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		<title>The Blue Jays Are Right to Stick to Their Plan in the Face of Increased Competition</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/27/the-blue-jays-are-right-to-stick-to-their-plan-in-the-face-of-increased-competition/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Dec 2017 11:43:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[If you were to look up &#8216;organizational crossroads&#8217; in the dictionary, you might find the Blue Jays there. Since Toronto won the World Series in 1993, they&#8217;ve consistently pivoted organizationally to try and keep up with their ever changing competitive landscape. Through that, there have been a few key organizational crossroads, which ended up shaping [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you were to look up &#8216;organizational crossroads&#8217; in the dictionary, you might find the Blue Jays there. Since Toronto won the World Series in 1993, they&#8217;ve consistently pivoted organizationally to try and keep up with their ever changing competitive landscape. Through that, there have been a few key organizational crossroads, which ended up shaping the then near future of the team. Some that come to mind include the Roger Clemens signing in 1996, the Roy Halladay trade in 2009, and the David Price and Troy Tulowitzki trades in 2015. Heading in to 2018, the Jays find themselves in a similar situation.</p>
<p>In 2017, the Blue Jays were quite bad; they narrowly missed a basement finish in the AL East while simultaneously getting lucky from a run scoring perspective. Yet, they have other average to above average players who they value highly, but who don&#8217;t exactly have great trading value if shipped off elsewhere.</p>
<p>Given that, do you buy or do you sell? At the start of the offseason, if you were to ask one fan, they might tell you to sell off the entire team—Stroman et al included. If you were to ask another fan, however, they&#8217;d have been looking to trade for Giancarlo Stanton and are still relishing in <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/12/heymans-latest-blue-jays-d-backs-cobb-lagares-castro.html" target="_blank">the J.D. Martinez rumours</a>. Despite their best efforts to clarify that they&#8217;re <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/12/olneys-latest-hosmer-padres-machado-jays-red-sox.html" target="_blank">not planning to trade Josh Donaldson</a> and are <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/12/heymans-latest-blue-jays-d-backs-cobb-lagares-castro.html" target="_blank">planning to pursue to big name free agents</a>, the Blue Jays&#8217; lack of action has made them a canvas which fans and teams alike can use to paint their own picture. Ergo, the Cardinals can continue to <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/cardinal-beat/blue-jays-might-move-donaldson/article_306ae4e1-c4d0-5968-a274-eb8b97bddf01.html" target="_blank">indicate to St. Louis press that Toronto is willing to move their star third baseman</a>, even in the face of public denial from Toronto themselves.</p>
<p>This has only been made more difficult by the fact that the Blue Jays&#8217; two nearest AL wild card competitors, the Yankees and Angels, acquired Giancarlo Stanton and Shoehei Ohtani respectively. One can raise questions about the sustainability of Stanton’s power, even with the Yankee Stadium power alley now available to him. Similarly, one can raise questions about Ohtani’s ability to transition to facing major league hitters. However, both are all-stars at worst and league MVP nominees at best; that’s nothing to scoff at.</p>
<p>In theory this should make the conundrum much easier to solve. The competition got better in ways that would be nearly impossible for the Blue Jays to replicate and the theory would then be that the team should change course. Yet, as recently as this past week, <a href="https://www.thescore.com/news/1452869" target="_blank">Ross Atkins confidently addressed Toronto’s biggest trade chip</a> by saying, “We&#8217;re trying to win, and I can&#8217;t imagine our team being better without Josh Donaldson.”</p>
<p>What gives?</p>
<p>Well, this is one arena where the Blue Jays definitely have it right. Once the team has an offseason direction, they’d be hard-pressed to find a good enough reason to shift it. This idea is backed by three key principles, one of which is partially unique to the Blue Jays and others that all teams understand.</p>
<p>The first principle surrounds the fact that the Blue Jays are owned by a profit-seeking, publicly traded company. One thing that comes in to play as a result of that fact is that the vision and direction for the Blue Jays (a department within the company) are pitched well in advance. I don’t know the specifics of the Blue Jays’ organizational calendar, but contrasting them with other publicly traded companies would lead one to believe that their vision, direction, and attached budget were approved within 4-8 weeks of the close of the previous season. As with any other business of that size, there may be just performance reviews, a short vacation, and reflection prior to preparing for the next season. Following the direction and budget approval, departments certainly have leeway to adjust it as opportunities or threats are introduced, but they’ll need a strong financial justification in order to do so. My guess would be that the business leaders in the Blue Jays’ front office made the calculation early on that competing in 2018 made the most sense when considering baseball and business interests. That isn’t changing solely because the team’s already tough competition got a little bit harder.</p>
<p>The second principle surrounds the fact that ‘winning the offseason’ can only get you so far. Once the season begins, there’s a wide range of outcomes that can change on the turn of a dime. The Blue Jays should know this better than just about anybody. Following R.A. Dickey and Marlins trades in the offseason prior to 2013, Toronto had ‘won the offseason’, but they then managed to lose more games than they won. Dickey went from Cy Young to Cy Old really quickly, Jose Reyes failed to reclaim his MVP vote getting form, and Josh Johnson lost all semblance of pitch control. Their marquee trade spoils had potential, but they were too injured, too old, or too unlucky to reach it.</p>
<p>The third principle ties in to the second principle, but describes the idea that competition in baseball can only go so far. Yes, it’ll hurt to see Giancarlo Stanton 19 times this season, but it’s possible that they never face up against Ohtani at all. The greater pain of increased competition on the margins comes in a team’s likelihood to achieve a higher win total, therefore making it statistically more difficult to win enough games to capture a playoff spot. However, looking to Fangraph’s dynamically updating win projections, one will find that the Yankees went from the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20171115114456/http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings">clear wildcard favourites</a> to <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings">almost being assured a wildcard spot</a> and competing with the Red Sox for the AL East title. Meanwhile, the Angels, hopped up from wildcard contenders to favourites for the second wildcard spot. Per Fangraphs, they now project for 88 wins. In comparison to the Blue Jays’ projected 83 wins, the 88 threshold seems daunting, but 88 wins is roughly where the team should have been striving for all along, if they were intending to compete.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-26-at-10.01.44-PM.png"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-14749" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-26-at-10.01.44-PM.png" alt="Screen Shot 2017-12-26 at 10.01.44 PM" width="400" height="343" /></a></p>
<p>Since the second wildcard spot was introduced to baseball in 2012, the teams that have captured it have done so with a median of 88 wins. Ergo, the Angels addition of Shohei Ohtani makes it possible that the team surpasses the 90 win threshold and makes it nearly impossible for competitors like the Blue Jays, Twins, and Mariners to catch up, but they all should’ve been aiming quite high anyways. As well, <a href="https://theathletic.com/?p=193361" target="_blank">as Andrew Stoeten notes at The Athletic ($)</a>, it’s entirely possible that Toronto’s lack of action indicates that they’re waiting on this offseason’s fairly late developing free agent market.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that sticking to one’s guns here is the salient decision. If it were me or any number of other rebuild-focused fans at the helm, the Blue Jays would be sellers this offseason. However, that point of view was consistent prior to any of this offseason’s results. On the flip side, if one’s position were that the Blue Jays should buy and compete, that point of view should also remain consistent. The additional competition in the AL East doesn’t move the needle enough during the offseason when the Blue Jays find themselves currently projected for a middling finish. If you were to consider baseball inputs alone, sticking to the initial strategy is probably smart. When you then add in the financial and organizational considerations of the Blue Jays likely having mapped out their plan for 2018, the additional competition is merely a bump in the road.</p>
<p>Baseball is weird. Baseball is random. As a result of these truths, our opinions will certainly change in season, but there’s been hardly enough to move the needle far enough just yet.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>Why We Should Stop Acting Like We Know What Shohei Ohtani Wants</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/01/why-we-should-stop-acting-like-we-know-what-shohei-ohtani-wants/</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Dec 2017 14:33:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=14386</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shohei Ohtani&#8217;s path to major league baseball is like Shrödinger&#8217;s cat. It&#8217;s not both dead and alive, but it&#8217;s everything and nothing with the designation at the whim of whom is interpreting it. While not all reasonable arguments, an case can be made that he could sign with any given major league team. Any team can [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Shohei Ohtani&#8217;s path to major league baseball is like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger%27s_cat" target="_blank">Shrödinger&#8217;s cat</a>. It&#8217;s not both dead and alive, but it&#8217;s everything and nothing with the designation at the whim of whom is interpreting it. While not all reasonable arguments, an case can be made that he could sign with any given major league team. Any team can afford him, it&#8217;s just a matter of whether or not they best fit his decision criteria. We&#8217;ve seen this borne out in the media — mainstream and otherwise — as writers have taken the little that we know about Ohtani&#8217;s decision and melded in to whatever fits their given argument. Sure, there have been a few common teams that have been advocated as favourites, but if you were to read five different articles predicting where Ohtani will end up, you <a href="http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/262615206/mlb-teams-most-likely-to-sign-shohei-ohtani" target="_blank">could</a> <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/84728/now-that-shohei-ohtanis-coming-to-america-where-will-he-play" target="_blank">get</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/11/22/scouts-are-conflicted-on-what-shohei-ohtanis-plan-should-be/" target="_blank">five</a> <a href="http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2017/11/22/261945676/free-agent-matrix-whos-the-favorite-to-sign-japanese-superstar-shohei-ohtani" target="_blank">different</a> <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/262478194/scouting-top-contenders-to-sign-shohei-ohtani/" target="_blank">teams</a>.</p>
<p>When it comes to Shohei Ohtani, we&#8217;re all Jon Snow.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s funny then that everyone seems to implicitly understand this, but sunsequently ignores it. An article by Anthony Castrovince at Sports on Earth inspired this thought. He ranked every MLB team by their likelihood to sign Ohtani, but then finished it off by saying, &#8220;nobody knows what Ohtani has in mind.&#8221; He&#8217;s not alone in this. In an <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/262478194/scouting-top-contenders-to-sign-shohei-ohtani/" target="_blank">article on MLB.com</a>, Jon Paul Morosi lists the top eight contenders for Ohtani, as determined by nothing other than conventional wisdom and unnamed MLB.com sources. However, he led off that article by asking an MLB executive to rank the contenders, to which the executive shrugged and said, &#8220;there&#8217;s no way of knowing what he will choose to do.&#8221;</p>
<p>The executive is right.</p>
<p>All that Shohei Ohtani has provided is the questionnaire that he sent across to teams. Here are the main points via <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-hot-stove-rumors-shohei-ohtanis-agent-sends-questionnaire-to-all-30-teams/">CBS Sports</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>An evaluation of Ohtani&#8217;s pitching and hitting ability</li>
<li>An explanation of the team&#8217;s player development, medical training and player performance philosophies</li>
<li>Spring training, minor-league and major-league facilities</li>
<li>Details for Ohtani&#8217;s cultural assimilation</li>
<li>How the team plans to integrate Ohtani into its organization</li>
<li>Why the city/franchise is a desirable place to play along with any other relevant &#8220;marketplace&#8221; characteristics</li>
</ul>
<p>From an analysis perspective, this questionnaire presents quite the problem and brings the &#8216;conventional wisdom&#8217; in to question. Why? As noted before, any team can craft their argument such that their city fits precisely in with what Ohtani is looking for in this memo. Notably, he hasn&#8217;t added any caveats around money, winning, or anything else that North American media has deemed relevant to his decision.</p>
<h3></h3>
<h3>Why The Bonus Money May Not Matter</h3>
<p>A lot has been made about the available bonus pools each MLB team has to work with while attempting to sign Shohei Ohtani. In the Morosi piece referenced above, he lists the Yankees, Rangers, and Twins as a few of the primary contenders for Ohtani&#8217;s services. One of the primary justifications behind that designation is the fact that those are the only three teams that can offer the Japanese star <a href="http://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/giants/how-much-each-mlb-team-can-pay-shohei-otani-free-agency" target="_blank">a bonus of more than $3 million</a>. While money — on a total and AAV basis — is traditionally a primary factor for most free agents, it doesn&#8217;t seem to concern Shohei Ohtani.</p>
<p>If we&#8217;re to assume that he&#8217;s the real deal, then he could easily top $200 million following his hitting free agency at age 29. Over the course of his career then, the $3 million difference between what the aforementioned trio of teams can offer him and the $10,000 that Cleveland and Colorado can offer him will amount to less than two percent of his earnings. Deciding based on that small a total would be like Marco Estrada spurning the Blue Jays over a $195,000 difference between what he wanted and got from the Blue Jays in an extension this offseason.</p>
<p>This may be a different story if, like a Latin American prospect, Ohtani were unproven and without any other income, but he&#8217;s fine in both departments. Not only has Ohtani made millions already in Japan, but a $3 million difference in bonus offerings pales in comparison to the endorsement dollars he&#8217;ll likely receive in Japan no matter where he ultimately ends up signing. Other writers have surmised that the extent to which a city has a large Japanese population may matter here, but I&#8217;d argue that he&#8217;ll probably still get the same amount of endorsement dollars from Japan no matter where he plays. In the long run, being in a city where he can establish his brand may help him get North American endorsement dollars, but that seems unlikely at the outset.</p>
<p>Lastly, Shohei Ohtani is thinking long term: this is one thing that he actually has indicated to us. In his questionnaire, he asks that teams evaluate him and pitch him on their development plans for him. In the long run, the difference between landing with a team with the right development plan and one with the wrong one could cost him tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, it&#8217;s much harder to make money when you&#8217;re injured or don&#8217;t adjust to the league.</p>
<h3></h3>
<h3>Why The History of Japanese Success May Not Matter</h3>
<p>Following the money point, the history of Japanese success in a given city has been brought up as a potentially strong factor in Ohtani&#8217;s decision. It&#8217;s the reason why the Mariners are considered to be strong contenders and one of the reasons why the Dodgers and Rangers are considered to be favourites. The writers who draw on this point predicate it on Ohtani&#8217;s praise of Ichiro and Darvish, arguably Japan&#8217;s best hitter and pitcher in major league baseball history. Of course, in addition to those two, teams like the Mariners, Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox have integrated many other Japanese players as well&#8230;just some less successfully than others *cough* Red Sox *cough* *cough* Dice-K *cough. However, in an <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/262669080/a-february-qa-with-shohei-ohtani-on-mlb-more/">interview that Jon Paul Morosi of MLB.com conducted with Ohtani in Februar</a>y, Shohei plays down this angle. When questioned about whether it&#8217;d be better for he and Darvish to be on different teams, he responded by saying that, &#8220;being on the same team would be great, but being on separate teams would also be great, because I would get to face him.&#8221;</p>
<p>Additionally, there are plenty more teams than the national media notes that have signed and integrated Japanese ballplayers. In addition to the Mariners, Dodgers, and Rangers, the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Mets, Cardinals, Padres, Rays, Cubs, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Brewers have all had success with signing players from Japan. Of note, the <a href="http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sd-sp-padres-case-shohei-otani-20170608-story.html" target="_blank">Padres have reportedly leveraged this angle</a> by bringing some of their former Japanese stars in to the organization. Ichiro as a Mariner and Darvish as a Ranger stand out most prominently in people&#8217;s minds, but those teams just happen to have signed two of the best, most recent Japanese ballplayers; they&#8217;re not unique.</p>
<p>And finally, there&#8217;s also this:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Shohei Ohtani development: Multiple <a href="https://twitter.com/MLB?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MLB</a> team execs believe Ohtani may actually prefer to sign with a club that doesn’t already have a Japanese star; Ohtani’s camp has not commented on that. <a href="https://twitter.com/MLBNetwork?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MLBNetwork</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) <a href="https://twitter.com/jonmorosi/status/936600677220003841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Why Letting Him Be a Two Way Player May Not Matter</h3>
<p>In the <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/262669080/a-february-qa-with-shohei-ohtani-on-mlb-more/" target="_blank">same Morosi interviewed referenced earlier</a>, Ohtani plays down the idea that hitting and pitching is a priority for him in the major leagues.</p>
<p>When asked, &#8220;when you come to MLB, how important is it for you to continue both hitting and pitching?&#8221;</p>
<p>He responded by saying that, &#8220;I&#8217;m not really sure how the American managers and scouts would rate my hitting compared to the way I&#8217;m rated in Japan. I would like to do both if I can.&#8221;</p>
<p>And when prodded again with the question: &#8220;how exciting is it for you that you can come here and change the way Americans think about baseball?&#8221;</p>
<p>Ohtani stayed the same course, saying that, &#8220;It&#8217;s not up to me to decide if this is a successful decision, it&#8217;s up to the fans and the analysts. If they can accept me as a two-way player, that is an exciting thought.&#8221;</p>
<p>Shohei Ohtani does acknowledge here that the thought of being Japan&#8217;s Babe Ruth is &#8216;an exciting thought&#8217; and he&#8217;s iterated in other interviews that he enjoys both hitting and pitching. But is it a necessity? Ohtani leaves that up for interpretation.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Why The Present Winning Ways May Not Matter</h3>
<p>This isn&#8217;t a traditional free agent deal: Ohtani isn&#8217;t signing on for three of post age 30 seasons. Instead, he&#8217;s signing on for the most important developmental period and prime of his career. He&#8217;ll presumably be with the team that he signs with for six — or possibly even <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-myth-of-six-years-of-team-control/" target="_blank">seven</a> — years. That&#8217;s a lot of time. Teams like the Dodgers and Yankees look like they&#8217;ll be competitive for years to come, but Ohtani could be looking to how other teams look to be developing long term. He&#8217;s indicated that he&#8217;s thinking long term in other instances, so we shouldn&#8217;t necessarily assume that he&#8217;ll be hopping on with the Yankees or either of the World Series finalists just yet.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>What Does Matter</h3>
<p>Contrary to what we&#8217;d assume based on how the majority of other free agents make team decisions, Ohtani hasn&#8217;t affirmed that money or immediate team success are primary factors in his decision. There are allusions to his enjoying being a two-way player and admiration of certain Japanese stars, but neither were keys in the Morosi interview. The only through line between everything that we&#8217;ve seen from Ohtani is that he&#8217;s driven and he wants to put himself in the best place to succeed in the majors.</p>
<p>To quote the Morosi interview yet again, this is what Shohei Ohtani said regarding his most important factors in choosing an MLB team: &#8220;the people on the team and in charge of the team is what matters most. I need to have a feeling of wanting to play for them.&#8221; Those factors are reiterated in the questionnaire as he inquired on the team&#8217;s evaluation of him, their training philosophies and facilities, and their plans for him.</p>
<p>Shoehei Ohtani may <a href="https://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/2017/09/13/move-to-mlb-could-cost-japanese-star-shohei-otani-more-than-100-million.html" target="_blank">lose out on more than $100 million</a> because he wanted to prove himself in the world&#8217;s top baseball league before he turned 25. Clearly, our standard rules for free agent destination analysis don&#8217;t apply here and we need to stop acting like they do. The extent to which a team has spent time and resources courting Ohtani will certainly aid them in their efforts to pitch him, but, if we&#8217;re to believe Ohtani himself, he&#8217;ll land with the team that with the best philosophical and developmental match.</p>
<p>As Ohtani himself says, &#8220;everyone will have the same shot.&#8221; Well, everyone <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnTrupin/status/936463342859726848" target="_blank">except for the Phillies</a>.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY</em></p>
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		<title>The Season That Was: Exaggerated, Oversold, and Bound to Disappoint</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/10/17/the-season-that-was-exaggerated-oversold-and-bound-to-disappoint/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Oct 2017 11:07:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=13664</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Many years ago, when I was just entering high school, I took a business class. The teacher, let&#8217;s call him Mr. Stewart, was a quirky fellow &#8211; and quite honestly not that great of a teacher &#8211; but on the first day of class he told us something that he said we&#8217;d remember for the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Many years ago, when I was just entering high school, I took a business class. The teacher, let&#8217;s call him Mr. Stewart, was a quirky fellow &#8211; and quite honestly not that great of a teacher &#8211; but on the first day of class he told us something that he said we&#8217;d remember for the rest of our lives: the happiness formula. He wrote it on the board.</p>
<p>Results &#8211; Expectations = Level of Happiness</p>
<p>It seemed too simple to care about, silly even. He then shared with us a seemingly sillier example:</p>
<p>&#8220;If a friend asks to borrow $10 from you and you expect that  $10 back at some point, but never get it, you&#8217;ll surely be unhappy&#8221;</p>
<p>0 &#8211; 10 = -10 → very unhappy</p>
<p>&#8220;If a friend asks to borrow $10 from you and you oblige out of the goodness of your heart, not expecting that you&#8217;ll receive the $10 back at some point, you&#8217;ll surely be content&#8221;</p>
<p>0 &#8211; 0 = 0 → throughly content</p>
<p>His example seemed poor. Why would one be content having lost $10? When I have experienced that very situation, however, I&#8217;ve found the happiness formula to ring true.</p>
<p>Now consider the 2017 Toronto Blue Jays. The team was coming off a season in which they&#8217;d won 89 games — their seventh highest total —and yet again come one stop short of the World Series. Pretty exciting stuff. The team then proceeded to lose their second best player, make Kendrys Morales their marquee signing, and have their already old starting roster age another year. The result? Projected records that put the Blue Jays well below the same projections in the previous season and even further below the team&#8217;s actual 2016 record.</p>
<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160404055301/http://www.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/" target="_blank">Projected 2016 Record</a>: 86-76<br />
<a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2016-standings.shtml" target="_blank">Actual 2016 Record</a>: 89-73<br />
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170402051004/http://www.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/" target="_blank">Projected 2017 Record</a>: 81-81<br />
<a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2017-standings.shtml" target="_blank">Actual 2017 Record</a>: 76-86</p>
<p>But because the team had surprised each of the last two seasons, the general consensus was that there was still a good shot at the playoffs again in the 2017. Statistically speaking, the consensus wasn&#8217;t wrong; any team projected to have at least as many wins as losses is bound to have 30 percent plus playoff odds. Though, compared to previous seasons, fans were no longer betting on a great season from a great team, they had to bet on a lucky season from an ok team. When that works, it&#8217;s incredibly exciting, but when it doesn&#8217;t it&#8217;s bound to disappoint. In either case expectations need to be set well in order to get a happy conclusion.</p>
<p>Results &#8211; Expectations = Level of Happiness</p>
<p>The problem, however, is that expectations weren&#8217;t set well at all, and we at BP Toronto were as big a culprit as any. In our preseason bold predictions piece, only one person seriously predicted a record at or below .500, and that was Bennett Brauer at 81-81, but we were by no means alone. TSN <a href="http://www.tsn.ca/al-east-preview-pitching-will-carry-blue-jays-1.694961">predicted that the Blue Jays would win the AL East title</a> on the backs of another successful year of pitching. Every one of <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/mlb-roundtable-award-predictions-world-series-picks-2017/" target="_blank">Sportsnet&#8217;s baseball analysts forecasted that Toronto would be in the playoffs</a>, and a few had the team as the AL East division winners. NBC Sports predicted that the team would <a href="http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2017/03/19/2017-preview-toronto-blue-jays/" target="_blank">place second in the AL East</a>. Even <a href="https://nesn.com/2017/03/al-east-preview-which-team-has-best-chance-to-knock-off-red-sox-in-2017/" target="_blank">Boston-based NESN thought the Blue Jays would be pressing the Red Sox for the division title</a>, noting that, &#8220;Toronto easily is the second-most complete team in the AL East, and if the Red Sox slack off at all, the Jays likely will be poised to snatch the top spot.&#8221; We set the expectations quite high, but we had no logical reason to.</p>
<p>This was prevalent beyond the beginning of the season as well. Even as the team dwindled in the standings in April, May, and June, there was still widespread thought that a push for the playoffs could come, which I <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/24/reframing-the-rest-of-the-blue-jays-season/" target="_blank">wrote about at the time</a>.</p>
<p>In reality, as we know, the team didn&#8217;t meet those expectations, but it was due to more than just bad luck, indicating that it was an issue with expectations, not with results. Yes, Aaron Sanchez&#8217;s nagging blisters didn&#8217;t help, and the Bringer of Rain&#8217;s injury induced drought was a disaster. But even if those two things hadn&#8217;t occurred it&#8217;s entirely possible that the Blue Jays would have found themselves without meaningful October baseball. In other words, there were a myriad of issues.</p>
<p>Per PECOTA&#8217;s projections, Toronto lost out on 1.5 WARP from Aaron Sanchez and 1.1 WARP from Josh Donaldson, which, even when generously extrapolated to additionally lost value from the two players&#8217; replacements, wouldn&#8217;t have been enough to make them competitive. The team wasn&#8217;t good enough. Of the Blue Jays&#8217; primary starters — the 25 players on the team&#8217;s roster on Opening Day plus Roberto Osuna — 14 underperformed their PECOTA projections while 12 over performed them.</p>
<p>If we accept that reality, then in order to take the team from &#8216;not good enough&#8217; to a playoff spot, one of two things would&#8217;ve had to have happened.</p>
<p><strong>1. Play Out All the Games and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I" target="_blank">Get Lucky</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Even though it&#8217;s most likely that a team plays <em>at</em> their true talent level, in any given season a team can play roughly ten games above or below their expected win total. The most recent and most prominent example of this is the 2016 Texas Rangers. They finished the 2016 season with 95 wins while only scoring eight more runs than they gave up over the full season. Had those runs been more evenly distributed, they would&#8217;ve missed the playoffs, but instead they won the division. However, as you can imagine, betting on this luck is an incredibly unsustainable strategy. When a team plays that high above their true talent level, it&#8217;s the outlier not the norm.</p>
<p><strong>2. Make Major Deadline Additions</strong></p>
<p>This was the 2015 Blue Jays&#8217; playoff strategy. In April, May, and June of 2015, Toronto&#8217;s playoff odds hovered between 10 and 20 percent, which is actually fairly similar to where the 2017 team was. At the 2015 deadline, however, the team added David Price, Troy Tulowitzki, and relief depth, thereby increasing the team&#8217;s true talent level. Given the prospect — and $ cost — of this path, this too is unsustainable.</p>
<p>Because you can&#8217;t make lucky happen and because the team is trying to create a sustainable contender, neither of those two things happened. As such, there were high expectations with no path to matching results.</p>
<p>Ok Results &#8211; High Expectations = A lot of unhappy Jays fans</p>
<p>Unless Toronto can convince Shoehei Otani to join MLB&#8217;s only Canadian team, the Blue Jays are likely to be in the same position again next year. These aren&#8217;t the dominant, AL East title winning Blue Jays of yesteryear and a year of aging without any top prospects ready to graduate to the major league level won&#8217;t help matters. <span style="font-size: 16px">I&#8217;m not going to tell you how you should carry out your fandom, but I will say that if we don&#8217;t all set our expectations more realistically in 2018, we&#8217;re in store for another disappointing season in </span><a style="font-size: 16px" href="https://bluejaysplus.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/unproductive-middle/" target="_blank">the unproductive middle</a><span style="font-size: 16px">. </span></p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>The Blue Jays Were Out of (Their) Depth in 2017</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/09/22/the-blue-jays-were-out-of-their-depth-in-2017/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/09/22/the-blue-jays-were-out-of-their-depth-in-2017/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Sep 2017 14:09:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=13529</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s September 22nd. The Blue Jays have 71 wins, they&#8217;re seven games back of a playoff spot, and there&#8217;s not a speck of meaningful September baseball to be found. Needless to say things have not gone quite as well as planned this season. If you were to dig in to the details, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;d [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s September 22nd. The Blue Jays have 71 wins, they&#8217;re seven games back of a playoff spot, and there&#8217;s not a speck of meaningful September baseball to be found. Needless to say things have not gone quite as well as planned this season. If you were to dig in to the details, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;d find a number of issues with the players&#8217; launch angles, pitch tunnels, and any other metric under the sun. But in order for a team to underperform their pre-season projections by five to ten wins, there have to be larger flaws pasted over the details. For the Blue Jays in 2017, it was a serious injury bug and far from enough depth to compensate for it. Some of this was assuredly bad luck, but there was a strategy behind it all and that could extend the issues in to 2018.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll know by now that the 2017 Blue Jays had their fair share of injuries, whether it was Sanchez&#8217;s constant blisters, Donaldson&#8217;s nagging calves, or Tulo and Travis&#8217; continued ability to find something that&#8217;ll keep them out for half the season. As a result, per <a href="https://www.mangameslost.com/mlb-injuries-disabled-list-games-missed-september-8-2017/" target="_blank">Man Games Lost&#8217;s latest update</a>, the Jays were the fourth most injured team in the league, with over 1200 games lost to injured players on the disabled list. Plus, this doesn&#8217;t even include the three post calf injury months in which Donaldson was hardly able to hit better than Kevin Pillar. You can see how the games lost to the DL stacks up visually in the graphic below.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Toronto Blue Jays are one of most injured teams in MLB this season. It hasn&#39;t been an issue for the Dodgers <a href="https://t.co/rje6hf5R6S">https://t.co/rje6hf5R6S</a> <a href="https://t.co/dDktwRU2wf">pic.twitter.com/dDktwRU2wf</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Man Games Lost MLB (@ManGamesLostMLB) <a href="https://twitter.com/ManGamesLostMLB/status/906565248668315648">September 9, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>In contrast, <a href="https://www.mangameslost.com/end-2016-regular-season-mlb-disabled-list-games-missed-october-3-2016/" target="_blank">in 2016 the Blue Jays were one of the least injured teams in major league baseball</a>, with just over 400 games lost to players on the DL.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">End of MLB 2016 regular season injury viz. Injuries versus wins. Total player quality lost is bubble size <a href="https://t.co/3qsgmbZaOU">https://t.co/3qsgmbZaOU</a> <a href="https://t.co/n6rbZZS8Ci">pic.twitter.com/n6rbZZS8Ci</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Man Games Lost MLB (@ManGamesLostMLB) <a href="https://twitter.com/ManGamesLostMLB/status/783076162646007808">October 3, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>Last year, Troy Tulowitzki and Russell Martin played in over 130 games for the first time since 2011 and 2012, respectively, Devon Travis and Michael Saunders set career highs in games played, and the rotation saw only two of their starts come from someone other than the team&#8217;s five (or six once Liriano was acquired) best pitchers. This led us all in to a false sense of security.</p>
<p>Because injuries are so hard to predict and because the team was coming off such an incredibly inspiring year (See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UdsVO7HaJg" target="_blank">Flip, Bat)</a>, we pushed this flaw aside in our minds. When &#8216;depth signing&#8217; Steve Pearce was to be a significant piece of the starting lineup, it was a setback, but there was &#8216;so much potential with the team&#8217;. When the Bringer of Rain himself brought decidedly fewer droplets, it was a &#8216;problem&#8217;, but nothing that a rejuvenated Justin Smoak couldn&#8217;t fix. Instead, the problem was only accepted when the team having to play so many poor depth players mathematically removed the team from the playoff race.</p>
<p>Even when you look at this team&#8217;s high level performance, it&#8217;s pretty gruesome just how bad things got.</p>
<p>Between injuries to Aaron Sanchez, Marco Estrada, Francisco Liriano and the roster shuffle that resulted from it, the Blue Jays&#8217; top five pitchers by total innings pitched only accounted for 50.4 percent of the team&#8217;s total innings. Again, for comparison, that number was a whole 14 percent below the team&#8217;s 2016 season mark. Over the course of a full season that means that over 200 extra innings went to pitchers outside of the team&#8217;s top five workhorses. In the rotation, that meant that 25 starts went to eight journeymen (Mike Bolsinger, Brett Anderson, Chris Rowley, Nick Tepesch, Mat Latos, Cesar Valdez, Casey Lawrence, and Tom Koehler) who collectively pitched to a 6.27 ERA.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Toronto, the hitting wasn&#8217;t much better. The team&#8217;s lack of a suitable backup catcher has resulted in 79 starts being handed to five players who were collectively worth -0.9 WARP. And the team&#8217;s commitment to the two headed &#8216;defensive beast&#8217; of Goins and Barney resulted in a collective -1.0 WARP from backups in the middle infield. It&#8217;s a miracle that there weren&#8217;t more injury issues in the outfield, as the team&#8217;s true fourth outfielder Ezequiel Carrera found his way in to half a season&#8217;s worth of plate appearances.</p>
<p>Compared to other big money teams like the Dodgers, Red Sox, Yankees, and Giants, the Jays have never been particularly great at providing depth options for their generally formidable major league starters. The flaw was just papered over in 2015 by a slew of upper level pitching prospects who were then traded away, and it seemed unnecessary in 2016 when Toronto lucked in to full seasons from most all of their starters. In 2017 there was not a healthy team nor any key minor league depth to aid it.</p>
<p>And yet, the same problem may repeat itself in 2018. The <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2732542-josh-donaldson-trade-rumors-blue-jays-unlikely-to-move-3b-in-offseason" target="_blank">team appears committed to contending</a> with a good, but aging, injured, and increasingly expensive core. In order to account for age related regression from key players, the Blue Jays will likely have to make a key acquisition in order to compete. But a key acquisition big enough to bridge the gap to a playoff spot will be a significant expenditure and will take away money for depth from a team that sorely needs it.</p>
<p>Aside from Aaron Sanchez&#8217;s freak blister injuries, all of the major injuries that plagued the team should have been anticipated as a possibility. This means that next season, when most of these exact same players come back a year older and with another season of wear and tear on their bodies, a disaster injury scenario needs to be accounted for again. If we&#8217;re to believe that history repeats itself, then I&#8217;d guess that the team won&#8217;t account for it and will grab a moderately flashy player alone. Bring in the reinforcements. Vlad and Bo, you can&#8217;t come soon enough.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>How Increased Team Interest May Actuallly Hurt the Blue Jays</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/08/15/how-increased-team-interest-may-actuallly-hurt-the-blue-jays/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/08/15/how-increased-team-interest-may-actuallly-hurt-the-blue-jays/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:07:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=12914</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s incredibly touching to see so many Canadians getting back in to baseball; enjoying a once forgotten professional sport in Canada. Having become attached to this team in an era in which attending a game with more than 20,000 fans was a blessing, walking in to the Rogers Centre with a near sold out crowd these [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s incredibly touching to see so many Canadians getting back in to baseball; enjoying a once forgotten professional sport in Canada. Having become attached to this team in an era in which attending a game with more than 20,000 fans was a blessing, walking in to the Rogers Centre with a near sold out crowd these past few seasons has been otherworldly. However, with the Blue Jays running through a tricky transition of eras, the increased fandom may actually hurt, rather than help the team.</p>
<p>That transition of eras is of course from the Blue Jays of the last few years, a team that&#8217;s made it to the ALCS in back to back seasons, to one with an aging core and a fading supporting cast. This new team has done just enough to fake competing for a playoff spot, but not enough so that&#8217;d you&#8217;d reasonably bet on them get one. In spite of a pythagorean record of .434, which pegs them as the <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/index.php?dispgroup=all&amp;standings_rsort=pct1" target="_blank">fifth worst team in baseball</a>, Toronto is somehow just 3.5 games back of the playoffs, or &#8216;close&#8217; as the sports pundits say. Putting aside the fact that being 3.5 games back of a playoff spot doesn&#8217;t actually make this team &#8216;close&#8217; to the playoffs, the narrative makes for a convenient talking point and continues to get Torontonians to come out to the games. So much so, that it has made the 2017 Blue Jays among quite the list of outliers in the history of attendance trends.</p>
<p>As it stands, the Blue Jays have averaged over 40,000 in attendance while maintaining a .479 record. In the history of baseball, there have been 118 seasons in which a team has averaged over 40,000 in attendance and just 19 of them occurred in seasons in which the team played sub .500 ball (16 percent of all seasons). Of the 19, just 11 averaged more in attendance and had a worse record than the 2017 Jays.</p>
<table class="tableizer-table">
<thead>
<tr class="tableizer-firstrow">
<th>Team</th>
<th>Season</th>
<th>WL</th>
<th>Average Attendance</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>COL</td>
<td>1994</td>
<td>0.453</td>
<td>56,094</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>COL</td>
<td>1993</td>
<td>0.414</td>
<td>55,350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TOR</td>
<td>1994</td>
<td>0.478</td>
<td>50,573</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>COL</td>
<td>1998</td>
<td>0.475</td>
<td>46,823</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ARI</td>
<td>1998</td>
<td>0.401</td>
<td>44,571</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>LAD</td>
<td>2005</td>
<td>0.438</td>
<td>44,489</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TEX</td>
<td>1994</td>
<td>0.456</td>
<td>43,916</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>COL</td>
<td>1999</td>
<td>0.444</td>
<td>42,976</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SFG</td>
<td>2013</td>
<td>0.469</td>
<td>41,594</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SFG</td>
<td>2017</td>
<td>0.395</td>
<td>40,870</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>BAL</td>
<td>2000</td>
<td>0.457</td>
<td>40,704</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>TOR</strong></td>
<td><strong>2017</strong></td>
<td><strong>0.479</strong></td>
<td><strong>40,627</strong></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>In theory, it matters not that the team isn&#8217;t performing well while they continue to draw. Again, in theory, it&#8217;s a great thing, more people are enjoying Canada&#8217;s only major league baseball team, and that&#8217;s reflected in the team&#8217;s own attendance trends.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img class="alignnone wp-image-12924" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/08/AttendanceBySeason.png" alt="AttendanceBySeason" width="500" height="378" /></p>
<p>However, it&#8217;s concerning when it&#8217;s not just bad luck that&#8217;s behind the poor performance. Why? Because it&#8217;s then more likely that the underlying issues will crop up next season too. This makes for an unfortunate cost-benefit analysis for management and—more importantly—for the Blue Jays&#8217; publicly traded ownership. When the team draws well in the stadium, they&#8217;re generally drawing even better on Sportsnet. When the in-game and TV viewership increases, Rogers Communications seeks to gain revenue. When a publicly traded company has the opportunity to make additional revenue with little short term cost, they&#8217;ll do it 10 times out of 10. It matters not what the underlying numbers tell us, and GM Ross Atkins reaffirmed that prior to the trade deadline by first standing pat and then re-upping his stance that the Blue Jays are a contending team, this time with a <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2017/07/24/blue-jays-atkins-believes-jays-will-contend-in-2018" target="_blank">specific reference to 2018</a>.</p>
<p>The result here is a situation where the Blue Jays attempt to optimize their team for the highest potential short term revenue. In turn, that means trading away fewer tradeable assets (and accepting whatever potential return there could be) while simultaneously trying to compete in both the 2017 and 2018 seasons, which have incredibly difficult paths to playoff contention.</p>
<p>It also likely means being more aggressive come the offseason, which includes digging deeper in to the free agent pool and exploring larger scale trades. Both avenues could be helpful to the team in the short term, but will require them to give up key prospects or a significant portion of their future budgets. Even then, it&#8217;s probable that the team won&#8217;t be a playoff favourite heading in to 2018, as they&#8217;re unlikely to be one or two players away with their already present stars continuing to age. This is the real problem.</p>
<p>If you assume that a World Series victory is the fans&#8217; most desired goal, then attempting to compete when all odds are against you isn&#8217;t the best way to get there. The argument has been made that by simply getting to the playoffs, the anything can happen environment could end up bringing the World Series trophy to Toronto. That may be true, but not only does that require betting on luck in the playoffs, it also requires betting on luck to get the team there. I&#8217;m willing to bet that even those who have reasonably made the argument that the Blue Jays should compete this year and next would admit that, on a talent level, the Blue Jays don&#8217;t stack up with the American League&#8217;s best.</p>
<p>Instead of a compete-at-all-expenses attitude, great baseball-ing teams take notice of the lulls in team performance and are flexible enough to adapt their strategy to accommodate it. Think of the Cardinals, Cleveland (ironically), and the Astros. Granted, there&#8217;s still time for the Blue Jays to shift their strategy. But given their insistence earlier this season that they&#8217;d try to compete in 2017 as well as Atkins&#8217; recent comments that they plan to compete in 2018, a shift seems unlikely.</p>
<p>In the end, should the Blue Jays choose to, even partially, mortgage the future to compete in the present, I won&#8217;t begrudge that decision. Baseball&#8217;s a business, especially so when you&#8217;re the subsidiary of public company. With that said, it&#8217;d be nice to see even a shred of flexibility. It could be argued that a lack of it hurt the team over their many playoff-less seasons and it&#8217;d be a shame to see that trend continued for the future.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>The New and Improved Justin Smoak is Here to Stay</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/24/the-new-and-improved-justin-smoak-is-here-to-stay/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Jul 2017 10:00:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=11941</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Justin Smoak has always been an odd player, but this year he&#8217;s been downright baffling. In his post on the 2010 Rangers Top 11 prospects, Kevin Goldstein noted that, &#8220;[Justin Smoak] has the best plate discipline in the organization, and among the best in baseball, with plus raw power from both sides.&#8221; Yet up until 2016, through [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Justin Smoak has always been an odd player, but this year he&#8217;s been downright baffling.</p>
<p>In his post on the <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9927" target="_blank">2010 Rangers Top 11 prospects</a>, Kevin Goldstein noted that, &#8220;[Justin Smoak] has the best plate discipline in the organization, and among the best in baseball, with plus raw power from both sides.&#8221; Yet up until 2016, through the major and minor leagues, he&#8217;d hit home runs in just 3.4 percent of his plate appearances. For reference, the major league average home run rate in 2017 is 3.3 percent.</p>
<p>In 2017, we&#8217;ve seen a different Smoak: One who has blasted by his career high of 20 homers in a season in only 374 plate appearances. One who is posting his first ever batting average above .240—he&#8217;s above .300 for the time being. One who is 16th in the league in true average, with a lofty .326—36 points above a certain Dominican man with a parrot. Yet, this isn&#8217;t some fluky success that we can dismiss with BABIP and HR/FB%. Justin Smoak&#8217;s current BABIP is .313, above his career .265, but not too far above his 2016 mark of .295 and within the realm of consistent possibility. Similarly, his current HR/FB% is 24.3%, which is well above his career average of 14.8%, but within the realm of what a hitter with Smoak&#8217;s exit velocity totals could reach and not too far from his two year average of 21.5%. In other words, he&#8217;s not Chris Colabello.</p>
<p>Based solely on his plate discipline stats (O-Swing%, Z-Swing%, Swing%, O-Contact%, Z-Contact%, Contact%), 2016 Justin Smoak&#8217;s top five comps were 2013 Jason Kubel, 2008 Ian Stewart, 2008 Ryan Ludwick, and 2013 Colby Rasmus; five of baseball&#8217;s most swing happy players in the last decade. Meanwhile, 2017 Justin Smoak&#8217;s top five comps are 2013 Carlos Beltran, 2015 Kyle Seager, 2014 Aaron Hill, 2013 Neil Walker, and 2008 Stephen Drew. While none of the latter set of players are about to walk more times than they strike out, those are five respectable hitting seasons.</p>
<p>In a post at <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/there-is-urgent-need-for-a-justin-smoak-article/" target="_blank">FanGraphs in early June</a>, Jeff Sullivan looked further and found that our other traditional markers to explain changes in hitting success weren&#8217;t applicable here either, noting that, &#8220;[Justin Smoak] hasn’t overhauled his swing, and he hasn’t meaningfully adjusted his average exit velocity or launch angle. Counter to the greater trend, Smoak now is actually hitting <em>fewer</em> balls in the air. Smoak’s contact quality is fine.&#8221; Instead, as Sullivan bluntly puts it, &#8220;he’s just making more contact.&#8221;&#8216;</p>
<p>For the most part, Sullivan is correct here, and that makes Justin Smoak&#8217;s 2017 even more perplexing. In general, a hitter&#8217;s contract rate fluctuates, but large swings are rare. Between 2016 and 2017 Smoak&#8217;s contact rate has shifted 8.9% and that&#8217;s the <em>largest single season increase ever</em>.</p>
<p>While Smoak&#8217;s 2017 season is clearly an outlier, as a whole, big changes in contact rate are fairly predictive. The contact rate of a player that&#8217;s seen a large increase or decrease has an 84% correlation with that player&#8217;s average contact rate in the three seasons that follow. This is because unlike home run rate or average, contact rate is a skill, not a result; it can be shifted, but it&#8217;s fundamentally based on the combination of a player&#8217;s raw ability and how that raw ability is applied through a player&#8217;s swing.</p>
<p>Jeff Sullivan is right in that the increase in contact rate is the main driver of Smoak&#8217;s newfound success. He&#8217;s also right that Smoak hasn&#8217;t overhauled his swing path. Justin Smoak did, however, make changes to the <em>start</em> of his swing process and the result has been a substantially more compact stroke, giving him more time to recognize good pitches and resulting in a higher contact rate.</p>
<p>I asked fellow BP Toronto writer and baseball mechanics aficionado Joshua Howsam to break down the specifics.</p>
<p>For reference, this is Justin Smoak&#8217;s swing from the left hand side in 2016 and 2017.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img class="alignnone" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/3oeHLxK9xBZpxO8c9y/giphy.gif" alt="" width="480" height="240" /></p>
<p>And this is his swing from the right hand side.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img class="alignnone" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/l1taUZHtBzWWa7QkM/giphy.gif" alt="" width="480" height="240" /></p>
<p>At first glance, there doesn&#8217;t appear to be too much change. He hasn&#8217;t added a leg kick nor is he setting up differently. However, Joshua Howsam has found a few key differences that look to be giving Smoak a little bit of extra time to determine whether or not to swing. The quoted comments below are his.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-LH-1.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12618" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-LH-1.png" alt="Smoak LH 1" width="718" height="358" /></a></p>
<p><em>&#8220;From the left side, we can see that Smoak has started with a more open, upright stance while keeping his hands higher and slightly farther away from his body.&#8221;</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-LH-2.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12619" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-LH-2.png" alt="Smoak LH 2" width="719" height="359" /></a></p>
<p><em>&#8220;While he closes his body up quickly once he finishes his stride, he is still slightly more open than last year and more importantly, his hands stay higher and further away from his body than they were in 2016.&#8221;</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-LH-3.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12620" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-LH-3.png" alt="Smoak LH 3" width="718" height="356" /></a></p>
<p><em>&#8220;These changes really start to matter as he begins his swing. Right before going forward, his hands are now much higher and closer to the plate than they were in 2017. You can see the angle of the bat in the 2016 frame, which seems to be coming out of his upper back or neck, whereas in 2017 the bat is coming from behind the back of his head and you can clearly see his right hand. This creates a shorter, and thus quicker, bat path to the plate which allows Smoak to wait a little bit longer before swinging. That extra bit of time helps tremendously with the ability to make contact, as the hitter can now better perceive the trajectory of the pitch.&#8221;</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-RH-1.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12621" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-RH-1.png" alt="Smoak RH 1" width="718" height="357" /></a></p>
<p><em>&#8220;While swinging from the right side, Smoak’s hand position relative to his body is actually almost unchanged from 2016 once he gets moving. But what has changed are when he starts moving and where his body ends up when he is finished. When you watch the GIF, you can see that Smoak is starting his leg kick much earlier, which is changing up his timing and getting his hands moving much quicker (this is a big part of what turned Jose Bautista into a good hitter).&#8221;</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-RH-2.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12622" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/Smoak-RH-2.png" alt="Smoak RH 2" width="717" height="357" /></a></p>
<p><em>&#8220;Then when he finishes up, Smoak’s body position is completely flipped from 2016. Last year, Smoak would start off slightly open, then close up following his stride. This year, he is starting slightly closed and then landing open. So while the hands are still the same distance from the body when he starts his swing, because his body is more open, they are taking a shorter path to the zone. The change in the leg kick timing and getting his hands moving quicker combined with the slightly shorter bat path from the open stance would give Smoak more time to recognize pitches and make consistent contact.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Within the past few years, we&#8217;ve seen other examples of strong hitters converting to a more compact approach and finding more contact success. The Dodgers&#8217; Joc Pederson and Astros&#8217; George Springer are two prime examples. Both were heralded as top hitters in the minors and they had the numbers to match. Once they reached the majors, however, they had a lot of trouble getting to good breaking pitches with their longer swings. Both hitters started out their major league careers with two straight seasons of sub-70% contact rates and both saw 5% plus year over year increases.</p>
<p>In terms of a swing change, Joc Pederson is the more extreme example of the two. Pederson famously utilized five distinct swings throughout 2015, with the last being the one that he has carried in to the two following seasons. In November 2015, MLB Network broke down the changes.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hayglb0CUS0?ecver=1" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" ></iframe></p>
<p>This is all to say that Justin Smoak&#8217;s extreme success is still an outlier, but it follows a strong trend and there are other prime examples of continued success following changes. As we discussed at the beginning of the post, the raw skills have always been there, Smoak has just finally found a way to apply them. Will Toronto continue to be the place that he gets to apply them? Maybe, maybe not. But wherever he is, he&#8217;ll be smoking baseballs and scooping throws with the best of them.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>We Need to Reframe the Rest of the Blue Jays Season</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/24/reframing-the-rest-of-the-blue-jays-season/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/24/reframing-the-rest-of-the-blue-jays-season/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 May 2017 10:05:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto Blue Jays]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=10892</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Blue Jays are a quarter of the way through the 2017 season and they&#8217;re in last place in the AL East. The team has gone 13-9 over their last 22 games while, at times, lacking their starting third baseman, shortstop, catcher, and three-fifths of their starting rotation. They won games on the backs of players who [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Blue Jays are a quarter of the way through the 2017 season and they&#8217;re in last place in the AL East. The team has gone 13-9 over their last 22 games while, at times, lacking their starting third baseman, shortstop, catcher, and three-fifths of their starting rotation. They won games on the backs of players who weren&#8217;t on major league rosters on opening day. But prior to that, they had nearly their entire roster and only managed to go 7-17. This current sequence of events and a momentous comeback two seasons ago leaves the Blue Jays in a confusing place.</p>
<p>The team had high playoff hopes in the preseason and it <i>feels</i> like they could buy at the deadline and succeed. But they&#8217;re also in a terrible situation, record wise, and have players that they could sell off to retool for 2018. After seeing two straight playoff berths over the last two seasons, the hunger is there to attempt to compete. However, we need to rethink how we see this Blue Jays team; they&#8217;re not in a good position and they seek to benefit greatly from selling, not buying.</p>
<p>If a team makes the playoffs, they can make money from revenue shares and in spillover value. This can include marketing for future seasons, additional ticket revenue in August and September, and the the intangible price of a division title or World Series win.</p>
<p>If a team doesn’t make the playoffs, however, and opts to sell instead, the added value comes in the form of prospects gained from trades, a higher pick in the MLB Draft, a larger MLB draft pool, and a larger international bonus pool. It’s hard to quantify precise values for some of those benefits, but we can quantify in approximate numbers the added value of additional prospects and a higher MLB draft pick.</p>
<p>Given that information, there are five main scenarios that the Blue Jays could find themselves in: buying and getting in to the playoffs, buying and missing the playoffs, standing pat and getting in to the playoffs, standing pat and missing the playoffs, and selling and missing the playoffs.</p>
<p>At present, Baseball Prospectus projects the Blue Jays for a 77-85 finish (22nd in baseball), while FanGraphs projects them for an even 81-81 finish (15th in baseball). To try to give the ‘buy’ argument the kindest chance at success here, we&#8217;ll use the FanGraphs projection for calculations.</p>
<h3></h3>
<h3>Scenarios</h3>
<h4></h4>
<h4>Stand Pat and Miss the Playoffs</h4>
<p>In this scenario we’ll assume that the Blue Jays finish 16th in the league and get the 14th overall draft pick. According to <a href="http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-net-value-of-draft-picks/">Matthew Murphy of the Hardball Times’ analysis on the value of MLB draft picks</a>, the 14th overall pick was worth approximately $10.2 million in 2014, which includes an adjustment to account for future value. Accounting for future value means discounting the total based on the fact that teams value wins in the present compared to wins in the future. The Hardball Times uses a 10 percent per year discounted value rate based on <a href="http://www.hardballtimes.com/methodology-and-calculations-of-dollars-per-war/" target="_blank">dollar per WAR research done by Matt Swartz</a>. We could further adjust that figure for baseball inflation since 2014, but again we’ll be kind to the ‘buy’ scenario and leave it as is. There would be no additional value gained from playoff revenue in this scenario, nor would there be any value gained or lost from the exchange of prospects.</p>
<p><strong>Base Value:</strong> $10.2 million</p>
<h4></h4>
<h4>Sell and Miss the Playoffs</h4>
<p>In this scenario, lets assume that the Blue Jays only sell off the pieces that either aren&#8217;t under contract for 2018 or don&#8217;t <em>need</em> to factor in to the 2018 roster plan. That group includes Marco Estrada, Jason Grilli,  Jose Bautista, Francisco Liriano, Joe Smith, and J.P. Howell. Of that group, only Estrada and Smith currently look like they&#8217;ll be overly desirable to contenders at the trade deadline. Given his elite first half performance, Joe Smith may have fetched a pretty penny had he been a left hander. As a right handed late innings reliever, however, his potential return isn&#8217;t guaranteed to be very high. Some right handed setup men have fetched good returns at the trade deadline, but it&#8217;s harder to draw precise comps as there&#8217;s too much potential supply in the relief market. For Marco Estrada on the other hand, there are two rental starting pitchers who stand out as being comparable: Matt Garza in 2013 and Rich Hill in 2016.</p>
<p>In Matt Garza&#8217;s case, he was inconsistent, but also regarded as one of baseball&#8217;s better starters prior to and during the 2013 season. During the first half of 2013, Garza pitched to a 3.17 ERA, 3.74 DRA, and 1.0 WARP with the Cubs. Garza was traded to the Texas Rangers for C.J. Edwards and Mike Olt. Olt was ranked 30th on <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19694" target="_blank">Baseball Prospectus&#8217; 2013 Top 101 prospect list</a>, while Edwards was ranked 81st on the <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22664" target="_blank">2014 Top 101</a>. In Rich Hill&#8217;s case, he wasn&#8217;t known for being a workhorse and he didn&#8217;t have a long track record of success, but he dominated baseball&#8217;s first half in 2016 posting a 2.25 ERA, 2.83 DRA, and 2.2 WARP. Even though he was out (blisters) he was traded along with Josh Reddick from the Athletics to the Dodgers for a package that included Grant Holmes and Jharel Cotton. Holmes was ranked 40th on Baseball Prospectus&#8217; Top 101 prospect list prior to the 2016 season, while Cotton debuted on some Top 100 lists following the season.</p>
<p>Given the Hill and Garza trades, Marco Estrada is probably worth two prospects at the middle or back of a 2017 Top 100 prospect list. For 2017, <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/valuing-the-2017-top-100-prospects/" target="_blank">valuations done by Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMecli published at FanGraphs</a> estimated that a back end Top 100 hitting prospect is worth approximately $20 million while an equivalent pitching prospect is worth $14 million. That means that the prospect return for Marco Estrada is worth somewhere in the range of $34 million.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the loss of Marco Estrada and Joe Smith for two to three months of the season is worth anywhere from three to four wins above replacement. A loss of two wins takes the Blue Jays from 81-81 and the 15th overall draft pick to 78-84 and the 9th overall draft pick, based on <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings" target="_blank">FanGraphs&#8217; projected standings</a>. The Hardball Times estimates the 9th overall pick to be worth approximately $13.2 million.</p>
<p><strong>Base Value: </strong>$47.2 million</p>
<h4></h4>
<h4>Buy and Miss the Playoffs</h4>
<p>Buying enough players at the MLB trade deadline to make up for injuries and a 5.0 game deficit in the AL Wildcard standings is no easy task. In 2015, when the team acquired David Price, Troy Tulowitzki, Ben Revere, and Mark Lowe, it required giving up eight legitimate prospects including Daniel Norris (<a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=25538" target="_blank">34th on BP&#8217;s 2015 Top 101</a>) and Jeff Hoffman (73rd on BP&#8217;s 2015 Top 101). A similar trade cost in 2017 would likely include Sean Reid-Foley (<a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=31160" target="_blank">85th on BP&#8217;s 2015 Top 101</a>), Anthony Alford (93rd on BP&#8217;s 2015 Top 101), and Rowdy Tellez (not in BP&#8217;s Top 101, but at the <a href="http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2017-top-100-prospects/#oMEBpr8ffw7UCaiy.97" target="_blank">back end of the Top 100 on other lists</a>). Using the same FanGraphs Top 100 prospect dollar valuation as above, has a combined value of $45 million. Missing the playoffs would mean no additional value gained from playoff revenue shares and little to no spillover revenue impact. It would also mean that the Blue Jays would be left with a pick in the late teens, which is worth approximately $8.4 million.</p>
<p><strong>Base Value:</strong> -$36.6 million</p>
<h4></h4>
<h4>Stand Pat and Make the Playoffs</h4>
<p>On the off chance that the Blue Jays do make the playoffs, there is of course value in doing so. The most certain value is that which is obtained via playoff revenue shares. During the playoffs, all revenue is shared amongst teams, players, and the MLB Commissioners office based on a formula stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement. In 2012 at FanGraphs, Wendy Thurm broke down <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/estimating-postseason-revenue-for-players-and-teams/" target="_blank">how the MLB postseason revenue pool is divided up</a>. In her piece, she notes that her players pool projection of $82.1 million was probably overzealous. She was correct, given that the players pool of postseason revenue in 2015 was only $69.8 million, a record high at the time. Given that, it&#8217;s reasonable enough to assume that the rest of her projections hold up for 2017 totals, a year in which the players pool will probably eclipse $80 million for the first time. Thurm estimates that the range of playoff revenue for teams goes from $500,000 for the Wildcard Game loser to just over $20 million for the World Series winner. The average amongst all 10 playoff teams for revenue share is $7.94 million.</p>
<p><strong>Base Value: </strong>$8.0 million</p>
<h4>Buy and Make the Playoffs</h4>
<p>The base value of the final scenario is accounted for in our previous explanations. We estimated the cost of buying at $45 million and the revenue share from making the playoffs at $8.0 million. As well, if the Blue Jays make the playoffs, their draft pick would be no higher than 21st overall, which has a value of $7.8 million.</p>
<p><strong>Base Value:</strong> -$37.0 million</p>
<h3></h3>
<h3>The Breakdown</h3>
<p>Overall, there is clearly a lot of relatively quantifiable value to the Blue Jays selling, especially given their current playoff odds of no higher than 15 percent. One can make the numbers work such that there&#8217;s more present value in attempting to make the playoffs rather than selling off the rental pieces, but it requires assuming that the spillover value from making the playoffs is very high. From the outside, calculating the spillover value of a playoff berth is nearly impossible, but we can surmise the components to be marketing for future seasons, additional ticket revenue in August and September, and the the intangible price of a of a division title or World Series win among other things. However, in order to make the numbers work to go for a playoff spot without buying, you have to believe that the Jays currently have a 40 percent chance at making the playoffs and that the spillover value of doing so is worth $85 million. Alternatively, for a playoff spot to be worth buying, you have to believe that the Jays would get to 90 percent playoff odds after buying and in the same $85 million spillover value.</p>
<p>You can play around with the numbers yourself in the spreadsheet below. Under &#8220;Insert Your Estimate Below&#8221; you can insert what you believe to be the playoff odds before buying and after buying to be, as well as your own estimate of the spillover value.</p>
<iframe src="https://docs.zoho.com/sheet/published.do?rid=2k9885da24713e73a48b687db41a2da25bf6d&amp;mode=embed" width="800" height="380" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" ></iframe>
<p>In the end, I&#8217;m not going to say that the Blue Jays have to sell. Whether or not you believe they should is up to how you value a playoff berth as well as your long term vs. short term orientation. However, you should be aware of just how much value selling can provide and how hard it is to make up for that value in going for the playoffs given the team&#8217;s current position. It&#8217;s worth remembering that even these calculations, whose results strongly favour selling, gave the buy scenario the best chance at success. But baseball&#8217;s a weird game. Anything can change and lightning did strike the Blue Jays and push them to the playoffs in 2015. Can lightning strike twice? Maybe. Just be careful on betting that it will do so.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>The Enhanced Frustration of Familiar Blue Jays Problems</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/04/12/the-enhanced-frustration-of-the-same-blue-jays-problems/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/04/12/the-enhanced-frustration-of-the-same-blue-jays-problems/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Apr 2017 13:52:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darwin Barney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Josh Donaldson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marco Estrada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ryan Goins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steve Pearce]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=10151</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let&#8217;s get a few things straight. Starting the season at 1-6 really sucks. However, the Blue Jays will also be perfectly fine in 2017, and one week&#8217;s worth of games holds no predictive value. But damn the start to this season has been frustrating. Everything that could have gone wrong has, which looks even worse [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Let&#8217;s get a few things straight. Starting the season at 1-6 really sucks. However, the Blue Jays will also be perfectly fine in 2017, and one week&#8217;s worth of games holds no predictive value. But damn the start to this season has been frustrating. Everything that could have gone wrong has, which looks even worse when it&#8217;s the exact same issues year over year.</p>
<p>This Blue Jays team is remarkably unchanged from the version that we saw on Opening Day one year ago. Among the 14 spots in the starting lineup and rotation, there have been just three changes: Kendrys Morales has replaced Edwin Encarnacion, Francisco Liriano pitches instead of R.A. Dickey, and Michael Saunders has shrunk a few inches while simultaneously either being a little pudgier or becoming a lot more Venezuelan. Oh sorry, that&#8217;s Steve Pearce and Ezequiel Carrera.</p>
<p>As such, not only have the flaws of certain Jays players been exposed early on, but those flaws could have been predicted or addressed, in some cases. In other cases it&#8217;s just a player who, while good, is not perfect, and their imperfections have shone through.</p>
<h3>The Imperfect and Unaddressable</h3>
<h4>Marco Estrada&#8217;s Changeup Digs the Long Ball</h4>
<p>In most cases, Marco Estrada uses his tightly spun changeup to dazzle hitters into hitting perfectly placed in field pop ups. That&#8217;s a large part of what&#8217;s made him so incredibly effective over the last two seasons. However, on Sunday April 9th against the Rays, that was not at all the case. Estrada lasted five innings in that start, but was peppered by Rays hitters for three home runs on the night.</p>
<p>The first home run was hit by the Rays&#8217; Corey Dickerson in the bottom of the third. The changeup was <a href="http://i.imgur.com/ZxGDI5C.png" target="_blank">up and in</a>, but Dickerson got just enough of it to dink the ball over the short wall in the left field corner at Tropicana field. You can cut Marco Estrada some slack on this one. Per <a href="http://www.hittrackeronline.com/" target="_blank">ESPN&#8217;s Home Run Tracker</a>, it had a true distance of just 326 feet and wouldn&#8217;t have been a home run in any other park in the majors.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/04/tropicanafield_2017_171.jpg"><img class="wp-image-10184 size-medium alignnone" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/04/tropicanafield_2017_171-300x295.jpg" alt="tropicanafield_2017_171" width="300" height="295" /></a></p>
<p><em>The Path of Dickerson&#8217;s HR via <a href="http://www.hittrackeronline.com/hrdetail.php?id=2017_171" target="_blank">ESPN&#8217;s Home Run Tracker</a></em></p>
<p>Unfortunately the homer troubles didn&#8217;t end there. After a Kevin Kiermaier triple and a Brad Miller walk, Steven Souza Jr. hit his own homer to left field, once again off of a changeup that Estrada left <a href="http://i.imgur.com/JbXIrme.png" target="_blank">up and over the plate</a>. A weak ground ball to first base got Marco Estrada out of the inning, but there was still more to come. In the bottom of the fourth, after going down 0-2, Jesus Sucre hit a home run off of, you guessed it, an Estrada changeup.</p>
<p>Estrada’s hasn’t always struggled with home runs off his changeup, but his propensity to give up home runs in general is the worst part of his game. His 1.18 HR/9 ranked 29th worst among qualified pitchers in 2016. Yet Marco Estrada&#8217;s changeup is his bread and butter pitch. Because it&#8217;s so good and because this is only a single start, it&#8217;s really not worth worrying about, but it&#8217;s certainly frustrating.</p>
<h4>Josh Donaldson&#8217;s Achilles Heel</h4>
<p>Josh Donaldson is a notoriously robust baseball player and he&#8217;s played in more than 155 games in each of the last four seasons. However, the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/josh-donaldson-vikings-history-canada-1.3941918" target="_blank">viking-esuqe star</a> has a Greek flaw, but it&#8217;s in his calf rather than his heel. On Sunday, Donaldson pulled up after running out a ground ball. Donaldson had to be removed from the game and missed the Blue Jays&#8217; home opener (save for a 9th inning pinch hitting appearance) as a result of what the team is calling a calf injury. This isn&#8217;t the first time that he&#8217;s had calf issues either. In the Blue Jays first series at Tropicana Field in 2016, <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/blue-jays-josh-donaldson-exits-game-rays/" target="_blank">Josh Donaldson limped his way to first base</a>, which also resulted in his being pulled from the game and getting diagnosed with a calf injury. The best predictor of a lack of injuries in the future is a lack of injuries in the past. Donaldson shouldn&#8217;t have too many nagging issues going forward, but it sure sucks when there&#8217;s even a chance of losing the player who&#8217;s <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=2023770">posted more value than the rest of your lineup combined</a>.</p>
<h3>The Imperfect and Clearly Addressable</h3>
<h4>Ryan Goins&#8217; Existence on the Blue Jays Active Roster</h4>
<p>For some reason, Ryan Goins is still here. Personally, I have nothing against Ryan Goins, but I&#8217;ve yet to see any strong argument for his continued presence in Toronto. Following the team&#8217;s choice of Goins over Melvin Upton Jr., Gideon Turk <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/04/02/the-info-that-went-into-making-the-blue-jays-opening-day-roster-decisions/">wrote that it was Goins&#8217; flexibility and fit for the team&#8217;s present roster construction that forced the Blue Jays hand</a>. While that answer makes sense in a vacuum, no roster needs two no-hit middle infielders on the bench, especially not when one of the two is MLB’s worst hitter. In some ways, the Blue Jays have proved that as Goins and Barney have split playing time, neither having being used in the same game. Even in the Blue Jays home opener, a game in which Ryan Goins started at 3B, the team found no need to use the second middle infielder on the bench. Instead, all we saw were three paltry plate appearances and one miraculous walk. Had there not been two middle infielders on the bench, someone palatable could have pinch hit for one of the Jays&#8217; light hitters. There’s no need for both players. Now only if the Blue Jays would see it.</p>
<h4>The Belief that Justin Smoak Starting at 1B is Ok</h4>
<p>In spite of his once immaculate prospect status, Justin Smoak has not been a great major league player. In fact <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=1b&amp;stats=bat&amp;lg=all&amp;qual=2800&amp;type=8&amp;season=2016&amp;month=0&amp;season1=1950&amp;ind=0&amp;team=0&amp;rost=0&amp;age=0&amp;filter=&amp;players=0&amp;sort=21,a" target="_blank">very few first basemen have been as bad as Justin Smoak has</a>, while getting as much major league playing time. That trend hasn&#8217;t changed much in 2017, as he has only continued to strike out at what seem to be the Blue Jays most opportune run scoring moments. Additionally, his hitting performance is not the only issue with his starting at 1B. He has also forced Steve Pearce in to the confines of left field. Steve Pearce is a versatile player, but he&#8217;s by no means an ideal defensive left fielder and he&#8217;s shown that so far this season. The only reason he continues to be forced out there is Justin Smoak&#8217;s presence at first base and on the Blue Jays payroll.</p>
<p>Some have continued to argue that the Blue Jays <em>must </em>have some advanced metric that tells them Smoak&#8217;s true first base defense is not only better than the publicly available defensive metrics say, but good enough to offset his being one of MLB&#8217;s worst hitting first basemen. Given that no other team has recently employed or even attempted to employ a defense first starting 1B, I find that hard to believe. With Pearce&#8217;s versatility, Jose Bautista&#8217;s previous first base experience, and Melvin Upton&#8217;s ability to play all three outfield positions, the Blue Jays had a chance to fix first base. Yet, once again, they squandered it, and they&#8217;ve been rewarded with strikeout after strikeout ever since.</p>
<h3>The Future</h3>
<p>As was noted earlier in this piece, everything that could have gone wrong for the Blue Jays, has gone wrong for the Blue Jays. There&#8217;s no greater evidence of that than their current 1-6 record; the team&#8217;s <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/mlb/toronto-blue-jays-off-to-worst-start-in-team-history-after-dropping-home-opener-to-milwaukee-brewers-4-3" target="_blank">worst ever start to a season</a>. But it will get better and it&#8217;d be nearly impossible for it not to. That doesn&#8217;t make any of the team&#8217;s current problems, addressable or otherwise, any less frustrating. If one were to see any of the aforementioned issues once it&#8217;d be unfortunate. To see the same issues crop with the same players a year later is even worse. However, it&#8217;s also incredibly easy to see the negatives when the team has only won one game. Once the Blue Jays start dominating again, the addressable woes will be forgotten. That&#8217;s the Blue Jays team we need and the Blue Jays team that we deserve. Until then, the <a href="https://twitter.com/dlbno/status/851979226920001537" target="_blank">barrage of critical tweets</a> are a little more appropriate.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: © Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>3 Things to Watch For in the Blue Jays Series Against the Brewers</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/04/11/3-things-to-watch-for-in-the-blue-jays-series-against-the-brewers/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Apr 2017 10:26:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Thames]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Josh Donaldson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roberto Osuna]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=10158</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Written by Matt Gwin, Nick Dika, and Jenn Smith 1. The Return of Eric Thames For the first time since September 11th 2012, Eric Thames will be playing at the Rogers Centre. Not a Jay as we remember him, nor as the Mariner he was during his last trip to the dome, but as a Brewer. Milwaukee [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center"><em>Written by Matt Gwin, Nick Dika, and Jenn Smith<br />
</em></p>
<h3><strong>1. The Return of Eric Thames</strong></h3>
<p>For the first time since September 11th 2012, Eric Thames will be playing at the Rogers Centre. Not a Jay as we remember him, nor as the Mariner he was during his last trip to the dome, but as a Brewer. Milwaukee signed Thames this offseason, getting his power prowess at the cost of three years, $15 million. Thames has spent the past three years dominating the KBO as the starting first baseman for the NC Dinos. He averaged 41 home runs and 31 steals a season while putting up a 1.172 OPS. It’s a different league in a different country, but the only season in MLB history that matches all three totals is Larry Walker’s 1997 season in which he hit 49 home runs and stole 33 bases while putting up the exact same 1.172 OPS.</p>
<p>While the Brewers were confident enough in Eric Thames video game-esque numbers in Korea to sign him to a three year contract, the MLB market as a whole was clearly skeptical of his transition back to a higher level of play. Dave Cameron wrote an interesting article at FanGraphs about Thames’ Steamer projection, which <a href="//www.fangraphs.com/blogs/lets-talk-about-that-eric-thames-projection/“">predicted him to be baseball’s seventh best power hitter</a>. That’s quite a ways away from the player of Blue Jays yore, when he lost his left field job to Rajai Davis and was traded for relief depth.</p>
<p>The Eric Thames that you’ll realistically see in this series won’t be as good as the KBO dominator, but will be much better than the 2012 outcast. Regardless, Thames’ power is something to be afraid of; J.A. Happ and Marcus Stroman better watch out.</p>
<h3><strong>2. Changing Statistics</strong></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">It happens more often than not. The Jays can’t seem to get out of the gate on the right foot and we start to worry about the start of the team and its players before a single person has been over-served at the home opener.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">You’ve heard the reasons you don’t have to worry a million times: Both team and individual performance take time to stabilize; if the team hit this type of skid in midseason, we would hardly even notice. There’s plenty of time to right the ship, though there is the always applicable “a game in April is as important as a game in September”.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">But maybe another way to be reminded exactly why we don’t need to worry is to look back at 2016 and see just how different the season looked at the end of September than it did at the end of week one.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">After one week of baseball in 2016:</span></p>
<ul>
<li>Tyler White (1.308) and Brock Holt (1.083) were second and fourth in all of baseball in slugging percentage. White finished 2016 slugging .378 in 276 at bats. Holt slugged .383 in 324.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400">Angel Pagan was tied for the Major League lead in runs scored with 6. He finished outside the top 75 (91</span><span style="font-weight: 400">st</span><span style="font-weight: 400">).</span></li>
<li>Drake had not yet released Views. It’s barely been out for a year. Doesn’t feel like it.</li>
<li>Chad Bettis had more strikeouts than Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard would finish 2016 with 80 more K’s in 3.2 fewer innings pitched.</li>
<li>Jeremy Hazelbaker was hitting .429. His average dropped to .235 by the end of the season.</li>
<li>Donald Trump was not yet a serious candidate to be the President of the United States. He has barely been a politician for a year. Doesn’t feel like it.</li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">You get the idea: it’s early. It’s not that a lot can change. It’s that a lot <em>will</em> change.</span></p>
<h3><strong>3. The Revolving Injury Door</strong></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">The Blue Jays dropped their third straight game Sunday at Tropicana Field, a 7-2 loss in which the Jays could muster up just three hits in their worst-played game of the young season. To add injury to insult, Josh Donaldson left the game with right calf tightness after running out a ground ball in the sixth inning.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">No doubt the sight of the former MVP limping off the field struck a chord of fear within the Jays’ organization and fan base alike: although the sample size is miniscule at this stage of the season, Donaldson has been the most productive Jays’ hitter by far. In twenty-seven plate appearances he is batting .348/.444/.652 with two home runs. The off-day Monday bodes well a quick recovery. Sportsnet’s <a href="https://twitter.com/ShiDavidi/status/851178974294269953">Shi Davidi reports</a></span><span style="font-weight: 400"> that Donaldson has responded well to treatment and thinks it’s “realistic” that he will play in tonight’s home opener, though John Gibbons was reportedly guarded regarding Donaldson’s return when addressing the media on Monday.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Donaldson was already sidelined once this spring with calf tightness and also spent time on the disabled list last season for the same injury, although Donaldson says that <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2017/02/19/blue-jays-josh-donaldson-should-be-back-in-2-3-weeks-after-frustrating-calf-strain">it was his left calf that caused an issue in 2016</a>.</span><span style="font-weight: 400"> In any event, there is never a good time for a team to lose its most productive offensive player from the lineup, but it is particularly troublesome when the other eight are off to a slow start. One hopes that Donaldson will be ready to face the Brewers this evening and that his calf will not become the type of nagging injury that rears its ugly head throughout the season.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Meanwhile, closer Roberto Osuna is expected to return for the home opener after spending ten days on the DL with neck spasms. Osuna, who incurred the injury towards the end of spring training, threw a simulated game in Florida on Saturday and expects to be ready for tonight&#8217;s game.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">His return could not come a moment sooner. The Jays’ bullpen has been charged with three of the five losses, two of which came in extra innings. It isn’t necessarily a function of Osuna himself being unavailable; his absence has altered the role of everyone at the back end of the ‘pen. His return means that Jason Grilli and Joe Biagini will once again pitch in situations they’ve become accustomed to, and a guy like Casey Lawrence won’t be called upon in a big situation. Osuna’s return lengthens the bullpen.</span></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-weight: 400">One thing to keep an eye on is Osuna’s velocity. After averaging 96 mph on his fastball the past two seasons, Osuna experienced a drop in velocity this spring, sitting around 93 mph. His dip in velocity was made an even greater point of discussion when the radar gun mysteriously stopped working during one of his outings, suggesting that the organization did not want to make public any potential struggles he was experiencing. One hopes it was simply a function of a spring training interrupted by the WBC alongside the neck injury, but should he be unable to regain his velocity over his first few outings, it will indeed become cause for concern.</span></strong></p>
<p><em> Lead Photo: © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>On Learning to Accept Marco Estrada&#8217;s Unorthodox Success</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/28/on-learning-to-accept-marco-estradas-unorthodox-success/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/28/on-learning-to-accept-marco-estradas-unorthodox-success/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Mar 2017 13:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marco Estrada]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=9777</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The conventions of sabermetric analysis are a funny thing. In theory, they should be agile and flexible; those following them should willing to adapt to new data findings. However, in practice that&#8217;s not always the case. Just as old-school baseball fans believe in closer mentalities and clutch performances, new school fans have DIPS theory and a standard [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The conventions of sabermetric analysis are a funny thing. In theory, they should be agile and flexible; those following them should willing to adapt to new data findings. However, in practice that&#8217;s not always the case. Just as old-school baseball fans believe in closer mentalities and clutch performances, new school fans have <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/library/principles/dips/" target="_blank">DIPS theory</a> and a <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/library/principles/aging-curve/" target="_blank">standard aging curve</a>. One of those two pairs is grounded in a bit more data than the other, but both cases are subject to outliers that won&#8217;t perfectly fit the model. Marco Estrada is one of those outliers and my personal bias towards the norms of DIPS created a reluctance to accept his success.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>Marco Estrada breaks every rule of thumb for pitching success. In theory, the best pitcher is tall, throws hard, gets a lot of ground balls, and doesn&#8217;t give up a lot of home runs.</p>
<p>Estrada isn&#8217;t overly tall—at barely 6&#8242;, you wouldn&#8217;t be able to spot him out in a crowd. Estrada doesn&#8217;t throw very hard—his average fastball velocity was fifth lowest among qualified starters in 2016. Estrada doesn&#8217;t get many ground balls—his 33.5 percent ground ball rate was the third lowest in baseball. Estrada gives up a lot of home runs—1.19 per nine innings was the 16th worst mark in the majors.</p>
<p>Yet in 357 innings over the last two seasons, Marco Estrada has pitched to a 3.30 ERA, which is 18th best across MLB. There&#8217;s only five other Blue Jays pitchers who&#8217;ve matched or beat that two season ERA: Roy Halladay, Dave Stieb, Doyle Alexander, Jimmy Key, and Roger Clemens. That&#8217;s good company.</p>
<p>In other words, he has to be doing something right.</p>
<p>Over the last two seasons, a number of analysts, including BP Toronto&#8217;s own Joshua Howsam, have <a href="http://www.bluejaysplus.com/how-much-should-we-believe-in-marco-estrada/" target="_blank">tackled the subject of Marco Estrada&#8217;s success</a>. Their conclusion? Estrada pitches in a way that allows him to induce weak contact and maintain a BABIP below the standard .300. The analysis was sound, the arguments were logical, but they subvert the conventions of standard sabermetric analysis. The main tenant of defensive independent pitching (DIPS) statistics like FIP is that pitchers have little control over the type of contact that is made off of them and that they can only control the true outcomes: strikeouts, walks, and home runs.</p>
<p>Through one season, Marco Estrada&#8217;s success could be thrown away as a fluke. His 2015 BABIP of .216 was the lowest mark since Jeff Robinson&#8217;s 1988 season for the Tigers in which he pitched to a 2.98 ERA. Robinson pitched in parts of five other seasons in the major leagues and he never again finished a season with an ERA below 4.50.</p>
<p>Through two seasons, Marco Estrada&#8217;s success has to be seen as a trend. His combined BABIP between 2015 and 2016 is .224. When you adjust for era, Estrada&#8217;s two season BABIP is the lowest in major league history.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/03/Screen-Shot-2017-03-27-at-10.50.03-PM.png"><img class="alignnone wp-image-9818 size-full" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/03/Screen-Shot-2017-03-27-at-10.50.03-PM.png" alt="Screen Shot 2017-03-27 at 10.50.03 PM" width="399" height="233" /></a></p>
<p>That&#8217;s an extreme statistical outlier; perhaps the most prominent in the history of baseball. However, if a statistical outlier is recorded over a larger sample, the idea that there&#8217;s more to it than luck is further affirmed.</p>
<p>All that said, when the model for success is well established, wrapping one&#8217;s head around anything or anyone that bucks the trend can be tough. As a result, a comment such as this one, taken from a piece on Marco Estrada&#8217;s changes, seems like the rational point of view:</p>
<p>&#8220;That he is pitching differently than he has in the past doesn&#8217;t excuse the awful DIPS numbers. Estrada has the worst xFIP- in the AL among qualifiers, and he doesn&#8217;t have a history of suppressing HR/FB (the opposite, in fact). If he continues to not strike out that many guys and give up a ton of fly balls, he will get hurt.&#8221;</p>
<p>While I didn&#8217;t write the comment, one of myself or the many other dismissers of Estrada&#8217;s early success easily could have. It&#8217;s rational reasoning backed by a mathematical model, which is the best way to logically tackle a problem, but it doesn&#8217;t always end with the correct answer. Outliers exist.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>We shouldn&#8217;t dismiss outliers, but we also shouldn&#8217;t not dismiss them. We need to be skeptical of results, but more open to explanations for them if they&#8217;re backed by new data.</p>
<p>In Estrada&#8217;s case, there&#8217;s still likely some luck involved in creating the lowest two season BABIP in the history of baseball, but luck alone is not that effective. However, that doesn&#8217;t mean reverting to the idea that the gritty ballplayer can succeed on hard work alone, as that&#8217;s rarely (if ever) the case. A player has to be exceptional in some area, even if that area isn&#8217;t standard in our evaluation. As newer data has shown, Marco Estrada is <a href="http://m.bluejays.mlb.com/news/article/190292698/marco-estrada-on-track-to-break-babip-record/" target="_blank">exceptional at spinning a baseball</a>. That skill doesn&#8217;t fit in to our existing rules of thumb for pitching success, but it should <em>add</em> a thumb to this proverbial hand.</p>
<p>Conventions exist for a reason and you can look no further than the top of any MLB pitching leaderboard to see why. You&#8217;ll find names the names of tall, fire throwing, and strikeout getting pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, Noah Syndergaard, and Justin Verlander. But conventions are only the normal way of doing things. By definition they&#8217;re made to be broken. As statistically inclined fans, we need to do a better job of recognizing when that&#8217;s the case.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: © Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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