Jays Realize Return on Arbitration Offers
Two months ago, the Blue Jays traded for Miguel Olivo just to decline his option and offer him arbitration. Along with John Buck, Jason Frasor, Scott Downs, and Kevin Gregg, Olivo was just one of the group of players with which Alex Anthopolous was plotting to acquire compensatory draft picks, as outlined in this piece. Yesterday, the last of that quintet signed as Kevin Gregg agreed to a two-year deal with the Baltimore Orioles. Just how many draft picks did they bring back, and how valuable are they?
Jason Frasor is the only one who will be returning to the Jays next year, as he accepted the team’s arbitration offer. Buck, Olivo, and Gregg will each bring back a supplemental pick, as they were all type B free agents and have signed with Florida, Seattle, and Baltimore, respectively. The Jays got slightly unlucky with their return on Scott Downs, as the Angels were just barely bad enough in 2010 to earn a protected pick. As such, the Jays will receive the Angels second round pick (third if they go on to sign Rafael Soriano) from Anaheim along with the compensatory pick they will receive from Major League Baseball.
According to Victor Wang’s research cited in my previous piece, those five picks will bring in a total of $11 million in value. Considering that the 2011 draft is widely considered to be one of the deepest draft in recent memory and that salaries have seen a good deal of inflation recently, there is good reason to believe that the value realized by the Jays will be even greater.
Although much of this turned out to be simply a right-place right-time scenario, I believe Alex Anthopolous should be praised for finding and exploiting an inefficiency in the game at a time when his team was in a perfect position to do so. The Jays were unafraid to offer arbitration to potentially expensive players and even spent $500,000 in order to add a supplemental pick in the form of Olivo. Obviously, none of this will matter if the Jays’ scouting department blows the draft, but as of right now, the Jays are in a great position to really boost their farm system. Along with the addition of Brett Lawrie, the team will add seven of the first 72 picks in the 2011 draft. Even without adding any first rounders through their type A free agents, the Jays should be satisfied with their haul.
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Thanks for doing this. I was wondering about it yesterday after Gregg signed. 7 of the first 72 is a nice way to re-stock.
Assuming they can get the draftees signed. Anybody afraid about a repeat of 2009, when the Jays had 4 top-100 picks but only got the 1 of those players under contract?
No we are not concerned about that. 2009 was JP 2010 and moving forward is AA – the Jays claimed they will spend on draft picks and showed there is bite behind the bark with last summers signings. We did not loose any player we really wanted.
Whoa.
Quick question:
“Considering that the 2011 draft is widely considered to be one of the deepest draft in recent memory and that salaries have seen a good deal of inflation recently, there is good reason to believe that the value realized by the Jays will be even greater.”
How quickly does the cost of player development (e.g., total player cost from when the player is drafted until arb, or something like that) adjust to FA salary inflation? IOW, does FA salary inflation result in draft picks having additional surplus value, and if so, how quickly does that additional surplus decay over time?
Love it! Can’t wait for draft day… really enjoying what Alex has been doing
Hopefully everything goes well at the draft!
The real coups were signing FAs nobody else particularly wanted – Gregg, Gonzales and Buck – and capitalizing on their bounce back years by getting picks and Escobar. And the Olivo trade was brilliant.
The unknowable element in this – which would be critical to fully assessing AA’s performance – is what kind of prospects the Jays were offered for Downs, Frasor, Gregg and Buck at the trade deadline. It seems that contenders who valued compensation picks anywhere near as highly as the Jays did should have been willing to make good offers for these guys, as they’d get not only the value of the player for the stretch run but also the surplus value from the subsequent pick. For some reason no team went there, I wonder if it’s just that AA places a significantly higher value on picks than anyone else.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the offers just weren’t any good. It totalyl seemed to be a buyer’s market then.
If you look at the sell trades AA has made, he always tries to obtain the most potential upside player in return even if realizing that upside is unlikely. So, I believe he didn’t do any trades because he believed the upside of talent available in the compensatory round was higher than any prospect offered.
The other positive of AA’s offseason strategy, is that he gets to retain Jason Fraser on a one year deal, whereas all other similar relievers seem to be commanding multiple years. This gives the team additional future flexibility and to repeat the process for the next year.
I also love the patience displayed by AA this offseason. With no multiple year deals or overreactions, the Jays are one of the few teams with the payroll and roster flexibility (plus the prospect of contention) to pick-up one of the veteran “rebound” talents on the cheap.
Excellent point about getting Frasor for 1 year. He might be wishing he had declined arbitration given the way the market for relief pitching has played out this offseason. On the flip side, he could be the Jays closer and might better his position for next offseason. For what its worth, his wife is from Toronto and they have lived there for 8 or so years.
Yeah I was thinking about that, who is currently slotted in to be the Jay’s DH? Do they still think Vernon Wells can play CF??? I figured going into this offseason the Jay’s were gonna try to find a cheap, defensive minded CF and have Wells hit at DH since his defense is so bad now.. Or maybe they figure keep him at CF and then sign one of the lumbering DH’s out there (Vlad, Thome, ManRam)? I mean if they get a few breaks and some players step up the Jays could challenge the Yankees for the Wild Card (All these players and more could theoretically improve alot next year – Morrow, Cecil, Drabek, Snider, Yunel, Lind, Hill, etc)
My best guess is that AA is o high on Brett Lawrie at 3B in 2012+ that he prefers Bautista there this year, and if he winds up staying longer than that well, that’s just a great problem to have. That would mean Wells in RF and R.Davis in CF and batting leadoff (he gets the job almost by default, like Scutaro a few years ago, but that worked out). Expect to see a reclamation project picked up on the cheap to join Lind and Encarnacion on the 1B/DH caroussel.
MORE PRAISE FOR THE BLUE JAYS. I WANT MORE PRAISE!
Now they just need to convert all of their concessions to chicken. Mmm, chicken beer.
The BJs are perennial also-rans, not contenders. Have fun rooting for a solid draft because that may be their only highlight of 2011.
wow having trouble getting laid or something? easy there downer
Great moves so far, I think he is my favorite GM in the league. This team should be able to really stack their farm system, and their major league product is actually pretty good as well. Not too many other teams can compete with their lineup depth, but unfortunately, the Yanks and Red Sox can.
It looks like the A’s have a similar plan for next year, given that they have acquired three type A level free agents for next year (Matsui, Dejesus and Willingham).
Are you expecting big bounce-back years from those three that will vault them into Type A status from their current Type B ratings?
Good smack down. A bit subtle, though. A little more face-grinding-in-the-dirt could be warranted.
Of course, we are assuming that draft pick compensation will still be in place after the CBA expires next year. Considering how it devalues free agents (especially relievers), the union may try to abolish it.
I agree. I also think that is part of the reason why some teams are so aggressively trying to exploit the system presently.
We can only hope that the Blue Jays care as much about improving their major league squad some day as they care about improving their farm system now.
uhh isnt that the point of stocking their farm system now?
AA seems to be one of the new breed of managers with a greater appreciation for the draft. The Red Sox and Rays will also receive a number of extra picks after losing both Type A and Type B free agents. Which club will be in the best position?
The Bosox and Rays consistently spend onte draft and should be expected to take full advantage of their situation. For the Jays to follow, assuming a bonus scale similar to 2010, they will need to spend $6m – $8m on those 7 and probably ~$11m in total, perhaps more because AA loves high ceilings and the draft class is considered strong. Under Ricciardi, this would have been unheard of but AA spent roughly that much last year so hopefully Rogers & Paul Beeston are on board for more of the same.
BTW, using the recent past as an example (www.angelfire.com/vt/prospectwatch/index171.html), suggests that the Jays could expect ~5 players from that draft to get to big leagues at some point and ~3 to play 3+ seasons.
I hope they do better than 2007 when they had 7 of the top 88 picks and walked away with Kevin Ahrens, Jonathan Arencibia, Brett Cecil, Justin Jackson, Trystan Magnuson, John Tolisano, and Eric Eiland.
Painfull to recall… though Arencibia (aka Aaron Cibia) and Cecil look like good work/luck. Jackson and Eiland might yet pan out but I won’t be wagering on it.
Ricciardi never gave a damn about HS players, probably didn’t scout them nearly as hard as the college guys. So it should be no surprise that the college guys worked out and the preps failed.
Very interesting idea.
to say nothing of the fact that history has shown that college picks have a greater likelihood of working out than HS players do.
Well yes, obviously prep players are much less likely to become big leaguers. But to take 4 of them in the first 88 picks and have none of them show ANYTHING after being drafted takes some pretty awful scouting. Out of the 4, the highest OPS in any season with at least 250 AB’s is Justin Jackson’s .708 in 2008. And he did it in low A ball.
It is way too early to judge the 2007 draft for any club. The collegians are (if things have worked out) got maybe a year under their belts of major league service. The prep picks are usually winding their way through the minors. So, for the Jay 2007 draft, Arencibia, Cecil and Rzepczynski may or may not turn out to be valuable contributors this year and beyond. Ahrens, Jackson, Tolisano and McDade may or may not arrive in the majors sometime in 2012.
Too early to make a final judgement, certainly. But folks try to get a sense of how well a draft class performs from scouting reports and minor-league performance. I guess it would be best to say that it does not look awesome so far, although it is not a disaster either, assuming 3+ seasons of MLB out of Cecil and Arencibia. It never fails to amaze me how even a good draft performance never really live up to the hype we (fans, etc) create.
I think it’s kind of nuts to be dissappointed about hauling an excellent young lefty starter like Cecil and a power hitting C prospect like Arencibia out of 7 draft picks.
That is a very good outcome considering the bust rate on draft picks.
While I am pleased with getting what appear to be 2 solid pieces of our major league roster long term from that draft, only Magnuson (again, the other collegiate) has ever become anything close to trade value for our organization (and even he had to be packaged to get the meager return of Rajai Davis). The 4 preps have been awful from the beginning, never appearing to be major-league bound. Even if they could have given us some value in trades, that would make the 07 draft so much more effective. But those 4 picks were far too brutal to do anything for us.
The Red Sox are another notable team that has quietly been using this strategy. Despite acquiring Crawford, Gonzalez and some relievers, their draft position in 2011 actually improved, because of the V-Mart (Detroit) and Beltre (Texas) Type A signings. Last year it was Billy Wagner who produced a first-round pick and supp pick for Boston. And the Felipe Lopez acquisition was apparently designed to add another supp round pick. The Red Sox might actually be in better shape than the Jays in next year’s draft, because of how high their picks are.