Wednesday rumours and things: Liriano's return, Semien signs, rumblings of additional moves, and, uh, Yadi Molina?
Happy Wednesday, everybody, but especially to Francisco Liriano. The Jays have got a lukewarm serving from the ol’ MLB hot stove for us here today, but with hints that something spicy may yet still be coming.
Before we get to that, first let me direct your attention to the post below this one — a call to submit questions for this week’s mail bag. I foolishly posted that yesterday afternoon, a day earlier than I normally would, when it seemed like the Jays weren’t going to give us much to talk about. Ho ho ho, how wrong I clearly was!
But regardless of circumstance, the mail bag is indeed now open! Hit me up with your Q’s. Though keep in mind that, as always, it’s only open for paid subscribers. (Hint, hint.)
Hey, and while we’re here, let’s do one more bit of tedious housekeeping and let me remind you that this here site has its very own page on Facebook. I post everything I write over on there, so check it out if you’re a FB user, and be sure to like and share.
Now, on to the rumours and links and things!
Francisco Liriano’s back, baby!
In a small move on Tuesday night, first reported by Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun, the Jays and Liriano agreed to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi has since added that Liriano will make a $1.5 million base salary if he makes the team, with some performance bonuses added into the contract.
My excited-sounding heading for this section is, frankly, only half tongue-in-cheek. This is a nice piece of business with a guy who has only ever been a nice piece of business for the Jays. Liriano first came over to the Jays at the 2016 trade deadline, along with then-prospects Reese McGuire and Harold Ramirez, in exchange for mid-flameout Drew Hutchison and the Jays’ willingness to eat a bunch of salary the Pittsburgh Pirates were no longer willing to pay. Hit pitched his ass off for the team down the stretch that year, posting a 2.92 ERA over 49 1/3 innings in 10 appearances (eight starts), took the win in the wild card game over Baltimore thanks to a clean 1 2/3 innings of relief work, but then lasted just a third of an inning in the Jays’ next series against the Texas Rangers before taking a line drive off the back of his head/neck which ended his playoffs.
Like most Blue Jays, Liriano’s 2017 didn’t go so well. He made 18 starts for the most disappointing Jays side since 2013 — a team that half tried to keep the good times of 2015 and ‘16 rolling, only to watch José Bautista and Marco Estrada completely fall apart, Aaron Sanchez break down, Josh Donaldson miss 50 games as he descended into calf muscle hell, Kendrys Morales stink as Edwin Encarnación’s replacement, and guys like Liriano and Joe Biagini plummet back to earth — he was dealt to Houston to be a bullpen lefty in exchange for Teoscar Hernández and Nori Aoki (as salary ballast).
Liriano was serviceable as the Astros trash-banged their way to a World Series win that year, pitching in all three of the team’s playoff series. He returned to a starting role with the Tigers in 2018, with limited success, then moved back to the bullpen for a decent run with the Pirates in 2019. He opted out of playing last season after having signed a minor league deal with the Phillies and looking in March like he would have made the team.
Working in short stints during his last big league action in 2019, Liriano threw as hard as he had since way back in 2006 with the Twins, averaging 93 mph on his fastball and, more importantly, 86.9 mph on his slider — a mark 1.5 mph higher than where it was at when he was a starter in 2016 and '17.
He walked guys — as Francisco Liriano does — and wasn't especially impressive at generating strikeouts (over 70 innings he struck out 63 and walked 35), but he was effective against left-handed hitters, holding them to a .194/.326/.333 line, looked especially good on either side of a somewhat rocky stretch from June through August, and gave the Pirates a clean inning in all but 18 of his 69 appearances, on his way to 3.47 ERA for the year.
Now, some of you may look at that last paragraph/run-on sentence and think that having a “rocky stretch” that lasts half a season, and giving up a run in more than once every four relief appearances is actually not all that good. You would be correct. But that’s why minor league deals are such great business for club.
The Jays don’t have a ton of options from the left side out of their bullpen. The three batter minimum makes those guys less valuable than they used to be, but it’s still better to have some, and right now, with Anthony Kay presumed to be headed back to a rotation spot in Buffalo, the Jays have only Ryan Borucki on the big league roster, with Tim Mayza (still with the organization after missing all of 2020 following Tommy John surgery at the end of 2019) and Kirby Snead in the minors. Lefties Robbie Ray and Steven Matz may yet get bumped out of the rotation and into swingman roles, but if that doesn’t happen, or if the oft-injured Borucki gets hurt, even the fairly unimpressive Liriano is a nice bit of insurance. (Better than Marc Rzepczynski, I’d say, who the Jays tried this with last year.)
Marcus Semien is officially unveiled, suggests more moves coming
Local reporters got their first chance to chat with the Jays' new infielder on Tuesday, and while there are plenty of interesting storylines to do with his signing — the soft market, his leaving his hometown A’s, which position he will play — the thing that jumped out to me by far the most was what he said about how active the Jays remain at this point.
“I'm really happy with the decision,” Semien said, according to Shi Davidi’s piece on the unveiling for Sportsnet. “I like the fact that they're still working on some things, trying to add some pieces and it just seems like some teams right now in the league are not doing that. I know COVID has a lot to do with that, but it's nice to be on a team that's still adding and going for it right now.”
I don’t think that a minor league deal with Francisco Liriano is what he’s talking about there. I also don’t think fans should be getting their hopes up for anything truly massive, though I saw more than a few doing so on Twitter on Tuesday night on the basis of a few cryptic rumblings.
My suspicion is that all this turns into something more like Taijuan Walker or Jake Odorizzi than Luis Castillo or German Marquez, but I guess we’ll see. As long as whatever moves the Jays make don’t do too much damage to the mail bag I already have half in the can, I say go for it!
And, of course, as long as it’s also not Trevor Bauer.
Could it be Yadier Molina???
Yadier Molina has had a great career, all of it spent with the St. Louis Cardinals. Two World Series wins, nine All-Star teams, nine Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger. He is a legend in the greater eastern Missouri region. He's also... of interest to the Toronto Blue Jays? In 2021? With his 39th birthday coming up in July?
Normally this is where I’d go take a good look at Yadi’s stats, conclude that he’s washed, and profess not to get this at all. But actually, I do think I get it.
Now, I do think that the Jays’ interest in D.J. LeMahieu was real, to a point. I’m not so sure about this Molina business. But either way, I cannot possibly envision Yadi joining his brothers Benjie and José in the pantheon of Toronto Blue Jays catchers anytime soon. The Cardinals finally just added Nolan Arenado, as our friend Mr. Olerud’s Helmet points out, and this season they are going to pay him absolutely nothing.
That the Cards would get Arenado for free in 2021 was hardly a given, yet they pursued the deal anyway. This suggests that they definitely have some additional cash available to spend if they want it. And that’s likely what Molina’s camp is smelling here. St. Louis will be loath to bid against themselves, but if they can be convinced there are really other teams in the mix, maybe they’ll up their offer.
I’ve been wrong before, but I can’t imagine this being anything other than that.
Links!
As I mentioned above, Marcus Semien has left his hometown team in Oakland to come and play for the Jays. He also left a team where he was viewed as their unofficial captain. As great as the signing has been for the Jays — and I wrote last week about reasons to believe Semien’s 2019 breakout was for real despite some less-than-impressive 2020 numbers — it’s been a tough one to watch for A’s fans. Alex Coffey of the Athletic has been on that beat over the last week, and filed another good one yesterday on Semien’s new home and the sorry state of his former team.
Speaking of my former place of employment, while I briefly noted this in my call for mail bag questions on Tuesday, I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this space to again direct you to Brittany Ghiroli and Katie Strang’s bombshell report on Mickey Callaway. A coach from 2010 to 2017 in a Cleveland organization that does not lack for connections to the current Blue Jays front office, Callaway managed the Mets for two seasons before being fired and moving to the Angels as their pitching coach. According to the report, it was a well known secret that Callaway repeatedly, aggressively, and inappropriately pursued women in the media, including (among many unseemly details) offering inside information about the Mets if one woman agreed to get drunk with him. It all sucks a whole lot.
Fansided’s Robert Murray tweets that free agent Chase Anderson has come to an agreement with the Philadelphia Phillies. Jays fans won’t exactly be sad to see this guy go, but I think most reasonable ones will understand that he got caught up in a freak pandemic year and that we didn’t really ever see the best of him.
Speaking of Anderson, I LOL’d:
You know it’s been a big winter for the Blue Jays when they’re getting multiple full articles written about them at Forbes. In one, Jordan Horrobin compares the club’s two biggest signings, George Springer and Marcus Semien, and tries to determine who will bring more value to the 2021 Jays. In another, Curtis Rush takes a broader look at the “glittering lineup” the team is putting together.
“He was one of the first guys that reached out," Marcus Semien said of new teammate Bo Bichette during an appearance on Sportsnet's Tim and Sid on Tuesday. "Him being a Tampa guy, he's like 'Hey, anything you need, let me know, because i grew up in the area.' He knows it's a big move for my family and I being from the west coast and used to Arizona." Love it!
Over at Jays From the Couch, Bob Ritchie gives a very good rundown of just what’s going on between the league and the players union at the moment, and why the players chose not to counter the league’s offer to delay the start of the season.
Elsewhere at Jays From the Couch, Shaun Doyle offers some thoughts on how the Jays may use their pitching staff in 2021, suggesting that “it looks as though they are preparing to increase their usage of the opener/piggy back/short starts method that they dabbled with last season.” Not the first time I’ve heard such things, and I’ll go deeper into it in this week’s mail bag, but in general I really think we’re overthinking this!
Over at the Toronto Star, Gregor Chisholm takes a look at the league’s recent labour posturing, the fact that it seems as though the players are going to exercise their right to play out 2021 under the terms of the current CBA, and what that — particularly the reversion to the usual playoff format instead of the expanded 2020 one — will mean for a Toronto Blue Jays team that isn’t quite a slam dunk contender just yet.
Lastly, let there be no doubt about it, spring training is right around the corner:
Top image via Sportsnet/MLB/YouTube
Look, I don't think the Jays will (or should) sign their third Molina, but! When he retires, if they don't bring him to Toronto on a one-day contract just to say they had all three brothers, it would really be a missed opportunity. Teams have hung banners over less!