Article: Blue Jays Acquiring Seranthony Dominguez And Cash For Juaron Watts-Brown

[Bob Ritchie]

Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith has reported, and confirmed by other MLB media members, that the Toronto Blue Jays have acquired Seranthony Dominguez from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for minor-league pitcher Juaron Watts-Brown.

Dominguez, a 30-year-old relief right-handed pitcher, has posted excellent numbers this season. His xERA ranks in the 77th percentile, and as of July 23, his WPA was in the 85th percentile. He is a strikeout pitcher (30.9 K%) but walks batters at a high rate (13.7 BB%). The MLB average K% and BB% for relievers are 22.5 and 9.4, respectively. Also, his 0.86 HR/9 is lower than Toronto’s bullpen mark of 1.07. Additionally, Dominguez has postseason experience with the Orioles and the Phillies, including Philadelphia’s appearance in the 2022 World Series. In his postseason career, he has posted a 0.78 FIP and a 0.60 WPA in 17 ⅔ innings. Dominiguez will become a free agent after the 2025 season.

In my article, Trade Deadline Reliever Options To Bolster The Blue Jays’ Bullpen, I listed Dominguez in Tier 2 of relievers. His xERA impact on Toronto’s bullpen would be similar to that of Phil Maton and David Bednar. The Dominguez acquisition should elevate the overall performance of Toronto’s bullpen.

Watts-Brown is a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher who reached Double A this season, where he posted a 3.48 ERA and a 3.95 FIP. In its recent prospect rankings, Jays Centre recently ranked Watts-Brown 14th on the Blue Jays' top prospects list. Baseball America projected his future as, “Watts-Brown shows projectable starter traits with command of a four-pitch mix and a swing-and-miss weapon in his slider.”

The trade makes sense for both Toronto and Baltimore. The Blue Jays need to bolster their bullpen, and Dominguez fills that need. From the Orioles’ perspective, Watts-Brown will join an organization in search of quality pitching and depth.

Thanks to forum user @Terminator for starting the comments thread.

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[Brock Beauchamp]

Apologies for the loss of comments. I have NO IDEA what happened, the screen just errored out while I was doing a mundane task, and then everything was gone. I even checked the dB and it's just... gone.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm pretty upset about it, FTR. Never had anything like this happen and I've been using this software for a decade.

[Nexii]

Ngl the error message was a little alarming. Instead of saying the thread was toast the board was like you aren't permissioned. Implying potentially banned or something

[John_Havok]

8 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I'm pretty upset about it, FTR. Never had anything like this happen and I've been using this software for a decade.

Seriously though, get your s*** together. LIke, running numerous MLB fan message boards is pretty easy in the grand scheme of things and not at all difficult and is pretty much done all with AI, demanding almost none of your time, so maybe in between smoking those Cuban cigars, doing lines of coke off the thighs of your "masseuse" and banging all those 10s on the daily, you could keep this place running a bit more smoothly. 

/sarcasm

[Grant77]

I'm not a fan of this move. Watts-Brown is way too much for a middle relief guy who walks an extremely high number of batters. 

[John_Havok]

4 minutes ago, Grant77 said:

I'm not a fan of this move. Watts-Brown is way too much for a middle relief guy who walks an extremely high number of batters. 

But you're not worried about JWB's walk rate as a starter in AA?

On paper yeah it does seem like an overpay, but maybe you hadnt heard, Dominguez throws a splitter, he's already ahead of the other pen arms based on that alone. 

[Grant77]

7 minutes ago, John_Havok said:

But you're not worried about JWB's walk rate as a starter in AA?

On paper yeah it does seem like an overpay, but maybe you hadnt heard, Dominguez throws a splitter, he's already ahead of the other pen arms based on that alone. 

He seems to have made improvements this season. I don't find a 10.1 BB% especially concerning. 

I'm not saying he's a sure fire star or anything, but it's substantially more value than we have seen some other teams give up in trades so far.

[John_Havok]

11 minutes ago, Grant77 said:

He seems to have made improvements this season. I don't find a 10.1 BB% especially concerning. 

I'm not saying he's a sure fire star or anything, but it's substantially more value than we have seen some other teams give up in trades so far.

40 FV seems to the price for rentals this season, that's where he is at. His walk rate is up to 4.5 per 9 since the jump to AA. Dominguez only walked 1.4 per 9 at AA when he was 23. Not a very equal comparison Dominguez was already transitioning to a reliever but... just saying, we all have a tendency to over-value our own team's prospects. It's probably a fair-ish enough deal, even if we feel its an overpay

[Grant77]

5 minutes ago, John_Havok said:

40 FV seems to the price for rentals this season, that's where he is at. His walk rate is up to 4.5 per 9 since the jump to AA. Dominguez only walked 1.4 per 9 at AA when he was 23. Not a very equal comparison Dominguez was already transitioning to a reliever but... just saying, we all have a tendency to over-value our own team's prospects. It's probably a fair-ish enough deal, if slightly higher. 

To tell you the truth, I think I have a reasonable view on JWB. I think I just don't like Dominguez as much as others do. Unless things change, I wouldn't trust him in leverage innings in the playoffs.

[John_Havok]

3 minutes ago, Grant77 said:

To tell you the truth, I think I have a reasonable view on JWB. I think I just don't like Dominguez as much as others do. Unless things change, I wouldn't trust him in leverage innings in the playoffs.

I'd trust him over the guy who just got DFA'd. Granted, he likely wouldn't have been on the roster, but, Dominguez is a pure stuff guy, and Walker is pretty good at working with those guys and dialing them in. 

[metafour]

17 minutes ago, Grant77 said:

To tell you the truth, I think I have a reasonable view on JWB. I think I just don't like Dominguez as much as others do. Unless things change, I wouldn't trust him in leverage innings in the playoffs.

 

Over the past two months Dominguez has a 1.19 ERA, 2.29 FIP, and 3.10 xFIP and has been overpowering hitters. He also presents elite splits against right handed hitters so he presents interesting matchup value against guys like Judge (although he can't pitch against LHB's). Yes, he walks a lot of guys - but this everything else about him is elite. If he could somehow limit walks he would be an elite closer.

He actually has a fair bit of high leverage experience and even pitched in the World Series in 2022.

[sliderguy35]

i like this move a lot. he didn't have a great april in terms of strike throwing, but since may his first-pitch strike rate has gone back to his career average & the walk rate's stabilized to around 12% (which will absolutely play when you're striking out 32% of hitters). he's also a lot more platoon-neutral than the surface numbers suggest, the splitter wreaks havoc against lefties & he's currently sporting a pretty unlucky .388 babip & sub-65% strand rate vs them.

to give a bit of context, his swinging strike rate (top-20 in MLB), k% & bb% since may 1st are all about the same as what andres munoz has done in that time period (although munoz gets a lot more groundballs & manages batted ball contact better). 

fangraphs had a good point this morning; the jays gave up far less than the mets did for gregory soto for a better pitcher by basically every metric. you're never going to /win/ a rental trade unless you win the WS, but it doesn't feel like too much of a loss to give up a guy who's probably going to be a breaking ball first swingman a few years from now.

[Terminator]

In addition to Bob's fine work, Fangraphs also had a good write up on the deal and likes the trade a lot for the Jays.

Quote

 

So with all that said, I think Toronto got a better pitcher than the Mets did (Soto), and gave up a lot less to get him. The premium on Soto being left-handed probably explains the bulk of the discrepancy in prospect cost (assuming the Orioles have a similar view of their prospects to what Eric has written up); even factoring that in, along with my concerns about Domínguez’s walk rate, the Blue Jays got a solid medium-leverage reliever whose stuff has a chance to play up in October in exchange for an unremarkable minor league pitcher.

Toronto will probably be eyeing another upgrade or two before Thursday, but this is a good piece of business.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/seranthony-dominguez-switches-clubhouses/

 

 

[max silver]

56 minutes ago, sliderguy35 said:

i like this move a lot. he didn't have a great april in terms of strike throwing, but since may his first-pitch strike rate has gone back to his career average & the walk rate's stabilized to around 12% (which will absolutely play when you're striking out 32% of hitters). he's also a lot more platoon-neutral than the surface numbers suggest, the splitter wreaks havoc against lefties & he's currently sporting a pretty unlucky .388 babip & sub-65% strand rate vs them.

to give a bit of context, his swinging strike rate (top-20 in MLB), k% & bb% since may 1st are all about the same as what andres munoz has done in that time period (although munoz gets a lot more groundballs & manages batted ball contact better). 

fangraphs had a good point this morning; the jays gave up far less than the mets did for gregory soto for a better pitcher by basically every metric. you're never going to /win/ a rental trade unless you win the WS, but it doesn't feel like too much of a loss to give up a guy who's probably going to be a breaking ball first swingman a few years from now.

I ran a quick Statcast search on Dominguez and it appears as though he's only been a tad unlucky vs left handed hitters as evidenced by a .348 xwOBA/.366 wOBA split. I really liked the look of his splitter when he located in properly last night, but when he hung the splitter it reminded he an awful lot of Hoffman's misplaced splitters as they tend to have very little movement when left up.

[sliderguy35]

33 minutes ago, max silver said:

I ran a quick Statcast search on Dominguez and it appears as though he's only been a tad unlucky vs left handed hitters as evidenced by a .348 xwOBA/.366 wOBA split. I really liked the look of his splitter when he located in properly last night, but when he hung the splitter it reminded he an awful lot of Hoffman's misplaced splitters as they tend to have very little movement when left up.

you're definitely right, he hasn't been that unlucky on the contact that he's gotten. i should have been a bit more specific, the .388 babip is because he's been giving up nearly 30% line drives to LHHs since may 1st which is super unsustainable in a small sample size.

wOBA - xwOBA is kinda weird in that way, it's just measuring the outcomes of the batted balls based on EV & launch angle, but it doesn't take into account the sustainability of the types of batted balls themselves (which is why its a good large sample metric but a fundamentally misused small sample one).

i'd put a lot more stock into the fact that his K-BB% to lefties since may 1st is an elite 24.6% (30.4% - 5.8%) since it stabilizes a lot quicker & tells us more about future performance.

[Brownie19]

46 minutes ago, sliderguy35 said:

you're definitely right, he hasn't been that unlucky on the contact that he's gotten. i should have been a bit more specific, the .388 babip is because he's been giving up nearly 30% line drives to LHHs since may 1st which is super unsustainable in a small sample size.

wOBA - xwOBA is kinda weird in that way, it's just measuring the outcomes of the batted balls based on EV & launch angle, but it doesn't take into account the sustainability of the types of batted balls themselves (which is why its a good large sample metric but a fundamentally misused small sample one).

i'd put a lot more stock into the fact that his K-BB% to lefties since may 1st is an elite 24.6% (30.4% - 5.8%) since it stabilizes a lot quicker & tells us more about future performance.

Are you a new poster? or someone who just changed their user name?   Love the insight you've been posting man.  If you're new, welcome!

[Grant77]

For the record, Dominguez regularly has games like this throughout his career, and that's what I was concerned about when we made the deal.

[Spanky__99]

3 hours ago, Grant77 said:

For the record, Dominguez regularly has games like this throughout his career, and that's what I was concerned about when we made the deal.

It's okay Grant, it happens.

[Grant77]

1 hour ago, Spanky__99 said:

It's okay Grant, it happens.

I know, it just happens a lot to him. I expect him to have a lot of good games as well.