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Blue Jays Discussion: End of the Hand

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Del Preston said:
Red Sox, Yankees, and Mariners all lost tonight. Oakland didn't play.
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Well it's gonna be pretty tough but at least last night went as well as possible. Gotta pretty much run the table in all these games against the O's and Twins and at least split with the Yankees and Rays. Although that three gamer at the Trop is probably a miracle if they go 1-2
 
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CatchyTune said:
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Well that sucks. Wasted a few million and trade Adams for nothing (likely was going to happen anyways). Oh well. Hopefully that means Pearson or Merryweather are up.

I guess this is the corresponding move;



Happy to have Jano back for Ryu's sake.
 
Thornton has been sent to Triple A, which solves a season-long question of: "When, exactly, is the appropriate time to play Thornton?"

Also we should rename the thread to "End of the Hand"
 
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I have not been following the Jays that closely this season but I do tune in sometimes, so I'm curious about thoughts from those who follow the team very closely.

When they made the deal for Berrios, I looked at where they were in the standings, how many teams were between them and the playoffs, and how the team had performed to that point. On paper the roster seemed like it could contend, but they had never showed it by the trade deadline with any consistency. Actually, I thought they had consistently been winning over the bottom half of the league, but consistently losing to the better teams. The combination of their position in the standings and their inability to compete with good teams suggested this team might not really be a contender, and I was surprised they would make a deal like that, trading two of their top prospects. I didn't like the deal at the time, but I will admit I almost never like trading prospects/picks for my teams unless they're in an obvious "go for it" situation. The fact they have him next year is obviously an important factor.

Further to this, even going back to the previous management group, there seems to be talk of the Jays deliberately using a strategy of acquiring players by trading prospects in-season, rather than signing free agents over the winter. Isn't it better to sign free agents, which "only" cost dollars, rather than give up prospects to get guys at the trade deadline? Obviously they did sign a big free agent this off-season, but couldn't they have gone after a starter then and therefore still been able to keep those prospects? Or did they try and failed, leaving them with no other option but to trade if they wanted to get more pitching?
 
The Nemesis said:
Pearson makes sense and explains in part why they shoved Hand out the door.

I honestly don't have a damn clue who Baker is. I just know he's not Hatch.
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Only thing I remember about Baker is he is from the Oh trade with Colorado years ago. He could strike guys out but has walk issues.
 
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Marmoset said:
I have not been following the Jays that closely this season but I do tune in sometimes, so I'm curious about thoughts from those who follow the team very closely.

When they made the deal for Berrios, I looked at where they were in the standings, how many teams were between them and the playoffs, and how the team had performed to that point. On paper the roster seemed like it could contend, but they had never showed it by the trade deadline with any consistency. Actually, I thought they had consistently been winning over the bottom half of the league, but consistently losing to the better teams. The combination of their position in the standings and their inability to compete with good teams suggested this team might not really be a contender, and I was surprised they would make a deal like that, trading two of their top prospects. I didn't like the deal at the time, but I will admit I almost never like trading prospects/picks for my teams unless they're in an obvious "go for it" situation. The fact they have him next year is obviously an important factor.
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The trade was likely as much about next year as it was this one. This is a young team that is (aside from Ray and Semien) mostly set up to be together for the next several seasons. So landing Berrios, especially for the cost paid, was done with an eye on making sure the team would have a chance to be competitive beyond just 2021. I don't think this management group is the type that's going to burn out an entire segment of the farm system on an all-in sort of move unless they are doing so to be prohibitive world series favorites and have contingencies in place.

Also there's speculation that trading those prospects was as much about maximizing value as it was just paying the steep price for a big asset in Berrios. In the eyes of some a lot of the shine has come off Austin Martin as he's gone from being a potential top-of-the-order bat with massive positional versatility potential to maybe being an OK contact guy propped up by his plate discipline, with no power, and with limited positional use. Think Cavan Biggio but probably worse because at least Biggio has power.

Maybe it doesn't turn out that bad. Maybe he rebounds into the guy he was supposed to be when he was a top tier prospect in his draft who fell into the Jays' laps. Or maybe not. Time will tell. And if there's one advantage to trading baseball prospects it's that the attrition rate on them is so ludicrously high that you usually stand a better chance of coming out ahead when you deal prospects for established players than having it come back to bite you. The Jays sent out a lot of prospects in its deals when Anthopoulos pushed his chips to the center of the table in 2015 and it could be argued that the only one that really came back to bite the team in any capacity is probably one of the guys least expected to: Matt Boyd. Daniel Norris, Jeff Hoffman, and to a lesser extent Miguel Castro were all more highly regarded and have largely been little more than acceptable relief arms in the bigs. Even going back before that really only Noah Syndergaard came back to bite them in that small flurry of 2012/2013 deals. The Marlins package never amounted to a ton. Henderson Alvarez had some brief shining moments before coming undone. Anthony DeSclafani looks solid but it's taken him like 3 organizations to get there. Nicolino was the centerpiece and he busted. Marisnick has had a long career but has never been more than maybe a pretty good part-time OF. Hechavarria is what his floor was figured to be, a solid defender who doesn't hit enough to be a viable everyday player in a lot of lineups. And Syndergaard's partner in the Mets trade (who it must be remembered was considered potentially the bigger loss at the time the trade was made) was supposed catcher-of-the-future Travis d'Arnaud. He had like a season and a half of strong play in New York and has been mostly mediocre since then.

Point being that dealing prospects in MLB is often a lot less risky than other sports just because the failure rate on MLB prospects is so much higher than most other sports.

Further to this, even going back to the previous management group, there seems to be talk of the Jays deliberately using a strategy of acquiring players by trading prospects in-season, rather than signing free agents over the winter. Isn't it better to sign free agents, which "only" cost dollars, rather than give up prospects to get guys at the trade deadline? Obviously they did sign a big free agent this off-season, but couldn't they have gone after a starter then and therefore still been able to keep those prospects? Or did they try and failed, leaving them with no other option but to trade if they wanted to get more pitching?
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I'm sure they tried to get some pitching in free agency. We can't know for sure how close it ever came because it's never proven but there are factors in play:

1) Pitching in free agency is an expensive risk/reward proposition. You back the money truck up to a guy who is hitting free agency because he's some combo of a) too expensive for his team, b) likely on the wrong side of 30, c) likely with a lot of miles on his arm, or d) potentially already showing some worrying cracks in the foundation and maybe a few leaky pipes and that one light switch that always gets way too hot so you leave it off even if it means you trip over the lego in the hall whenever you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night because that switch is supposed to be for said hallway's lights and now my house metaphor is getting away from me. Point being is that free agent starting pitching is a big risk. Perhaps a bigger risk than anything other than expensive top shelf free agent relief pitching.

The Jays apparently kicked the tires on bringing back Taijuan Walker but weren't willing to give him the term he wanted. Nobody predicted he's spend the first half of the season on fire the way he did with the Mets.

Meanwhile look at the money that was tossed around.

Trevor Bauer was the crown jewel and got an obscene amount of cash from the Dodgers. Granted nobody would've necessarily predicted his season would go down in the burning wreckage of his reputation as he was outed for allegedly being a massive, massive scumbag, but he also was very good but perhaps not $30m+ per season good. The Jays were allegedly in on him til the end too.

Jake Odorizzi was also a Jays target who chose Houston. He's been kinda shit for the Astros, pitching to an ERA of almost 4.50 while averaging like 5 innings per start.

Walker was already mentioned

Mike Minor got $18m over 2 years. ERA north of 5 for the Royals this season

Charlie Morton, Corey Kluber, Drew Smyly, and Garret Richards all got more than $10m a season on 1 year deals

Morton has been very good. Kluber decent, Smyly trash, and Richards a tire fire.

Point is that spending big money on the free agency market is a risky proposition that is just as likely to backfire as it is to succeed. Or perhaps more likely to backfire.

2) Like I said, Free agent pitchers are older. This is a young team and Berrios is an opportunity to get a guy more in line with the age group of everyone else.

3) Perhaps it could be argued that if spent smartly the cost of the prospects and the cheaper trade acquisition contract is more valuable because it represents the potential to do more. For the price of the two prospects the Jays gave up they got a pitcher who could be as good as any other potential free agent acquisition and have extra money in the budget to spend elsewhere if needed.

It does seem likely that Berrios was plan B, but it's not the worst plan B in the world and it does have its advantages
 
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My buddy and I bought tickets for Saturday anyone know if you need you’re full vaccine now or is that at a later date? He only has his 1st shot and we don’t wanna drive up if he won’t be allowed in
 
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