Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Anthony Kay, Pablo López, and Zac Lowther — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

———

Anthony Kay, Toronto Blue Jays

“I’ve been throwing this changeup ever since I’ve been pitching. I never really had a curveball until I was 16 or 17 years old. Growing up, it was mainly just fastball-changeup because my dad didn’t want me [throwing curveballs]. My older brother played, and he also didn’t have a curveball until he got older.

“I first learned a circle change, and I still pretty much throw it to this day. Of course, there has been a little bit of variation. When I came back from [Tommy John surgery] in 2017 it was pretty inconsistent, and I was trying to find a grip that made it more reliable. I used to be on the seams, like a two-seamer, and now I’m kind of moved over to where it’s almost the same, but just off the seams. I was cutting it a lot, and I think being on the seams was a big reason for that. Now that I’m off them, I feel I get a truer release to it.

“It was mostly an inconsistency issue. There were some days where it would be really good, and there were days where it wouldn’t be good at all; it would cut. So I figured I might as well just mess around with it a little bit and try and get it more consistent. I don’t know that I really understand why [the adjustment makes made it more consistent], but it did. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not privy as to whether the Cincinnati Reds assign a grade to character in their draft reports. I also don’t know how much the San Diego Padres weigh that attribute when pondering possible acquisitions. I do know that Taylor Trammell projects as more than a quality big-league outfielder. He projects as a role model.

Trammell became a Padre last summer. Part of the trade-deadline deal that sent Trevor Bauer to the Queen City, he’d been selected 35th overall by the Reds in the 2016 draft out of Kennesaw, Georgia’s Mount Paran Christian School. Blessed with plus raw tools, Trammell is slotted No. 69 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list.

A prima donna he’s not. When he reaches the big leagues, Trammell will do so with a genuine appreciation for what life has presented him. Moreover, he doesn’t just embrace the game of baseball. He embraces the people who come to see it played.

“I have thoughts on fans,” Trammell told me in Padres camp last month. “I love them. There are people who come to games and want to heckle, and they have the right to do that. Do I agree with it? No, but if you want to pay money to come yell at us, I mean, do whatever you want. Go to a boxing match. Go to a baseball game. Go to a basketball game. Any game. When there are a whole bunch of fans in the stands, whether they’re rooting for you or not rooting for you, it’s great for baseball. They want to see a game and we’re putting on a show for them.”

If you’re rolling your eyes with skepticism upon reading that, you shouldn’t be. By all accounts, that’s who Trammell is. Part of a working-class family — his father is a post office employee, his mother once balanced two jobs — he hasn’t forgotten where he came from. The values he grew up with remain the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Toronto Blue Jays. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Young Pitching
Emanuel Vizcaino, RHP
Alejandro Melean, RHP
Sem Robberse, RHP
Jiorgeny Casimiri, RHP
Winder Garcia, RHP
Michael Dominguez, RHP
Yunior Hinojosa, RHP
Luis Quinones, RHP
Jol Concepcion, RHP

Vizcaino, 20, must have gotten hurt at the end of Extended Spring Training last year because he pitched into late-June but never threw a pitch at an affiliate. He’s a lanky relief prospect with a good three-pitch mix, and his heater was in the low-90s when healthy. Melean is advanced from a body and stuff perspective, sitting 90-94 at age 19, but his strike-throwing did not progress last year. Robberse and Casimiri are both medium-framed 18-year-olds from the Netherlands. Both sit in the low-90s; Robberse’s breaking ball has better natural shape and snap. Winder Garcia is a 5-foot-10 18-year-old up to 94, and has an average slider. Michael Dominguez is a physically mature 19 and only sits in the low-90s, but his fastball has plus spin and vertical movement. Hinojosa is similar but he’s 20, sitting 89-93. Quinones, 22, has one of the highest-spinning heaters in the entire org and struck out a lot of guys in Vancouver last year. He needs a grade and a half of command improvement to be a reliever. Concepcion is 22 and has big arm strength (92-96), but little else right now.

Bench/Role Players
Ryan Noda, 1B/LF
Josh Palacios, RF
Santiago Espinal, INF
Forrest Wall, CF
Kevin Vicuña, INF

Noda has elite walk rates, his exit velos are very strong, and he’s hit for power at every level of the minors. He also strikes out a lot for someone older than is usual for his level, which I think is evidence he’ll fall on the wrong side of the Quad-A bubble. Palacios is a lefty stick tweener outfield type who runs well, takes good at-bats, and has doubles pop. Espinal is a multi-positional infielder with below-average power. He might be a 25th or 26th man, but I think the lack of offensive impact means he’s closer to replacement level than above it. Wall can really run and has some contact skills. Vicuña has contact skills and can play all over but is a few years away from a bench infielder role.

Stiff-bodied, Older Relief Types
Maximo Castillo, RHP
Jackson McClelland, RHP
Ty Tice, RHP
Brad Wilson, RHP

Castillo pitched pretty well in a rotation last year. He’s a bowling ball with an upright delivery and two above-average pitches in his heater and split. His slider/cutter is fine, too, but he has a relief-only mechanical and physical look. McClelland throws really hard (up to 100), and also has a good split, but 30 control. Tice and Wilson are both fastball/slider relief sorts. Wilson is up to 96, Tice up to 97.

System Overview

Almost every pitcher the Blue Jays have acquired via trade over the last year or so has had a high spin rate fastball, at or above 2400 rpm. It’s clearly something teams are selecting for more often in general, but not with the same amplitude as Toronto. Hatch, Kay, Juan De Paula (not on the list), Perez, and even some of their waiver tries, like David Garner, have been up there. This proclivity has not been true of the amateur department, which has drafted and signed athletes with good frames, and college hitters with measurable power.

A lot of the relievers in their mid-20s actually need to see big league time this year. From among that unusually large group should emerge the short-term core of Jays bullpen and probably a trade chip or two, especially if Merryweather pitches like I expect he will.

There are lots of changeups and splits in this org, though it hasn’t been one that’s had success developing breaking balls. The org has also had trouble finding complementary pieces to fit around the young core of Bichette, Guerrero, and Biggio (who, as an aside, I was light on — his approach is elite, and he should’ve been on my Top 100 when he was eligible), though the team’s strategy has been clear. The Jays are everyone’s place to ship toolsy, frustrating upper-level players who are squeezed off better rosters, with Socrates Brito and Derek Fisher the new models.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about passing the halfway point of the season preview series, Zach Eflin’s spring training feedback on a possibly less lively baseball, the effect of sign stealing on the average time between pitches, a recent rash of spring pitcher injuries, and the incredible career trajectory of former Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr., then preview the 2020 Mets (19:06) with The Athletic’s Tim Britton, and the 2020 Blue Jays (58:23) with Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith.

Audio intro: Aceyalone & RJD2, "Junior"
Audio interstitial 1: Yo La Tengo, "Meet the Mets"
Audio interstitial 2: Guided By Voices, "Blue Jay House"
Audio outro: Crowded House, "Now We’re Getting Somewhere"

Link to Eflin story
Link to Ben on sign stealing and pace
Link to Kershaw’s comments on 2017
Link to post about Amaro
Link to story about Mets fans and Venmo
Link to Tim on Ramos
Link to Ben on the one-knee catching trend
Link to The Resisters
Link to The Cactus League
Link to order The MVP Machine

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It’s difficult to predict that a team will go from a losing record to reaching the postseason in any given season without sounding like a contrarian or someone who’s trying too hard, but in baseball, it’s a legitimately prudent exercise. Every year since 2006 has produced at least one playoff team that finished with a record under .500 in the previous season. Odds are good that it will happen to somebody this year too, and if you’re guessing who it will be, there are no shortage of options to choose from. The Angels have beefed up their lineup. The White Sox are pushing their chips in. The Reds are something close to favorites in a weak NL Central. The Padres fancy themselves close as well. If you’re looking for a good old-fashioned comeback story to cheer for in 2020, you can take your pick. My personal favorite might be the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays are rarely mentioned in the same breath as the teams listed above, but they share something in common with each of them. Like Los Angeles, they overhauled a major portion of the roster. Like Cincinnati, they improved their team in a division that mostly either stood pat or took a step back. And like Chicago and San Diego, they enter this season with a boatload of young players who are excellent candidates to break out. But when you think of teams who might suddenly contend this season, Toronto probably doesn’t come to mind, and for good reason. Our Depth Charts project them to be 21st in team WAR in 2020, and Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections have them at just 76 wins and a 3% chance of making the postseason. Depending upon how you look at things, the Blue Jays are probably somewhere between the ninth and 11th-best team in the American League on paper, either at the bottom of baseball’s middle class or the top of its lower class.

Recent performance backs that up, of course. By WAR, they had just the 20th-most valuable position player group in baseball last year and the 21st-most valuable pitching staff. Their record was 67-95 in their third-straight losing season, their worst since 1995. Playing in a division with three solidly above-average teams and fighting through a crowded Wild Card field won’t be an easy task, so I’m not going to try to convince you that Toronto is a playoff team. What I’d merely like to convince you of is that the 2020 Blue Jays are a completely different team from the 2019 squad, and they ought to be dramatically better as a result.

We’ll start with the pitching staff, since that is where the Blue Jays devoted so many resources this winter. Toronto starters were dreadful in 2019, amassing just 7.2 WAR. Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez accounted for four of those wins, and those two throw baseballs for different teams now. Twenty-one pitchers made starts for the Blue Jays in total in 2019, a reflection of just how little stability the organization had on that front.

This year should be better, to say the least. The team signed Hyun-Jin Ryu and Tanner Roark to multi-year deals while also bringing in Shun Yamaguchi from Japan on a two-year contract. Throw in the acquisition of Chase Anderson from Milwaukee and that’s three new starters who compiled a total of 8 WAR in 2019 plus a 32-year-old who is coming off 181 innings, 194 strikeouts, 64 walks, and a 2.78 ERA for the Yomiuri Giants. As for the No. 5 starter, the most likely option is Matt Shoemaker, who made just five starts for Toronto last season after returning from injury. If things go according to plan, none of the Blue Jays’ top five starters by innings pitched in 2019 will crack this year’s Opening Day rotation.

Are there still potential issues here? Absolutely. Projections do not like the top four starters, injuries have limited Shoemaker to just 26 starts over the last three seasons combined, and we have no idea how the transition to major league baseball will go for Yamaguchi. But the Blue Jays still have Thornton and Waguespack in the organization, whose peripherals were roughly league average last season, and guys like Wilmer Font and Sean Reid-Foley offer upside as well. Toronto also has Nate Pearson, who Eric Longenhagen ranked as the top right-handed pitching prospect in baseball, just one level away from the majors. There are a number of things that could go wrong for this rotation, but there is no doubt that the depth in place entering 2020 far exceeds what this team could offer a year ago.

And if the Blue Jays wind up turning heads this season, it won’t be because of their pitching staff, anyway. It’ll be because of the offense, which boasts one of the most exciting groups of young players on any team in baseball. According to Eric and Kiley, Toronto entered 2019 with the No. 1 (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), No. 9 (Bo Bichette), and No. 47 (Danny Jansen) prospects in the majors. Then Cavan Biggio and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. each broke out. This is now the Blue Jays’ core, and it’s a good one.

My logic for singling out these five players is that they are all in their early-to-mid 20s, debuted in the past two seasons, and were all highly regarded as prospects just before their debuts. Toronto would love to get great seasons out of Randal Grichuk or Teoscar Hernández or Rowdy Tellez, but those aren’t the players that the franchise is relying upon to carry it for the next several seasons. These five are, and the early returns from them have been promising.

You might be thinking something along the lines of, so what? These guys all logged hundreds of plate appearances last year, and it still wasn’t enough to move the Blue Jays from finishing in the bottom third of the AL in wRC+. After how much fanfare surrounded the debut of Vlad Jr. and how quickly Biggio and Bichette succeeded, when you look back on the 2019 season, it might seem to you like these guys spent the majority of the season batting in the same lineup — at least, that’s the way I remembered it. But while it’s true that all of these players individually amassed nearly a half or whole seasons worth of playing time, the truth is that only a fraction of Blue Jays games featured all or most of these players making an appearance. I went through each game of Toronto’s 2019 season and counted how many of these five players appeared in each one. This is how that playing time distributed itself:

There were just six games last year in which all five of Vlad Jr., Bichette, Biggio, Gurriel Jr., and Jansen made an appearance and just 51 games in which four of them did. Put another way, the Blue Jays played 105 games in 2019 — almost 65% of the season — without at least two of these very important players. This was surprising to me given how much each of these players played on their own, but for various reasons, playing time never coalesced. Vlad Jr. wasn’t called up until late April, Biggio wasn’t called up until mid-May, and Bichette was in the minors until late July. Gurriel Jr., meanwhile, spent five weeks early in the season ironing things out in Triple-A and then missed more time with an injury in the second half.

This is significant because, barring multiple catastrophes, Toronto is certainly planning to play more than just a third of its season with at least four of these players in the starting lineup in 2020. According to our RosterResource, each of these players is expected to have a starting role with the exception of Jansen, who should get a fairly even split of catching duties alongside Reese McGuire. Like the rotation, there’s a very good chance the lineup that Blue Jays fans see throughout 2020 looks totally different than what they saw for most of last year.

It’s also significant because when these young players did get the chance to play together, the difference in production was enormous. While tracking how many of these players took part in each game, I also logged how many runs Toronto scored, how many runs it allowed, and whether it won or lost. Here’s what I found:

When at least four of Vlad, Bo, Biggio, Gurriel Jr., and Jansen were active, the Blue Jays raised their average run production by nearly one and a half runs and won more games than they lost despite the average pitching performance being close to what it was for the season. And 57 games is not that small of a sample size for something like this — if a team were 31-26 at the end of May and scoring nearly six runs per game, we would at the very least take them seriously. If that team then went out and added four starting pitchers at the start of June, we would almost certainly think of them as contenders.

Is that a perfectly rational way to think of this Blue Jays team? Perhaps not. After all, there are still plenty of holes here. The outfield is in bad shape, as is first base. Vlad Jr.’s defense was as awful as advertised, and a 21-year-old DH is a tough pill to swallow, regardless of how well he hits. The bullpen is probably trouble. And the position player depth is concerning enough that a couple of injuries could spell disaster. There is no shortage of ways in which this can all fall apart.

But it isn’t difficult for me to see a universe in which enough things go right. Vlad Jr. should be better; a full season of star-level production from him or Bichette wouldn’t shatter our understanding of baseball as we know it. Jansen, a bat-first prospect in the minors, shouldn’t be over 30% worse than the average hitter again. Nobody would be shocked to see Biggio or Gurriel Jr. repeat something similar to last year’s production, nor would they be blown away to see a bounce-back season from Grichuk or Travis Shaw, each of whom had been plenty reliable for several consecutive seasons before falling off a cliff in 2019. The rotation is full of workhorse-like arms capable of average-ish production over the course of a season, and Ken Giles is one of the better options a team could hope to have closing games.

It probably won’t be enough. The Yankees are a fire tornado, the Rays are great, and the Red Sox are still pretty good, too. The Angels can hit better than Toronto, the Indians can pitch better than Toronto, and the White Sox are about to roll out a youth showcase for the ages. Conventional wisdom says the Blue Jays shouldn’t be able to keep up with any of these teams. But that’s the thing about surprise contenders: You’re not supposed to see them coming.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

If you planned a Bond villain-esque scheme to abduct the sons of famous baseball players and put them to work in your baseball mines, it would make for a pretty good plot, and a hell of a lineup. Toronto’s storyline is still incomplete, however, as the next phase of the plan involved collecting a bunch of castoffs and tossing them into the batting order.

Perhaps this is a touch on the mean side. Whatever else you can say about the Jays, it’s unlikely they have a floor anywhere near as low as some of the other teams — like the Marlins or Royals — likely to land in the 70s for wins. The outfield has a lot of guys to juggle, as players like Dalton Pompey and Anthony Alford never developed into the types that carve out permanent roles. ZiPS remains skeptical of Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s offense, and while the computer has him ticking up near an OPS+ of 100, that isn’t all that exciting when you’re talking about a corner outfielder instead of a middle infielder. The Jays don’t really have a center fielder in this group — at least among those likely to start — which raises some concerns about what their defense will look like. Read the rest of this entry »

When publishing prospect lists — in particular, the top 100 — I am frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock am I buying? This post represents my best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.

This is the third year of this exercise, and last year Kiley and I instituted some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while I think Corbin Martin will return from Tommy John and become a 50 FV again later next year, I’m not allowed to include him here (although I just sorta did). The second rule is that I am forbidden from using players who have ever been on this list before, which means no Gilberto Celestino (on the list two years ago) or Lenny Torres (who was on last year’s) even though they might soon be 50s. McDaniel and I were right about 18 of the 63 players we picked the first year, about a 29% hit rate, and we were right about 16 of the 55 players on last year’s list, which is also 29%. Two years still isn’t long enough to know whether that’s good or not, but it does appear as though a baseline is being established.

At the end of the piece, I have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year, because readers seem to dig that category. These are not part of the 50+ FV forecasting; it’s just a way to point an arrow at guys I like who might have real big league impact in a smaller role very soon.

I’ve separated the players into groups or “types” to make the list a little more digestible and to give you some idea of the demographics I think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with The Board (with The Board, through The Board, in The Board). For players whose orgs I’ve already covered this offseason, there is a link to the applicable team list where you can find a full scouting report on that player. I touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. If you want to peek at the previous lists, here is Year 1, and here is Year 2. Read the rest of this entry »

Financially savvy or cheap? Like beauty, the fundamental essence of thriftiness lies in the eye of the beholder. In truth, either adjective adequately describes the Blue Jays under the stewardship of club president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins. In their teardown, the Jays have done much to rebuild the farm system and add a youthful vigor to the big league team. Recent trades to unload veteran talent, most notably the Kevin Pillar and Marcus Stroman deals, were difficult but justifiable moves for a team unable to compete in the short term.

But the Jays have also come under criticism for leaning a bit too far into the rebuild. They were all set to play the service-time manipulation game with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (a hamstring injury allowed them to delay his call-up without resorting to that tactic) and have been so aggressive in culling their veterans that Anthony Alford, with all of 59 career plate appearances to his name, is now the club’s longest tenured player. The makeover led an obviously delighted Shapiro to gush: “The combination of young talent along with the lack of future commitments, it will never be this again. It’s just for this moment.”

Surprisingly soon after achieving that spiritual high, the Jays started adding major league players. The big signing was Hyun-Jin Ryu, but they’ve made other moves to fill out their hollow roster. The additions of Chase Anderson and Tanner Roark give them a respectable rotation, and by signing of Travis Shaw, Toronto may well lengthen the middle of the lineup. Taken together, these moves make the Jays quite a bit better in the here and now. I don’t know if I’d call them playoff contenders quite yet, but it’s been a far more expeditious winter north of the border than many anticipated.

Shaw signed a one-year contract for $4 million, with incentives that could carry the deal to nearly $5 million if he plays well. Of course, he was only available for that price because he was non-tendered by Milwaukee after his horrible, no good, very bad 2019 season. After producing 3.5 wins in 2017 and 2018, his production fell off a cliff:

For a player who was only 29, the regression was as surprising as it was dramatic. Few players pumpkin overnight and the ones who do usually aren’t in their 20s, nor holding their own at a demanding defensive position.

Knowing nothing else, signing Shaw makes sense for a rebuilder like Toronto, particularly given the terms. It’s a classic pillow contract, a one-year, low-dollar commitment that won’t disrupt the club’s burgeoning young core. A third basemen by trade, Shaw will likely slide across the diamond to first to fill the vacancy left by Justin Smoak’s departure. The new man will get a chance to start and rebuild his value after a nightmare season, a mutually beneficial proposition; if last season proves an aberration, the Jays can flip Shaw for a prospect near the deadline. For his part, Shaw would then hit free agency without his 2019 numbers looming over his recruitment.

The challenge here is that Shaw didn’t merely have an off year, or put up lousy numbers after battling an injury. Rather, he was simply one of the worst players in the league last season. Among players with at least 250 plate appearances, only Mike Zunino offered less at the plate:

Everywhere you look, there’s a damning statistic. He struck out in 33% of his plate appearances, which is troubling on its own and also nearly double how often he fanned in 2018. His .157 batting average was the lowest in the league, which is bad, though not nearly as bad as the fact that his .270 slugging percentage also brought up the rear.

But a glance at Shaw’s batted ball profile suggests that all may not be lost just yet. His average exit velocity has barely budged throughout his major league career, and he actually set a career best in 2019, at 88.7 mph. His hard hit rate was only a tiny bit lower in 2019 than in previous seasons. For what it’s worth, he hit just fine in Triple-A after a midseason demotion.

Shaw had two problems last year, and they may well be related. The first is that he swung and missed far too often, and way more than he normally does. He made contact 70% of the time he swung last year, which is bad relative to the league and terrible compared to his career norms. There isn’t a key split here, mostly because none of them are good: He didn’t swing any more often (on either pitches in or out of the zone) but he missed a whole lot more, and his whiff rate rose on fastballs, offspeed pitches, and breaking balls. The uptick in missed fastballs was particularly substantial, from 18% of the time in 2018 to nearly 30% last year. Interestingly, a lot of those increased whiffs were concentrated in the upper part of the strike zone and above. His whiff rate was worse just about everywhere, but the difference is especially glaring above the belt:

That feeds into the second problem, which is what happened when he did connect. Always a guy who put the ball in the air a lot, Shaw’s average launch angle shifted from 16.6 degrees to 24.5 degrees (the league average was 11.2) in 2019. That was the second highest launch angle in baseball, and as you’d expect, it produced a corresponding increase in fly balls and popups from previous campaigns.

Critically, this change was clearly counterproductive for Shaw. On this site, we’ve often covered how hitters try to change their launch angle in an effort to hit more balls in the air, and how this tends to lead to a better offensive output. But there’s a limit to how high you want to go. It’s not necessarily that Shaw climbed into dangerous territory — Rhys Hoskins had the third highest launch angle last year, and Edwin Encarnación and Mike Trout occupied similar real estate — but it may well be dangerous territory for him. After all, Shaw was a pretty darn good hitter pre-2019, and with a higher launch angle than most bears. Raising that launch angle produced more harmless flies and far more swings and misses, particularly up in the zone, as we’d expect from a player using a steeper swing plane. All of this suggests that he wasn’t getting his bat in the hitting zone for nearly long enough.

It’s a trend that started early in 2019. At FanGraphs, we’ll often talk about how spring training numbers are meaningless, and usually they are. At the very outer fringes of the extremes though, we can sometimes detect something meaningful, for either good or ill. Such was the case with Shaw last year, who struck out 25 times without a walk in 52 trips to the plate. He hit the ball pretty well when he did connect last spring, which somewhat masked the issue at the time, but in hindsight it’s clear that this was a season-long problem for him.

Despite the depths of his struggles, this seems like a reversible trend. It’s far easier to fix glaring and identifiable problems than to grasp for solutions in the dark. Toronto’s challenge is to either help Shaw make more and better contact with the swing plane he employed in 2019 or to help him return to what worked in previous seasons. Simply knowing what to do doesn’t ensure that Shaw can do it, of course, but at least it’s a theoretically fixable issue. We’ve seen plenty of players successfully adjust their launch angles and there’s no reason to think Shaw can’t do the same.

Ultimately, for one-year and $4 million, this is the kind of move rebuilding clubs should be lining up to make. If Shaw doesn’t hit, the team can swallow the money and find someone else to man first base. But even modest improvement makes this a bargain of a contract, and given Shaw’s underlying batted ball indicators and recent history of success, there are plenty of reasons to think he can bounce back. A return to form won’t necessarily propel Toronto to the top of a very competitive AL East, but combined with a number of promising young players, it would go some way toward making the Blue Jays a fun club to watch in 2020. Between that and his potential re-sale value, what’s not to like?

This winter’s free agent class was once full of starting pitching. The offseason began with starting pitchers representing 10 of the top 20 free agents overall, and 21 of FanGraphs’ Top 50 Free Agents. After Dallas Keuchel signed with Chicago White Sox, Hyun-Jin Ryu, 40-year-old Rich Hill, and Homer Bailey were the only ranked starters remaining, and only Ryu represented a good bet for production next season. With many teams still in need of reinforcements for their rotations, competition for the lefty’s services was likely strong. Among potential contenders, the Twins and Angels presented the greatest need for a starter, but it was the Blue Jays who surprised and reached agreement on a four-year deal worth $80 million, per Jeff Passan.

Ryu will turn 33 years old in March, so the end of this contract will take him through his age-36 season. He’s got a complicated injury history (he hit the injured list again for a short time last season), but a strong 2019 combined with his status as the last man standing on the free agent market allowed him to far exceed the $48 million crowdsource median ($59 million average), as well as Kiley McDaniel’s $32 million estimate. In Ryu’s free agent capsule, Jay Jaffe noted the factors working in the left-hander’s favor, as well as those working against him, as he headed into free agency:

After being limited to 15 starts in 2018 due to a severe groin strain, the portly port-sider pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title for the first time since his 2013 rookie campaign. He didn’t just qualify, he led the NL with a 2.32 mark despite fading late. Through July, he posted a 1.53 ERA and 2.85 FIP, but that ballooned to 4.60 and 3.83 over the final two months, with a 10-day IL stint for neck soreness thrown in. Ryu’s success isn’t quite as enigmatic or unorthodox as his process, which includes rarely throwing bullpens between starts. Via a five-pitch arsenal, with his changeup the real star, he’s exceptional at limiting hard contact; his average exit velocity of 85.3 mph ranked in the 96th percentile, his .282 xwOBA in the 81st. His strikeout rate was a modest 22.5%, but he walked an NL-low 3.3%, so his 19.2% K-BB% ranked 12th, and his 3.10 FIP fourth. After accepting a qualifying offer last fall, he’s well-positioned for a multi-year deal despite the questions about his durability.

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Over the last week or so, several players who had been playing pro ball in Korea or Japan (some originally from those countries, others former big leaguers kicking back to the States) have signed contracts with major league clubs. I had notes on several of them in our Top 50 Free Agents post, but wanted to talk about them at greater length now that we know their employers and the details of their contracts.

LF Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, Tampa Bay Rays
(Two years, $12 million, $2.4 million posting fee)

Tsutsugo’s deal came in a bit beneath what Kiley predicted on the Top 50 Free Agents post (Kiley had two years at $8 million per), where we ranked him No. 42 in the class, but multiple public reports have confirmed that Tsutsugo had more lucrative offers from other teams and chose to sign with Tampa Bay because of comfort with the org.

In addition to regular DH duty, Tsutsugo seems like an obvious platoon partner for Hunter Renfroe in one of the two corner outfield spots. The Rays have indicated he’ll see some time at third and first base, positions he hasn’t played regularly since 2014, and the notes I have from pro/international scouts and executives indicate he’s not athletically capable of playing there, though there’s no harm in seeing whether or not that’s true during spring training. Yandy Díaz isn’t good at the hot corner (he used to be, but he’s just too big and stiff now), but still played third situationally, so perhaps Tsutsugo can be hidden there, even if it’s for a few innings at a time. Read the rest of this entry »