General 2017 Blue Jays Discussion Thread

[keggy]

I really hope the team isn't serious about Gordon. Not into a 3/38 commitment for the 30-32 seasons of a guy whose game is 100% legs.

 

That's probably less than what he would get on the open market. Honestly if he follows a standard aging curve he should provide value on that deal.

 

It completely depends on what the Marlins want in return. If we provide a B prospect and salary relief, that's a good deal for us. We can keep him to remain respectable or we can flip him a year later for better prospects. This is how big market teams with financial flexibility flex their muscles.

[Terminator]

Don't guys who rely on speed age pretty well in baseball? Or is that not true? He should be fine through his age 32 season. I'd take Gordon but there's not a ton of surplus value on that deal moving forward so I'd only give up a B- prospect for him.

[G-Snarls]

Anyone have access to this???

 

Jonah Keri: Dissecting the Blue Jays of future past with GM Ross Atkins

 

https://theathletic.com/75180/2017/07/13/jonah-keri-dissecting-the-jays-of-future-past-with-gm-ross-atkins/

[burlingtonbandit]

If you are a Toronto sports fan should probably just subscribe its dirt cheap too.

 

When I talked to Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins during spring training, he spoke about the challenges of prolonging a streak that had seen the Jays make the American League Championship Series two years in a row, while also building for the future.

 

Pulling off that balancing act looked like a big challenge in March. It’s looking damn near impossible in July. The Jays sit dead last in the AL East at 41-47. They employ the oldest group of position players in baseball. And while Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are racing up the prospect charts, both are still years away from helping the major league club, as the Jays lack impact talent on the cusp of making the Show.

 

Not that Atkins and team president Mark Shapiro didn’t see this coming. When Shapiro took over in August 2015 and Atkins followed three months later, it was a poorly kept secret that the new guys in charge weren’t thrilled with the raft of top pitching prospects that former GM Alex Anthopoulos had given up in deadline deals that year. Still, Atkins saw a team loaded with top-flight talent that could at the very least contend in the short term.

 

“We came into an interesting situation,” Atkins told The Athletic in an extended interview in his office last week. “The short term was relatively obvious to us, for two reasons. One, we felt like it was a team we could contend with a couple of acquisitions, that if those acquisitions hit — J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada, a couple of bullpen additions —that we had an opportunity to be a good team. And the second aspect is the fan base, what that has meant to this city, this country. So those two drove us to say, ‘Let's win as long as we can.’

 

“If that's one year, if that's two years, if that's five years, great. And at some point, I don't think anyone ever wants a complete rebuild, but at some level there for most organizations, not just in professional baseball, across all businesses, there are times for resets. And certainly in Major League Baseball, a lot of the really good examples today are teams that have had significant rebuilds. So we didn't set a firm timeline for when that would be. So much of it was dependent on the performance of our players.”

 

Pulling off the balancing act of trying to win now and trying to get younger at the same time is a monstrously difficult task. Beyond the draft and international market, you’re not going to find youth via free agency, and you’re rarely going to get younger via trades — unless you’re willing to trade away veterans who’ll help you win now. The Jays got creative last summer, acquiring Francisco Liriano to give them a veteran left-handed starter whose rights they could control through the end of 2017 … and also Pirates prospects Reese McGuire and Harold Ramirez. Neither McGuire nor Ramirez were (or are) considered elite talents. But getting the chance to take a flyer on two prospects, while getting a win-now pitcher, while giving up nothing but dollars (and fringe right-hander Drew Hutchison) was a testament to the Jays using creativity and financial muscle to thread the needle on their twin goals.

 

Another way to try to keep the good times rolling without crippling the team’s future? Signing undervalued veterans who won’t lard up the team’s payroll for many years to come. The bullpen has been one of the Jays’ biggest strong suits this season, thanks to multiple contributions coming from different sources. All-star closer Roberto Osuna was an international signing, while newly anointed setup man Ryan Tepera was a 19th-round steal eight years ago. But the pitching staff’s biggest pleasant surprise of the first half was Joe Smith, the side-arming veteran who cost just a one-year, $3 million deal, then turned into a strikeout machine in Toronto before hitting the disabled list last month.

 

Still, the brightest light of the first half, without question, was Justin Smoak. When the Jays signed Smoak to a two-year contract extension last summer, I reacted with appropriate restraint … except not at all. Turns out I was spectacularly, horribly wrong. Smoak has been a beast this season, batting .294/.350/.575 with 23 home runs, earning a starting nod in the All-Star Game. Smoak made several changes last winter in an effort to get better, including some significant work on his swing with hitting coach Brook Jacoby. But Atkins said the overarching factor that’s driven Smoak’s turnaround is something simpler.

 

 

Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins believes that Justin Smoak's “open-mindedness” has led to his success in Toronto. (Brad Penner/USA Today Sports)

“It’s his open-mindedness,” Atkins said. “His open-mindedness, and his perseverance, which was manifesting in a no-excuses approach to his career and to baseball. He was solution-focused and extremely open to any and all resources that could help him. That's rare. A lot of guys stick with ‘I want to dance with what got me here.’ And what we saw from Justin was a willingness to work with any and all information, any and all resources, whether that was on the performance side, on the sport psychology side, any of the opportunities that he thought could help him. Having said that, he is also someone that I see as very smart because he prioritizes well. He keeps things very simple. And I think that's actually the smartest thing you can do in the game of baseball is deciding and prioritizing on one specific goal and sticking to it. Sports psychology [in particular] helps with that.”

 

As great as Smoak has been, his most notable skill has been launching balls over the fence. That’s hardly rare in a season that’s on pace to net more home runs than any other in MLB history. So what does Atkins see as the next opportunities to exploit in baseball’s arms race for talent.

 

“You can always be better at [finding and developing power], and there are going to be opportunities around defense and baserunning,” Atkins said. “But really I think the next opportunity is less about identification and more about development. Because I wonder how many teams think about improving Justin Smoak as opposed to acquiring the next piece, because that could be the big inefficiency.”

 

After Smoak and the bullpen, the Jays’ results this season start to look dim. Injuries have walloped the roster. More than that, several key veterans have fallen far below career norms even when in the lineup. Troy Tulowitzki put in his usual barrage of hard work over the off-season, seemingly still possesses at least a good chunk of the talent that made him a superstar in Colorado, yet he’s been one of the least productive hitters in the league this year. Atkins refuses to panic on that front, noting that Matt Holliday experienced a drop in exit velocity a couple years ago similar to what Tulowitzki's gone through this year. Holliday’s slip and advancing age caused many observers to wonder if he was cooked … and he’s gone back to raking in 2017. Atkins thinks Tulowitzki's pullback is largely a function of injuries interrupting his season, as well as small sample size; he expects a similar rebound before long.

 

Even if Tulowitzki, Jose Bautista, and other underachieving veterans start to rally, it’s entirely possible that it’s all too late. Forget winning the AL East for a second — the Blue Jays would need to leapfrog seven teams in the wild-card chase just to earn the right to play a one-game playoff in someone else’s ballpark. The most pressing question then becomes how a team in limbo proceeds from here.

 

Neither Arkins, nor Shapiro, nor anyone else in the organization can answer that question definitively. At least not yet. Behind Atkins, a white board displayed lists of five prospects/young major leaguers for each team, the kinds of players a rebuilding club would try to acquire if it decides to trade away its stars. To my right sat another showing a passel of veteran players who’d be well suited for the Jays’ needs — including plenty of second basemen for a team that may have lost its starter for the year and now has to get by with Ryan Goins and Darwin Barney at the deuce. The perfect-world scenario, Atkins said, is to acquire players who can help both now and in the future — whether that’s through a complicated trade like last summer’s Liriano pickup, or via more conventional moves.

 

Then there’s the matter of degrees. It would be one thing to trade a walk-year pitcher like Liriano or Marco Estrada. It would be quite another to trade a franchise player like Josh Donaldson. I asked Atkins point-blank if he’d consider a Donaldson deadline deal if the Jays continue to slide out of the race.

 

“Josh Donaldson is one of the better players in the game,” Atkins replied. “He makes a ton of sense for us. Moving him, we can't see the logic in it based on how we're built to compete for this year and next. What that means beyond, we would like to have more information [before making that decision].”

 

Complicating everything (in the best possible way) is a fan base that’s energized after two straight deep playoff runs following more than decades of futility. The Jays are on track to lead the American League in attendance for a second straight season. Atkins noted that there’s a snowball effect when a team becomes a perennial contender. When fan interest rises, attendance, merchandise sales, and TV revenue tend to follow. When all of that happens, teams get more money to spend on premium talent, both in-house and on the open market. During the depths of the Jays’ 22-year run without a playoff berth, some in the industry quietly mused that free agents wouldn’t want to sign in Toronto.

 

That’s all changed now, said Atkins, noting that the Jays’ success has “increased our rate of acquisitions. And we hear it, the way people talk about this environment and feel like it's the best thing for the organization for us to continue to build on that.”

 

All of those factors make a total teardown much harder to swallow. Bid goodbye to the team’s most recognizable stars, and all of those free agents might look elsewhere. Fans might stop showing up, and the tidal wave of cash flowing into 1 Blue Jays Way might dry up in a hurry.

 

In the meantime, the Jays' GM remains optimistic. He’s particularly excited about the team’s amateur draft, held last month. “At each window where we were coming up next, we thought if this player gets to us, we would be very happy. And our first four selections, that happened every time, to a very high level of excitement.”

 

He’s also excited about the people running the show. Atkins sang the praises of an organization that’s blended holdover talent evaluators and operators from the Anthopoulos era with new minds over the past couple years. He cites the additions of Eric Wedge, Ben Cherington, and Gil Kim to player development, the reintegration of Tony LaCava and the addition of Steve Sanders to amateur scouting, Anthopoulos’ assistant GM Andrew Tinnish now deployed on the international side, the growth of the analytics department under Joe Sheehan, and the development of what Atkins cryptically calls the “high-performance department,” i.e. the part of the organization focused on deploying technology to make players better. Atkins said the integration of these and other baseball minds — from scouting to analytics, international operations to domestic, coaches to trainers, and everything in between — has been a major positive development over the past year and a half, one he believes will help the Jays solve the quandary of an old team trying to keep winning, while also improving for the future.

 

Given all the challenges in play, he’d better be right. Whether through sell-off trades or natural attrition, the core of the 2015 and 2016 teams that gripped Toronto with Jays fever might not be around much longer. Father Time is undefeated. The AL East will forever remain a bear. And if a total rebuild doesn’t happen, a softer reloading process could still net a couple of drab seasons … or worse.

 

“We're focused on winning,” Atkins said.

 

Problem is, so’s everyone else. What comes next for the Jays should be fascinating to watch, one way or another.

[Omar]

 

Bo Bichette going 7/8 in a double header vs South Bend this past June for those of you who haven't had a chance to see him hit.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Omar

[John_Havok]

 

Bo Bichette going 7/8 in a double header vs South Bend this past June for those of you who haven't had a chance to see him hit.

 

To say there's a lot of moving parts in his swing is an understatement. His hand eye coordination is incredible though

[Pendleton]

Baseball is back tonight!!

 

[TholesWeirdEye]

Baseball is back tonight!!

 

 

http://68.media.tumblr.com/b176aad35760b3cefdb75de202494749/tumblr_n4v2hwJocp1qewacoo2_400.gif

[Candy Maldonado]

[wk680]

Joe Smith pitched a scoreless inning on Friday and looks like he will be back with the Jays sometime this coming week.

[Bobthe4th]

[Slade]

I never expected to Tulo to be this awful and we are stuck with him for the next 3 years at $54 Million. He's not even 33 years old and the drop off in production has been massive.

 

Do they just keep running him out there until we have a better option in hopes he builds up some value? Hard to see them say they want to compete and retain a guy who is just not giving you enough both on offense and now this year the defense is slipping.

[G-Snarls]

I never expected to Tulo to be this awful and we are stuck with him for the next 3 years at $54 Million. He's not even 33 years old and the drop off in production has been massive.

 

Do they just keep running him out there until we have a better option in hopes he builds up some value? Hard to see them say they want to compete and retain a guy who is just not giving you enough both on offense and now this year the defense is slipping.

 

Can't trade him now or you're accepting Ryan Goins as the every day shortstop

[WONDERBAT]

I never expected to Tulo to be this awful and we are stuck with him for the next 3 years at $54 Million. He's not even 33 years old and the drop off in production has been massive.

 

Do they just keep running him out there until we have a better option in hopes he builds up some value? Hard to see them say they want to compete and retain a guy who is just not giving you enough both on offense and now this year the defense is slipping.

 

No choice really. Play the trash Tulo or play the even trashier Goins. No point in eating Tulo's contract if there is no replacement.

 

I wish they would just sell.

[Jonn]

I never expected to Tulo to be this awful and we are stuck with him for the next 3 years at $54 Million. He's not even 33 years old and the drop off in production has been massive.

 

Do they just keep running him out there until we have a better option in hopes he builds up some value? Hard to see them say they want to compete and retain a guy who is just not giving you enough both on offense and now this year the defense is slipping.

 

Considering they have rostered Goins this long I'm not very confident they will find a replacement. May as well trot him out and hope he figures something out.

[xposbrad]

 

Ya of course not. The Blue Jays "EXPECT" lol, to be competitive in '18. When they aren't and they won't, they will flip him at the deadline. They will have to hope he's not injured or his numbers stay the same but they will get a lesser quality prospect next year for him. It's too bad, this club could realistically be pretty competitive in about 3 years if they retool properly. Holding onto 34 year old pitchers that could net you a decent prospect now would be pretty stupid even if the pitching market will be pretty thin this year.

[Jonn]

If a team makes a great offer for Happ and the Jays refuse it because we don't have many starting options next year I will be extremely pissed. Hes going to be 35 next year sell high please.

 

They will hang onto him and watch him be s*** next year so we get nothing for him at the deadline.

[Terminator]

If a team makes a great offer for Happ and the Jays refuse it because we don't have many starting options next year I will be extremely pissed. Hes going to be 35 next year sell high please.

 

They will hang onto him and watch him be s*** next year so we get nothing for him at the deadline.

 

I'm all for trading Happ as well. He was hurt earlier in the season and is old. Despite that he's probably one of the few guys we have who could net us something at the deadline unless you consider Donaldson or Smoak at which point our chances to contend in 2018 would really take a hit.

[glory]

Have the Jays ever really sold during any trade deadline since Rogers took over? I'm trying to think of one instance but can't remember. Maybe Alex Gonzalez for Yunel Escobar, if that counts?

[Terminator]

Fangraphs lays out the case for still trying to contend this year. In summary, it says that the offense is bound to be better, getting Sanchez back will help a lot, the bullpen is good and 2B is easily upgraded without giving up anything of long-term value.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-case-for-the-blue-jays/

[wk680]

Fangraphs lays out the case for still trying to contend this year. In summary, it says that the offense is bound to be better, getting Sanchez back will help a lot, the bullpen is good and 2B is easily upgraded without giving up anything of long-term value.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-case-for-the-blue-jays/

 

Seems like they are just suggesting acquiring someone to play 2B and stand pat with the rest of the roster. I guess that's fine if they don't get any good trade offers. But they are going to have some serious work ahead of them in the off season.

[Terminator]

Seems like they are just suggesting acquiring someone to play 2B and stand pat with the rest of the roster. I guess that's fine if they don't get any good trade offers. But they are going to have some serious work ahead of them in the off season.

 

There is at least a lot of money coming off the books. Estrada, Liriano, Bautista alone are north of 40 million.

[Angrioter]

Score: Jays showing sincere interest in Dee Gordon

[jaysguy44]

I've always loved Gordon's game.

 

Not sure if it is a wise move at this time though.

 

Gordon

Bautista

Donaldson

Smoak

Morales

Martin

Tulo

Carrera/Pierce

Pillar

 

Not bad, I wish we would go after some pitching as well.

[Terminator]

Gordon is a solid player on an alright contract. Wouldn't want to give up a ton to get him but he'd be a major improvement over the slop we call second basemen. Probably improves the team over a WAR or so for the remainder of this season alone.

[Slade]

Score: Jays showing sincere interest in Dee Gordon

 

[jays4life19]

Gordon is a solid player on an alright contract. Wouldn't want to give up a ton to get him but he'd be a major improvement over the slop we call second basemen. Probably improves the team over a WAR or so for the remainder of this season alone.

 

Do we even want a 1 win boost at this point though?

[metafour]

Do we even want a 1 win boost at this point though?

 

Yes, so we can pick lower in next year's draft. Duh.

[Terminator]

Do we even want a 1 win boost at this point though?

 

Well yeah adding Gordon falls under the presumption that the team wants to compete this year. He also helps next year too.

[Jonn]

Well yeah adding Gordon falls under the presumption that the team wants to compete this year. He also helps next year too.

 

Does he though? I don't know. Obviously he adds an element of speed but absolutely no power. He doesn't get on base and his defence is average at best.

 

Outside of adding speed he doesn't bring much to the table. If we were to take his full contract we better be trading next to nothing prospect wise.