Donaldson Aug 31 Trade Thread

[Abomination]

He'll be 27 in a month, how has he performed at the MLB level since he has all these great 'peripherals' ?

 

He was a college player who a few years ago made an adjustment that appears to have changed his outlook. He may be older but he's only had 4 years as a pro, so the age imo is less important.

[xposbrad]

He was a college player who a few years ago made an adjustment that appears to have changed his outlook. He may be older but he's only had 4 years as a pro, so the age imo is less important.

 

So was he ranked higher than #17 in their org? #17 and 27 years old basically means he wasn't going to ever get a shot at the bigs unless he was traded to a team that has many openings and sucks.

[BTS]

Cleveland seems to have a knack for finding these kinds of arms. Kluber and Clevinger took the same route we're hoping Merryweather takes. If he can even become a useful SP5, that's pretty good.

[xposbrad]

I'm really not at all upset that we got an older minor leaguer who is rehabbing from TJ and not a club's top 10 prospect, given this was done on waivers. I'm more upset Shatkins gambled last year by holding onto him thinking the Jays actually had a chance this year. JD would have gotten a top 50 or top 75 prospect in the offseason, that could be a potential high upside guy who would develop with Vlad JR. Complete failure that he turned JD into what we got now, we're just happy because JD was on the DL the whole year and we got something, when he should have been gone in the offseason.

[Laika]

In theory Donaldson should have been worth about the same in the 2018 offseason as he should have been worth at the 2018 deadline.

 

Nobody could have predicted the extent of his injury issues this season.

 

The "Shatkins should of traded him last offseason!" crowd are really blowing the realistic/projectable injury risk out of proportion. Toronto took on a bit of extra risk by holding him into 2018 but nobody could have reasonably foreseen that his trade value would plummet by 90% due to chronic veganism. So f*** right off with your trash hindsight opinions. Toronto got extremely unlucky and worked hard to make the best out of a s*** situation. And the massive irony in all of this is that the complainers are also largely the exact same people who will complain when the FO doesn't make a big offseason acquisition to try to compete in the short team--which is more or less the decision they made when they chose to keep JD into 2018.

[Boxcar]

So was he ranked higher than #17 in their org? #17 and 27 years old basically means he wasn't going to ever get a shot at the bigs unless he was traded to a team that has many openings and sucks.

 

Lol what an unbelievably dumb line of reasoning.

[Terminator]

In theory Donaldson should have been worth about the same in the 2018 offseason as he should have been worth at the 2018 deadline.

 

Nobody could have predicted the extent of his injury issues this season.

 

The "Shatkins should of traded him last offseason!" crowd are really blowing the realistic/projectable injury risk out of proportion. Toronto took on a bit of extra risk by holding him into 2018 but nobody could have reasonably foreseen that his trade value would plummet by 90% due to chronic veganism. So f*** right off with your trash hindsight opinions. Toronto got extremely unlucky and worked hard to make the best out of a s*** situation. And the massive irony in all of this is that the complainers are also largely the exact same people who will complain when the FO doesn't make a big offseason acquisition to try to compete in the short team--which is more or less the decision they made when they chose to keep JD into 2018.

 

This past offseason was an awful market for corner infielders too. Hard to imagine a team giving up a whole lot and then paying him 20+ million when they could have just signed Moose for basically free.

[Thaddeus Malice]

In theory Donaldson should have been worth about the same in the 2018 offseason as he should have been worth at the 2018 deadline.

 

Nobody could have predicted the extent of his injury issues this season.

 

The "Shatkins should of traded him last offseason!" crowd are really blowing the realistic/projectable injury risk out of proportion. Toronto took on a bit of extra risk by holding him into 2018 but nobody could have reasonably foreseen that his trade value would plummet by 90% due to chronic veganism. So f*** right off with your trash hindsight opinions. Toronto got extremely unlucky and worked hard to make the best out of a s*** situation. And the massive irony in all of this is that the complainers are also largely the exact same people who will complain when the FO doesn't make a big offseason acquisition to try to compete in the short team--which is more or less the decision they made when they chose to keep JD into 2018.

 

 

Good strawman you've built up here. I'm sure there are casual fans that think that way but there are plenty of people who didn't think this team had much of a chance this year, and that we should deal Donaldson and forget about competing for a couple of years. And I mean if the attendance was any indication even casuals weren't expecting us to compete at all.

 

He missed 50 games last year. Holding on to him for three extra months was a risk given his injuries and it backfired. You trade him in the off-season and you simply don't deal with that risk. I don't know why people are so deadset on defending Shatkins here, it was a mistake and we lost value on a good asset.

 

The FO has done an OK job the last couple of years but they've made a couple of mistakes and sometimes it seems like any criticism of that is met with a disproportionate defense.

[Laika]

Good strawman you've built up here. I'm sure there are casual fans that think that way but there are plenty of people who didn't think this team had much of a chance this year, and that we should deal Donaldson and forget about competing for a couple of years. And I mean if the attendance was any indication even casuals weren't expecting us to compete at all.

 

He missed 50 games last year. Holding on to him for three extra months was a risk given his injuries and it backfired. You trade him in the off-season and you simply don't deal with that risk. I don't know why people are so deadset on defending Shatkins here, it was a mistake and we lost value on a good asset.

 

The FO has done an OK job the last couple of years but they've made a couple of mistakes and sometimes it seems like any criticism of that is met with a disproportionate defense.

 

Is the "even casuals weren't expecting us to complete" part supposed to make that opinion more legitimate?

People defend the FO because the vast majority of criticisms are vapid and idiotic.

 

I don't even think there is an obvious straw man in what I said. If anything, you're the one(s) constructing a straw dude because you're transforming a complicated decision based on probabilities and chance into a binary one, after the outcome is known, with obvious risks where the FO made some type of categorically and objectively incorrect historic decision, which is just not the case.

 

How do you know they didn't test the waters only to find out that the market for him wasn't very strong? See:

 

This past offseason was an awful market for corner infielders too. Hard to imagine a team giving up a whole lot and then paying him 20+ million when they could have just signed Moose for basically free.

 

I'm not ecstatic with the eventual return for JD but I'm also not going to piss on my favourite team for taking a chance and making a semi-reasonable effort to complete for a wild card spot--it just didn't work out. A lot of s*** went very wrong for the MLB team this year but we could have reasonably expected a lot of the core players to be better and for the team to at least have played meaningful baseball this month. At least they could get a top 10 pick out of this dumpster season.

[glory]

You guys all read the Shapiro "intellectual exercise" quote right? Like I said, I find it reasonably unlikely that they had full autonomy over starting a rebuild last off-season.

 

Yeah, Shapiro rebuilt a bunch of times in Cleveland. He's not new to this.

 

The only thing new to him is working for a publicly traded company that doesn't give two shits about baseball and only looks at revenue. He didn't rebuild because he couldn't.

[Jimcanuck]

You guys all read the Shapiro "intellectual exercise" quote right? Like I said, I find it reasonably unlikely that they had full autonomy over starting a rebuild last off-season.

 

JD would have been traded long ago if Shatkins had full autonomy.

 

I'll see if I can find my post from last offseason where I said JD should be traded due to injury risk (and Spanky chimed in saying JD has been very durable).

 

It's not all hindsight, some of us saw the significant risk that has been realized.

[Laika]

JD would have been traded long ago if Shatkins had full autonomy.

 

I'll see if I can find my post from last offseason where I said JD should be traded due to injury risk (and Spanky chimed in saying JD has been very durable).

 

It's not all hindsight, some of us saw the significant risk that has been realized.

 

If you call heads and the coin lands on heads, it's not f***ing foresight, Jim.

 

Similarly, just because the outcome was worst case Ontario does not mean the risk was significant or the negative outcome was highly probable.

[Jimcanuck]

If you call heads and the coin lands on heads, it's not f***ing foresight, Jim.

 

Similarly, just because the outcome was worst case Ontario does not mean the risk was significant or the negative outcome was highly probable.

 

Even if the risk was not significant as per your assessment (which I do not share), even with small risk it was a poor decision to hold onto JD for a season with low post season chance.

[metafour]

You guys all read the Shapiro "intellectual exercise" quote right? Like I said, I find it reasonably unlikely that they had full autonomy over starting a rebuild last off-season.

 

Its very obvious that they would have traded most of these guys much earlier. If anything, the fact that he's now supposedly considering going to the Mets which are in a worse spot than us and have even worse ownership should point signals to the idea that he's probably not very happy getting thrown onto a landmine over decisions that they never wanted to make in the first place. If he leaves, things are very wrong with Rogers and yet the casual morons will probably be celebrating the departure without understanding what the actual situation is.

[Jimcanuck]

Its very obvious that they would have traded most of these guys much earlier. If anything, the fact that he's now supposedly considering going to the Mets which are in a worse spot than us and have even worse ownership should point signals to the idea that he's probably not very happy getting thrown onto a landmine over decisions that they never wanted to make in the first place. If he leaves, things are very wrong with Rogers and yet the casual morons will probably be celebrating the departure without understanding what the actual situation is.

 

Maybe Beeston will come back.

[Spanky__99]

In theory Donaldson should have been worth about the same in the 2018 offseason as he should have been worth at the 2018 deadline.

 

Nobody could have predicted the extent of his injury issues this season.

 

The "Shatkins should of traded him last offseason!" crowd are really blowing the realistic/projectable injury risk out of proportion. Toronto took on a bit of extra risk by holding him into 2018 but nobody could have reasonably foreseen that his trade value would plummet by 90% due to chronic veganism. So f*** right off with your trash hindsight opinions. Toronto got extremely unlucky and worked hard to make the best out of a s*** situation. And the massive irony in all of this is that the complainers are also largely the exact same people who will complain when the FO doesn't make a big offseason acquisition to try to compete in the short team--which is more or less the decision they made when they chose to keep JD into 2018.

 

[Spanky__99]

JD would have been traded long ago if Shatkins had full autonomy.

 

I'll see if I can find my post from last offseason where I said JD should be traded due to injury risk (and Spanky chimed in saying JD has been very durable).

 

It's not all hindsight, some of us saw the significant risk that has been realized.

 

lol

[Jimcanuck]

lol

 

You've been wrong more times than I can count, Spank off.

[5ToolPhenom]

It really is a shame that everything that could go wrong did... and more. JD, Osuna, Sanchez and Tulo were basically AWOL for the entire season and the ace of the team is going into September with a 5.54 ERA. Even the most casual baseball fan knows there'd be no chance at competing under those circumstances.

 

With all of that considered, I guess I'm still annoyed by the half-baked approach that Shatkins took this year. They supplemented the holes in the roster with no risk signings in the hopes that maybe there would be a run left with what was left of the core. That's a pretty egregious misstep considering the vastly superior lineups fielded by the Yankees and Red Sox. They were seemingly hoping that there might be a fleeting chance at sneaking into the 2nd wildcard position, which begs the question, why take the risk? Long shot scenario, they sneak in and have no shot at competing with the powerhouses in the playoffs anyways.

 

The popular assumption seems to be that Rogers has some sort of metaphorical gun to their heads and if that's the case, is the money they're being paid enough for these guys to wanna put up with that in the first place?

 

Whatever the true reasoning, there's no denying that this season was a massive wasted opportunity and a setback for the timeline to compete.

Edited September 6, 2018 by 5ToolPhenom

[Spanky__99]

You've been wrong more times than I can count, Spank off.

 

JD was injured once in '17 for his career... and he still put up 5.2 WAR when I said that, I guess you think he's finished, amirite? Well played, Captain Hindsight!

[5ToolPhenom]

Don't you guys think that Shapiro and Atkins should've been able to read the tea-leaves a little better though? I think as a rational fan when you weigh the options, it's clear there would've been a much better case for cashing in with a rebuild than to risk things with a pipe-dream of making the playoffs in a division with Red Sox and Yankees in 2018.

 

I only ask because I never really see them criticized on this forum whereas on other sites it's the complete opposite! I'm surprised by what a stark contrast the fan reactions are. I personally fall somewhere in the middle.

[Spanky__99]

In theory Donaldson should have been worth about the same in the 2018 offseason as he should have been worth at the 2018 deadline.

 

Nobody could have predicted the extent of his injury issues this season.

 

The "Shatkins should of traded him last offseason!" crowd are really blowing the realistic/projectable injury risk out of proportion. Toronto took on a bit of extra risk by holding him into 2018 but nobody could have reasonably foreseen that his trade value would plummet by 90% due to chronic veganism. So f*** right off with your trash hindsight opinions. Toronto got extremely unlucky and worked hard to make the best out of a s*** situation. And the massive irony in all of this is that the complainers are also largely the exact same people who will complain when the FO doesn't make a big offseason acquisition to try to compete in the short team--which is more or less the decision they made when they chose to keep JD into 2018.

 

Don't you guys think that Shapiro and Atkins should've been able to read the tea-leaves a little better though? I think as a rational fan when you weigh the options, it's clear there would've been a much better case for cashing in with a rebuild than to risk things with a pipe-dream of making the playoffs in a division with Red Sox and Yankees in 2018.

 

I only ask because I never really see them criticized on this forum whereas on other sites it's the complete opposite! I'm surprised by what a stark contrast the fan reactions are. I personally fall somewhere in the middle.

 

...

[BTS]

Don't you guys think that Shapiro and Atkins should've been able to read the tea-leaves a little better though? I think as a rational fan when you weigh the options, it's clear there would've been a much better case for cashing in with a rebuild than to risk things with a pipe-dream of making the playoffs in a division with Red Sox and Yankees in 2018.

 

I only ask because I never really see them criticized on this forum whereas on other sites it's the complete opposite! I'm surprised by what a stark contrast the fan reactions are. I personally fall somewhere in the middle.

 

I don’t think most people here believe they had the option of tearing them it down and losing 100 games. And regardless, they would have been crucified by the same casuals. Probably worse so.

[Spanky__99]

I don’t think most people here believe they had the option of tearing them it down and losing 100 games. And regardless, they would have been crucified by the same casuals. Probably worse so.

 

This really shouldn't need to be explained, imo.

[glory]

The Jays made the playoffs in 2015 and 2016, and had over 3 million in attendance in 2017. Anyone who thinks Rogers was going to agree to rebuild after that is not thinking clearly.

[Spanky__99]

The Jays made the playoffs in 2015 and 2016, and had over 3 million in attendance in 2017. Anyone who thinks Rogers was going to agree to rebuild after that is not thinking clearly.

 

They limped in and gave it a shot, the JD injuries couldn't be predicted(not to mention everything else), s*** Happens. lol.

[John_Havok]

It really is a shame that everything that could go wrong did... and more. JD, Osuna, Sanchez and Tulo were basically AWOL for the entire season and the ace of the team is going into September with a 5.54 ERA. Even the most casual baseball fan knows there'd be no chance at competing under those circumstances.

 

With all of that considered, I guess I'm still annoyed by the half-baked approach that Shatkins took this year. They supplemented the holes in the roster with no risk signings in the hopes that maybe there would be a run left with what was left of the core. That's a pretty egregious misstep considering the vastly superior lineups fielded by the Yankees and Red Sox. They were seemingly hoping that there might be a fleeting chance at sneaking into the 2nd wildcard position, which begs the question, why take the risk? Long shot scenario, they sneak in and have no shot at competing with the powerhouses in the playoffs anyways.

 

The popular assumption seems to be that Rogers has some sort of metaphorical gun to their heads and if that's the case, is the money they're being paid enough for these guys to wanna put up with that in the first place?

 

Whatever the true reasoning, there's no denying that this season was a massive wasted opportunity and a setback for the timeline to compete.

 

You answered your own questing when you posted "why take the risk?"

 

There's far more risk in signing more big money FAs than there is in doing what they did, given they already had a core of high piad aging veterans. The Jays will never be the team that signs the Harpers, Stanton or Machados in free agency when Rogers owns them.

 

You say they should have been able to read the tea leaves better, but they did absolutely nothing to hurt the longterm outlook, and arguably made that outlook even better with the myriad of depth acquisitions, low risk vets and then dumping everyone they could dump aside from Estrada and Morales. You don't need the #1 pick to rebuild, baseball drafts are so much of a crap shoot it's far more likely than other sports you can get a guy anywhere from 1-10 that can be a cornerstone. Plus with actual attention to international talent, there's not as much need to tank outright IMO.

 

To me, that's reading the tea leaves right. They took on zero contract risk, improved the long term outlook, and have financial flexibility to add some low risk high reward guys again in 2019.

 

One thing that people need to understand is, there is no such thing as satisfying the casual fan base. To a casual fan, you need to spend like crazy every year or you're not trying, therefore they mad. Spend like crazy and win for a couple seasons, then realize they're up to their necks in anchors and have no flexibility it means you didn't spend wisely enough and they mad. Tank and they mad because who wants to watch a bad team for 3 years? The casual fan base doesn't understand how many levels of pro ball there are below the majors and hve virtually no clue about what is needed to build a sustainable team.

[Bobthe4th]

You answered your own questing when you posted "why take the risk?"

 

There's far more risk in signing more big money FAs than there is in doing what they did, given they already had a core of high piad aging veterans. The Jays will never be the team that signs the Harpers, Stanton or Machados in free agency when Rogers owns them.

 

You say they should have been able to read the tea leaves better, but they did absolutely nothing to hurt the longterm outlook, and arguably made that outlook even better with the myriad of depth acquisitions, low risk vets and then dumping everyone they could dump aside from Estrada and Morales. You don't need the #1 pick to rebuild, baseball drafts are so much of a crap shoot it's far more likely than other sports you can get a guy anywhere from 1-10 that can be a cornerstone. Plus with actual attention to international talent, there's not as much need to tank outright IMO.

 

To me, that's reading the tea leaves right. They took on zero contract risk, improved the long term outlook, and have financial flexibility to add some low risk high reward guys again in 2019.

 

One thing that people need to understand is, there is no such thing as satisfying the casual fan base. To a casual fan, you need to spend like crazy every year or you're not trying, therefore they mad. Spend like crazy and win for a couple seasons, then realize they're up to their necks in anchors and have no flexibility it means you didn't spend wisely enough and they mad. Tank and they mad because who wants to watch a bad team for 3 years? The casual fan base doesn't understand how many levels of pro ball there are below the majors and hve virtually no clue about what is needed to build a sustainable team.

 

Good points. The risk was also not very big. We already had a good farm so it's not like the cupboard was bare. Only trades of Osuna and Stroman would have resulted in significantly higher returns than what we got for Osuna and would get now for Stroman. JD, Sanchez and Travis were all injury risks and buy low candidates that got lower, and very few others would have returned significant value.

 

The upside to the risk was potentially competing for a wildcard spot while various prospects are integrated into the team (and baseball playoffs are not like basketball where the best team nearly always wins). This would have set the team up for a quick retool.

 

The upside to not taking the risk and trading everyone would have been a few more lottery tickets, plus a few blue chip prospects, none of which would guarantee anything. With a guaranteed downside of an extended period of low attendances, fan interest, and payroll reductions (potentially lengthening a rebuild).

[Spanky__99]

Good points. The risk was also not very big. We already had a good farm so it's not like the cupboard was bare. Only trades of Osuna and Stroman would have resulted in significantly higher returns than what we got for Osuna and would get now for Stroman. JD, Sanchez and Travis were all injury risks and buy low candidates that got lower, and very few others would have returned significant value.

 

The upside to the risk was potentially competing for a wildcard spot while various prospects are integrated into the team (and baseball playoffs are not like basketball where the best team nearly always wins). This would have set the team up for a quick retool.

 

The upside to not taking the risk and trading everyone would have been a few more lottery tickets, plus a few blue chip prospects, none of which would guarantee anything. With a guaranteed downside of an extended period of low attendances, fan interest, and payroll reductions (potentially lengthening a rebuild).

 

Why do people keep insisting on saying JD was an injury risk coming into this season? Age, I guess... but there was no history aside from his calf injury on his other leg last year? He was nowhere near a risk as the latter two, or any pitcher for that matter.

[LGBJ29]

Why do people keep insisting on saying JD was an injury risk coming into this season? Age, I guess... but there was no history aside from his calf injury on his other leg last year? He was nowhere near a risk as the latter two, or any pitcher for that matter.

 

Recency bias. JD didn't have a single trip to the DL in 4 straight seasons leading up to last year (2013-2016). He then made his first trip last season missing over 40 games and it lead the casuals to believe he was an injury risk... based on one injury. Now, it just so happens he got hurt again this season leading to all these "I told you so's" but to say that the front office or anyone else should have seen this coming based on one DL trip in 5 seasons is just asinine