The Yunel deal is highway robbery, pure and simple. I really can't believe any agent would make that deal,
I agree wholeheartedly. Why on earth would he ever consent to those club options? It's one thing for fans to undervalue a career 288/364/401 shortstop. It's another entirely for an agent to do so.
Acknowledging the deficiencies in WAR, here's Escobar's career starting in 2007 and prorating his 2007 and 2011 to full seasons (his age appears in brackets): (24) 4.3, (25) 3.7, (26) 4.5, (27) 2.1, (28) 4.0.
Ages 29 and 30 are arb years.
Ages 31 and 32 represent the club options years. The current marginal value of 1 WAR in the free agent market is about 4-4.5MM. The Jays have no downside risk. If Escobar declines precipitously, a la Julio Lugo, the team can walk away. If Escobar's decline is more gentle, they'll pay him as a 1.0 WAR player. If Escobar retains his value (say he's a 2- or 3-win player at that point), the team gets a bargain and Escobar gets underpaid.
What's in this for Escobar? What is his upside? A big payday at age 33?
Highway robbery or lifetime security?
I'd agree with this line of thinking if Escobar were a pitcher or if he had a history of injuries. He's made over 4MM to date so you'd figure that should buy him a bit of security, at least enough to gamble on not incurring a devastating career-ending injury over the next season and a half.
I think we are underselling the clubhouse and how players like playing for the Jays. I don't want to hear about "Fleecing", etc. Yunel wants to play here. Good for him. We will take him.
As far as Hech is concerned, you can never have too many playing chips. He challenges for 2nd base, or he is traded. Part of winning the two world series was Pat Gillicks ability to shuffle top prospects away at the trading deadline.
AA's Shopping cart
RF - Check
SS- Check
Starting pitching - check
1BDH - Check
I think the direction is a good one. They are really just 3-4 players away from playing with the big boys.
So maybe notions of robbery and pity are out of place here.
I'm quite sure you didn't hear anyone use the word pity.
If Escobar got a 4-year guaranteed deal or 2 player options rather than club options, I could buy into the argument that he wants to stay with an organization even if it means not maximizing his revenue. That would be one thing. Instead, he has elected to show his love for the organization by giving them the opportunity to underpay him for 2 years? That's one twisted way to express love.
My theory is that this was at Escobar's impetus. It seems to me (from this contract) that perhaps AA did not have much interest in retaining Escobar past 2013 (seeing him as an underpowered 3B man by then?), but Escobar, being insistent on stability in his life, "made him an offer he couldn't refuse".
Who is his agent?
They are really just 3-4 players away from playing with the big boys.
Um ... well, really, only if two of those guys are solid 240-IP, 18-game winners and a third can hit 35 home runs ....
No,, seriously, "playing with" maybe, "staying with" ... I don't see it.
Sorry Anders here is the less rosy picture which management will tell you behind closed doors.
The Jays need more dynamic players to compete. You've got a LF who is having a career year yet is a very poor baseball player. He makes too many mistakes on the base paths, doesn't really steal bases, or hit for a high average. He does everything adequately enough to say he should be playing in the Majors but nothing enough that says he's going to win you ball games. You've got a CF who is prone to swinging at the breaking ball in the dirt and doesn't get on base enough to steal bases. He certainly doesn't play an excellent CF. In RF, you're set. Perenial all-star who does everything you want.
At 3B, you have nothing. At SS, you have a solid player. A very good defender who hits for some average and gets on base. Does everything well, but nothing spectacular. He is a solid player but not a player on a contender who is one of your better players. At 2B, a below avergae hitter and an average defender. At 1B, you have a below average defnder and a solid to excellent hitter. Lind would be a very important part to an offence, in the mold of a Jayson Werth to Phillies a couple years ago. I have a hard time believing he is of the level of a Chase Utley or Ryan Howard. At catcher, I think many have been fooled by Arencibia. Defensively Arencibia has been very poor. He doesn't catch the ball particularly well, nor is he very athletic behind the plate. The amount of mixed-sign drops is alarming. He better start to hit so he can move off the position, because you just can't have the mistakes that he's making behind the dish. He's really not someone who can play the position at the high level needed. I preume as soon as d'Arnaud is ready (who receives better marks for his defense and all-around game) Arencibia will be traded or platooned.
Pitching wise they really only have one proven starter. Romero may one day be able to beat other top pitchers, but his recent track record indicates he's not quite there. Morrow had a good half-season last year. Sure he may have capability, but he's so inconsistent, you really can't call him more than a fourth or fifth starter on a competing team.
Basically the Jays need to become more dynamic. More players with a better variety of high-end tools, guys like Lawrie, Gose, Hech, d'Arnaud.
To say the Jays are close to competing, compare the Jays' players to contending teams, not to league average
Not sure I get this line of thinking but perhaps it is just a testament to how under-rated Escobar has been in his career. Since 2007, there are 5 shortstops that have accumulated more WAR than Escobar: Ramirez, Tulowitzki, Reyes, Rollins and Jeter. He is also 8th in wOBA and 7th in wRC+ over that time (minimum 600 PA). This season he is 8th in WAR and 5th in wOBA and wRC+. I am not sure how much more the player needs to produce in comparison to his contemporaries to be considered worthy of playing on a contender. And just for the record, New York and Boston seem to be surviving quite nicely with less than spectacular production from their current shortstops.
To say the Jays are close to competing, compare the Jays' players to contending teams, not to league average
The Jays have scored the 3rd most runs/game in the American League this year. The two teams ahead of them (Boston and New York) are scoring at 5.37 and 5.31 runs/game. The Jays are at 4.69. They are closer to Tampa Bay and Baltimore, tied at 9th, with 4.07 runs per game than they are to 1st and 2nd. The Jays have a very good offense this season, even though there are such obvious offensive sinkholes (2B, 3B and CF especially). Snider probably could be putting up a better line than Patterson is this year in LF, but the Jays don't want him to be better than Corey Patterson. They want him to be better than Carl Crawford.
The problem is not the offense, though the offense could be improved. The pitching has been...not good. I don't want to say 'bad' because there are some positives. The Jays lead the league in K/9, but have the 2nd highest WHIP thanks to a slightly below average H/9 and 2nd worst BB/9 (There should be some improvement on this simply because Kyle "Walkathon" Drabek is in the minors). This all leads to the 3rd highest RA/G at 4.58.
I haven't checked the stats, but my impression is that the Jays are reverting to last year: a team with pretty good pitching and pretty weak offence
The team is 3rd in offense at 4.69 R/G. The league average is 4.31. There are only 3 regulars with an OPS+ > 100.
They are 12th in defense at 4.58 RA/G. The league average is 4.22 (different than R/G due to interleague games).
what happens if the Marlins ask for Juan Rivera from the Jays?
Pigs will fly.
After the game last night, even Ricky Romero was complaining (politely) about the lack of Jays hitting. Here's the quote from Romero: "“We can’t rely on Bautista, we can’t rely on Lind. We’ve got to get somebody else to step up and get on base and drive ‘em in. Those guys are getting pitched around. Everyone’s got to step up or else we’re not going to keep winning ball games, we’re going to keep losing ball games like this. This team doesn’t revolve around one or two guys. Everyone’s got to put in their part.”
Over the past 7 games (since the Red Sox series), the Jays pitchers have done very well, allowing just 16 runs. But the offense has provided just 21 runs -- almost entirely against the Orioles. They're turning into a good-pitching, bad-hitting team again. Of course those 7 games are a small sample. Maybe they're not indicative of this team's talent. Maybe they'll return to being the big-hitting Jays of the first two months -- when Jayson Nix and John McDonald and Juan Rivera were belting home runs, and Rajai Davis was hitting singles and stealing tons of bases, and JP Arencibia was posting an .800 OPS. Maybe -- but I wouldn't bet a huge amount of money on it.
....What exactly is the overachievement there that you are suggesting we should bet against continuing?.....
You must have missed the first part of this thread. The over-achievement was the Jays being 3rd in offense with a 4.69 R/G, ahead of the league average of 4.31. Or are you wagering that that will continue for the whole season?
During those first "couple of months", Rivera posted a .667ops, Davis .666, Nix .635, JMac .547.
It's true, those are bad numbers. And yet, amazingly, two of those numbers are even worse today, and two are no better.
....If Lind and/or Bautista turn into pumpkins, then they might fall below average, but I don't think either of them will....
But the Jays are surely aiming for more than just being a little above league average. Being slightly above average is hardly a goal to aspire to. Unless the pitching is absolutely stellar, a slightly-above-average offense is not going to do them any good at all.
Let's clarify first of all that my point was about the 2011 season, rather than the long-term. Yes, in the long term, the Jays have good prospects on the way. I was focusing on 2011 because it's a season that could still amount to something -- if not contention, then at least a strong stepping-stone for 2012.
I agree that Escobar and Arencibia are part of a good supporting cast for Lind and Bautista. I like Patterson too, despite his base-running mistakes and his career mediocrity. But the rest of the team? To argue that Encarnacion and Hill and Rivera have "good track records" is a little irrelevant in 2011 when all of them are past their prime. To hope for a big rebound from any of them is .... well, not totally impossible, but increasingly improbable.
As for the prospects: Thames is in the minors because he needs to work on his defensive skills. Snider is injured and will need some rehab time and some further time to polish his new mechanics, and he is very unlikely to be in a Jays uniform until August at the earliest. Lawrie, too, seems unlikely to be in a Jays uniform until late July at the earliest.
I don't see much chance of a big improvement in the Jays offense in 2011.
Why would you call a safety squeeze against a reeling Bronson Arroyo with nobody out and a slow runner on third? I don't even care that it didn't work - McDonald could've lined into a double play U5 or something, though that is less likely than a bunt DP - but it's not the results we care about, it's the process. The most likely outcome is second and third with one out for Villanueva. Then what? Strikeout and hope Escobar knocks the runs in?
Just to be contrarian, I'd suggest the likely outcome of not bunting is first and third with two out and Escobar up. So no different than your likely outcome. In the NL, first and third, nobody out, early in the game, with the 8 and 9 hitters up is not an ideal run producing situation.
Even with Bautista and Lind hitting like MVPs, the Jays have posted a very mediocre .296 OBP and .678 OPS in their 18 games in June. That takes an enormous amount of crap from the supporting cast. I can understand why Ricky Romero was frustrated. (And yes, he wasn't "calling out" individual players, but he was certainly expressing unhappiness with the non-Lind non-Bautista portion of the offense.)
The only question is whether June is merely a slump, or whether it reflects the true nature of the Jays of 2011. Of course we don't know the answer yet, but I think the "true Jays" are closer to June than to their earlier peaks.
I wonder if living in Canada makes life easier for Yunel in terms of dealing with family in Cuba. The restrictions around travel and sending remittances to family and non-family members alike as legislated by the government of the United States might make things more difficult for him. Additionally, the Helms-Burton law forbids any US citizen or resident from investing money in a Cuban enterprise (aside from right wing, counter-revolutionary assassination plots and terrorist activities that is!) As Raul Castro and the government of Cuba look to stimulate the economy through a form of heavily regulated market place liberalization, Yunel may be looking to invest $ back home. Canada seems like a better place to live for a Cuban national.
"I can't believe we have all 3 of Nix, JMac, and McCoy on this team but no Thames. It boggles me."
I've moved on from boggled. I'm now at 'what the #&#% ?!'.
I can wait until early August at the latest for this lineup, but I'm more patient than most. : )
My guess is that since Romero is our "#1" starter, he's usually up against the opposition's best starter, who often limits our offense.
You hear this said but after the first week or two of the season, is this still true? By then, every teams' number of games played has differed so starts by the #1s are no longer aligning. And after an even longer period, one would think that there have been enough other disruptions to the rotation that would make the aligning of #1s even less likely.
Romero has had 2 well pitched no-decisions this year:
* Sabathia (#1)
* Cahill (#1)
He has had 4 well pitched losses:
* Shields (not a #1 but pitching like one)
* Pineda (not a #1 but pitching like one)
* Hudson (#1)
* Hochevar
He had 3 poorly pitched losses:
* Matsuzaka
* Verlander (#1)
* Arrieta
His 6 wins:
* Pavano twice (#1, but a dubious one)
* Garcia (NY)
* Davis (TB)
* Danks
* Arrieta
So that's 15 starts against 6 #1s (even if you swap Pavano out and Shields and Pineda in). He has seen more #1s than random chance suggests, and that makes some sense. Still, I would imagine that this ratio (6 in 15) will drop as the season goes on and rotations become less and less aligned.
....I don't get the hoopla being made about Romero "complaining".... Nothing to see here....
Well, there was SOMETHING to see there, because Romero was forced to call a team meeting before today's game to clear the air, and Farrell made it clear that he disagreed with Romero's comments.
Quite possibly Romero did not express himself very well. Maybe he was trying to be sympathetic to Bautista and Lind, and he just wanted to ask the other hitters to give greater support to those two. But his comments were certainly controversial within the team because they SOUNDED like complaints about his teammates, and today he needed to explain what he really meant. Not a good moment for team harmony, even if Romero misspoke himself.
Not a good moment for team harmony, even if Romero misspoke himself.
Indeed. The form his misspeaking took was to speak the truth. Far too many of the hitters do stink. But it's not Romero's place to say that out loud.
