With Happ, Blue Jays Complete Purely Cromulent Rotation

With the signing of J.A. Happ to a three year, $36 million contract, the Blue Jays seem to have turned the corner on their 2015 ace, David Price. So in that sense, for Blue Jays fans, the Happ signing is not a Happ-y occurrence… Has everybody left? Okay! Time to get down to business. While we are all focused on the big-name free agents, like Price, picking their new and surely happy homes, the almost-AL Champs north of the border have been somewhat quietly going about the business of doing lots of business, and that business has been assembling a rotation that can take advantage of their offense.

Happ is the third starting pitcher the Jays have brought in or back since the season ended. Recall that they re-signed Marco Estrada to a two year deal, and then traded Liam Hendriks to Oakland for Jesse Chavez. Now they bring back Happ, a member of the Jays as recently as 2014. With R.A. Dickey and Marcus Stroman, that’s five starting pitchers under team control for next season. While Happ represents likely the last and largest free agent outlay by the Blue Jays organization for a starting pitcher this offseason, that doesn’t mean the team is completely done. With Happ, the team has $92 million committed to seven players in 2016 and none of those seven are Josh Donaldson, meaning adding an eighth player will make that figure meaningfully larger. Last season Toronto spent $137 million, their highest payroll ever, and though reports are a bit conflicting, they don’t seem likely to go much beyond that if at all for 2016. Assuming that’s all true, fitting David Price’s salary in would have meant cutting some muscle from the payroll, and doing that likely would have meant cutting muscle from Toronto’s greatest strength, their offense.

So instead the Jays either bought high on Happ, or just bought Happ, depending on your point of view. Normally I’d say those who think Happ has turned a corner need to look at the man’s player page because we’ve got over 1,000 innings detailing his mediocrity. But, considering we’ve seen Carlos Carrasco, Corey Kluber, Jake Arrieta, and Dallas Keuchel (and probably some I’m forgetting) all turn into very good to ace-level pitchers after years of mediocrity, well, let’s say I’m not to eager to write Happ off and hit “publish” under my byline. I’ve probably made enough mistakes here already without that, thanks anyway.

We know that with those aforementioned 1,000 innings in the books, what the projection systems are likely to say about Happ in 2016, and maybe they’re right. Honestly, they’re probably right. They are projection systems, after all, and their track record is, on the whole, better than mine or yours. They’re better than we are precisely because we’re likely to buy into real improvement before it’s warranted. Even with the starting pitching examples noted above, the vast majority of the time players don’t make huge jumps beyond their previously established track records.

Happ may or may not be in that vast majority (Jeff Sullivan looked at Happ’s improvements back in September), but the thing is, Happ’s signing doesn’t have to hinge on his newfound effectiveness, or the number of leftover bags of Ray Searage Magic Dust he stuffed into his duffel when the Pirates coaching staff wasn’t looking. Happ can be his normal pre-Pirates one-to-one-and-a-half win guy and this deal won’t be any kind of disaster either financially or on the field. Firstly, free agent contracts really only become disasters when the player quite literally can’t play. Think Hanley Ramirez. The problem there isn’t that Ramirez is paid $22 million a season, it’s that he can’t field and can’t hit. If Happ can throw 160 innings of 1.3 WAR ball for three consecutive seasons, then that’s a fine contract for Toronto. If he throws 70 innings of -0.7 WAR ball, then it becomes a problem. We don’t know what this offseason’s free agent market is valuing a win at yet, but if it’s in the $8 million or even $8.5 million arena then the Jays will get their money’s worth in that seemingly likely 1.3 WAR scenario.

So then the question becomes whether or not that’s something the Jays should want. Clearly, Happ isn’t a more desirable pitcher than Price, but that’s not a realistic comparison because Price won’t sign for three years and $36 million. Also, recall Toronto didn’t start last season with David Price, and in fact, they didn’t start the season with Marcus Stroman either. We remember they were there because they both pitched prominently in the playoffs, so it’s easy to forget that Toronto only got 11 regular season starts out of Price and four regular season starts out of Stroman, for, and this is where I prove I can do math, 16 starts! [Editor’s note: 15, you numbskull.] This season they figure to get more than that out of just Stroman. Thirty starts from Stroman are more valuable than 11 from Price and four from Stroman, so while the name on the back of the jersey at the front of the rotation may be different than what Jays fans were dreaming of after last season, the overall effect is likely to be an improvement from 2015. It’s true the calculation becomes different come playoff time, but that’s something the Jays can worry about and address closer to that time.

Also, there’s the argument that the Blue Jays offense is good enough that they shouldn’t need a David Price pitching. When you outscore the second-highest scoring team in baseball by over 100 runs, maybe you don’t. There are different ways to assemble winning baseball teams, and there is probably some irony in the fact that it’s the Royals and their junky rotation and amazing bullpen who are the reigning World Series champs while the rest of the baseball world goes crazy for aces like Price, Zack Greinke, Jordan Zimmermann, and Johnny Cueto*.

*I’m aware I’ve simultaneously called Cueto an ace and not an ace. I explain it this way: I think he’s an ace going forward, but he didn’t pitch like one while with Kansas City. Contradiction explained!

The Blue Jays are a win-now team on an (admittedly self-imposed) budget. For them to continue to operate within their financial milieu, adding Price would have been prohibitive without other changes to expensive pieces on the roster. As it stands now, 30 starts of Stroman stand in for 11 Price starts. A back end of Dickey, Estrada, and Chavez is solid if not spectacular, and if Happ’s gains are real, he’s your nominal number two starter at back end money. If not, he’s another piece in an average rotation that has a chance to appear much better than that by the time the 2016 season ends.