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Edwin, Jose, and Alternate Realities

Now that the dust has settled on the return of Jose Bautista, the mind naturally wanders – or mine did anyway – to how the Blue Jays as they are currently constructed would compare to a world in which Jays fans got what they originally wanted; one where Edwin Encarnacion had said yes to the offer the Blue Jays made him at the beginning of the off-season.

Of course, any sort of speculation of this type involves a lot of assumptions, but let me see if I can sort out some basic premises. As the team stands now, we have a fair sense that management has somewhat more money to spend, and clear #1 priority to spend it (LH set up reliever, now that reserve catcher has been addressed). For the sake of this exercise, I’m going to assume they have the money to successfully complete this objective. Other than adding depth, that would leave one area of primary concern to most fans: left field. If we assume Steve Pearce will get most of his work keeping Justin Smoak on the bench (which is a noble calling), then they are left with hoping that Dalton Pompey seizes the moment or plugging in guys who have no business being a full time major league starter (Upton, Carrera, Cecilliani even).

So that’s what constitutes our “prime” timeline: every offensive position filled with – assuming Pearce’s health – a quality contributor except LF, where life is uncertain. How would it have been had things gone the other way back in November?

It is an easy and obvious conclusion, based on public comments, that had Edwin signed for the 4/$80M offer, Kendrys Morales would not be on the team. For simplicity’s sake let’s assume that the club views Edwin as a DH and also signs Pearce. So in the wake of signing Encarnacion and Pearce, Toronto has $10 million less to spend this year than they had after signing Morales and Pearce. That reality of course pretty much kills any rationalization about also bringing back Bautista. Even if they don’t sign Pearce they can’t recover enough to make that happen. On the other hand, if they don’t sign Bautista then they gain a net eight million dollars on where they stand right now, but you have a team with no clear LF or RF.

Just after it became clear that Bautista would return, Michael Saunders conceded their was no room left in the budget for him, though he made it obvious he was waiting on a chance to return and signed a deal with the Phillies for nine million dollars. For all his flaws, he’s as good as or better than any of the current free agent alternatives for Toronto’s outfield and it doesn’t take a stretch to assume that he’d be an obvious place to spend that money. So let’s pencil him into our alternate reality option. To compare:

Team A: Martin/Pearce/Travis/Tulo/Donaldson/Bautista/Pillar/Pompey/Morales

Team B: Martin/Pearce/Travis/Tulo/Donaldson/Saunders/Pillar/Pompey/Encarnacion

Those two versions of the team would cost basically the same money. The question then, is which will end up being a better deal?

A further assumption is necessary before we answer that. For how long do we actually have Bautista in the wake of this deal? While it has been rightly observed that mutual options are seldom exercised, there’s also been a great deal said about how this deal only happened because Bautista was unwilling to walk away if he had an opportunity to stay. I think the odds are much better than most do that he’s with the Jays another two, if not three seasons. More important to the context of this discussion is that it’s simply easier to compare the three year time frames that affect Bautista and Morales to the four year frame of the Encarnacion deal. Eddie’s deal, had he accepted it, would have covered his age 34-37 seasons. Jose’s, if it runs the full course, covers his age 36-38 seasons. Morales is signed for his age 34-36 seasons and Saunders is entering his age 30 season.

The following comparison is drawn from Fangraph’s Depth Chart projections and is based on and interesting forecast regarding Bautista’s future written by Craig Edwards back in November. In Edwards’ piece he begins with the DCP forecast of 2.8 (it’s now revised to 2.9) WAR and applies a standard aging curve and estimated value for the upcoming three years. He arrived at a projected value of $58.9 million over that span. Given that all three years of Bautista’s deal add up to $55 million, that’s interesting in and of itself. But how do we compare this to the other players in this discussion?

The process can be complex because the projections make certain assumptions that are not always obvious, but the same system projects Edwin to 2.4 WAR in 2017, Morales to 0.9, and Saunders to 1.0. So basically summing the figures, our real-world team begins at 3.8 WAR and the alternate reality team at 3.4. In terms of projecting the future you’d have to apply the same aging curve assumptions to all these players. You or I might assume that any one of them would defy the projections but that’s beyond the parameters of this comparison. Even though he’s two years older, the projections like Bautista’s future better. The other conclusion worth noting here is that if the projections like the value that the Blue Jays got on Bautista, then those same calculations would have called Encarnacion and 4/$80M an overpay.

The upshot of all this, then, is that even though the fanbase found the meandering drawn out process frustrating, and even though it can be argued that the Blue Jays backed into this position by a series of fortunate events, Toronto is probably in a better position now than they would have been if Eddie had said yes.

The club is on the hook for fewer dollars, have far more flexibility (in that they can simply not pick up the option if they think it’s best to move on after this season), and got more (projected) production in the process. Other than the valid observation that they could always simply choose to spend more money, it’s hard to complain about where they ended up.

Lead Photo: © Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

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3 comments on “Edwin, Jose, and Alternate Realities”

JP

WAR is a terribly flawed stat when it comes to a DH. Morales will be far more valuable than WAR suggests.

JF

Don’t just make a statement like that… show your work (or cite the work of others). You say “WAR is a terribly flawed stat when it comes to a DH”… I’m willing to be convinced of that, so convince me.

Kongos

I agree that WAR is a flawed stat when it comes to DHs, but I think it overestimates Morales’s value. He’s a terribly slow runner who is going to clog up the bases and cost the team runs.

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