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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.