This Week in Things That Just Won't Go Away: Jose Bautista Trade Rumours

In all honesty I've been trying to ignore this topic all together in the hope that it would just burn itself out and go away. Instead, it just seems to be gaining more and more "traction", if that's even the word for the ceaseless troll jobs we've seen coming from mostly American media outlets in recent months. You know the topic I'm talking about. It's the one where the Toronto Blue Jays, in a fit of hopeless despair after the crushing disappointment of the 2013 season, trade star slugger Jose Bautista and his ludicrously team friendly contract to [insert team of the week here] for a back of the rotation starter and a B level prospect.

The suitors for Bautista are most commonly the Rangers, Mets and recently the Phillies, but make no mistake, there are 29 teams in the league that would all love to get Bautista's bat into their lineup. What's more, there is an incomprehensibly large and vocal segment of the Blue Jays' fan base that seems not only willing to entertain the notion of trading the franchise cornerstone, but are ready to drive the all-star outfielder to the airport themselves. 

Now, I don't doubt for a second that there have been inquiries made on Bautista, as I'm sure there have been on Encarnacion, Reyes, Rasmus, and probably others too. The Jays are a team with several desirable pieces, a large payroll that may not have a lot of room to grow, and multiple holes to fill. It stands to reason that rival GMs might see them as ripe for the picking, and that Anthopoulos might be willing to listen to offers. It's his job to listen. I don't really believe in players being untouchable, should the right offer come along. However, that doesn't mean trading one of the best players in franchise history while he's still under contract for two more seasons with an option for a third should be seen as a desirable or likely scenario.

Free Agent Targets: Position Players

Well it's a good thing this year's market is slow to develop, because I wanted to have this out days ago! Life though, you know? Absolutely no consideration for hot stove season. Typical.

Anyways, the other day I posted my take on some of the free agent pitchers on the MLB Trade Rumours Top 50 list that the Blue Jays may target this off-season. If you missed it you can check it out here. It was pretty much every starter on the list except for Tim Hudson who I just can't see considering the Blue Jays at this point in his career, and Phil Hughes because he's Phil Hughes. For position players I'm going to have to go off the list a little bit, because quite frankly pickings are slim at the Blue Jays' positions of need, which are catcher and second base. 

Like I mentioned in the intro to the previous piece, I don't expect them to be players for the biggest names at those positions, which are undoubtedly Brian McCann and Robinson Cano. Behind them the list gets real short real quick, but there are still some guys that would provide upgrades over the gaping black holes of suckitude they got out of those positions in 2013. It will be important to remember when considering some of these unsexy names that the Jays received -1.1 fWAR performances out of the catcher's position in 2013, and -2.1 fWAR from their second basemen. Those WAR totals are good for 29th and 30th of 30 teams respectively. So, while some of the names I mention might be no great shakes themselves, even replacement level players at each position would be a three win upgrade which, coupled with better health all over the diamond (because it couldn't possibly be worse, right? Right?! *knocks wood*) would be very significant for the 2014 team. 

Also, I'm less interested in seeing them lay out big money to fill their holes in the lineup. If they're going to spend big, I'd rather it be on upgrading the rotation. Given the abject terribleness of the incumbents, I think they should have an easier time making modest upgrades that seem huge, considering the very low bar that's been set, and with far less cost either in dollars or prospect capital. So, it may sometimes seem like I'm favouring lesser players, but it's in the interest of best allocating what are still sure to be limited resources, even if the purse strings are looser than they've been in the past. 

Note: I'll be referring to FanGraphs' Steamer projections in this piece, which I didn't do in my piece on pitchers. It may not be entirely justified, I'm no sabermetrician after all, but I find I put more stock in projections for position players than for pitchers. Obviously hitters' performances can fluctuate from year to year as well, but pitchers are so volatile, and projections have such long memories, that when it comes to evaluating free agents I'd rather look at the differences between their career and recent performances separately rather than rolling it all up into one set of projected numbers. I know not everyone buys into statistical projections, so take them with whatever sized grain of salt you choose. I've just included them as food for thought, not as gospel.

Free Agent Targets: Starting Pitching

The happiest time of the year, at least for those of us that spend time spilling digital ink about baseball, is upon us yet again. Free agency opened up this week, with the deadline for teams to extend qualifying offers to their pending free agents having passed Monday at 5 p.m. With free agency season comes MLB Trade Rumors' Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Tim Dierkes' predictions of where they might end up signing. It's worth checking out the whole list as a lot of the predictions seems pretty spot on to me, at least in terms of the types of contracts we might expect to see each free agent sign.

I expect there to be a lot of sticker shock on a lot of these free agents this off-season (because there totally isn't any other off-season, right?), if the contracts the Giants dished out to Hunter Pence and Tim Lincecum are any indication of this year's market. At this point, it's still hard to know whether the Giants went and blew up the market all on their own by setting a surprisingly high bar that superior free agents will expect to surpass, or if the added revenue from new TV deals would have inflated salaries anyways, with the Giants just being among the first to operate in this new climate. 

So, while I expect there to be some eye-popping overpayments to come, I find myself a lot more okay with the Blue Jays indulging in a bit of free agent silliness this off-season than I ever have been before. In my view, the team has a strong enough core, much of which is under team control or signed to absurdly team friendly contracts for the next couple of years, that they are at the point that supplementing that core through free-agency makes more sense to me than trading away the prospects that will hopefully be the core of the next competitive Blue Jays team. The team has very little in salary commitments beyond 2015, and how underpaid guys like Bautista and Encarnacion are should allow them a bit of flexibility to overpay some other players (*cough* Buehrle *cough*). Basically, if Rogers is willing to open the wallet a little bit more for the next two years, the Jays should be able to take on some salary without hamstringing their future payroll or depleting the farm too much.

That being said, I don't expect the Blue Jays to be players for some of the biggest names on the market like Cano, Choo, McCann and Ellsbury. Barring some pretty significant trades, I don't see that kind of money kicking around, and the fact that all of them will be attached to draft pick compensation will be some deterrent, although I feel that with that level of talent it should be a fairly minor consideration, especially with the Blue Jays being in possession of two protected first round picks. For a lot of the second tier free agents on the market, however, giving up even a second round pick and the associated bonus pool dollars will be a significant consideration, and rightfully so if the goal is to build a competitive team in the present without mortgaging the future.

So, with that in mind, here is the first of a two-part look at some names off the Top 50 list that the Blue Jays might be considering address their needs in the rotation, behind the dish, and at second base. First I'll be looking at starting pitchers with position players to follow. My rankings aren't just based on the quality of the player, but also the likely cost to sign them, whether they're attached to a draft pick, and in some cases the likelihood of the Blue Jays being able to convince a player to take their money.

Could The Josh Johnson Era Be Coming To An End In Toronto?

Today's 5:00 EST deadline for the Blue Jays to extend Josh Johnson a $14.1 million qualifying offer has come and gone without the team making the decision to do so, and I've got to say I'm more surprised with this than I was with any of their decisions regarding contract options. Perhaps I shouldn't have been, with the season Johnson had and with Jon Heyman having tweeted days ago that a qualifying offer was "unlikely", but I was all the same. 

What to do with Johnson had been one of the most divisive topics among Blue Jays fans and armchair GMs since he was acquired from Miami last December. During the off-season and early in the 2013 campaign, the question was whether to try to re-sign him to a multi-year deal as soon as possible or to let him play out the year and either re-sign him or extend a qualifying offer at the end of the season. The thinking was that Johnson would be getting multiple years, so if the Jays couldn't lock him up, the next best thing would be to qualify him and take the draft pick compensation should he sign elsewhere.  Somewhere along the rocky road that was Johnson's 2013, however, the comfort that draft pick compensation offered turned to dread that, if qualified, Johnson would most likely just accept it in hopes of rebuilding his decimated value and pursuing a multi-year contract for 2015 and beyond. Johnson's inability to stay healthy had surely cost him that lucrative deal, and now fans were worried that the Blue Jays could end up with $14 million of potentially scarce payroll resources tied up in Johnson's rotation worst 6.20 ERA.

To Exercise Or Not To Exercise, That Is The Option

Well the Blue Jays wasted no time at all in announcing which 2014 options they'd be picking up and which they'd be declining. There is only really one surprise in the bunch, from my perspective at least, and those of you who are familiar with my opinions on various players might be similarly surprised by my surprise. Still with me? Good.

Casey Janssen's $4 million option was an absolute no-brainer. He's been great for a second straight season, posting a 2.56 ERA and a 2.74 FIP while striking out 23.8% and walking 6.2% of the batters he's faced. If you go in for saves (which you don't, because they're kind of silly) he's converted on 34 of 36 opportunities. In short, he's been one of the league's most reliable closers, and given some of the absurd contracts handed out to "proven closers" in recent years, picking up his option was not a decision that Anthopoulos expended much brain power on, I'm sure. It was going to get picked up unless his arm fell off, and while there were times this season that we heard his post-op shoulder was giving him trouble, it remained firmly attached to his torso and never seemed to have much of an impact on his performance. Now that he'll have a presumably surgery-free off-season to rest and recover, paying him $4 million to hopefully do it all over again next year is very appealing, but as I wrote here, I'm not entirely sure it'll be with the Jays. That's not to say I think he will or should be traded, but that salary for that kind of performance will likely be very appealing to other teams as well, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if we hear his name in a lot of trade rumours this off-season.

Masahiro Tanaka, The Posting System, and Crying Over Spilled Milk

Might he look better in a lighter shade of blue?

Much as they were two off-seasons ago, the Toronto Blue Jays are once again being tossed about as a potential landing place for the next big thing out of Japan, should Masahiro Tanaka of the NPB's Rakuten Golden Eagles be posted as expected. In his typical fashion, Anthopoulos is playing his cards close to the vest, never more than hinting at the possibility of the Jays being in play for the Japanese right-hander. However, this hasn't stopped fans and media alike from speculating that they could be one of the clubs to make a serious play for Tanaka.

In a lot of ways, it just makes too much sense not to seem likely. Despite what a certain knuckle-dragging segment of the fan base will try to tell you about the magic of coaching, chemistry, and cut-off men, the 2013 Blue Jays had exactly three glaring weaknesses (when they were healthy, at least). They had obvious holes at catcher and second base, receiving sub-replacement level performances from both performances. Those should be relatively easy to improve at, because even replacement level at both positions would be about a three win upgrade over what they received in 2013. Their biggest problem, and unfortunately the hardest to address in a meaningful way, was the disastrous health and performance of their starting rotation. If the general consensus about Tanaka being among the top free agent starters this off-season is accurate, landing him could go a long way towards shoring it up. What's more, Tanaka is exactly the kind of acquisition that, in a perfect world, I believe Anthopoulos should be targeting right now.

Could There Be Hope Behind The Plate in 2014?

Yes please!

If it's true that last off-season J.P. Arencibia received some sort of assurance that he wouldn't be traded amidst swirling rumours, early signs suggest that he shouldn't be nearly so comfortable in his job heading into 2014. I won't rehash J.P.'s historically woeful 2013 performance here, but suffice to say that only wearers of the most rose coloured glasses could feel good about the prospect of going into 2014 with Arencibia as the club's starting catcher.

So, unfortunately for his many fans that apparently still exist for some reason (but oh so fortunately for those of us that are bigger fans of winning at baseball) it should come as no surprise that the Blue Jays are rumoured to be looking hard at a number of potential upgrades on the trade market. While he may remain with the club in a backup role, I think we should probably get used to seeing a whole lot less of JPA going forward.

Most recently, the Jays have been linked to Angels catchers Chris Iannetta and Hank Conger. A couple of weeks ago, they were also rumoured to be interested in the Washington Nationals' Wilson Ramos. Quite frankly, the only thing that needs to be said is, "Do it already!". Obviously that's an oversimplification of a complex situation requiring in-depth analysis of past performance, clever projection of future performance, and shrewd assessment of the value of various assets, both financial and human, but... nuts to that. Do it already!