Some quick thoughts:
Hopefully, Santander is playing RF with Springer in LF. If the Jays need a CF for the beginning of the year, Loperfido is a strong candidate to be the starter (Lukes is a strong candidate to be 4th outfielder, with Loperfido either starting with Varsho on IL or getting sent down if Varsho is good to go to get reps in). Straw and Lukes should be battling each other (Straw brings speed and defense where Lukes's bat profile is interesting).
Across the infield, Clement got robbed out of a gold glove and his crazy low K rate suggests that his offense could theoretically improve. The biggest thing is that his BB rate needs to improve (he's a 5-8% guy in the minors with sub-2.5 in the majors). The difference between the two is the difference between him being average (with no other improvements) and slightly below average.
Bichette is the shortstop and assuming he's back to 100%, he should be solid.
Gimenez is the best defensive 2B the Jays have had since Semien at least (possibly above that level). Offensively, he struggled to barrel the ball last year, and hit too many fly balls the year before.
Vlad is Vlad at 1st.
Kirk gets a lot of criticism but he's still seen as one of the better catchers in baseball. He got better when he played more last year. His biggest problem was hitting less balls hard (it's a slight difference, but it is likely from pulling less pitches, since that is the easiest way to hit the ball hard without changing your swing).
Schneider is one of the backups. One of the takeaways of the last few years has been a noticeable move to "use all fields". This completely undermines the approach that makes some players successful. 50 to 46 is only slight but when all 4% goes the other way, it means that most of those extra balls are going to be outs. This has been a consistent problem within the organization (he actually has good numbers on balls to right, but the shift means more fly balls in the big part of the park).
Heineman is the likely backup although all of the options figure to be about the same. They are all glove first catchers.
Wagner is likely on the team and should be a contributor, but where he plays is yet to be determined. He is more of a bat-first utility guy (like Biggio before the Ks caught up which is not a problem that Wagner has ever had).
After that, Barger, Jimenez and Orelvis could be competing for one spot. Orelvis is a candidate to take 3B away from Clement if he makes it (given his power profile), whereas Barger might be a strong-side platoon option who can play 3B/OF and Jimenez runs a Kirk-like offensive profile with speed and fielding.
The rotation is Gausman/Berrios/Bassitt/Scherzer/Francis in some order.
The bullpen has set pieces in:
Rodriguez / Sandlin / Swanson / Garcia / Green / Hoffman
The last two spots are battles with the lefty spot between:
Little (120 Stuff+ sinker, 94 cutter, 120 knuckle-curve) who throws 94.5
Walker (99 fastball, 84 sinker, 106 curveball) throwing 94.2
Garrett (100 fastball, 105 sinker, 110 slider) throwing 95.6
Lovelady (96 fastball, 111 sinker, 104 slider) throwing 92.4
Lucas (100 fastball, 95 sinker, 102 cutter, 120 slider, 92 change-up) throwing 94.2
All stuff+ values and velocity are from last year and all velocities are 4 seamers except Little who doesn't throw 4 seamers (Lucas has a sizeable velocity difference between fastball and sinker and everyone else throws them at similar velocity)
The other spot could be someone above or:
Nance (84 fastball, 104 sinker, 105 slider, 101 curveball) throwing 95.3
Pop (106 sinker, 92 cutter, 120 slider) throwing 96.2
Burr (88 fastball, 88 slider) throwing 94.1
Roberston (94 fastball, 101 cutter, 127 slider, 92 changeup) throwing 94.3
Barnes (103 fastball, 94 cutter, 97 slider) throwing 95.4
The significance of Stuff+ is that high quality pitches are generally very good and lower scoring ones generally aren't. A slight change in approach could make a massive difference (a guy like Pop abandoning a 92 cutter for two very good pitches could make all the difference in his performance. Robertson's slider was elite last year, with Little having the 11th best sinker and 9th best knucklecurve (small sample size).
- Jeff Passan | SportsCenter
