Semi-Eh? Blue Jays Snag Marcus Semien on One-Year Deal

The Blue Jays had already made a splash in free agency, signing George Springer to a six-year deal last week. They added to their haul yesterday, signing Marcus Semien to a one-year, $18 million contract, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Most of the deals that have gone through so far this offseason have exceed both Craig Edwards’ projections and our crowdsourced estimates. It’s been a slow offseason, sure, but not an abnormal one when it comes to the players who have actually signed. Semien breaks that trend, and it’s worth looking back at his career to see how we ended up here.

Stop your tape after 2018, and Semien looked like a competent but unspectacular regular. His batting line was almost metronomic — 97 wRC+ in 2015, 98 in ‘16, 97 in ‘17, and 97 again in ‘18. There were glimmers of something interesting going on — his strikeout rate kept dipping, he increased his contact rate without sacrificing power, and he put the ball in the air to the pull side frequently. Still, at some point you are what you are, and Semien looked like an average hitter.

One very interesting thing happened to Semien in 2018, however. He’d long been regarded as a defensive liability, both by the eye test and by advanced defensive metrics. From 2013 to 2017, DRS pegged him as 8 runs below average at shortstop, while UZR was far more pessimistic at 20 runs below average. Worse than average (for a shortstop) with his glove, roughly average with his bat — Semien looked like a league average player, a nice but forgettable piece for the A’s.

In 2018, Semien’s defense suddenly improved. It’s possible that it was already headed that way, that opinion (and noisy statistics) lagged reality. In 2015, the A’s went full Brad-Pitt-in-Moneyball and brought in Ron Washington to teach Semien defense, and it worked.

Reasonable metrics could still disagree. UZR and DRS liked Semien’s work more than Statcast’s Outs Above Average, which saw him as an improved-but-still-lacking defender. However you look at it, though, Semien with an acceptable glove was an interesting player.

In 2019, Semien’s glove was the last thing anyone cared about. Years of incremental, under-the-hood improvements at the plate exploded into a career-best 138 wRC+. He was the best shortstop in baseball by WAR (again with excellent defense per UZR and DRS and subpar defense per OAA), and all the underlying pieces looked good. In every imaginable metric, Semien took a step forward:

In essence, what you think of Semien depends on how real you think this improvement was. The abbreviated 2020 season didn’t provide much, if any, clarity. Semien struggled with a sprained oblique, and he was awful at the start of the season before turning into peak Joe DiMaggio in the playoffs (.407/.484/.667). Even counting the playoffs, however, it was a mere 267 plate appearances of 107 wRC+ hitting, not enough to change any previously held opinions.

If you buy the improvement, at least partially, then Semien is an underrated gem. Seriously, look at ZiPS’s median projection for him this year:

That .265/.336/.473 line isn’t 2019, but it’s still way above average for any hitter. Saying “for a shortstop” doesn’t make as much sense as it used to — shortstops compiled a 100 wRC+ in 2019 and a 102 in 2020 — but getting that kind of offensive production is always valuable. ZiPS also believes that Semien is roughly average as a shortstop defender (he’ll be playing second in Toronto, but that changes his overall projection by less than a run), and as you might imagine, that works out to a great player.

Part of the ZiPS magic (ZaGiC?) is a percentile distribution, and Dan also produced that:

That’s quite a wide range of outcomes, and remarkably, the 10th percentile scenario looks close to Semien’s career before his 2019 breakout. When you improve as many things at once as he did, statistical projections take notice — though it is worth noting that Steamer thinks he’s roughly a win worse than ZiPS’ median projection.

Here’s the kicker: ZiPS’s 10th percentile outcome would hardly be a disaster for the Jays. That $18 million isn’t nothing, but paying that much for an average player for one year is probably something they’d sign up for. It might not be efficient, but given Toronto’s current competitive situation, wins are at a premium.

The Jays have a hole in their infield. Before signing Semien, their defensive plan involved handing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a third baseman’s glove and praying. By adding Semien — who will play second base — they can slot Cavan Biggio in at third, move Vlad to DH, and move Teoscar Hernández to the outfield.

Look at it that way, and the Jays are essentially upgrading from Randal Grichuk (who loses playing time in this alignment) to Semien. That’s a trade that could net them several wins even in a below-average scenario. Given how close the division is — we think they were a handful of wins better than the Rays and Red Sox before this signing — and their still-modest payroll, the Blue Jays would be lining up at the win store if they could simply purchase wins for $9 million a pop.

It’s hard to have a bad one-year contract as a team. The downside just isn’t that dire. If all this analysis is for naught and Semien turns back into a pumpkin, so what? There’s no awkward period where the two parties are still connected, no messy breakup. No long-term plans were impacted; with or without Semien, Biggio has always looked like a third baseman in the long run.

It’s harder to figure what this means for Semien’s market. He’s probably not a true plus defensive shortstop, and might be best suited for second base going forward, but second basemen with a chance to hit like Semien don’t exactly grow on trees.

Of course, a chance is the limiting factor here. If Semien had a longer track record of hitting, or if it was clear he was a great defender, someone presumably would have offered him more money or more years. For now, he’s at an inflection point between two different players: the average regular and the All-Star.

If he’s really what he was before 2019 — and again, projections don’t think that’s the case, because he made several meaningful improvements — well, Cesar Hernandez just signed a $5 million deal and gave up a club option year to do so. One of the big trends in recent years is a squeeze on that competent middle class of players, fueled by an increasing reliance on cost-controlled talent.

If he’s more DJ LeMahieu — or at least 2019 LeMahieu — well, he just signed a deal too, and he’s getting $90 million and the undying love of millions of Yankee fans. I don’t think Semien is quite at that level, but it’s worth noting that their ZiPS projections are less than a rounding error apart.

Given that, I understand why Semien took a one-year deal. It’s not a great sign that no team wanted to give him LeMahieu money, but if his best offer was something like four years and $40 million — roughly splitting the difference between LeMahieu and Hernandez — I understand the impulse to bet on yourself. That’s not to say that that offer was on the table. I don’t have any inside information here. Semien’s track record and the league’s reticence to spend on average players merely make him a strange case in this environment.

When most marquee free agents sign, their fate determines the long-term destiny of the team they sign with. In Semien’s case, the exact opposite is happening. Whether he’s a champ or a chump, the Blue Jays will head into 2022 with a promising young team. After missing out on Michael Brantley, the Jays clearly wanted to improve by a little bit, and Semien should provide that even in a down year.

Semien, on the other hand, has a huge range of outcomes. If he’s back to his 2015-2018 self, he’s looking at a long road of short-term contracts. If he puts together another year like 2019, it will be hard to look at his career arc and not buy in. Before last year’s strange season, 2020 looked likely to be the most pivotal year of Semien’s career. Now, he’s simply running it back.