AMS528

Oh right this is an actually good team we're facing now.

There's been a lot of discussion about how the Jays have drafted the last few years and their player development and also discussions about how they've drafted relative to other teams and the last management team. I figure a comparison with the last regime for productivity would be useful. There was some continuity from JP to AA, but it's hard to measure for part credit so I'm not going to do that and just start from 2010. This is incredibly simple I'm literally just going to be using bWAR for it. It would not be fair to measure WAR totals for the 2010-2015 period so I'm just counting whatever was accumulated until 2017 so it's a fair seven year window. It is going to lack precision because it is tiring and I have a job I'm avoiding to do it. Unsigned players don't count. I'm also going to note any major players obtained with those pieces, cause a major part of drafting is about accumulating chips to cash in later. I will also list international signings but not bothering with WAR totals there. 2010 Aaron Sanchez (8.3) Noah Syndergaard (7.9 for the Mets) Sam Dyson (2.9 for other teams) The Jays also drafted Chad Green and Kris Bryant but they didn't sign them so no credit there. Other notable names were Nicolino, Asher Woj and Sean Nolin, all of whom were pieces in fairly major deals later on. All those other pieces including Nicolino and guys like Pompey accumulated 1.1 WAR between them by 2017. Mostly Danny Barnes accomplished this with one good 2017. 9.4 WAR accumulated for the Jays. 20.2 in total. 2011 This was an really good draft the Jays did not reap enough benefits from. Kevin Pillar (12.5) Joe Musgrove (0.6 with Houston) Daniel Norris (2.8 mostly with Detroit) Desclafani (3.7 mostly with Cincinnati) The Jays also drafted Aaron and Austin Nola that year with no real hope of signing them. Jon Berti was also drafted but he accumulated all his value post 2017. The rest accumulated a grand total of -1 WAR. The Jays got 12.9 WAR from this draft. 18.6 WAR in total by 2017. 2012 This one is super simple. Jays only took a single player worth mentioning. Marcus Stroman (9.6) The Jays also took Borucki but all value he accumulated was after 2017. The rest managed -0.3 in that time. 9.3 WAR all for the Jays by 2017. 2013 Not a bad draft in total. Matthew Boyd (1.7 for Detroit) Kendall Gravemen (6.5 mostly for Oakland) Danny Jansen and Tim Mayza were also taken in this draft but did not start accumulating value until 2018. Rowdy also was taken and accumulated a grand total of 0.1 WAR in all his post 2018 seasons since then. The Jays got -0.3 WAR accumulated for them in this draft. 7.9 total by 2017. 2014 No one produced anything for the Jays by 2017. Jeff Hoffman produced negative value within that time. Jordan Romano and Lane Thomas were also taken by the Jays this draft which improved it long term. -0.3 WAR produced by Jeff Hoffman for the Rockies in total. 2015 A really bad draft. Only Brady Singer amounted to anything and the Jays failed to sign him. Nothing accumulated by 2017. Totals: The Jays got 31.3 WAR produced for the Jays from the picks. 55.7 WAR was produced by 2017 from those drafts. Ok now onto this regime. 2016 The best draft they've had because of one player. Bo Bichette (17.8) Cavan Biggio (7) Zach Jackson and Josh Winckowski have also produced some value from this draft elsewhere. Shea Langeliers was drafted but not signed. 25.8 WAR for the Jays from this. 26.1 in total. 2017 Terrible draft. Davis Schneider (1.8) Riley Adams (1.6 elsewhere) Ryan Noda (2.3 with Oakland) Remember the totals only include up to 2023 which is why Schneider is not at 3.1 and Noda is not lower with his terrible year. Also taken were Nate Pearson, Kevin Smith and Zach Logue whose numbers bring down the entire year more. 1.4 WAR for the Jays 3.4 total WAR from this draft to 2023. 2018 Nightmare draft. Barger, Groshans, Cal Stevenson and and Vinny Capra were notables. The fact that I am listing Groshans, Stevenson and Capra as notables is a bad sign. -0.6 WAR total for the Jays from this one, and basically the same in total. 2019 This draft produced one temporarily great player. Alek Manoah (7.4) Spencer Horwitz was also taken. 7.7 total for the Jays. 2020 COVID draft. No one has produced anything for the Jays. Austin Martin and Nick Frasso were taken in those five picks. 2021 Nothing from here. Ricky T and Gunnar Hoglund were taken. 2022 and 2023 Combined these two given the recency. No real top prospects have emerged from these two drafts as of yet. Totals: 34.3 WAR in total for the Jays. 36.6 in total. So the Atkins drafts actually in total produced more WAR specifically for the Jays but an incredibly large portion of this was the first draft with Biggio and Bichette (and this also includes additional drafts for this one although it's balanced out by the loss of development from COVID). In total though there is a huge gap in total WAR drafted by each management team. There were simply a lot more pieces to go about dealing from the AA drafts. That bears itself out as AA used some of the draft pieces to get Happ, Buehrle, Reyes, Dickey, Donaldson, Tulo, and Price. Some of these were ultimately pretty bad deals by AA, with one home run deal in Donaldson. Big pieces by Atkins for those drafted pieces are Berrios, Chapman and Stripling. Honestly given the sheer lack of pieces drafted by Atkins his trade history is very good, there is no doubt that is his greatest strength in his tenure. I cannot find a definitive list of AA international signings but obviously he got Vlad, Osuna, and Franklin Barreto from my recollection, and Atkins got Kirk/Moreno/Orelvis. I think from looking at these in totality, there's no doubt that the AA team was better at both drafting and developing. There are many players who turned out with good long term careers and even within that timeframe produced plenty of value. But he also made some terrible trades and lost out on some of that cheap value. Given he's drafted well with Atlanta, it seems like he could have continued to do that if he had stuck around. He may have also continued to make some bad trades cause he liked taking risks. Atkins draft record is one year aside really really terrible, and that was nearly 8 years ago now that draft took place. After that point in time it has been 7 years of not much to show for it which is a great way to absolutely handicap the long term future and ability to stay a contender. We have no pieces to deal, and very little to look forward to for prospects.

I mean no. Atkins has done well with deals and signings. IKF looks good, Turner doesn't but that's barely needle moving anyways. What would have saved this team was drafting and developing a single impact piece in the last seven drafts other than Schneider (Manoah was as well for a short period). It's actually possible to deal with a core player failing or struggling like Bo, or your big free agent signing declining as they age like Springer if you manage to draft and develop well enough to compensate. Seriously look through every draft from 2017 forward there is next to nothing there. Because we have not, we have no real impact pieces coming up, you have to hope Tieddeman is not made of glass or that Orelvis will bat better than .200/280/450 one day. That is why Atkins has failed and this team is under .500. Not because of any potential free agent signings that would have saved us. And those are also the only two real pieces we have to trade for a star if that opportunity happens to come up. That's dire. Bo and Kirk playing well is not the only thing that could have saved this team.

In fairness those ones were knockoffs I think that definitely looked worse than the official ones. The official ones are still whatever but they're not the worst in the league or anything.

How Leo Jimenez's defense at SS? He's having a decent enough season with the bat, if we move on from Bo and aren't replacing him with an external option immediately we're either going to be playing IKF there and Jimenez is the only other option as far as I know.

Vlad could at least run the bases better than he does. He is legitimately at 50th percentile sprint speed this year, he's just a terrible baserunner anyways cause he has no instincts for it I guess. It's so incredibly frustrating that everything about Vlad indicates a player that could be great. He has enough speed to be a decent baserunner. He has the athleticism to be a decent 1B. He hits the ball hard as hell and should be hitting plenty of HRs. He can take walks. He should be putting up 5-6 WAR seasons consistently. If he even managed to fix one of those things his value would be solid. It will be the most frustrating thing if winds up going elsewhere and figuring out how to put it together.

It's definitely possible there's some truth to that, but the hit rate for guys who played in the Negro Leagues and then came to MLB was amazingly good. Forget the HOFers, cause there were a bunch of those, but the guys who came over in their mid to late 30's like Sam Jethroe, Luke Easter, or Bob Boyd and still put up solid seasons when they were nearing the end of their careers. There were plenty who came over who weren't the absolute best and were making all star games.

Positive surprises is definitely the thing here. If you're going to be successful and paper over flaws that inevitably pop up on your big league team (core guys having bad years), you need those players that seemingly come of the blue (as a result of effective player development) that teams like Tampa and Houston always seed to get. As everyone has mentioned several times, Davis Schneider is the only one of those guys from either the pitching or hitting pool that has happened for. You need a Boweden Francis to look good as a back end starter, an Otto Lopez to succeed. You need some low level guys who weren't top picks to have really good years so it looks like they've got a shot and you can pool them when you need to make a trade for Juan Soto etc.

The entire developmental weight of this organization has resulted in one Davis Schneider and basically nothing else.

I was going to say well Profar was pretty decent last year, and could have made sense and didn't realize I was thinking of 2022 when he was solid. I completely missed that he was literally one of the worst players in baseball last year. He really vacillates between being pretty good and completely unplayable.

That is significantly better than what we wound up with.

One genuine large area of concern for me right now is that the team has been bad enough that pieces are going to be dealt. Obviously this needs to happen, the problem is with Atkins at the helm I am skeptical that we are going to make deals for the right pieces. Atkins has a terrible drafting record, and as someone showed a couple of weeks ago, his initial deals for prospects with a rebuilding Jays team were absolutely awful (Billy McKinley, Brandon Drury, Derek Fisher etc). Not a lot of hope that he's going to start figuring out which players are going to become solid minor leaguers. Atkins is decent at knowing the prospects he drafts aren't very good and dealing them away for decent major league talent, and (mostly) signing free agents. This has limited value for a team that needs to rebuild. The (potential) Bo and Vlad trades are going to be what set up the next Jays era, and he should probably not have been the guy at the helm to make those deals. Shapiro failing to can Atkins at the end of last year means the guy he may fire at the end of the year is the guy who needs to make the deals to get us to the rebuild. Large misstep by Shapiro.

Even though he's been incredibly frustrating to watch, he's likely to at least provide better value than Hosmer I think on that kind of deal. His career wRC+ is basically Hosmer's career high. He's managed to get himself back to being an average sprinter (and the 6th fastest 1B!), so the concern that he's going to be so slow and fat he'll be completely done in a few years is less likely. The caveat there is that even though he's an average sprinter, he is the worst baserunner possible anyways.

Man the numbers Gabriel Martinez, Alex De Jesus, and Miguel Hiraldo have put up in AA this year may as well be their death knell for whatever chance they had as long shot prospects. No one has even had a good season from these borderline types across the levels. Aponte, Toman etc. The hitting prospects are particularly dire for this team. Even the guys who get mentioned as having good years, like Roden, and Kasevich have been decent but not great, and have fairly clear limitations (splits, literally zero power). There's incredibly few guys who you can look at and say, this guy is having a no doubt excellent season that we can get excited about for the future. Barger probably counts, even though he struggled when he was up cause his numbers are genuinely great. He's 24 and his second full season at AAA which tempers the excitement a bit. Bohrofen has been good, and that's about it. There's been a few pitchers who look interesting, but really there are the same issues where no one has broken out and looked like, ok this is a possible top three starter someday in the future. This is not a fun minor league system to follow at this point. I have to think with Nimmala struggling, Barriera having another lost year, and Tiedemann having persistent injury concerns, this team is going to be in the bottom 5 again for most prospect lists.

He's putting up Vladdy like underperformances for xWOBA.

Good shot at ending the season at 50 career WAR and 43 peak WAR. Steadily building his HOF case. Peak is going to be HOF worthy at least.

Assuming that this season is a lost cause there's a real question of what to do with Vladdy. Do you try to get an extension done, do you deal him, you certainly shouldn't let him just get to free agency next year or delay on trading him like with Donaldson. He's having a very solid hitting season at this point, albeit in a broadly inexplicable way, with zero power like he's Mark Grace. His xWOBA is undoubtedly elite, but he does not pull the ball enough on fly balls to capitalize on those numbers so his underperformance does make some sense. He's only 25, so it is possible that an extension would encapsulate some years in which we can hope to be competitive again. I'm not even really certain what his return would be in a trade right now, and I'm definitely not certain what a reasonable extension looks like. If I'm being honest I cannot imagine he's worth more than like 6/120, but I also can't imagine he accepts that. His season can kind of be seen as a success right now, but I feel like it raises more questions anyways cause of the lack of power.

We are closer to the A's and Angel's than we are to the third wild card seed, which is the only one we'd even have a shot at. The best you can say is there's only 3 games seperating the batch of non playoff teams and us. But that's not much comfort given how many there are. It's beyond stupid to chase the possibility of the third wild card while competing with six teams that are ahead of you honestly. The ship has sunk. Our inability to even beat mediocre teams is enough evidence of that. Time to acquire pieces for a rebuild. Wish we had more blue chip prospects to get ourselves going for it but Atkins has failed to draft and develop so we'll have to restock through trades.

He doesn't even need to be with how elite his defense is now. Being a slightly below average bat makes him worth like 3-4 WAR. Pity his bat has never gotten back to that level cause he would be the best catcher in the game. If he was performing roughly to his expected numbers this year that would be great.

Saddest prophecy.

He's pivoting to becoming Keith Hernandez instead of Prince Fielder.

I don't know man. I've seen Bichettes, Kirk's, Springer's, Varsho and KK's statcast pages. And it definitely feels like there's been plenty of reason for it.

I edited more in after that. But yeah, and when you can restock it lets you deal effectively for more talent. We can't deal for more talent cause who the hell wants our nothing prospects. 2022 and 2021 have produced barely anything. Tiedeman aside we've got nothing to use now to deal with the fact that we can't hit at all. Who on earth wants to deal for zero power Toman/Kasevich/Roden. Those guys have like a combined slugging of .002 or so. Barriera may as well be done, we have to hope he can one day pull things together, but he has no value as a trade chip now. We gotta dream on Trenton Wallace putting up great numbers at 25 in AA.

At least the Leafs have talent that performs in the regular season. I'd love to see Vladdy and Bo perform like Matthew/Nylander/Marner do in the regular season. Fake hope for the playoffs is better than wondering why you're generational hitting prospect can't hit.

Extremely sad that in the past 5 years since he started in Atlanta "bare cupboard AA" drafted Michael Harris, Spencer Strider and Bryce Elder who have more than doubled the total WAR produced by Jays drafts in the same time period. If you give the Jays the 2018 and 2017 drafts to add on, it is literally just half the production, and significant chunks of that are from like Ryan Noda and Riley Adams who we traded away. It's basically Manoah and Davish Schneider in the past 7 drafts who are our controllable young guys that have come up and that is unbelievably bad. Cannot be overstated how mediocre the 2022 draft looks as well at this point. That could have been a restocking that allowed us to deal for a guy like Soto but Atkins failed hard. AA used Langeliers, Cusick and Estes from his drafts to help get Matt Olson as well. And even after all the players that have come up and trades they've made to add they also have some top notch pitching prospects to restock with now with Waldrep and Owen Murphy.