Mumblings on Jays' Trades
So I am back.
I was on an assignment to cover the swimming world championships for about three weeks in July. Got home a couple of days ago and just recovering, watching/shuttling kid and catching up on some baseball stuff that I missed while I was doing this after the end of the swimming worlds.
So the trade deadline in baseball has come and gone. Starting this year, there is only one deadline; no distinction between July 31 "non-waiver" deadline and "waiver" deadline, which fell on Aug. 31 until last year. Hey, so no more acquiring someone like Justin Verlander at the last minute on the last day of August, right?
My Blue Jays, predictably, were sellers this week. We aren't going anywhere, and we had a few assets that we fans felt would bring some decent pieces back, be it major league-ready talent or high-end prospects that could form building blocks for the future.
To get right to the point, this wasn't the case.
No longer in Toronto are: Stroman, Hudson, Biagini, Sogard, Sanchez and Phelps.
Coming in: a bunch of middling minor leaguers, a failed prospect and who knows what.
This is all head-scratching at best, maddening at worst. Our fan base's relationship with the front office had reached a new nadir.
(Too bad about Ken Giles' elbow issues this week. He would have been in high demand and would have fetched some decent pieces in return.)
So what is it that Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins are thinking? I don't even know where to start.
These guys seem to be betting on the current crop of kids in our system, especially on the pitching side. Both Stro and Sanchez were still in their 20s and were both shipped out. And tellingly, MLB.com's depth chart for the Jays' starting rotation shows only three pitchers.
Reid-Foley had a strong start the other day against the Royals but we ain't going to play the Royals the rest of the season. I liked Thornton earlier in the year but he's on IL now. Borucki had a strong second half in 2018 and a lot was expected of him in 2019, but he has only thrown 6 2/3 innings this year because of elbow issues. Veteran guys that we brought in during the offseason, Richard and Shoemaker, are both injured as well.
Who else is there? This kid name Nate Pearson, who's supposed to be really good. Alex Manoah and Eric Pardinho are up there in our prospects rankings. Two former Mets guys who joined the Jays in the Stro trade, Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson, immediately came inside the top 10 in the rankings.
I tend to think that you can't be relying entirely on kids even in rebuilds. There's only so much losing these guys can take, no? Wouldn't you still need some veteran guys to help you along? Our front office picked up guys like Shoemaker, Bucholz, Phelps and Richard for that, but these guys don't really move the needle. Given our situation, high-end free agents won't sign with us anytime soon (unless someone decides he wants to play with Vlady Jr. and other kids of ex-All-Stars and HOFer as they develop) so the only realistic way to add some veteran presence would be via trades.
We're not in a race for anything this year, other than maybe to avoid finishing last in AL East. We didn't need someone that could get us over the hump or anything like that. But I certainly would have liked to see more out of the guys we shipped out, be it big league regulars or better-regarded prospects.
I suppose the value of someone like Stroman is open to debate: Are we Toronto fans disillusioned in thinking that Stro should've netted us more than we got from the Mets? Is he overrated? He's a groundball pitcher in this era of strikeouts. How would he fare on a team with such poor infield defense like the Mets?
What about Sanchez? He still leads the AL in losses and is 2nd in walks allowed, but he has come on strong of late, with 16 Ks against no free passes in his last 10 2/3 innings. The Astros have a history of revamping/reviving a pitcher's career with their player development (spin rate and all), and look what happened to guys like Morton, Cole and even Verlander, who went from a borderline HOFer to a potential first-ballot guy during his Houston tenure. If Sanchez regains his 2016 AL ERA champ form, is this going to be the new Chris Carpenter case? (You know, we drafted Carp in the first round, released him after six bad to mediocre years, and he won the NL Cy Young with St. Louis three years later.)
By the way, Sanchez's joining Houston must have pissed off his former best pal Stroman, who himself wanted to go to a contender and ended up with a wrong New York team. Sanchez will most likely get a chance to pitch in the postseason in some capacity, while Stroman will probably on the outside looking in with the Mets.
The Sanchez deal was an "F-U" trade by the front office on Stroman, as far as I am concerned. Stro took his feud with the FO to the public/media, and though the guys up there took the high road in the media, I can't imagine they would have been too happy with Stro's antics and comments.
Stro was always, "This team doesn't want to sign me, even though I want to stay here a long time and I love Toronto and Canada" and blah-blah-blah.
I don't have a particular feeling for him as a player one way or the other. I admired him for returning from the devastating knee injury in time to pitch in the final weeks of the regular season and then the postseason in 2015, and he pitched well in the clinching Game 5 in the 2015 ALDS (the bat flip game) and the 2016 wild card game (Ed-wing walk-off HR game). But was he my favorite Jays pitcher from those days? No. Marco Estrada was always my guy in the starting rotation.
And I am far from the only Jays fan who got tired of Stroman and the chip that kept getting larger and larger on his shoulder. Most of the slights he said he felt seemed perceived. He pushed that "height doesn't measure heart" angle a little too far, in my opinion.
I have a feeling Stro will regret getting that Toronto skyline tattoo on his abdomen
I was on an assignment to cover the swimming world championships for about three weeks in July. Got home a couple of days ago and just recovering, watching/shuttling kid and catching up on some baseball stuff that I missed while I was doing this after the end of the swimming worlds.
So the trade deadline in baseball has come and gone. Starting this year, there is only one deadline; no distinction between July 31 "non-waiver" deadline and "waiver" deadline, which fell on Aug. 31 until last year. Hey, so no more acquiring someone like Justin Verlander at the last minute on the last day of August, right?
My Blue Jays, predictably, were sellers this week. We aren't going anywhere, and we had a few assets that we fans felt would bring some decent pieces back, be it major league-ready talent or high-end prospects that could form building blocks for the future.
To get right to the point, this wasn't the case.
No longer in Toronto are: Stroman, Hudson, Biagini, Sogard, Sanchez and Phelps.
Coming in: a bunch of middling minor leaguers, a failed prospect and who knows what.
This is all head-scratching at best, maddening at worst. Our fan base's relationship with the front office had reached a new nadir.
(Too bad about Ken Giles' elbow issues this week. He would have been in high demand and would have fetched some decent pieces in return.)
So what is it that Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins are thinking? I don't even know where to start.
These guys seem to be betting on the current crop of kids in our system, especially on the pitching side. Both Stro and Sanchez were still in their 20s and were both shipped out. And tellingly, MLB.com's depth chart for the Jays' starting rotation shows only three pitchers.
Reid-Foley had a strong start the other day against the Royals but we ain't going to play the Royals the rest of the season. I liked Thornton earlier in the year but he's on IL now. Borucki had a strong second half in 2018 and a lot was expected of him in 2019, but he has only thrown 6 2/3 innings this year because of elbow issues. Veteran guys that we brought in during the offseason, Richard and Shoemaker, are both injured as well.
Who else is there? This kid name Nate Pearson, who's supposed to be really good. Alex Manoah and Eric Pardinho are up there in our prospects rankings. Two former Mets guys who joined the Jays in the Stro trade, Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson, immediately came inside the top 10 in the rankings.
I tend to think that you can't be relying entirely on kids even in rebuilds. There's only so much losing these guys can take, no? Wouldn't you still need some veteran guys to help you along? Our front office picked up guys like Shoemaker, Bucholz, Phelps and Richard for that, but these guys don't really move the needle. Given our situation, high-end free agents won't sign with us anytime soon (unless someone decides he wants to play with Vlady Jr. and other kids of ex-All-Stars and HOFer as they develop) so the only realistic way to add some veteran presence would be via trades.
We're not in a race for anything this year, other than maybe to avoid finishing last in AL East. We didn't need someone that could get us over the hump or anything like that. But I certainly would have liked to see more out of the guys we shipped out, be it big league regulars or better-regarded prospects.
I suppose the value of someone like Stroman is open to debate: Are we Toronto fans disillusioned in thinking that Stro should've netted us more than we got from the Mets? Is he overrated? He's a groundball pitcher in this era of strikeouts. How would he fare on a team with such poor infield defense like the Mets?
What about Sanchez? He still leads the AL in losses and is 2nd in walks allowed, but he has come on strong of late, with 16 Ks against no free passes in his last 10 2/3 innings. The Astros have a history of revamping/reviving a pitcher's career with their player development (spin rate and all), and look what happened to guys like Morton, Cole and even Verlander, who went from a borderline HOFer to a potential first-ballot guy during his Houston tenure. If Sanchez regains his 2016 AL ERA champ form, is this going to be the new Chris Carpenter case? (You know, we drafted Carp in the first round, released him after six bad to mediocre years, and he won the NL Cy Young with St. Louis three years later.)
By the way, Sanchez's joining Houston must have pissed off his former best pal Stroman, who himself wanted to go to a contender and ended up with a wrong New York team. Sanchez will most likely get a chance to pitch in the postseason in some capacity, while Stroman will probably on the outside looking in with the Mets.
The Sanchez deal was an "F-U" trade by the front office on Stroman, as far as I am concerned. Stro took his feud with the FO to the public/media, and though the guys up there took the high road in the media, I can't imagine they would have been too happy with Stro's antics and comments.
Stro was always, "This team doesn't want to sign me, even though I want to stay here a long time and I love Toronto and Canada" and blah-blah-blah.
I don't have a particular feeling for him as a player one way or the other. I admired him for returning from the devastating knee injury in time to pitch in the final weeks of the regular season and then the postseason in 2015, and he pitched well in the clinching Game 5 in the 2015 ALDS (the bat flip game) and the 2016 wild card game (Ed-wing walk-off HR game). But was he my favorite Jays pitcher from those days? No. Marco Estrada was always my guy in the starting rotation.
And I am far from the only Jays fan who got tired of Stroman and the chip that kept getting larger and larger on his shoulder. Most of the slights he said he felt seemed perceived. He pushed that "height doesn't measure heart" angle a little too far, in my opinion.
I have a feeling Stro will regret getting that Toronto skyline tattoo on his abdomen
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