About an hour after I named Russell Martin one of the bargains of this free agent crop, the Blue Jays removed him from the pile, signing him to a five year, $82.5 million contract, according to Ken Rosenthal. This was slightly higher than the 5/$75M I’d guessed in my predictions, and quite a bit higher than the 4/$64M that the crowdsourced project produced.

As with the Heyward/Miller swap, this InstaGraphs post is not our full write-up of the deal; this is just a place for the facts and your reactions. So, some facts.

The five year deal buys out Martin’s 32-36 seasons at $16.5 million per season. Martin projects at +3.6 WAR per 450 plate appearances, according to Steamer, and that doesn’t include any additional value you’d add for framing skills or the unquantified parts of catcher defense at which Martin might excel. It wouldn’t be aggressive at all to consider him roughly a +4 WAR player for the upcoming season.

However, Martin will displace Dioner Narvarro, who proved fairly useful himself; we had Navarro as a +2 WAR player in 2014, projecting for +1.6 in 349 PA for next year. Navarro, however, rated as one of the game’s two worst pitch-framers last year, so this could be a signal that the Blue Jays view this as a massive defensive upgrade; Navarro could spend some time at DH, or perhaps he’s now trade bait.

It’s a big expenditure for a team that isn’t known to make them, but the Blue Jays were able to land a premium free agent who stays within their self-imposed five year contract limit. Do you like giving five years to an aging catcher? Do you think this signifies that Navarro taught the Blue Jays to emphasize catcher defense more heavily than they were? Or is this a Canadian team paying too much for a Canadian player?

We’ll have our thoughts up in a bit. For now, let us know what you think.