Derek Norris, the former top catching prospect who has bounced around recently and was released by the Washington Nationals on March 15th, signed with the Tampa Bay Rays today. Of more note to this website is that Norris was deciding between the Rays and the Blue Jays according to Robert Murray of FanRag Sports, but ended up choosing Tampa because they were offering more playing time, in contrast to the Blue Jays, who offered more money.
Norris was deciding between the #Rays and #BlueJays, league source says. Toronto offered more $, he chose more playing with Tampa.
— Robert Murray (@RobertMurrayFRS) March 24, 2017
This does have some implications for the Blue Jays and tells us what Ross Atkins thinks about the current state of his ball club. First, it is important to note that Atkins and his staff clearly viewed Norris as an upgrade over Jarrod Saltalamacchia, the current option in the backup role behind Russell Martin. For their careers, they have been virtually identical on the offensive side of things, with Norris putting up a triple slash of .233/.309/.380, and Salty at .234/.309/.413. However, defensively Norris takes the cake. He has a reputation of being a good receiver and a good pitch framer, with 19.9 framing runs over the past two seasons. In contrast, Salty has cost his team 16.3 runs in that department over the same sample.
The dollar amount they offered to Norris likely wasn’t that much; reading anything into this about the Blue Jays’ payroll situation would be unwise given this info. If he were to take the place of Salty, that would have meant the team would have been off the hook for Salty’s salary because his $1.5 million deal is only guaranteed in the major leagues.
Although it should be obvious, it is good to see that the team isn’t going to sit back and be comfortable with that they have if better options arise. For example, if Angel Pagan, who has been tied with the club for a while now, decides that he is willing to settle for a position that isn’t full time, the Blue Jays don’t seem like they’ll be letting that opportunity pass them by without making their best effort to bring him, or any other player, in to help the team win ballgames. With just about a week left of Spring Training, most of the Blue Jays’ roster is set, but today showed that it can change pretty quickly, especially as players on the fringe of the rosters are being released or made available in trade.
If all goes well, maybe Angel Pagan is playing for the Blue Jays next week, because the current options of Melvin Upton and Ezequiel Carrera are able to be upgraded upon, just like Norris would have been an upgrade over Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
Real baseball. Soon.
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