industry as he is here for Pipeline, too. And I know far less about the Mariners prospects making their way to southern Ohio. All of which is to say: we actually probably shouldn't look at any of these rankings as gospel. Things can change in a hurry for guys this young.
Nevertheless, the simplistic way to look at this deal is to say that a package headlined by Orelvis or Tiedemann, with one more of those top 100-ish guys (or perhaps a guy like Nick Frasso, with real helium) would have been too little, and that the Jays probably figured one headlined by Moreno would have been too much.
Seems fair. And also seems like a whole lot! There has been a lot of fantasizing about Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani these last couple of weeks, and with good reason, but oh man, those are going to be monster deals if/when they happen.
Even the third and fourth pieces the Mariners gave up are intriguing guys.
This sets the market really high. Add in the difficulty of finding the prospects to fit what the team you’re dealing with is looking for — i.e. the thing I’ve mentioned before about the Nationals maybe not being as interested in Moreno because they already have Keibert Ruiz — and the sheer number of buyers lurking out there and there’s a real needle Atkins is going to have to try to thread here. Fortunately for the win-now aspirations of the Jays and their fans, like Jerry Dipoto, his counterpart in Seattle, I don’t think he has much choice but to swing big. I guess we’ll see in the coming days. Should be fascinating…
Today in MLBTR…
• The thing about the Jays right now is that, while starting pitching is needed, finding a top-of-the-market starter is more of a luxury. It doesn’t exactly surprise me that this would be the case:
• The area where upgrades for the Jays are an absolute must is very obviously in the bullpen. Unfortunately, a couple relievers of note have already come off the board. One is Rockies closer Daniel Bard, who it was announced here on Saturday has signed a two-year extension with the club. Failing to trade a 37-year-old reliever with real rental value is extremely a Rockies thing to do, and does nothing to help the trade market. I must say, though, rebuilding is mostly a scam, and if a player likes where he is and the team and the fans like having him around, more power to them. Ken Giles was one of the best things about watching those awful 2019 Blue Jays. I get it.
• Another reliever to come off the board is Chris Martin, who has been acquired by the Dodgers. Not a name that has been front of mind when talking about reliever acquisitions, the fact that the Dodgers have nabbed him suggests that Martin would have been a sneaky-good pickup. Though his ERA is 4.31 and he’s been a bit too homer-prone (though hardly Richards-esque), he’s struck out 40 in 31 1/3 innings while walking only four. Seems good!
• I’ll have to use an image here because, like half of the internet, I’m blocked by Jeff Blair, but this is intriguing…
• Seems odd to me, especially since it doesn’t really appear as though the Jays view it that way. But what it might indicate is that teams really and truly believe in the bat. That makes sense to me, I suppose. But if you can have an All-Star at catcher, even with the attrition rate among those types of prospects, that’s incredibly valuable. This isn’t just a hitter who can catch type of guy, he’s legit back there. (H/t to @_bkuh_ for the catch.)
• Another old friend alert, as Joe Musgrove of the Padres is reportedly going to receive a contract extension in the realm of five years and $100 million. People sure were mad at Anthopoulos when the Jays traded him to Houston in that first J.A. Happ trade. And then to make Kevin Comer the PTBNL!!?!?!
Nice to see that those folks were on to something, though. It took him a while, but Musgrove — who is still somehow only 29 years old — has been one of the best pitchers in the sport the last few years.
• Lastly, don’t forget that Nick and I will be coming at you live following the final out of the Jays-Tigers series on Sunday with a fresh Blue Jays Happy Hour! We’ll be doing it again after the Jays’ opener with the Rays on Tuesday — deadline day!
Be sure to follow us on Callin so you can listen in, drop us a question in the chat, or give us a call!
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Speaking of elbows, unfortunately I'm thinking that Springer may be looking at some extended time off. The Front Office might need to get an outfielder as well. Is Derek Fisher still available?
re the Nationals and Moreno
I see what you’re saying about maybe not matching up on a trade in baseball timeline terms, but by the same token the Nats should keep Soto for his remaining arb years to play with Ruiz. The reason I keep reading for why they’re considering a trade is to enhance the value of the club for a future buyer who may not want to be forced to wear the decision of trading Soto. So non-baseball considerations may also make a Moreno trade possible.
Put another way, if part of the motivation to trade away Soto is to clear the decks for the future owner of the club, then wouldn’t the value of the club also be enhanced by a lot of “prospect capital” at a premium position regardless of how neatly it aligns with a competitive timeline? Not to pre-judge their new owner as some ghoul who’ll look at prospects like fungible game pieces but, well 🤷♂️