I’ll try to complete the FanGraphs analysis of the Josh Donaldson deal, with Dave covering the A’s perspective of the deal and Drew Fairservice covering it from the Jays perspective while I’ll jump in with the prospect end of things. Those two prior pieces do a good job analyzing the various angles of this deal, with the main question being what the next few moves are for Oakland, since they seem far from done shuffling their roster.

Dave’s piece made the points that the gap between Donaldson and Brett Lawrie may be smaller than 2013-2014 would lead you to believe, so if one of the prospects end up as a star or a piece that can be used in another deal, it could swing the balance of the deal toward Oakland.  There’s an expectation that Lawrie won’t match Donaldson’s production, hence the three minor leaguers included. While Lawrie will be the player watched most closely in 2015 from this deal, one exec I talked to last night said Franklin Barreto is the key to the deal, so let’s start with him.

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Four months ago, the A’s made the biggest splash of the summer, trading elite prospect Addison Russell in a package that landed them both Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. It was a clear go-for-it trade, giving up a player rated as one of the 5-10 best prospects in baseball in exchange for a short-term upgrade, as they were renting just a few months of Hammel’s services, and only getting another year and change from Samardzija. It was the kind of deal that the team would likely regret if they didn’t have a deep playoff run in either 2014 or 2015. They followed up on that aggressive stance by trading Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester, moving even more of their assets into the present at the expense of the future.

We know what happened to finish out 2014; the A’s played very poorly down the stretch, lost out in the division race to the Angels, and then saw the Royals literally outrun them in Game 163. The window that the team worked so hard to open slammed shut in their face. Lester and Hammel are both going to pitch elsewhere next year, and Jed Lowrie and Luke Gregerson are almost certainly going to find new homes this winter as well. Next year’s A’s were simply never going to look like last year’s version, and the A’s just made extra sure of that by trading away their best player, third baseman Josh Donaldson.

On the surface, it’s easy to look at this move and think that it suggests the A’s are switching back into a build-for-the-future mode. Beane’s post-trade comments even suggest that this is perhaps the right interpretation of this trade. From MLB.com’s Jane Lee:

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After the 2011 season, it seemed improbable that the Blue Jays would ever trade Brett Lawrie. He was the native son who exploded onto the scene, bounding his way into the hearts of baseball fans from Victoria to Corner Brook. Always a great hitter in the minor leagues, Lawrie hit .293/.373/.580 with 9 home runs in a 40-game big league tease that set completely unrealistic expectations .

Three injury-ravaged and underwhelming seasons later, Lawrie and three prospects are gone and Josh Donaldson is the new starting third baseman in Toronto as the Blue Jays try to accomplish one goal: reach the playoffs for the first time in a generation. No passport or sentiment will stand in their way as they try to end a long streak without playoff baseball.

Adding Donaldson is a significant upgrade for the Jays, as any team would expect when they pick up one of the premier players in baseball. Conservatively, switching out Donaldson for Lawrie is about a two win upgrade on talent alone. Lawrie’s spotty injury history and inability to translate his minor league offense at the big league level suggest it might be an even bigger gulf.

With two top-ten MVP finishes and 53 total home runs in the last two years, the Jays get a star – a star moving from an offensive sinkhole to a very friendly space for right-handed power hitters. Donaldson is an older player, heading into arbitration for the first time (he’s a Super Two) as well as his age-29 season. Unlike the A’s side of the deal, the four years of control that come with Toronto’s new third baseman is purely secondary to his ability to help them win in 2015.

The Jays wanted an upgrade and, according to Alex Anthopoulos, it was the inclusion of Lawrie in the talks that brought this deal to life. They sell low on Lawrie, who always hit before struggling (mightily at times) at the big league level. He’s as talented a player as there is, one Oakland hopes they can reshape into a more well-rounded big leaguer.

His talent is undeniable, Lawrie is perhaps the defensive equal of Donaldson at third base, and like Oakland’s Fielding Bible Award winner, Lawrie is a former catcher. Perhaps Oakland can get the countless moving parts of his swing in order and awaken the one tool that brought him to the big leagues at 21.

Toronto also gives up a very promising international free agent in Franklin Barreto, a shortstop at 18 with his stock on the rise, fast-rising pitcher in Kendall Graveman, and slightly stalled prospect in Sean Nolin. In terms of bulk control years, the Jays give up a lot. But that future surplus value finishes a distant second to the chance the Jays are building the best team in their division.

Some might look at the Jays rotation and wonder if they have the talent to win a championship. To that I say: look around. The state of the game swung so heavily in favor of pitchers, adding Donaldson’s bat to the likes of Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista — to say nothing of Russell Martin — suggests the Jays believe the road to the postseason is paved with extra base hits.

Like the Red Sox, the Jays seem focused on piling more offense on top of their already-deep pool of sluggers. In Donaldson the Blue Jays add another home run threat who actually strikes out at a below-league average rate. As the league heads in one direction, it appears Toronto is headed in another.

It is easy to search for additional meaning in this trade and the Blue Jays interest in Josh Donaldson. Simply put, they targeted a great player they thought could help their team win a division title and more. They added a player who saved more than 30 runs with his glove since 2012 while putting up a 125 wRC+. His 14 WAR over the last two years trails only Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen. Rather than hope their third baseman realized his potential, Toronto acquired one of the best in the game.

It also signals Toronto is serious about overhauling their clubhouse culture, though there is no better cure for a divided clubhouse than a whole pile of wins. Any team that boasts Reyes-Martin-Bautista-Encarnacion-Donaldson at the top of their batting order figures to give pitchers fits, though another left-handed bat in that mix (Reyes switch hits, the rest are all righties) must be a priority.

There is still work to do in Toronto, as huge questions loom in left field as well as second base. Their presumed starting center fielder is 43 big league plate appearances into his career (barely 200 PA above A-ball for Dalton Pompey, another Canadian.) They might not be done yet, but adding an elite ballplayer for the second time in two weeks is a nice way to head into the Winter Meetings.

Deals like this are how teams climb from the 80-85 win treadmill to the 90-win tier of World Series favorites. As they did with Russell Martin, the Blue Jays looked at a decent (and affordable) spot on their roster and thought they could improve it. They gave up a chunk of their identity and whole lot of prospect capital to do it, but it looks like these aren’t your older brother’s Toronto Blue Jays – though I’ve said that before.

Remember when Billy Butler stole a base against the Angels in the playoffs? Of course you do. It was beautiful and it was absurd, and it psychologically cemented the notion that there was nothing the Angels could do to slow the Royals down. Even Billy Butler was having his way, however he wanted to. It was like the Royals flying their flag over the Angels’ conquered castle. And it had to be Butler. It felt meaningful because that’s something Butler just doesn’t do. There are reasons he doesn’t run, so when he ran, and when he got away with it, the Royals felt invincible.

Here’s an image sequence that should remind you of how the moment felt:

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Perhaps my favorite players to stumble upon betwixt my scouting escapades are the “Conversion Guys”, players who are undergoing a positional change because shortcomings in their skill set force them to find a new path to the Majors if they hope to achieve that dream at all. Most often this occurs when a position player with superlative arm strength struggles to hit so mightily that his employer abandons all hope in his ability ever to learn how and moves him to the mound.

These conversions happen at various stages of development and have any number of useful results. Jacob deGrom moved off of shortstop between his sophomore and junior year of college and is a budding rotational mainstay. Kenley Jansen spent four years catching as a pro before moving to the mound in 2009 and exploding to the majors as a reliever. Tony Pena Jr. moved to the mound at 28 and became a minor league depth arm who ate innings at upper levels for a few years and made Veteran Minor Leaguer Money for a little while longer than he would have if he would’ve been a stubborn, punchless shortstop.

Plenty of these developmental journeys begin in the Rookie-level Arizona League (AZL), where I was lucky enough to observe a handful of them this summer.

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Do you guys know Jaack? That’s not a very good introduction. We’ve run live game chats during the wild-card playoffs the previous two nights, and Jaack is the screen name of at least one participating commenter. This is Wednesday’s live chat, and this is Jaack, at 11:05pm EDT:

Comment From Jaack
There needs to be an article about how much better last night’s game was. Like inning by inning breakdown.

Jaack’s the best. Thank you, Jaack! Following is such a breakdown.

Tuesday’s game, of course, set an impossible standard. It feels like it’s an all-time kind of playoff game, and while I’m fully aware of recency bias, I felt the same way after Rangers/Cardinals Game 6 in 2011, and that one’s stood up. We can debate how amazing it was to watch the A’s and the Royals, but there’s no debate that it was some kind of amazing. So there was no chance at all that the Giants and Pirates would follow that show with at least an equivalent show of their own, but Wednesday was a total dud. The saving grace was that Madison Bumgarner pitched and was awesome, but for the most part he was awesome without any danger, and when the outcome feels decided, the entertainment value plummets.

This isn’t about the quality of the baseball. This is about the quality of the show. We already know that Tuesday’s show was several times better, but now let’s put some actual data to it because what else do you have to do for the next few minutes? If you started reading this, you can finish reading this.

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Three months ago, the Oakland A’s had Yoenis Cespedes, Addison Russell, Tommy Milone, a seemingly insurmountable lead in the American League West, and joy in their hearts. (I don’t know, probably.) Now, they’ve had a summer-long collapse, a much smaller-scale collapse within the wild card game, and have some farewells to offer to short-term employees Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Geovany Soto, Jonny Gomes and Adam Dunn, plus slightly longer-term employees Luke Gregerson, Alberto Callaspo and Jed Lowrie, all free agents.

I’d say “it’s going to be a winter of transition” in Oakland, except that’s always the case. A full 30 members of the season-ending 43-man roster (three players were on the 60-day DL) were acquired via trade; throw in nine more via free agency or waivers, and only four Oakland players were homegrown draftees. Even that’s overstating it, though, because two of those four (eternal prospect Michael Ynoa and injured starter A.J. Griffin) didn’t appear at all for the A’s this season. That leaves Sean Doolittle, who wasn’t even drafted to do the job he’s doing, and Sonny Gray. Otherwise, this entire A’s team was built via the non-draft machinations of Billy Beane.

Right now, the A’s have financial commitments to a mere five players next year, and two of them are minimal. What’s next for the A’s? There’s no shortage of answers to that question.

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It’s too bad that the playoffs have to continue uninterrupted, because I’d be content to think about and write about Tuesday night’s wild-card game for the next month and a half. While it wasn’t actually a demonstration of smallball vs. Moneyball, the Royals resembled a team from the 80s, or more accurately, the Royals resembled themselves, beating the A’s with exactly their own brand of offense. The Royals this past season were the best base-stealing team in the league, and while it’s easy to downplay baserunning as a significant overall factor in determining wins and losses, the small picture doesn’t always work like the big picture, and Tuesday night, stolen bases were very much a huge reason behind the Royals’ stunning advance.

That was a key we all thought to watch for. Aggressiveness was part of the Royals’ game plan, as they tied a playoff record with seven steals. There’s blame going the way of Derek Norris, who replaced an injured Geovany Soto, and to be sure, Norris could’ve had a better game. But something we’ve really come to understand in the past few years is that steals are more off of pitchers than catchers, and this wasn’t so much the Royals taking advantage of Norris as it was the Royals taking advantage of the batteries. The Royals read and the Royals ran, and there was no bigger stolen base than Jarrod Dyson’s arrival at third in the bottom of the ninth.

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It doesn’t feel like corny sentiment to say the Kansas City Royals stole the American League Wild Card from the Oakland A’s. The Royals lineup does not inspire much in the way of fear but this ragtag bunch hung nine runs on the A’s best starter and its (rightly) maligned bullpen.

They did so while hitting just two extra base hits, both of which came in the 12th inning. Eric Hosmer tripled and Salvador Perez yanked the walkoff double down the line compared to 13 singles and three walks. Without the benefit of big bats, the Royals instead did what the Royals do – they swiped and stole and small ball’d their way to victory, just as our fearless leader suggested they should mere hours before the game began.

They stole seven bases on the night, equalling the record for a postseason game. While none of these steals are likely to reach “Dave Roberts Game 4” levels of notoriety, five of the seven thefts came around to score. Let’s look at each steal, ranking them by win probability added to see which was truly the biggest steal of the night.

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What are you going to remember from the AL wild card game? Be honest, really.

You’re going to remember Ned Yost. Hooooooo boy, are you going to remember Ned Yost. There’s going to be no shortage of post-mortems in Kansas City about Yost, for about 40 different reasons, surprisingly not all about bunting. (Argue about whether it was smart to take out James Shields [yes] for an on-one-day-rest Yordano Ventura [no] all you want, I’m still not over the early botched Eric Hosmer / Billy Butler double steal that was actually called on purpose.) You’re not going to forget Brandon Finnegan, either, or Salvador Perez, or Jarrod Dyson on the base paths.

You’re going to remember Bob Melvin and that eighth inning, too, inexplicably leaving Jon Lester in to rack up 111 pitches, get three men on base, and (along with Luke Gregerson) turn a 7-3 lead into a 7-6 nailbiter. You’re going to remember Jonny Gomes in left field, and what should be by all reason the last game that Derek Norris ever catches in the big leagues. I’ll remember thinking that for every time we laugh and make jokes all while understanding that managers know a million times more than we do, every single thing in this game happened. Yost was often brutal in this one. Melvin wasn’t necessarily better.

There’s so, so much to unpack there, and I’ve barely scraped the surface of what was one of the weirdest, greatest, worst, best, ludicrous baseball games ever. So much happened, in fact, that what no one at all is going to remember is what seemed for much of the evening like the biggest story of the night: Brandon Moss, who had hit two homers in the previous two months, hit two in the same playoff game. Let’s talk about that, a little.

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