Let's Play Make Believe! (Undoing the Marlins/Mets trades)

[Muck Bartinez]

Obviously this is a topic that has been discussed to death on here, but I'm still left wondering what the team could have looked like without these two trades. No matter who you think was at fault for the trades, they definitely came as a result of Rogers being willing to increase payroll. Whether they always were willing to, or they all of a sudden decided to last year, we might never know. Here's the idea I've been playing with:

 

Rogers decides to keep the status quo payroll for 2013, and delays the payroll bump for one year. So this off-season, Alex gets the go ahead to jack up the payroll to 136M (Wendy Thurm's estimated opening day 2014 number).

 

My best guess for end of 2013 roster with 2014 contract numbers from Cot's. This is assuming that all other moves still happen (Melky, Happ, Esmil Rogers, etc.)

 

C - D'Arnaud 500k

1B - Encarnacion 9M

2B - Hechavarria 500K? (contract up, pre-arb eligible)

3B - Lawrie 500k

SS - Escobar 5M

LF - Cabrera 8M

CF - Rasmus 7M

RF - Bautista 14M

DH - Lind 7M

 

Bench

OF - Gose 500K

2B/3B - Izturis 3M

C - Mathis 1.5M

SS/2B - Kawasaki 1M

 

SP - Morrow 8M

SP - Alvarez 500K

SP - Happ 5.4M

SP - Rogers 1.85M

SP - Redmond 500K

BP - Janssen 4M

BP - Santos 3.75M

BP - McGowan 1.5M

BP - Cecil 1.5M

BP - Perez 500K

BP - Delabar 500K

BP - Loup 500K

BP - Jeffress 500K

 

This gives us 86.5M + Romero 7.5M = 94M meaning 42M (!) to improve the team. Obviously the rotation is putrid for the hypothetical 2014 season, 2B is still a glaring hole, Lind needs a platoon partner, etc.

 

What would you do to improve the team for 2014 and beyond?

 

TL;DR They blew it.

[baseballsss]

escobar was gone no matter what. synderguard is looking like an absolute stud right now. To be honst if those trades werent made what would are rotation be like. Probably 20x worse then it is now.

[eastcoastjaysfan]

So we could've kept an elite farm system in tact and signed basically all of Ubaldo, Garza, Santana, and Drew to put the team over the top.

 

It's Saturday bro, Saturday is supposed to be a happy day for us. Stop ruining everything.

[ElNik2013]

Arguably, they would also be looking at a top 5 draft pick 'cause they would've likely lost over 90 games. That's a key right there, I don't think this franchise was willing to go into a season being expected to lose 90 games.

[TheBigSmoke.RF]

With 42 million I definately try to get 2 of the top 5 starting pitchers in free agency. As well as 2b upgrade, however I dont think that Marlins trade was bad the trade that hurts is the Mets trade...

[bbb44]

This type of speculation stupid , It was the real first attempt at competing the jays have made in almost 20 yrs and created more buzz for the team then its had in the same time frame and that generated a hefty increase in revenue for them .

 

Unfortunately everything that could go wrong seem to happen last season , Lets see what this year brings before you get to excited about these prospects that got traded that have not even proven to be a quality major league player , Prospects barley ever turn out and chances are none of those guys will even be half the players we got in return

[G-Snarls]

Arguably, they would also be looking at a top 5 draft pick 'cause they would've likely lost over 90 games. That's a key right there, I don't think this franchise was willing to go into a season being expected to lose 90 games.

 

And a 90 loss team wasn't going to attract top free agents even if there was money there

 

This would have been another year of baby steps roster wise, but possibly a significant step up in performance

[G-Snarls]

And AA would have made other trades. He lives off the daft and trade market obviously.

[ElNik2013]

And a 90 loss team wasn't going to attract top free agents even if there was money there

 

This would have been another year of baby steps roster wise, but possibly a significant step up in performance

 

 

 

Let's not forget that they lost 89 games in 2012, but I don't think they were expected to lose that many games going into the season, in fact, there was a lot of excitement about how the team was coming together at the start of the season. It's much different to go into a season being expected to lose 90+ games with a chance at 100 losses, that's just not what the Jays are about. They're about having decent teams, good enough to attract enough viewers for RSN, but not good enough to win it all. I think the mandate was to improve the team, especially the decimated starting rotation and to "not strike out" in doing so.

 

Remember, they were rumoured to have been in on JJ in July 2012 and maybe AA wasn't ready to give up the package the Marlins wanted. Then they reportedly struck out on Peavy and Sanchez, so I could see AA going back to the Marlins in a bad spot.

 

At the end of the day, I could live with the Marlins trade because of the need to improve the rotation in particular and because there's no doubt in my mind that it was decided Escobar would be off the team one way or another. The Dickey trade was just stupid, AA just accepted the rationale that there's a certain price that you have to pay for a CY winner without much of a fight and I think he even said so.

 

I have to admit that I picked the team to win between 86-92 games and to certainly be in contention in September....tells you how much I know.

[G-Snarls]

At the end of the day, I could live with the Marlins trade because of the need to improve the rotation in particular and because there's no doubt in my mind that it was decided Escobar would be off the team one way or another. The Dickey trade was just stupid, AA just accepted the rationale that there's a certain price that you have to pay for a CY winner without much of a fight and I think he even said so.

 

I have to admit that I picked the team to win between 86-92 games and to certainly be in contention in September....tells you how much I know.

 

Ditto from me. We're in the minority I think but that's exactly how I feel too. The Dickey trade and this nothing of an off season bother me.

[Dick_Pole]

Ditto from me. We're in the minority I think but that's exactly how I feel too. The Dickey trade and this nothing of an off season bother me.

 

I agree. Henderson Alvarez can throw 20 no-hitters in his life and I won't bad mouth Anthopolous for that specific trade because I thought his career was headed nowhere based on his complete lack of ability to miss bats. Nothing given up in the Marlins trade made me go "oh s***, the Jays gave HIM up?" except Escobar but like you guys said he was probably (stupidly) gone anyways. Now the poor roster management and inactivity this year...he can be blamed for that.

 

Where it gets murky is this back and forth claim where AA's hands are tied with respect to payroll. Either he is which made the addition of all those expensive players for prospects very ill-timed. Or he isn't tied and he was just being lazy or too cheap/a poor evaluator of the FA market. People say he *could* have had an extra $40M to play with without those trades. Well, we are unclear if he had that much money to spend THIS offseason and if he was just playing cheap. So very likely the payroll and starting rotation without those trades would be the current state of the team.