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	<title>Toronto &#187; Cole Nefsky</title>
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		<title>How the Blue Jays Should Handle Their 2018 Catcher Conundrum</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/09/11/analyzing-the-blue-jays-difficult-catcher-conundrum/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/09/11/analyzing-the-blue-jays-difficult-catcher-conundrum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Sep 2017 11:36:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cole Nefsky]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=13369</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Much has been written about how the catcher position has become one of depth in the organization recently and it’s for good reason. Here&#8217;s a quick rundown of the highlights: Danny Jansen has turned himself into a masher Reese McGuire has turned himself into a masher Max Pentecost has turned back into a catcher Two [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Much has been written about how the catcher position has become one of depth in the organization recently and it’s for good reason. Here&#8217;s a quick rundown of the highlights:</p>
<ul>
<li>Danny Jansen has turned himself into a masher</li>
<li>Reese McGuire has turned himself into a masher</li>
<li>Max Pentecost has turned back into a catcher</li>
<li>Two of the Blue Jays’ first four selections in the 2017 draft were catchers: Hagen Danner (2nd round) and Riley Adams (3rd round)</li>
</ul>
<p>This is very good news. Catcher is in the conversation for the most important position on the field, and having depth there provides the team with a variety of potential starting and backup options while also giving them some attractive trade assets. The fact that the position is now such a strength for the Blue Jays, however, is quite shocking. Prior to 2017, scouts, front office personnel, and pundits alike would’ve called it a position of weakness for Toronto. But a lot can change when every development at the position is a positive.</p>
<p>Yet, for many, it being a position of strength is largely in contrast to the Blue Jays’ history of poor development at the position. The term ‘Catcher of the Future’ was oft-used throughout both of the teams’ two previous management eras. But now few, if any, are still making an impact anywhere in the majors. This is what brings me caution.</p>
<p>For Reese McGuire, it’s a 15.4% bump in his HR/FB rate that’s pushed his success, with seemingly no other changes. For Max Pentecost, leaving the friendly confines of the designated hitter role for one behind the plate is welcome, but he caught fewer than 20 games at A-Level Dunedin. For Hagen Danner, it&#8217;s poor peripherals that have come along with moderate contact success. For Riley Adams, it&#8217;s a 6&#8217;4 height that&#8217;s going to make it very hard to frame the lower part of the strike zone. For Danny Jansen, it&#8217;s an inability to add value by framing pitches in the upper minors.</p>
<p>Together, in the long run, the combined depth will likely produce an amicable major league result. In the short term, however, there&#8217;s no help&nbsp;immediately coming and there&#8217;s a lot of help needed. In his age 34 season, Russell Martin&#8217;s bat has held up okay, but injuries have plagued him more and more and that may hurt his already falling framing numbers. In order to combat likely increasing time lost due to injury, the Blue Jays will begin to seriously need a backup capable of handling the starting job for a quarter of the season.</p>
<p>Currently, the Blue Jays have two non-Russell, technically major-league catchers under contract for next season: Luke Maile and Raffy Lopez . Luckily, neither one of them is up for arbitration, because if they were, they&#8217;d be non-tendered immediately.</p>
<p>Of the two of them, Raffy Lopez is the better candidate currently. This comes on the back of&nbsp;what is essentially one number: Luke Maile&#8217;s TAv of .146, which has resulted in him being worth -7.9 VORP. For Luke Maile to be replacement level, his defense would have to be equivalent to 32 runs as a regular. Granted, his .146 TAv probably isn&#8217;t indicative of his true talent, but it also likely isn&#8217;t far off. He&#8217;s a ground ball hitter who makes a ton of weak contact, strikes out in more than a quarter of his plate appearances, and has only three walks on the season.</p>
<p>In Raffy Lopez, I see a mediocre defender, who has some offensive upside. His 37% current strikeout rate is buoyed by an extremely low swing rate, which should come up as he becomes more comfortable. In contrast to Maile, Raffy has shown a propensity to walk more and hit fly balls. There was a period from 2014 to 2016 where things were not working out for him, but before that he&#8217;d hit extremely well for a catcher. If his defense were where his bat is, I&#8217;d say that he&#8217;d almost be perfect for this job, but there&#8217;s always risk in a player who spent time in Indy ball with sub-par receiving and throwing.</p>
<p>Given all that, I&#8217;d say that there are two ways to view the upcoming season. Either you call up Danny Jansen half way through next year, which means that you use Martin as much as ever in the first half with Lopez behind him. Or you sign a high quality back up for the full 2018 season. Luckily for the Blue Jays, there are a trio of such players available as free agents this coming off-season.</p>
<p>Kurt Suzuki, Chris Iannetta, and Alex Avila all bumped their fly-ball numbers and saw a dramatic increase in their respective offensive outputs this season. Of the bunch, Iannetta represents the best receiver. He&#8217;s been worth about three runs above average on the defensive front, but there&#8217;s a tremendous amount of instability there. He&#8217;s historically been quite a bad framer, but shot up to 13 runs above average, before falling to 14 below average last year. Meanwhile, Suzuki and Avila have been a couple runs below average over the course of their respective careers, which is tolerable with their ability to hit.</p>
<p>If promised 70 games as a starter, Suzuki or Iannetta might get swayed to come up North for a little extra money. Alex Avila is a more difficult sell, though. He&#8217;s been a starter this season, so he will be looking for a team to be able to offer him that same role. He&#8217;s played innings at first base, which might be a way to get him the extra innings, not to mention some DH time, but there&#8217;s a Kendrys Morales sized blockage there.</p>
<p>The Jays have been gifted with some organizational depth at catcher,&nbsp;but none of them are quite the polished pieces we&#8217;d want to bring up to open next year. While options exist both within the organization and in free agency, affirming a successful 2018 at the season will be difficult. The Blue Jays&#8217; in house options are promising, but either far away or with their issues. The free agent options are interesting, but the Jays will be competing with a number of other suitors, some of which may be able to offer a better chance at playoff and World Series baseball. In other words, compared to previous seasons, the Blue Jays are on the right track in the long term at the catcher position, but that track isn&#8217;t quite straight heading in to this offseason.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo:&nbsp;Dan Hamilton, USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>What Makes a Successful End to the Blue Jays Season?</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/08/30/what-would-make-the-rest-of-the-season-a-success/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/08/30/what-would-make-the-rest-of-the-season-a-success/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2017 13:43:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cole Nefsky]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=13195</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Toronto Blue Jays are out of the playoffs. If not mathematically; spiritually, practically, and deservedly so. As a bunch, the team has not played well this season. Players have been injured, other have showed skills they&#8217;ve then lost, and others further have aged to a dangerous degree. Things have not gone as planned, nor [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Toronto Blue Jays are out of the playoffs. If not mathematically; spiritually, practically, and deservedly so. As a bunch, the team has not played well this season. Players have been injured, other have showed skills they&#8217;ve then lost, and others further have aged to a dangerous degree. Things have not gone as planned, nor have they gone as projected, but let&#8217;s look at the next month and pick what we&#8217;d need to see to at least say that it ended strong.</p>
<p>September is a weird month in baseball. Half the teams have sold everything and are running on fumes, others have a bullpen stocked with 15 men, just in case they burned their second LOOGY earlier in the game. It&#8217;s a weird mix of entertaining baseball &#8211; the games are important and you meet new players yet you see some of the worst, slowest baseball you&#8217;ll witness all season. September won&#8217;t feel very unusual to Jays fans this season; their team has been filled with AAA callups all season. When rosters expand, we&#8217;ll get to see some players that we&#8217;ve wanted to, and if things work out, we could be in a much better position for next season.</p>
<p>As mentioned by <a title="The Likely Blue Jays September Roster Additions" href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/08/22/the-likely-blue-jays-september-roster-additions/" target="_blank">Andrew Munn last week</a>, two of the players that the Jays are likely to call up are Anthony Alford and Teoscar Hernandez, two outfielders with the ability to play center. If they come up and show the front office that they&#8217;re ready to take the next step, it frees them up to make moves with outfielders that are currently on the big club. All three of the outfielders the club has under contract for next season certainly have qualities that other teams are attracted to. Depending on the metric you look at, Kevin Pillar still grades out as an above average defender, Ezequiel Carrera has <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/08/29/ezequiel-carreras-approach-is-evolving/" target="_blank">turned into a hitter</a>, and ever since the first month of the season, Steve Pearce has mashed. Alford and Hernandez performing would allow the team to get creative in finding solutions to any number of issues coming up into next season.</p>
<p>Next would be a resurgence of some of the players they were counting on. Kendrys Morales has been an utter disappointment all season long. He has hit the ball very hard, right into the dirt. He has walked less than expected, and struck out much more. For him to turn around in the last month would be big for the fans&#8217; perceptions of him. And if it could be done by making a real change, like adjusting his batted ball profile to play up his power, or making more contact like he has in the past, maybe that could give people some hope that he could return to form next year. If Kevin Pillar could show some of what he brought at the beginning of this season, that would certainly be a high note to end on as well. These are obvious ones, but they would warm my heart and be a sign that things might turn up for next season.</p>
<p>Next, it would be good for the fans, and for the team, if players returned strong from the DL. If Russell Martin, or Aaron Sanchez, or Devon Travis were to come back, that would be a bright spot that we could all look back on and hopefully remember the bright spot after a tough season. Hey, even a good report about Troy Tulowitzki&#8217;s recovery might make someone excited for the season to come.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think that a focus for the rest of season should be winning. I think that instead of playing the lineups that give us the best chance of winning, fans might like the chance to see the players that are fun to watch. The call-ups like Hernandez and Alford are fun, fast players. I always find it fun to sort out my thoughts about these players from tiny samples.</p>
<p>We all know what kind of season it has been. The best way to see the time out is with excitement. Two ALCS appearances in a row are an incredible accomplishment, and we should work to appreciate the baseball we have left.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>Shred It Up, Then Burn What&#8217;s Left: What the Blue Jays Should do at the 2017 Trade Deadline</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/17/shred-it-up-then-burn-whats-left-what-the-blue-jays-should-do-at-the-2017-trade-deadline/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/17/shred-it-up-then-burn-whats-left-what-the-blue-jays-should-do-at-the-2017-trade-deadline/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Jul 2017 10:00:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cole Nefsky]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=12269</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Toronto Blue Jays should sell everything they can, as quickly as they can. Period. While talking to Jays fans, there are a couple arguments that they seem to make for why they must either be buyers or stand pat this trade deadline. They&#8217;ll tell you that they don&#8217;t want to suffer through millennia of [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Toronto Blue Jays should sell everything they can, as quickly as they can. Period.</p>
<p>While talking to Jays fans, there are a couple arguments that they seem to make for why they must either be buyers or stand pat this trade deadline. They&#8217;ll tell you that they don&#8217;t want to suffer through millennia of tragedy like either Astros or Cubs fans have, partially because it&#8217;s not fun and partially because of a general sense of fear that the fans won&#8217;t return. Or they&#8217;ll tell you that the Jays are really REALLY close and all we need is a better LOOGY and are a defensive replacement away from winning the second Wild Card slot, technically counting as a playoff team.</p>
<p>Please.</p>
<p>The Astros and Cubs were that bad for that long because they didn&#8217;t sell when the writing was on the wall. If you take this team &#8211; a talented, but aging one &#8211; and you add an extra year and a couple of middle relievers, next year you can&#8217;t sell and you finish last in the division. However, if you trade these players, you could be stocked with prospects from Buffalo to Dunedin. Houston and Chicago didn&#8217;t have the benefit of hitting the reset in a smart, efficient manner.</p>
<p>Look at what the Yankees did last year. Look at what Chicago did in the off-season. They had players, even though they weren&#8217;t winning, and they turned those players into practically a quarter of the top hundred prospects in baseball. That is the sentiment that has yet to be considered by the fans arguing for some version of holding and going for it. If we sell, which we should, it will not be a tank. It will be part of a plan that sparks a shorter turnaround; hopefully one where we acquire some young 0-3 players that we can fall in love with in the long run instead of a bunch of grizzled, graying mercenaries that spend more time tying down their disconnected limbs than playing baseball.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if you are trying to sell a rebuild to this city from a marketing perspective, look at what just happened to the Leafs. Here in Toronto, we pretend that the city as a whole cares about the Jays, Raptors, and that weird sport with eleven guys who can&#8217;t pick up the ball. And some of us do. But after seasons like 2016-2017, and in a world where Auston Matthews exists, it become increasingly clear that the city is centrally focused on the Maple Leafs. In a press conference announcing the trades, talk about how the Leafs have Marner, and Nylander if you have to. The fans will understand and back it.</p>
<p>As for the next argument. I get that this team has flirted with .500 and had stretches where they look like they&#8217;re competitive. I get that it is mostly the same bones that made it to the playoffs in back to back seasons. I get that this team really is talented enough to be an 85 game winner over the course of any given season, but it&#8217;s not talented enough to beat the Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, Astros or Dodgers in a playoff series. And that isn&#8217;t even counting the fact that most of those guys will be buyers at the deadline. The Blue Jays would have to buy just to keep pace; if they hold they&#8217;ll get wrecked and be committed to paying millions of extra dollars, while also failing to benefit from the minor league face-lift a sell would provide.</p>
<p>There are only two realistic options, buy or sell, and they&#8217;re not good enough to spend the prospects they have on the sort of players needed to carry the team to the ALCS, let alone the World Series.</p>
<p>To anyone that can hear me, I think that it&#8217;s time for our version of a letter writing campaign. Tweet the team that you&#8217;re fine with a rebuild, #wellbeback. We&#8217;ll be back with shiny new prospects and enough free payroll to scare some other teams to death in the 2019 free agency. Let&#8217;s find Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. some teammates and have the Jays come back either next year or the one after as the sort of team that really strikes fear into the hearts of opposing pitchers. They can be the sort of team that makes batters walk up to the plate defeated, and the sort of team that has, I don&#8217;t know, maybe one of the top 70 fastest players in the league, and maybe fewer than three of the ten slowest?</p>
<p>If you want to know what the Jays might be able to yield in a such sell-off,<a title="How to Build a Blue Jays Fire Sale" href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/11/staging-a-potential-blue-jays-sell-off/" target="_blank"> here&#8217;s a piece that I wrote about just that</a>.</p>
<p>Comment, tweet, and embrace the pain. It&#8217;s gonna be worth it in a couple of years.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Butch Dill USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>How to Build a Blue Jays Fire Sale</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/11/staging-a-potential-blue-jays-sell-off/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/11/staging-a-potential-blue-jays-sell-off/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Jul 2017 10:00:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cole Nefsky]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=12213</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I am not saying we should do this. The Toronto Blue Jays currently are projected for 78 wins, with a 6.3% probability of making the playoffs. That looks bleak, but it also comes with a couple of caveats. Primarily, PECOTA is built on nearest neighbors, a method of projection that uses individual player/team comparisons as the baseline of [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I am not saying we should do this.</p>
<p>The Toronto Blue Jays <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/odds/" target="_blank">currently are projected for 78 wins, with a 6.3% probability of making the playoffs</a>. That looks bleak, but it also comes with a couple of caveats. Primarily, PECOTA is built on nearest neighbors, a method of projection that uses individual player/team comparisons as the baseline of eventual future performance. The trouble with a nearest neighbors method is that there isn&#8217;t a particularly large sample of comparable players for most, and there also isn&#8217;t a very large sample for teams to be compared to.</p>
<p>So for some players, real outliers in the minors, it&#8217;ll either match them with no one in particular and guess average. Or if there is one match, it&#8217;ll essentially tell you this new player will have the exact same career as the former. Again, it does the same thing for teams.</p>
<p>So when PECOTA sees this year&#8217;s Toronto Blue Jays, it sees that it has performed like a bad team, and then is grouping it in the &#8220;Bad Teams&#8221; cluster, projecting the rest of the season as a bad team. What it doesn&#8217;t see is a historic lumping together of injuries, bad luck and under-performing players.</p>
<p>Realistically, the team in its current form is an 85 win team over the course of a season, with approximately 80-82 wins at the end of this particular one. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with being a fine team. There is nothing wrong with being merely good for a bunch of years in a row. Baseball is a weird sport where bad teams win ten consecutive games and then have their opposition dog it in the playoffs. An 85 win true-talent team can win the World Series, an 85 win true-talent team can have a 75 win season, and the same team occasionally wins 85 games.</p>
<p>I also acknowledge that members of the front office have <a title="Source: Blue Jays Finalize Plans for July Trades" href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/07/source-blue-jays-finalize-plans-for-july-trades/" target="_blank">recently said that they would be opposed to a full tear down</a>. However; if Ross Atkins and the front office team decide to sell, there are certain players I would look at holding onto instead of burning it straight down.</p>
<p>The first player I would look to trade is <strong>Jose Bautista</strong>. Despite a drop in power, Bautista still walks and reaches base at an above average rate. He is projected to have a .294 rest of season TAv, meaning that PECOTA certainly still thinks there&#8217;s some thump left in this stick. He also hasn&#8217;t had a terrible season so far. Though he hasn&#8217;t lived up to expectations, he has been worth 1.2 WARP. For around one to one and a half wins in the seventy or so remaining games, coming in the form of a .294 TAv, you could probably fetch a return similar to what the Yankees got for Carlos Beltran last year. They received Dillon Tate, Erik Swanson, and Nick Green. Dillon Tate was the fourth overall pick in 2015, and has been electric since coming off the minor league DL this season. The other two are more minor league depth prospects who have ceilings as hard throwing middle relievers. Toronto would probably have to pay down some or all of Bautista&#8217;s deal to make this happen, but all in all, I think it would be a good way to salvage some value. Potential destinations include the Rockies who might be looking for a bat and first baseman to replace Ian Desmond, as well as the Diamondbacks and Nationals.</p>
<p><strong>Ezequiel Carrera</strong> is another good piece that other teams would pay for. After being a below average fourth outfielder for the bulk of his career, he has asserted himself as a serviceable platoon player, who can defend center field in a pinch. He&#8217;s not special, and the yield wouldn&#8217;t be substantial, but if the Blue Jays could trade him for a younger version of himself, that&#8217;s a quick win in my book.</p>
<p>The next player to move is <strong>Russell Martin</strong>. He is having a good season on both sides of the ball, despite some bad BABIP luck. He&#8217;s still a well above average framer who has a .368 OBP, which is more than you can say about most catchers. He has two years remaining after this season, which for a player of his age is concerning. But Martin keeps himself in remarkable shape and is more versatile than most catchers, which would be an easy sell. There are a lot of teams that are in the hunt and looking for catchers. In order to reap the maximum reward, this would obviously involve paying down approximately seven million dollars of his deal per season, or seventeen million over the three seasons. A good trade comparison for Martin would be the Jonathan Lucroy trade last year. They received Lewis Brinson and Luis Ortiz. Brinson is a top tier prospect while Ortiz is also ranked in most top 100 lists. This deal also involved Jeremy Jeffress, so I wouldn&#8217;t expect quite the same level of compensation unless we throw Joe Smith in the deal as well, which might be worth it. I see Martin as a good fit for possibly Cleveland (who actually tried to trade for Lucroy last year before he refused the deal) as a bridge while they wait for Francisco Mejia. This could also be of interest to the Brewers, Rockies and Diamondbacks, who are all quite weak at the position.</p>
<p><strong>J.A. Happ</strong> has been shoving it recently (his last start notwithstanding) and I am absolutely sure that the Jays could be handsomely compensated for a pitcher like him. I&#8217;d expect the return to be something just below what the Rays got for Matt Moore or what the Padres got for Drew Pomeranz. Probably either one prospect ranked in thirty-fifty overall range or two prospects from sixty to one hundred. Happ has struck out 23.8% of opposing batters while only walking 4.6%. And while his HR/FB numbers are significantly higher than his career average, his hard hit rate is right in line so this is probably just bad luck. Even still, with a FIP in the mid-high threes and being left-handed, there should be a lot of interest there. The Brewers, Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Astros, and Cubs could all be suitors for him.</p>
<p><strong>Steve Pearce</strong> was traded last year for Jonah Heim, a low minor league catcher who isn&#8217;t performing and also isn&#8217;t highly regarded. Steve Pearce has also been mashing ever since the end of April. He has been doing it to both lefties and righties, too. The fact that he is signed for as little as he is for next season also helps raise his value. The issues with Pearce, though, are that he&#8217;s old and he&#8217;s either a bad outfielder or an average first baseman. You could probably get a prospect in the seventy five to hundred range for him, or maybe by including him in a deal for another player, you can increase help yield a more significant return.</p>
<p><strong>Justin Smoak</strong> is another player that I looked at, given that he has been excellent and is on a very cheap deal, but I would rather hold onto him for this season. If the team is in a similar situation next year, that would be the time to move him. He still has two more years (one plus a team option), so keeping him through 2019 is a good option as well. Ideally he performs next season, in which case he will have a longer track record and could get moved for higher quality players, though I could definitely be sold on moving him this year. There are a lot of teams looking for a first baseman, so I&#8217;m sure someone would pay a top 50 prospect with a couple other throw-ins.</p>
<p>Maybe the most controversial candidate to be moved is <strong>Roberto Osuna</strong>. The still young closer is in his best season yet. He has a 1.46 FIP and a 2.06 ERA. He&#8217;s still in his 0-3 term yet has been a closer in the playoffs for two different postseasons. In short, he&#8217;s a stud. Some fair comparisons for the return you might get for Osuna, look to Andrew Miller, Aroldis Chapman, and Craig Kimbrel (though he moved in off-season deals). Miller went to the Indians for top prospect Clint Frazier, another good prospect in Justus Sheffield, and then two relief prospects. Frazier is consistently ranked in the top 30 prospects in baseball, Sheffield in the top 100. For Chapman, the Yankees received a package centered on Gleyber Torres, who is a consensus top five prospect. Roberto Osuna has numerous suitors, most notable the Nationals, and he could be used to bring in not only a good player, but an above average, middle of the field, big bat prospect, who is a centerpiece of this team for years. I want to trade Osuna, but with a heavy heart.</p>
<p>The last piece I&#8217;d move is <strong>Josh</strong> <strong>Donaldson</strong>. I don&#8217;t know which specific team we would sell to because most playoff teams have a good option at third, but I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s one out there. At the very least, there&#8217;s a team who wants to upgrade. The closest comparison that I could find for an in-season trade of Josh Donaldson is Yoenis Cespedes. Donaldson has a year longer deal that Cespedes did, though, and he&#8217;s also a better player at a premium position. The Tigers received Michael Fulmer and Luis Cessa. This wouldn&#8217;t be enough to get it done. I would start with looking at a top twenty prospect, then two or three more from the top hundred, if the return were only prospects. I think that a better look would be taking a zero to three player who could be worth around three and a half wins until the end of his first deal, and then fill out with a two win major leaguer with two more years of control, or instead two prospects ranked from fifty to one hundred.</p>
<p>The names left off this list that were at one point ripe for it are <strong>Marco Estrada</strong>, <strong>Francisco Liriano</strong> and, although mentioned, <strong>Joe</strong> <strong>Smith</strong>.</p>
<p>Marco Estrada I think would be a good candidate to resign. And with current performance, it might be tough to sell him. He is still talented, though, and a couple good starts could change everything.</p>
<p>Francisco Liriano is another guy who might rebound, but I think it&#8217;ll be tough to recoup the value lost for him.</p>
<p>Joe Smith would certainly get a haul for the season he had, but I think he would be better used as a player to sweeten the deal in one of the aforementioned trades than he would being traded on his own.</p>
<p>In summary:</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Trade-Deadline.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-12277" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Trade-Deadline-300x264.png" alt="Trade Deadline" width="300" height="264" /></a></p>
<p>These moves would clear money off the books for next season and, most importantly, it would infuse the minor league system with a lot of talent. The next two free agent classes are very good (2019 is shaping up to be jaw dropping, as I&#8217;m sure you know), and it would be nice to have the spending room to go out there and make something happen.</p>
<p>Because of their unique situation, being a very talented team that hasn&#8217;t lived up to expectations, the Jays have the pieces to turn their system into the best in baseball. It could accelerate a rebuild significantly, with the team potentially being competitive in 2019 when Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman, and Joe Biagini should all still be in their primes.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Joe Biagini&#8217;s Outstanding, Yet Perfectly Average Fastball</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/06/09/joe-biaginis-outstanding-yet-perfectly-average-fastball/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/06/09/joe-biaginis-outstanding-yet-perfectly-average-fastball/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jun 2017 11:21:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cole Nefsky]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=11486</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A few weeks ago at BP Toronto, I wrote a piece about Joe Biagini that essentially listed all of the reasons he&#8217;d fail as a starting pitcher. He seems to be doing better than expected, but the issues raised in that piece are still of concern. As he&#8217;s started more games, the release speed of his [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A few weeks ago at BP Toronto, I wrote a piece about Joe Biagini that essentially <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/15/heart-and-eyes-vs-brain-the-joe-biagini-starter-warning/" target="_blank">listed all of the reasons he&#8217;d fail as a starting pitcher</a>. He seems to be doing better than expected, but the issues raised in that piece are still of concern. As he&#8217;s started more games, the release speed of his pitches still declines every inning, and he hasn&#8217;t blended his pitches any better than he first did.</p>
<p>Two things <em>have</em> changed, though. To quote myself:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px">A possible fix to this would be throwing dramatically more curve balls to gain some of the hill effect and make batters uncomfortable, but this might negatively impact his ability to limit walks.</p>
<p>Out of nowhere, in a game called by Luke Maile on June 3, Biagini threw 40 curve balls of 100 total pitches. While the elevated curve ball usage certainly played a part in this fantastic most recent start, something else has been keeping Biagini performing well, I just didn&#8217;t think of it until recently.</p>
<p>Biagini&#8217;s fastball is categorized improperly by Baseball Savant, MLBAM, Fangraphs, Brooks. Every single possible categorization of this pitch is wrong. He calls it a two-seam, it looks like a two-seam, but every one calls it a four-seam. Why they get it wrong is part of why it makes him such an extraordinary pitcher.</p>
<p>Biagini&#8217;s fastball appears, for all intents and purposes, to be an entirely average moving pitch. It has a z-score of 0.03 when it comes to vertical movement, and -0.84 when it comes to horizontal, according to Brooks. This would mean Biagini has slightly above average run and exactly average ride. Overall, a seemingly unspectacular pitch.</p>
<p>Last year when I wrote about Biagini&#8217;s arsenal, I found some comps for his fastball. The closest were, in order, Jeff Hoffman, Andrew Cashner and Matt Harvey. All good comparisons, all have good fastballs, but there is one thing that is exceptional about Biagini compared to this trio. For a bit of background, this was Harvey&#8217;s down year, where he had a fairly average fastball. Hoffman was in his rookie season, with only a few appearances and was fine. And Cashner was bouncing from rotation to pen, after a trade and really wasn&#8217;t very good either. I teased that there was something that set Biagini apart, and here it is:</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Biagini-Release-Point.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-11487" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Biagini-Release-Point-173x300.png" alt="Biagini Release Point" width="173" height="300" /></a> <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Cashner-Release-Point.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-11488" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Cashner-Release-Point-227x300.png" alt="Cashner Release Point" width="227" height="300" /></a> <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Harvey-Release-Point.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-11489" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Harvey-Release-Point-203x300.png" alt="Harvey Release Point" width="203" height="300" /></a> <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Hoffman-Release-Point.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-11490" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Hoffman-Release-Point-188x300.png" alt="Hoffman Release Point" width="188" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Joe Biagini has a significantly higher release point than the rest of his closest comps. Generally, with a lower release point, you&#8217;d expect more run and less &#8220;rise&#8221;, vice versa with a higher one. Biagini&#8217;s two-seam fastball behaves as if he had a much lower release point than he actually does. This is where the deception comes from.</p>
<p>You would expect a pitcher, out of that arm slot, to have closer to 11 inches of ride than Biagini&#8217;s ~9, and you would expect it to have closer to 2 inches of run than his ~6. The exceptions to most arsenal rules go something like, &#8220;This is true, unless someone is really weird,&#8221; and upon first look, Biagini&#8217;s fastball isn&#8217;t, but with further digging, it is of course.</p>
<p>You could view it in another perspective, too. If you assume that it&#8217;s actually a two-seam fastball then that means Biagini has the most extreme ride of every two-seam fastball, and an extremely small amount of run. All in all, this pitch confuses hitters because of how unique it is, but you&#8217;d have to spend way too much time thinking about this issue to realize it.</p>
<p>So do I think that he will be a successful starting pitcher? I&#8217;m not sure anymore, but I&#8217;m closer to yes than I used to be. I still think that if his change up more closely resembled his fastball he&#8217;d be better, but he&#8217;s also proven that he can survive without it.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: © Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>Heart and Eyes vs. Brain: The Joe Biagini Starter Warning</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/15/heart-and-eyes-vs-brain-the-joe-biagini-starter-warning/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/15/heart-and-eyes-vs-brain-the-joe-biagini-starter-warning/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 May 2017 09:57:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cole Nefsky]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=10842</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Joe Biagini burst onto the scene last year, straight out of the Richmond Flying Squirrels (Giants&#8217; AA team) and into our hearts. As a Rule 5 pick, the odds are stacked against you because you have to be able to stay on a Major League roster for the entire season or be offered back to [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Joe Biagini burst onto the scene last year, straight out of the Richmond Flying Squirrels (Giants&#8217; AA team) and into our hearts. As a Rule 5 pick, the odds are stacked against you because you have to be able to stay on a Major League roster for the entire season or be offered back to where you came from. But Biagini surpassed all expectations, making himself one of the better young relievers, not only in Canada, but in all of baseball. </p>
<p>A starter in the minors, Biagini added velocity when he moved to the pen and it certainly helped him. He struck out 21 percent of the batters he faced last year, more than he had in any minor league season since 2012 in Low A Augusta. With injuries ravaging the Toronto Blue Jays rotation, Biagini was called back to start a game against the Tampa Bay Rays. He certainly lived up to the task.</p>
<p>Biagini gave up only two hits and one run &#8211; unearned &#8211; striking out four and walking not a single batter. However, he only faced 15 batters in four innings, as expected on a spot start, so we didn&#8217;t know how this might translate to a full start, however one typically defines it. He followed that up with another good game against the Mariners, going five plus innings, striking out three, giving up four hits and walking no one.</p>
<p>Biagini has excellent stuff and he&#8217;s a lot of fun to watch pitch, but there is definitely cause for concern. Joe Biagini has two big questions that must be answered before the Jays fan base pencils him into the &#8220;Rotation of the Future.&#8221; The first has to do with his pitch mix. The second with how his velocity will be able to hold up.</p>
<p>Here on BP, tunneling has become a topic of substantial interest for good reason. Tunneling, essentially the idea that if two pitches look the same but aren&#8217;t that they&#8217;ll be tougher to hit, helps with deception. But at least in my humble opinion it isn&#8217;t the most important thing to look for with regards to pitch mix. That would be blending.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s some overlap between tunneling and blending, so this certainly isn&#8217;t meant to discount tunneling, only that it misses part of the story that blending captures better. With tunneling, you&#8217;re essentially measuring the gap between pitches over the course of their journey from release to the plate, seeing how similar they can be until the batter chooses to swing. With blending, you&#8217;re looking at the movement patterns. Basically, which pitches are similar enough to trick the batter, if used properly. The classic blending study would be a changeup that has the same horizontal movement to a pitcher&#8217;s fastball, but differs when it comes to vertical movement. A good example would be Alex Cobb and his 2014 season:</p>
<table style="height: 213px" width="557">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="84"></td>
<td width="71">Four Seam</td>
<td width="72">Change Up</td>
<td width="72">Separation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Speed (mph)</td>
<td>92.69</td>
<td>87.91</td>
<td>4.78</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HMov (in.)</td>
<td>-7.3</td>
<td>-8.06</td>
<td>0.76</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>VMov (in.)</td>
<td>10.1</td>
<td>3.21</td>
<td>6.89</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>For some other information on blending, look <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1680808-what-sets-an-elite-changeup-apart-from-the-rest-of-the-pack" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21675" target="_blank">here</a> or at anyone who&#8217;s pitched for Andrew Friedman&#8217;s two teams in the last five years.</p>
<p>Now this isn&#8217;t the only way to have a good changeup. You can blend using vertical movement too, but it&#8217;s not good to have both be drastically different from the fastball. You would normally want one to be similar, if you were going to use a pitch regularly, without them all being too similar to the fastball. </p>
<p>The word regularly is important. Of course, if you have a pitch that&#8217;s wildly different from the fastball then it can be used, just not regularly. Either quite rarely, or like Rich Hill and Lance McCullers, as another main pitch. This idea, specifically with changeups and also not named as blending, can be explored <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=21675" target="_blank">here</a> by Harry Pavlidis. This also comes with the caveat that if the velocity gap is extreme (difference &gt;= 12 mph), then that pitch will play as well. For that, look to Marco Estrada.</p>
<p>So, looking at Biagini:</p>
<table style="height: 209px" width="558">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="84"></td>
<td width="71">Four Seam</td>
<td width="72">Change Up</td>
<td width="72">Separation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Speed (mph)</td>
<td>94.91</td>
<td>88.06</td>
<td>6.85</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HMov (in.)</td>
<td>-6.33</td>
<td>-9.32</td>
<td>2.99</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>VMov (in.)</td>
<td>9.54</td>
<td>5.41</td>
<td>4.13</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>You wouldn&#8217;t really say Biagini&#8217;s blending anything. There&#8217;s drastically different movement in both dimensions and the velocity difference isn&#8217;t enough to get any help there either. It also seems to be moving in the wrong direction; the table above is from this year, here is Biagini&#8217;s 2016 season:</p>
<table style="height: 213px" width="556">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="84"></td>
<td width="71">Four Seam</td>
<td width="72">Change Up</td>
<td width="72">Separation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Speed (mph)</td>
<td>94.97</td>
<td>86.52</td>
<td>8.45</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HMov (in.)</td>
<td>-5.92</td>
<td>-7.81</td>
<td>1.89</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>VMov (in.)</td>
<td>9.62</td>
<td>5.37</td>
<td>4.25</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>This is both encouraging and discouraging because it means that the good changeup is in him but that he&#8217;s losing it.</p>
<p>Biagini&#8217;s Stuff has been a well documented subject by writers on this site. By me <a href="http://jaysfromthecouch.com/2016/09/18/toronto-blue-jays-mostly-ridiculous-entirely-stupid-biagini-aggregate-scouting-report/" target="_blank">here</a>, Matt Gwin <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/02/24/joe-biagini-should-start-the-season-as-a-starting-pitcher/" target="_blank">here</a> and Mike Sonne <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/10/03/the-final-regular-season-blue-jays-stuff-report/" target="_blank">here</a>. And that&#8217;s where the title comes in. I like Biagini as a character on the field. Having <a href="http://jaysfromthecouch.com/2016/09/18/toronto-blue-jays-mostly-ridiculous-entirely-stupid-biagini-aggregate-scouting-report/" target="_blank">&#8220;One&#8221;</a> as his entrance music, hugging teammates, chumming with Jimmy Fallon&#8230;he&#8217;s a likable, quirky guy, so I want him to succeed. I would want our Rule 5 pick to be great because it feels good to hold that over other teams. And his stuff is clearly elite, which is where my eyes come in. But my brain is fighting that prediction back.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Biagini&#8217;s curveball doesn&#8217;t have any blending ability with his fastball, for examples of that look at Clayton Kershaw or Drew Smyly. His curveball is a very good pitch, but it will probably struggle as he goes through the order.</p>
<table style="height: 211px" width="557">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="84"></td>
<td width="71">Four Seam</td>
<td width="72">Curve</td>
<td width="72">Separation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Speed (mph)</td>
<td>94.91</td>
<td>80.38</td>
<td>14.53</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HMov (in.)</td>
<td>-6.33</td>
<td>4.33</td>
<td>10.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>VMov (in.)</td>
<td>9.54</td>
<td>-9.85</td>
<td>19.39</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>His cutter is also just a slightly muted version of his fastball:</p>
<table style="height: 213px" width="561">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="84"></td>
<td width="71">Four Seam</td>
<td width="72">Cutter</td>
<td width="72">Separation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Speed (mph)</td>
<td>95.17</td>
<td>91.51</td>
<td>3.66</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HMov (in.)</td>
<td>-6.45</td>
<td>-0.58</td>
<td>-5.87</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>VMov (in.)</td>
<td>9.66</td>
<td>5.8</td>
<td>3.86</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Stuff alone can make a reliever, which it clearly has in Biagini. Stuff and command can make a pretty competent starter, so let&#8217;s hope it does. But the blending is certainly something that could hold him back.</p>
<p>A possible fix to this would be throwing dramatically more curveballs to gain some of the Hill effect and make batters uncomfortable, but this might negatively impact his ability to limit walks.</p>
<p>A much bigger concern, though, is that his velocity will fall back down to the levels he showed in AA, about 91-93 as a starter. We haven&#8217;t seen him in a long enough start to really see how he adjusts to possibly throwing 90+ pitches, but in his first start, he was within the margin of error for velocity, compared to his time relieving. Velocity can turn bad pitchers good and good pitchers great, so that will be the first indicator if things are going to go backwards. There isn&#8217;t much to really say about this, given that if you&#8217;re reading BP then you know about how important velocity is and how relievers are able to max out in shorter spurts.</p>
<p>But the fact that his velocity didn&#8217;t deviate in his first start, a 52 pitch performance that has been covered <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/08/joe-biagini-avoided-the-reliever-to-starter-transition-problems/" target="_blank">here</a> by Joshua Howsam, before falling in his second certainly shows that it is indeed a concern.</p>
<p>In his second start, Biagini&#8217;s fastball fell below 94 mph, while all other pitches lost around a mile per hour. This does not bode well for his potential future as a starter. Possibly the best visual for this:<br />
<a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/05/Brooksbaseball-Chart.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-10903" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/05/Brooksbaseball-Chart-300x200.png" alt="Brooksbaseball-Chart" width="300" height="200" /></a></p>
<p>The chart above shows that other than a big of a spike in the third, Biagini&#8217;s velocity fell every inning that he pitched, which explains why he couldn&#8217;t get any strikeouts after the third.</p>
<p>I want Biagini to succeed as a starter for the Jays&#8217; sake, for his sake, and for the sake of fun. His stuff looks good and he throws hard, all of which would point towards success. But he might run into problems with his pitch mix, and he probably will run into problems with maintaining his velocity.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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