Blue Jays Drafts and UFA

Sunday, November 27 2022 @ 12:07 AM EST

Contributed by: John Northey

Over the years the Jays have had a few GM's and each did drafts and signed undrafted free agents. So how did each do?

An oddity I hadn't noticed before. 3 of the 5 GM's we've had (I don't count Bavasti for 1977 as I suspect Gillick was 100% in control of the draft and most of the rest) had last names starting with the letter A - did the Jays just start looking by alphabetical order and said 'screw it lets just take the first guy' (yes, that is a joke)?

Undrafted Free Agents (UFA)...

Gillick: 1977-1994: 1004 signed, 52 reached, 55.8 per year signed, 2.9 reached per year, easily the best is Tony Fernandez (45.3 WAR)
Ash: 1995-2001: 391 signed, 11 reached, 55.9 per year signed, 1.6 per year reached, best I think is Gustavo Chacin (4.1 WAR)
JPR: 2002-2009: 409 signed, 9 reached, 51.1 per year signed, 1.1 reached, best Henderson Alvarez (made an all-star team after leaving Toronto 8.5 WAR)
AA: 2010-2015: 419 signed, 18 reached, 69.8 per year signed, 3.0 per year reached. Best Vlad (13.5 WAR, 2 time AS)
Atkins: 2016-now, 407 signed, 9 reached, 58.1 signed per year, 1.3 per year reached (most still working through the system). Best Kirk (5 WAR so far)

So AA easily signed the most per year, just shy of 70 a year, and had the most reach at 3 per year (more might still make it - remember these guys are signed very young). If you go by # signed vs reached the worst was JPR at 45.4 signed to get 1 in the majors. Atkins is at 45.2 (will improve as time goes by), Ash at 35.5, AA at 23.3, Gillick at 19.3. Super scout Epy Guerrero was amazing under Gillick but Ash/Interbrew (owners of Jays during Ash's time) cut the coaching in the minors and scouting money which shows up here big time. JPR was horrid by any measure (lowest per year reached, worst ratio of signed/reached, lowest # per year signed). Kind of surprised that Gillick and Ash signed almost an identical # per year (0.1 spread) but Gillick had 1.3 more reaching per year - that is massive. AA/Atkins both signing more than any other GM before did although AA really went nuts with it and got the results (Osuna, Vlad, Adeiny Hechavarria was decent too plus lots of minor guys).

Note: this includes undrafted free agents in the USA/Canada/PR. So guys like Casey Lawrence & Chris Rowley are included.

So how about the draft? Same measurements plus WAR/draft

Gillick: 1977-1994: 790 drafted, 89 reached, 43.9 drafted/year, 4.9 reached/year, 34.0 WAR/Year. Best John Olerud (also 50+ WAR from Jeff Kent, Dave Stieb & David Wells)
Gillick Other Drafts: 1977-1986 (4 drafts per year): 163 drafted, 7 reached, 5.4 drafted/draft, 0.2 reached/draft, 2.1 WAR/draft. Best Todd Stottlemyre (22.9 WAR)
Ash: 1995-2001: 380 drafted, 31 reached, 54.3 drafted/year, 4.4 reached/year, 37.8 WAR/Year. Best Roy Halladay (HOF)
JPR: 2002-2009: 380 drafted, 52 reached, 47.5 drafted/year, 6.5 reached/year, 17.5 WAR/Year. Best Aaron Hill (All-Star)
AA: 2010-2015: 276 drafted, 51 reached, 46.0 drafted/year, 8.5 reached/year, 22.0 WAR/Year. Best Marcus Stroman (All-Star)
Atkins: 2016-now, 207 drafted, 18 reached, 29.6 drafted/year, 2.6 reached/year, 3.8 WAR/Year (most still playing). Best Bo Bichette (All-Star) but Manoah not far back.

Note: Other drafts is the old January and 2 secondary drafts they had each year. Not many signed through those but a few gems like Stottlemyre, Eichhorn, and Mark Whiten (all 10+ WAR) and poor Mike Sharperson (1 ASG and died far too young).

10+ WAR guys... (included the 2 9.9 guys)

Gillick: (17 draft, 6 UFA) Jesse Barfield, Lloyd Moseby, Dave Stieb, David Wells, Jimmy Key, Pat Hentgen, Mike Timlin, Derek Bell, Woody Williams, David Weathers, John Olerud, Jeff Kent, Steve Karsay, Shawn Green, Alex Gonzalez, Shannon Stewart, Chris Carpenter; UFA: Tony Fernandez, Luis Leal, Jose Mesa, Luis Aquino, Carlos Delgado, Kelvim Escobar
Ash: (7 draft, 0 UFA) Halladay, Vernon Wells, Alex Rios, Casey Blake, Orlando Hudson, Michael Young, Reed Johnson; UFA: none.
JPR: (6 draft, 0 UFA) Aaron Hill, Shaun Marcum, Adam Lind, Ricky Romero, Yan Gomes, Jake Marisnick; UFA: nada.
AA: (5+ draft, 1 UFA) Noah Syndergaard, Kevin Pillar, Joe Musgrove, Anthony DeSclafani, Marcus Stroman, more to come (Jansen, Jordan Romano, Matthew Boyd, Kendall Graveman, and Chad Green all might); UFA: Vladimir Guerrero
Atkins: (1+ draft, 0+ UFA) Bo Bichette (many more to come I'm sure like Manoah); UFA: none yet (Lourdes Gurriel is close, Alejandro Kirk at 5)

Net reached per year per GM plus net 10+ WAR per year (solid guys)

Gillick: 18 years (really 17, but I'm counting 1977 under him) - draft 89, other drafts 7, UFA 52 = 148 players = 8.2 per year, 23 solid guys - 1.3 per year
Ash: 7 years - draft 31, UFA 11 = 42 players = 6.0 per year, 7 solid guys (including 1 HOF'er) - 1 per year.
JPR: 8 years - draft 52, UFA 9 = 61 players = 7.6 per year, 6 solid guys - 0.75 per year
AA: 6 years - draft 51, UFA 18 = 69 players = 11.5 per year (! - he clearly focused on development more than any other GM and said so day one), 6 solids (more to come) - 1.0 per year
Atkins: 7 years - draft 18, UFA 9 = 27 players = 3.9 per year (many more coming soon hopefully) - 1 solid so far or 0.14 per year (obviously going to grow).

Obviously Atkins numbers for reached and WAR will be far lower than the others due to his guys just getting started (takes at least 5 years before any UFA reaches, often 10 years before you can say for sure if guys are successful or failures). AA's will also continue to improve as time goes by and more reach and those who are here add to their resumes. AA was by far the biggest development guy running the Jays ever, while Ash was even worse than I thought at it (hampered by owners who were super cheap - iirc every year we heard about the Jays signing guys who were lower ranked than the picks including guys like Wells & Rios who developed quite nicely) but did get a lot of really good players but flopped on role players and trades (Blake & Young never played a game here for example).

So what does this mean going forward? Hard to say, but it seems Atkins is on the right trend - signing more than any GM outisde of AA as AFA's (amateur free agents) to compensate for the reduced draft he has had to deal with. Hopefully it works well.

As a final data point - how did Cleveland do with Mark Shapiro running things? (he did train Atkins and is the president right now) GM 2002-2010, President 2011-2015, Atkins Farm Director 2009-2014

Draft: 671 drafted, 75 reached, 6 with 10+ WAR, best by a mile is Francisco Lindor 36.6 bWAR (5.4 reached per year, 0.4 with 10+ WAR per year). UFA's: 838 signed, 32 reached, 1 had 10+ WAR, 59.9 signed a year, 2.3 reached, the only 10+ guy was a big one - Jose Ramirez (40.3) who they signed November 26, 2009 (thus not a big name at the time like Kirk & Moreno). So combined he had 7.4 reach per year but very, very few were star level (7 total, 8th probable in Yandy Diaz and a 9th in Gio Urshela). His 7.4 reaching per year combined is lower than Gillick, AA, even JPR (barely, 0.2 spread). But he also had a budget that was worse than Ash had I suspect so that has to be factored in.

So by that it looks like Shapiro wasn't very good at the draft or UFA's, nor Atkins who was high on the player development ladder (2001 was assistant director of player development, promoted to director of Latin American operations in 2003. In 2006, promoted to director of player development, then promoted to vice president of player personnel after the 2014 season). But they did get a few big hits in the last 5 years in UFA (Ramirez, Diaz, Urshela) so maybe they finally got it figured out just before the Jays poached them. Hope so at least. Kirk and Moreno suggest that they might have (both late cheap signings so odds are it was mainly Atkin's scouts that found them vs old profiles from AA's setup).

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