The Jays FO could very well believe Moreno will be a star and still decided to trade him because they also believe Varsho is (and will continue to be) a star and fills much more of a need for the Jays right now than Moreno, for obvious reasons.
The Jays replace two OFers who combined for 3.4 WAR (4.1 projected WAR) with two OFer who combined for 5.7 WAR (4.7 projected WAR) but you'd say without Bassitt they'd be worse for sure?
How do you figure that?
Should also note that the two OFers leaving were below average corner OFers and the two coming in are above average to elite CFers
Kekai Rios
He's had 10 PA's in AA in his career
The Jays only have two catchers on the 40 man, Jansen and Kirk. Varsho is the defacto 3rd string catcher right now.
Bec and Ellison are slated to start as the AAA catchers right now
Lots of off season left though
Kikuchi started 20 games for the Jays last season to the tune of negative 0.7 WAR and the Jays still won 92 games as a team. They can afford to trot him out again as a 5th starter if that's what they want to do IMO.
Luxury threshold be damned....
Sign Conforto or Profar
Sign Cueto or Kluber
Sign Rogers or Chafin
You'd be adding about $25-30 million AAV or so?
I'd like that team, a lot.
This is probably why the Jays were reportedly talking to Cueto. I would love to see Cueto or Kluber brought in on a year deal just to fill out the 5th spot and as a result improve the depth by knocking everyone else down a notch.
Yeah there is lots of potential there for sure, none of it MLB battle tested though. Well, except for Ryu but he'd still be probably the biggest question mark out of all of them at this point.
If Berrios bounces back to 3-4 WAR and they somehow miraculously unlock Kikuchi we should have a pretty damn good rotation.
Everybody needs to stay healthy too I guess, because the depth is still not very good, or at least not very proven. White/Zulueta/Tiedemann does have potential to be solid depth though.
Think so?
His last three seasons he's only accumulated 0.7 WAR and last season was -0.2 WAR
I figured he'd be signing cheap somewhere and then trying to bounce back and prove himself again.
I wonder if Conforto would have no interest in signing with the Jays seeing as they already have 3 OFers with KK, Springer and Gurriel?
He probably wants a full time spot all gift wrapped and guaranteed.
Kikuchi with the 16.8 K/9 and 2.28 xFIP out of the pen last year could potentially be a weapon, especially if he can cut down on the walks just a hair.
It'd be a smart move to bring in a steady #5 like Cueto and then let Kooch work 1-2 innings at a time in middle relief and fine tune things. By mid season he might be a legit high leverage lefty if he can build up his confidence.
I still would like to see Taylor Rogers brought in too. Could end up with a pretty killer back end of the pen with Romano/Pearson/Rogers/Kikuchi if everything clicked.
Thanks peeps.
It'll be interesting to see how much more they spend.
That $233,600,000 number also includes Ryu, and IIRC they have that insured so while they are still over the threshold, they at least have some $$ coming from insurance.