We have a trade: Jordan Groshans moved to Miami for better relief help that you may think!
The Jays have traded “top 100 prospect” Jordan Groshans to the Miami Marlins for Anthony Bass, a reliever they let go of in October 2020, and Canadian reliever Zach Pop. Interesting appetizer for what damn well better be bigger deals still to come.
Update: The deal is now official. To make room on the 40-man the Jays have designated Anthony Banda for assignment. Andrew Vasquez is also gone, having been claimed on outright waivers by the Phillies. There is also a PTBNL coming to the Jays in the deal.
So let’s talk about it…
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Look, I don’t want to be mean to Jordan Groshans. I hope he finds success in Miami. But the shine has really come off of his star over the last year.
The 12th overall pick in the 2018 draft out of high school in Magnolia, Texas, Groshans impressed the hell out of the industry in his first taste of pro ball that summer, slashing .331/.390/.500 over 37 games in the Gulf Coast League. That led to him very quickly becoming a top 100 prospect according to most sites, and as a 19-year-old in the Midwest League in 2019 he was even more impressive — when he was healthy.
Groshans hurt his foot after just 23 games with the Lansing Lugnuts that year, missing the rest of the season, but ending with a very impressive .337/.427/.482 slash line. He was the number 29 prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America heading into 2020.
Unfortunately, time missed because of the foot injury hurt his development. The time missed because of the pandemic hurt his development — though he did spend time at the Jays' alt-site in 2020, where my recollection is he was mentioned less often than fellow youngsters Alejandro Kirk, Gabriel Moreno, and Orelvis Martinez. And health, again, was an issue in 2021, where he managed just 75 games for New Hampshire — though he slashed an impressive .291/.367/.450.
By the time this season started he'd played in just 150 pro games over four seasons in the organization. That's far from ideal.
Even less ideal is what has happened here in 2022. Groshans is eligible for the upcoming Rule 5 draft, and it was going to be tough for the Blue Jays to justify giving him a 40-man spot given the way the bottom has dropped out on him as a hitter this year.
Groshans has just one home run and 10 extra base hits over 72 games. In Buffalo he's slashed just .250/.348/.296.
Even though his season has been rough, a former 12th overall pick who has made it to Triple-A and has hit well at every other level would have been a tempting guy for another organization to pluck in December. It's entirely possible that the power will still come, and that this could be a huge win for the Marlins. The Jays, I’m sure, understood that, but presumably felt there was a good chance they would lose him for nothing, so instead traded him for win-now help.
Or... well... Anthony Bass and Zach Pop.
Oh man, thank goodness for Pop’s passport, because this one would really befuddle the Leaf Brains out there otherwise. A top 100 prospect for ANTHONY BASS??!? Bass wasn’t awful when he pitched for the Jays in 2020, but he wasn’t anything special either. I admit, on the surface this seems like a weird one.
Dig a little, though, and you’ll see that Bass is quite a different pitcher today than he was back then.
He's increased his slider usage considerably since 2020. He's now more slider-sinker to right-handers than the other way around. And against lefties it's 57% sliders, up from 32%, with a mixture of sinkers, four-seamers and splitters making up the rest of his mix. He's also moved on the rubber from where the Jays had him.
What it's led to is the first season of his career where he's averaged above a strikeout per inning, very manageable walks, barely any home runs, a 1.41 ERA, 2.06 FIP, and 1.4 fWAR.
His Statcast rankings are, um, actually quite good too!
Pop has himself a pretty interesting arm, as well. He throws 97, pounding the zone with sinkers (just two walks in 20 innings this year), while using a slider to keep batters honest. He upped his sinker usage to 83% this year from 66% and lost some swing-and-miss as a result — his K/9 has dipped from 8.4 last year to 6.3 — but has been very effective, posting a 3.60 ERA and a 2.81 FIP.
And there may be even more in there than that.
Evidently Eno wouldn’t have hated this deal if it was just Pop for Groshans, so the fact that the Jays netted Bass as well? That seems pretty good actually, doesn’t it?
Are these the guys you imagine having the ball with the game on the line in the playoffs? No. But they absolutely help. Absolutely. And there’s more time left to keep adding.
Plus, these aren’t just rental solutions, either. Bass has a club option for 2023 at just $3 million ($1 million buyout), and Pop only came into this season with one year’s worth of service time, so at the earliest he won’t even be arbitration eligible until after next year. He’s got all his minor league options left, too, so the Jays could end up pushing that back.
Yeah, this works:
Also, you love to see it:
"It's pretty special to be able to go back home and see my family, and to play for the Blue Jays. I've got a lot of friends, a lot of people rooting for them right now. To be a part of what they're doing is pretty amazing," Pop said, not doing a very good job of hiding his smile. "They've got a great team over there and I'm lucky to be a part of it. They're doing some pretty special all around the field."
Don’t forget that Nick and I will be coming your way live at 6:30 PM ET on Callin for our post-deadline edition of Blue Jays Happy Hour!
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Ok. 6:21. Deadline passed and I'm shockingly underwhelmed. I expected more impact from Atpiro.
It’s exactly the deal you don’t have to make if Pearson and Merryweather become literally anything, but alas, here we are. Now go get Bryan Reynolds.