The main motivation for the Marcum-Lawrie deal was to render Jays' playing personnel younger and more athletic.  Right? 

Wrong.  It was just another salary dump.  And there is nothing quite so gratifying as hunkering down for a great big dump.  Salary dump, that is.

Recent history shows that most every Blue Jay due a substantial salary increase is now gonzo.  In this case, Lawrie's projected upside allows Anthopoulos ample justification for the dump to his adoring public.

What next?

Adios, Jose.  No mas dinero.  Muchos gracias por 2009, amigo.

 

 

Er, make that 2010, Jose.

Dumo aside... trading Bautista at the height of his value would just be good baseball sense.

Does anyone think he will ever be as valuable as he was last season?

My answer: I don't know.  I do not know enough about Lawrie to make a judgment about his likely value in the medium-term.  He might be Willie Greene and he might be Mike Schmidt. 

Is this really the height of J-Bau's value? Every GM in baseball, like ourselves, are wondering if he's for real. Right now, the Jays would need a GM that believes, has a team that is a bat away, and that doesn't mind parting with prospects. I'm not sure such a creature exists. The team would also probably try and work out a contract with Bautista as well, to protect against him leaving after one season.

Nope, I think if AA trade J-Bau, we'll be more disappointed in the return than we've been with Marcum's return.

Jermaine Dye with wheels?

I voted for door #1.

Uh, I mean, that was my first mental comp, based on looking at Lawrie's stats and nothing else.

What Lawrie did in the Southern League (which is not the Texas League) suggests he has a decent chance to hit like an above-average corner outfielder. So, I figure a lot of things will have to go wrong for him not to be useful.

Dye is a middle ground.  He basically gave the Royals 2 good pre-free agency years in his mid 20s. I guess an outfield of Snider/Gose/Lawrie (say) in 2016 might be good.

"Does anyone think he will ever be as valuable as he was last season?"

That's a couple different questions.

Does anyone think he's going to be a regular 50-homerun hitter? Probably not, if only because almost no one does that.

But is THIS, right now, the height of his trade value? When no one is quite sure how much of his improvement is going to stick?

Obviously, if he turns back into a normal hitter in 2011 - say, 20-25 homers, then his value will go down. But if he keeps most of his power, and spends the first half of 2011 mashing everything over the fence, then maybe he's a more appealing acquisition midseason.

In other words: How much value does he have if other teams expect him to be less valuable?

Wrong.  It was just another salary dump.

If the Jays were looking to dump salaries you wouldn't think they would send $6MM to the Phillies in the Halladay deal.  Or sign minor leaguers to big deals that most people aren't paying attention to.

Well the Jays were saving 8 more million on the Halladay deal than had they kept him, so it's interesting you only see the positive aspect of that trade where they ate 6m.

I vote for Option F - the trade is a good one from a value perspective but it's a little puzzling to see them trade away affordable starting pitching, which everyone seems to think is worth its weight in gold. I think a healthy, productive Marcum commands way more than Lawrie at the trade deadline, and that this team was in a position to wait on it considering Marcum's paltry salary.

It was just another salary dump

According to AA, the Jays have been after Lawrie for awhile now and it was Milwaukee who asked for Marcum.

 

Has there ever been a poll so equally divided as this one? At least the bottom choice is only at 8%. That's a good sign.

I like the deal because I trust AA. I also like his general approach, which is to think long-term and to build a solid core of young talent that will develop at around the same time (and continue to be supported by new waves of talent). The Jays' farm system has improved a lot over the last couple of years and should get a nice boost in 2011 with the extra draft picks. It could take another two, three or four years before the major-league club really takes off, but the future is certainly starting to look bright.

I'm torn.

I have always looked at Lawrie's stats, because of the next world baseball classic, and thought he looked to be one of the top position prospects in the game... He has a shot at being a franchise type player; if there is such a thing in baseball...

That being said, it's not too common to see a pitcher of Marcum's track record and personality go for a single prospect..

This was NOT a salary dump. This was a situation where the Jays are trying to build a great young core, and had to look at moving a starting pitcher to make room for Drabek/Stewart ..

If any of Romero/Cecil/Morrow  prove to be just mediocre, look for them to get moved to make way for the next wave of Alvarez/McGruire/Jenkins and if any of them are mediocre or don't pan out, get ready for the wave of Sanchez/Syndergaard/Wocherjsiki/(12 other high school pitchers)...

The jays are looking to build the best rotation in baseball....So expect a revolving door around the 5 man until they get there...

One more  B-, or C+ prospect to hedge the risk, and I'd say it was a great deal.  Now it's a 1 for 1, man to man, proven commodity vs upside.  Ballsy for sure.

I actually agree that a couple of C prospects would have made the optics look a lot better... Not that we should care, but unfortunatly Toronto sports fans are pretty dumb!

Throw in a Tim Collins prospect and everyone would have been ecstatic, it's true. The trade is fine from a value perspective - from a philosophical one, well that's a different story.

It was just another salary dump.

Wow. That's really, really dumb. You don't dump anyone because they're making $850 K.

C'mon, Mags, sure you do ... in 1977!

Um... pretty sure no one in baseball was making $850 K in 1977. Not even Catfish or Reggie...

Hey, minor league guys! What Lawrie did in AA at age 20 looks roughly comparable to what Travis Snider did in AA at age 20 - how do the two leagues compare?

According to minorleaguesplits.com minor league equivalency calclulator, if you translate Lawrie's numbers from Huntsville in the Southern League to New Hampshire in the Eastern League, you get a line of .283/.341/.461.  Comparing Lawrie to Snider, you can also use the fact that they both played in the Midwest League at age 19, where Snider was considerably better. 

Lawrie has walked and struck out somewhat less and hit for somewhat less power than Snider.  Overall, Snider was a modestly better hitting prospect than Lawrie as of age 20.  That is high praise. 

While Snider certainly put up better numbers as a 19 year old in the Midwest than Lawrie he did have the advantage of 2 months in the Appy with Pulaski the year before, whereas Lawrie was getting his first professional experience. This may have manifested itself in Lawrie's first and second half splits, although I can't find them so I can't be certain - he did, however, hit significantly better in 2010 pre-ASB than post-ASB (he took a .299/.363/.483 AA line into this year's break). Perhaps the extra 2 months Snider got as an 18 year old after he graduated high school helped him not break down over the grind of a longer season. Either way, I get the feeling that a lot of Lawrie's value comes from the potential due to his athleticism, the hope that he'll provide defensive value and baserunning value that Snider didn't project to do at the same age. It's not a stretch to suggest Lawrie today has similar market value to Snider pre-2009. I enjoyed reading in the Vancouver Sun about Lawrie's time with the Canadian jr. national team playing exhibitions vs. DSL teams prior to the 2008 draft -

Lawrie, who comes from an athletically gifted family (sister Danielle is a pitcher on Canada's Beijing-bound national women's softball team), has been on the radar of the MLB scouting bureau for some time.

Yet it was a recent trip with the Canadian junior national team to play a series of exhibition games against teams in the professional Dominican Summer League that had scouts booking last-minute flights to the island to see him play.

In eight games, Lawrie literally tore the cover off the ball for a .486 average (17-for-35) with eight home runs and 24 RBI. The highlight came in a doubleheader against the Seattle Mariners' farm team when Lawrie hit five home runs.

"He's such a polished hitter," commented one scout. "We go into Ohio or Pennsylvania and see a high school hitter have a great day. But the pitcher [there] is throwing 82 mph.

"We saw Lawrie in Arizona and Florida and now the Dominican. He's hitting bombs off second-year pros."

It's so frustrating to know that the Jays wanted Lawrie badly and were one team away from getting him. An already strong system would look even better with Lawrie in the top 3 and the ability to pick up another top prospect by moving Marcum. They couldn't lose one more game in 2007 and pick ahead of MIL? Griffin & Elliot would have been besides themselves if JP had been the one to spend the highest draft pick ever on a Canadian position prospect.

You're right, Mags. I was just going for a more or lesss general point.  According to BBRef, ih 1977, Cat made $640K while the straw who stirred the drink made $600K. The metaphor stands, tho!