The 2017 season was a disheartening one for the Blue Jays. After back-to-back trips to the ALCS in 2015-16 — their first two postseason appearances since 1993 — they faceplanted out of the gate, losing 11 of their first 13 games. They never reached .500, going an improbable, Sisyphean 0-8 in games that would have evened their record. Amid injuries to Josh Donaldson, Russell Martin, Aaron Sanchez, Troy Tulowitzki and others, not to mention the collapse of Jose Bautista, they finished fourth in the AL East with a 76-86 record, their worst showing since 2013. This winter, they stayed out of the deep end of the free-agent pool, making a few low-cost additions plus a handful of trades that hardly qualified as blockbusters. Yet as of Opening Day, they were projected for 84 wins, the league’s fifth-highest total. What in the name of Cito Gaston is going on?

To these eyes, the Blue Jays’ projection is like the flip side of the Brewers’ one that raised my eyebrows a few weeks ago. Recall that the Brew Crew quickly turned around from their rebuilding effort and won 86 games last year while remaining in the NL Wild Card hunt until the season’s final weekend. They added Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich over the winter, and didn’t lose anyone of importance save August acquisition Neil Walker, yet their projection called for just 78 wins.

As for the Blue Jays, when one considers that they had the majors’ oldest lineup (weighted average age of 30.9 years according to Baseball-Reference), and that even with the jettisoning of Bautista, all of this year’s projected regulars save two are on the wrong side of 30, it’s at least worth wondering why our projection system (which is driven by Steamer and ZiPS but with manual judgment in terms of distributing playing time) is so keen on them.

As I did for the Brewers, here’s a position-by-position comparison between our Depth Charts (as of March 29, Opening Day) and last year’s splits. All rankings are AL-only:

The first thing to note is how distressingly godawful the Jays were at so many positions last year. In terms of WAR, they ranked among the league’s bottom four teams at five positions, including dead last at catcher and shortstop, and received 0.5 WAR or less from six different positions including DH, with a net of 0.1 WAR for those half-dozen spots. Only at first base (Justin Smoak) and third base (Donaldson) did they receive significantly above-average work; in the latter case, that was despite the majors’ top third baseman playing just 104 games at the position due to a calf strain. Thankfully, they also received above-average production from their pitching staff, without which they might have been relegated to the independent Canadian-American League.

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Next Thursday, the author of this post and a group of people much more interesting than the author of this post will be discussing the Blue Jays over drinks and then even more drinks at the historic Royal Cinema in Toronto.

Among the most interesting people scheduled to appear is Mark Shapiro — a person of some consequence in the Blue Jays organization, it would seem. Early-bird tickets have sold out, but the general-admission variety are still available — and readers can get a $5 discount by using the promo code “fangraphs.”

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a new nautical analogy by Scott Boras, the resurgent Lucas Giolito, Ronald Acuña (again), and possible destinations for free agents Alex Cobb and Greg Holland, then preview the 2018 Blue Jays (15:00) with Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith, and the 2018 Pirates (46:48) with MLB.com’s Adam Berry.

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This post begins with a friendly reminder — specifically, that there are five teams in each of baseball’s six divisions. Given the noise around baseball for much of the offseason, one could be forgiven for thinking there were only four clubs in the American League East. Much of the chatter regarding the AL East this winter has centered around the formidability of the Yankees’ roster, the Red Sox’ (now successful) pursuit of J.D. Martinez, the imminent close of Baltimore’s competitive window, and the Rays’ sort of, kind of, not really teardown. It isn’t that the Blue Jays have done nothing — they’ve made several good trades and taken low-cost risks — it’s just that there have been a few more prominent stories and louder fanbases.

The most recent move out of Toronto continues the club’s offseason trend of reasonable, low-cost acquisitions. For a price of just $2.5 million, the signing of Seung-Hwan Oh — a player who, in 2016, recorded nearly three wins out of the bullpen — seems like a potential bargain.

Of course, he would not be available at this time of the offseason and at this price if he didn’t have some warts. He is coming off of a mediocre 2017 campaign, falling from one of the leauge’s top-10 relievers to barely replacement level. Of possibly greater concern is the fact that the Rangers nixed a potential deal after expressing concerns with Oh’s physical. Despite these warning signs, there is reasonable optimism for an Oh turnaround, one that would benefit the Blue Jays in either a playoff chase or as a deadline trade chip.

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Every now and again I’ll forgo my usual spot in the Fenway Park press box and watch a game in the stands, an overpriced adult beverage in hand. Such was the case last September when the visiting Blue Jays made a pitching change and the friend I was with asked what I knew about the left-hander jogging in from the bullpen. My response was something along the lines of, “Not a whole heckuva lot, but maybe I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see what I can learn.”

That’s exactly what I did. I approached Tim Mayza the following day, and as he’d thrown almost exclusively sliders, I began our conversation by inquiring as to why.

“It’s is my out-pitch,” explained Mayza, who’d come into the previous night’s game with 13-and-a-third big-league innings under his belt. “I’ll throw it at any time, in any count, and I faced two lefties. With deception and the different shapes of the slider, it tends to be more effective than a fastball, per se, left on left.” Read the rest of this entry »

Around the same time the Orioles were finalizing a two-year deal for Andrew Cashner, the Toronto Blue Jays signed a better pitcher at about half the cost. After multiple arm and shoulder surgeries, Jaime Garcia isn’t what he once was, but the 31-year-old was an average starter last year and should repeat that level of production in the coming season. For $8 million over one year plus a $2 million buyout on a $10 million option for 2019, the Blue Jays are paying for less than average.

Garcia fits the mold of many of the Blue Jays’ moves this offseason. In addition to other formers Cardinals Aledmys Diaz and Randal Grichuk, the Blue Jays have also acquired multiple low-cost, quality players like Curtis Granderson and Yangervis Solarte, allowing for the possibility of catching lightning in a bottle to make a run for the playoffs. On the other hand, if the season goes south, the team has plenty of flexibility to take the franchise in a different direction and try to reload as Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. get closer to the majors.

Injuries took away the bulk of Jaime Garcia’s prime. He barely pitched in 2013 and 2014, and wasn’t ready at the start of 2015, either. He had a resurgence in 2015, though, making 20 starts and pitching like a top-of-the-rotation starter, with a 3.00 FIP and 2.43 ERA. Garcia was more good than ace for the first part of 2016, but still showed some flashes of greatness before falling apart at the end of the season. The Cardinals traded him to the Braves, and he had a roughly average season, putting up a 4.25 FIP, 4.41 ERA, and 2.1 WAR over 157 innings for a combination of the Braves, Twins, and the Yankees.

The lefty pitched better for the Braves than he did with the Yankees. In New York, struggled to throw strikes, pitching in the zone just 40% of the time — well below his career average of 48% — and experiencing a similar dip in first-strike percentage. Even with those issues, he was only slightly below average as a starter for the Yankees. Assuming his 21% HR/FB rate was more a reflection on the small 37.1-inning sample and not his true talent level, he didn’t pitch too poorly. 

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Health issues have thrown Patrick Murphy a curve. Toronto’s pick in the third round of the 2013 draft has had Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, and a nerve moved in his elbow. As a result, he went into last season having amassed just 94.2 professional innings.

He more than doubled that total in 2017. Four years into what had been a frustrating career, the 22-year-old right-hander was finally able to cast aside his injury demons and demonstrate an ability to flummox opposing batters. Featuring a hook-heavy three-pitch mix, Murphy fashioned a 2.94 ERA with the Low-A Lansing Lugnuts, then finished up the year by making two starts for high-A Dunedin.

Late in the season, I asked the 6-foot-4 curveball specialist about the arduous path he’s taken to what now qualifies as promising prospect status.

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A few days ago, the Blue Jays picked up a new, young, cost-controlled starting outfielder. They got him in exchange for a reliever, and for a pitching prospect with lousy peripherals. It’s not hard to see how you could spin this as a big positive for Toronto. The other side, of course, is that the Blue Jays are taking a chance on a guy who the Cardinals couldn’t make better over a number of years. It’s fine for any team to express faith in its own player-development system, but if the Cardinals can’t get a guy polished, what hope might another club have?

As is generally the case, all three players in the trade are interesting. High-level baseball players are always interesting. Randal Grichuk is interesting, because of his track record and skillset. Dominic Leone is interesting, for the way he reemerged in 2017. And Conner Greene is interesting, because of the raw quality of his stuff. The Cardinals hope they just made their bullpen better. I don’t mean to ignore their side of this. But I’d like to focus on Grichuk, and, specifically, I’d like to focus on how he hasn’t progressed. The era in which Grichuk plays today isn’t the same as the era in which he debuted.

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Blue Jays, red birds, Conner Greene. The 22-year-old righty was the lone prospect involved in a trade Friday evening that sent power-hitting OF Randal Grichuk from St. Louis to Toronto in exchange for Greene and reliever Dominic Leone.

Greene is coming off a maddening statistical season at Double-A New Hampshire, where he accumulated a 5.29 ERA in 132.2 innings. He experienced some success till the beginning of summer, entering July with a 3.23 ERA despite erratic command, but started getting shelled as the season continued. Greene has a plus-plus fastball that sits 94-97 and will touch 99. The pitch has heavy sink and arm-side movement, as well as notable downhill angle to the plate — a result, that, of Greene’s size, relatively upright delivery, and high three-quarters arm slot. It’s Greene’s best pitch and he uses it heavily, perhaps too frequently, as his strikeout totals are not commensurate with his quality of stuff.

The curveball (which was bad last fall) has taken a huge step forward and is now Greene’s best secondary pitch. It has traditional power curveball shape, bite, and depth. It projects to a 55 on the scouting scale. Greene’s changeup is inconsistent and a bit easy to identify out of his hand, as Greene is prone to drop his arm slot when he throws it. Due to his loose, fluid arm action and incredible arm speed, though, some scouts project quite heavily on the changeup. It pretty conservatively projects to average and has more upside than that. There’s a chance Greene develops two above-average secondaries to pair with his plus-plus fastball, but no measure of his ability to miss bats indicates anything remotely close to that.

Greene struggles to repeat his release point and has 30-grade control. He walked 13% of hitters he faced in 2017 and 83 total hitters in his 132.2 innings. Unless Greene’s ability to locate greatly improves, he’ll wind up in the bullpen. It makes sense to continue developing him as a starter on the off chance that he develops 45 or better command and simply as a way to get him more reps than he’d get out of the bullpen, but the Cardinals were quick to move Sandy Alcantara to the bullpen last year and seemed inclined to keep him there. They’re thought, by other clubs, to be considering pulling the bullpen ripcord on either or both of Jordan Hicks and Ryan Helsley. Greene would seem to fall into that bucket of still-raw, upper-level arms. He has a chance to pitch as a mid-rotation starter if the command comes, but he’s more likely to be a hard-throwing, above-average bullpen arm. He’s a 45 Future Value prospect.

Kiley McDaniel contributed to the scouting notes on Conner Greene.

Despite having failed to record more than 500 plate appearances in any of the past three seasons, outfielder Randal Grichuk has nevertheless produced a total of 6.8 WAR during that same interval — or just over two wins per season. Players who reliably produce two wins in a season are average players. One could make the case with some ease that Randal Grichuk is an average player.

For the St. Louis Cardinals, however, average isn’t sufficient to guarantee a place in the outfield. Dexter Fowler, Marcell Ozuna, and Tommy Pham will start for the club this year and all are superior to Grichuk. Jose Martinez is another outfield option, and he just authored a breakout season. Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill are loitering in the halls somewhere. That abundance of talent is what allowed the club to exchange Stephen Piscotty for a future MVP. And now the Cards have done a similar thing with another totally competent, but not sufficiently excellent, outfield piece.

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