On The Blue Jays And Going For It In The AL East

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but one of my favorite tools on our site would have to be the Depth Charts, which combine Steamer projections and human-curated depth charts to output expected WAR totals.

What I’ve done today — last night, really, which I’m clarifying only in the event of some huge late-night signing that would invalidate all of this — is to sort that by division and graph it out. When you do that, you get this:

A few things stand out there, things like “should we just give the NL East to Washington now or must we wait until next year” and “just think about what the Phillies are going to look like after they trade Cole Hamels, Marlon Byrd, and whomever else.” If the Mariners look too high, well, Jeff already delved into that. If the Yankees look too low, well, name their infield or a single reliably healthy starting pitcher.

Obviously, what we’re looking at is a snapshot of things they way they are right this second, and that’s not how they’ll look when the season kicks off. To use just one example: No, I don’t imagine we’ll be looking at the Dodgers and Rockies as being nearly equal teams in April, because at the moment, the Dodgers have almost literally no shortstop and just three-plus starting pitchers.

You get the idea, though. A lot’s going to change, but in order for teams to effectively make those decisions, they have to adequately understand where they are right now. That’s what might stand out the most about this chart, actually, at least to me — just look at the American League East.

If you prefer the raw numbers to the chart, here’s how we have this quintet sitting right now:

TOR 36
BOS 35.6
TB 35.1
BAL 34.5
NYY 29.4

That’s four teams in virtually a dead heat, at least within the margin of error of not caring about tenths of a point in WAR and giving the Orioles whatever boost you care to offer for the fact that they continually outplay our expectations. When we talk about going for it at the right time, or having an appropriate window to win, this is what we mean. While we learned this year that all sorts of ridiculous things can happen in a sport that has two wild cards, increasing the value of a half-decent team with hope, a division that has absolutely no clear front-runner seems like exactly the kind of situation where you’d want to push your chips to the middle of the table.

That’s what Toronto clearly did with Russell Martin, anyway, and the timing is right. The 2014 Jays finished a distant third place, but they also increased by nine wins over 2013. This wasn’t about luck or sequencing; Base Runs considered them an 84-win team, and they won 83. Now, the 500 or so plate appearances that were going to go to Dioner Navarro (2.0 WAR last year) will instead be going to Martin (5.1 WAR last year). With our understanding that catcher WAR doesn’t really have the full impact of pitch framing baked in — and considering Martin is enormously better than Navarro at framing, perhaps two wins on its own — it’s possible to suggest that the Jays received an even bigger boost than we’re showing here.

With one move, that AL East WAR ranking looks a little different than it would have a few days earlier. In 2015, Steamer easily sees a difference of 2-3 WAR between the two, enough of an improvement that if I’d done this before Monday, the Jays might have been ranked fourth in the AL East. (Again, understanding the limitations in decimal points in WAR.)

That’s the point, really. In a division that looks this tight, the value of every additional win is simply off the scale. When the Jays calculated whether giving Martin $82 million dollars made sense, part of that calculus is clearly that the AL East simply isn’t what it was. The Yankees have all sorts of problems, especially if Masahiro Tanaka’s arm doesn’t hold up, and we’ve already wondered whether the post-Friedman/Maddon Rays have seen their best days. The Red Sox have too much talent to repeat last year’s disaster and clearly intend to spend this winter; on the other hand, depending on how you feel about Clay Buchholz, they may not have even a single above-average starting pitcher. Even if Jon Lester returns, it’s not easy to build an entire rotation in one offseason.

It’s not just that the Jays see weakness among their competition, either. It’s that they look at themselves and fairly wonder that the core of this team might only be around for another year or two. Martin will be 32 in February, and he’ll be joining a team that counts Jose Bautista (34 in 2015), Edwin Encarnacion (32), Jose Reyes (32), R.A. Dickey (40), and Mark Buehrle (36) as the primary components. That’s not to say that there’s no youth — Brett Lawrie will be just 25, and Drew Hutchison and Marcus Stroman each 24, Aaron Sanchez and Daniel Norris both 22.

Maybe that sounds doom-and-gloom for the future; maybe it will be. But for the moment, with what’s happening in the division and the simple aging of their best players, this is the right time for the Jays to be making a big splash like the one they made with Martin. Of course, if you’re going to make that kind of statement, you can’t stop there. Toronto still has an enormous hole in second base, where the Ryan Goins / Steve Tolleson / Maicer Izturis / Munenori Kawasaki situation was a disaster; in the outfield, where both Melky Cabrera and Colby Rasmus are free agents; in the bullpen, where Casey Janssen and Brandon Morrow depart a group that was mediocre; and potentially at DH without Adam Lind, unless you strongly believe in Justin Smoak.

You can’t get Martin and say, well, we’ve done enough. That’ll be it. The good news, however: It almost certainly won’t be. Back in October, team CEO Paul Beeston said that he expected the payroll would increase; since then, there’s been reports that the new CEO of parent company Rogers, Guy Lawrence, views the team’s success as important and is willing to approve additional spending.

That’s why the recent revelation of just how backloaded Martin’s contract is was so fascinating. Martin’s five-year deal works out like this:

2015: $7M
2016: $15M
2017: $20M
2018: $20M
2019: $20M

Is paying Martin 20 million dollars in 2019 going to be easy? No, probably not. But what that does is allow for even more flexibility right now. Including Martin, the team has approximately $110M booked for 10 players (and Ricky Romero!); arbitration, depending on some tender decisions, would be about $9M – $10M more. In 2014, they started the year with a payroll of approximately $137M. If the payroll merely stayed the same, there’s room for another big move or two. If it rises, the Jays could be a surprisingly major player.

If you believe the reports, that’s what they’re working on. Here’s a report calling the Jays “very aggressive” in going after Andrew Miller. This one says they want Jon Lester. Yet another says they’re going to make an offer to Pablo Sandoval. “Reports” are just that, of course; they mean nothing until a deal is actually done. But the idea is there, anyway. The Jays can’t just get an expensive over-30 catcher and be done. They have to do more, and all indications are that they have the money and interest in doing so.

After two years of having done barely anything at all since the big trades that brought Reyes, Buehrle and Dickey to town, the Jays finally look like they’re ready to make a move. The division is weakened. Their window might be limited. Now is the time.