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	<title>Toronto &#187; Justin Smoak</title>
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		<title>Putting Justin Smoak into Jose Bautista&#8217;s Context</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/09/08/putting-justin-smoak-into-jose-bautistas-context/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/09/08/putting-justin-smoak-into-jose-bautistas-context/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Sep 2017 10:10:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Gideon Turk]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jose Bautista]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto Blue Jays]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=13296</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Blue Jays have been defined by no player better in the past decade than Jose Bautista, the former utility journeyman turned home run king. His transformation was the only thing that got fans through the lean years between Roy Halladay and the 2015 playoff run. He was the star. But before he was able to [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Blue Jays have been defined by no player better in the past decade than Jose Bautista, the former utility journeyman turned home run king. His transformation was the only thing that got fans through the lean years between Roy Halladay and the 2015 playoff run. He was the star.</p>
<p>But before he was able to do that, Jose Bautista had doubters. Hitting 54 home runs in 2010 was nice, but because he was going to be a free agent after the 2011 season, the Blue Jays had to make a decision about whether they believed in his talent or if he was a fluke. The decision polarized Toronto, with both sides of the debate having ample support. Alex Anthopoulos ended up betting on Bautista and extended him for five years before the 2011 season started. He decided that what he saw in 2010 was worth the risk. But throughout that process, Jose Bautista had his doubters.</p>
<p>Justin Smoak does not.</p>
<p>Smoak, of course, is going through a breakout of his own this season. With 137 games played in 2017, Smoak has received 552 plate appearances and hit a gaudy .283/.361/.561 with 37 home runs. I posed a question <a href=" I%20posed a question on Twitter earlier in the week, asking " target="_blank">on Twitter</a> earlier in the week, asking whether people were buying Smoak&#8217;s breakout more than they did Bautista&#8217;s and if so, why they were doing so. I received a few answers and I want to explore them in a bit more detail here. So why is Justin Smoak turning into an All-star more believable than Jose Bautista doing the same?</p>
<h3><strong>Prospect Status</strong></h3>
<p>When Jose Bautista became an All-Star at the age of 29, it was the first time in a while people believed in his talent. He was never listed on any top prospect lists while developing in the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league system. His comments in the Baseball Prospectus Annual in the mid 2000&#8217;s were about his future as a utility man and he ended up bouncing around from team to team in the Rule Five Draft. Nobody was jumping to get their hands on Bautista in hopes that he would become the next big thing.</p>
<p>The complete opposite is true for Justin Smoak. He was taken 11th overall in the 2008 MLB Draft by the Texas Rangers, then rose as high as 17 on Baseball Prospectus&#8217; top prospect list and 13 on Baseball America&#8217;s. When the Rangers wanted to Cliff Lee to front their playoff rotation in 2010, they needed to part with Smoak because he was a can&#8217;t miss prospect. In 2009, BP said this of Smoak:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;Think Justin Morneau with the ability to switch-hit—he could be that scary.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>It&#8217;s easy to see why people believe in Smoak today more than they did in Bautista eight years ago. For Smoak, it has been a matter of figuring things out and reaching his potential. In Bautista&#8217;s case, it was like he made a change to his baseball DNA, allowing him to reach heights nobody ever saw coming.</p>
<h3><strong>Contract Details</strong></h3>
<p>As previously mentioned, Bautista was scheduled to hit free agency after the 2011 season, so there was a sense of urgency when it came to deciding what to do with him after his monstrous 2010. The Blue Jays could either have him play out the 2011 season, see if 2010 was a fluke and then make a contract offer, or they were able to extend him before 2011 and risk owing a lot of money to a player with just one good year. They decided on the latter, and it paid off for them.</p>
<p>With Smoak, the urgency doesn&#8217;t exist. Much to the chagrin of Blue Jays fans last year, Smoak was given a contract extension for the 2017 and 2018 seasons with a six million dollar option for 2019. Although the move was widely questioned at the time, the Blue Jays brass defended it. Now they can enjoy the fruits of their labor for the next two seasons.</p>
<p>What this means is that while for Bautista, people felt the need to question his talent because a lot of money was on the line, that just isn&#8217;t the case for Smoak. Even if he crashes back down to earth next season, the Blue Jays still just owe him fewer than five million dollars. If he repeats his 2017 next season and then crashes in 2019, the Blue Jays will owe him for that team option, another small price that would have virtually no financial impact on the club. Believe in Smoak or don&#8217;t believe in him, but either way, there isn&#8217;t a lot riding on him compared to Bautista after his breakout.</p>
<h3>Becoming &#8220;Good&#8221;</h3>
<p>Nobody mentioned this one when responding to my tweet, but I do think it is pretty important to discuss. Jose Bautista&#8217;s ascent to stardom was well documented. Everybody knew about his leg kick. He made a dramatic change that led to dramatic results. It was very easy to point to one specific thing and say that is what caused him to become a superstar. He perfected his timing and was able to increase his power because of it. It didn&#8217;t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.</p>
<p>Ask somebody how Smoak has turned his career around, and the answers you&#8217;ll get will likely be a lot murkier. That&#8217;s because there hasn&#8217;t been some drastic change. Rachael McDaniel <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/06/08/justin-smoak-is-finally-having-fun-playing-baseball/" target="_blank">wrote about</a> Smoak&#8217;s emotional well being and how he is finally having fun while playing baseball. That could be it, but we obviously have no way to quantify that to see if it is responsible. Matt Gwin <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/24/the-new-and-improved-justin-smoak-is-here-to-stay/" target="_blank">wrote about</a> the more statistical and mechanical changes that have occurred, but if you go and read that article, you&#8217;ll see that it is a combination of changes that have got Smoak where he is today. It wasn&#8217;t just one leg kick thing, it&#8217;s a whole host of mechanical and discipline-based changes.</p>
<p>Knowing this, you&#8217;d think that people may not believe in Smoak as much as Bautista. For Bautista it was there for all to see. For Smoak, you have to be a pretty smart person to be able to break down his swing into parts and see the minor details that have been altered. If something looks the same but produces different results, usually we&#8217;d think it wasn&#8217;t sustainable.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">***</p>
<p>In the end though, I think people believe in Smoak because there isn&#8217;t much else to believe in right now when it comes to the Blue Jays big league team. It&#8217;s been a very disappointing season and Smoak has been the only breath of fresh air since it started. Sure, the Blue Jays didn&#8217;t make the playoffs in 2010, but they won 85 games. They were a good team! There was more at stake with that club, even though they ended up taking a step back, than there is with this one. Combine that with the fact that he&#8217;s cheap and had an entire industry pegging him to be the next big thing fewer than 10 years ago and Smoak&#8217;s breakout lasting for a long time doesn&#8217;t seem so far-fetched.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>The Top 10 Blue Jays by Trade Deadline Value (No. 6 &#8211; 10)</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/25/the-top-10-blue-jays-by-trade-deadline-value-no-6-10/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jul 2017 10:59:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kyle Matte]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bo Bichette]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Devon Travis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[J.A. Happ]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Biagini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=12567</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Twice a year over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron publishes a list of who, in his opinion, are the fifty most valuable trade assets in baseball. Cameron&#8217;s most recent update was published over the All-Star break earlier this month. Rather than simply listing the best players, he has attempted to blend past performance and future projection [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Twice a year over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron publishes a list of who, in his opinion, are the fifty most valuable trade assets in baseball. <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2017-trade-value-honorable-mentions/">Cameron&#8217;s most recent update</a> was published over the All-Star break earlier this month. Rather than simply listing the best players, he has attempted to blend past performance and future projection with age, team control, and remaining salary. It&#8217;s why, for example, Clayton Kershaw falls outside of the top fifty despite being undeniably the best pitcher in baseball. Not only does he have a salary prohibitive to all but a small handful of clubs, but his contract has a clause that allows him to opt-out at the conclusion of any season in which he&#8217;s traded. Kershaw is the best pitcher on the planet. He&#8217;s nowhere near the most valuable to anyone but the Los Angeles Dodgers.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think Dave is the first to come up with the concept, but in terms of both execution and quality, it&#8217;s his that I look forward to most during the lulls of the baseball calendar. With that being said, it&#8217;s always a tad disappointing that we only get his insights and rankings of one, two, or maybe three Blue Jays players, if we&#8217;re lucky. This is why I&#8217;m going to tangent off Dave&#8217;s work, in an effort to offer you my perspective on the ten most valuable trade assets in the Toronto Blue Jays organization. If you have a differing view, please don&#8217;t be afraid to let me hear it.</p>
<p>With the trade deadline only a week away, there may be no more appropriate time for such an endeavour. Not only is the Blue Jays&#8217; 2017 season at a crossroads, but both their short- and long-term outlooks are as well. Few would argue that standing pat and hoping for better luck with the same aging roster seems untenable. Does the front office throw good prospects and money after bad players and try to make one final push, or begin unloading some legitimately valuable assets in an effort to avoid a Phillies-esque unrewarding collapse to the bottom of the division for the next five years?</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t meant to be the blueprint for a tear down or a shopping list for other teams; there are plenty of both floating around. The players that Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins are most likely to move aren&#8217;t going to shift the needle substantially either way. In fact, I&#8217;d be shocked if any of these ten get moved in the coming days. But just in case they do, here are, numerically, one man&#8217;s outlook of the Blue Jays&#8217; ten most valuable trade chips. Ten to six will be published this morning, with five to one released tomorrow.</p>
<p style="text-align: left"><strong>#10: <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=70988">RHP Joe Biagini</a></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: left"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/10B-Biagini.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12598" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/10B-Biagini.png" alt="#10B Biagini" width="466" height="104" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: left">The tenth most valuable trade asset in the Toronto Blue Jays organization is right handed pitcher Joe Biagini. Since being claimed as a Rule 5 pick from San Francisco, the 27-year old has worked long relief, late innings, and even in the starting rotation. He certainly has the repertoire to stick in the rotation as his four-pitch mix has always graded exceptionally well by <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/12/the-stuff-report-vol-2-issue-5-all-star-break-edition/">Mike Sonne&#8217;s &#8220;Stuff&#8221; metric</a>. Biagini has produced modest strikeout rates, but offsets this with a remarkable proficiency for inducing groundballs. Belying his advanced age, Biagini has accumulated fewer than two years of service time and thus is under team control through 2021—including next season at league minimum. Biagini has the potential to build up significantly more trade value if he is able to settle into a role in the coming months and give teams a bit more certainty about what he is. The most recent rotation/bullpen swingman of similar quality with three-plus years of control to be traded was Drew Smyly, though he had affixed himself in the rotation by the time he was used as a piece in the <em>first</em> David Price trade back in 2014.</p>
<p>Biagini narrowly edged out catcher Russell Martin, who would have been the eleventh name on the list. Martin is still a top ten or fifteen catcher in baseball, but with the club owing him 40 million over the next two years, he&#8217;s paid like someone in the top three. Not only that, but he&#8217;ll be 35 years old in 2018 and nagging injuries have begun to take their toll on his game—particularly his arm behind the dish. Were the Blue Jays to pay his salary down, something that wasn&#8217;t considered in building the list, he could certainly net some interesting pieces. Look no further than the Astros acquisition of Brian McCann last winter, with the Yankees picking up 11 of the 34 million remaining on his deal in order to get a pair of intriguing prospects.</p>
<p><strong>#9: <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=100193">2B Devon Travis</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/9-Travis.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12582" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/9-Travis.png" alt="#9 Travis" width="466" height="101" /></a></p>
<p>Devon Travis is 26-years old. He&#8217;s under control through 2020 with his first of three trips through arbitration on the horizon this winter. He capably plays an up-the-middle position, and is a career .292/.331/.462 hitter. This is the résumé of a player who should be one of the most valuable assets in any organization. Of course, as always, the story with Travis isn&#8217;t his performance on the field, but how much time he spends off it. In his brief career the second baseman has already been placed on the disabled list four times, two of which included subsequent transfers to the 60-day disabled list.</p>
<p>If he doesn&#8217;t play another game with the Blue Jays in 2017, shoulder and knee injuries will have limited him to 213 of a potential 486 regular season games since he made the Opening Day roster in 2015. Put another way: by the end of the season he&#8217;ll have accumulated three years of service time despite playing in just 44 percent of the team&#8217;s games over that time. Jedd Gyorko and Dee Gordon are second baseman with similar service time to have been moved in recent years, with the former landing Jon Jay in San Diego and the latter Andrew Heaney with the Dodgers, though neither has the tantalizing all-around upside that Travis possesses. With this kind of asset, the obvious most is to hold. You&#8217;d be selling for pennies on the dollar today, and a healthy Devon Travis is a piece that any team would love to build around tomorrow.</p>
<p><strong>#8: <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58692">1B Justin Smoak</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/8-Smoak.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12583" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/8-Smoak.png" alt="#8 Smoak" width="466" height="101" /></a></p>
<p>Of all of the players to receive consideration for the top ten, Justin Smoak&#8217;s value was the hardest to nail down. He was the 11th overall pick in the 2008 amateur draft and a highly touted prospect in the years that followed, but the first seven years of his major league career &#8212; across three organizations &#8212; were a complete nightmare. He hit .223/.308/.392 over nearly <em>three thousand </em>plate appearances, and entering 2017, most Blue Jays fans were hoping the front office could find a way to bury him for as little money as possible. Yet incredibly here on July 23rd, he&#8217;s sporting a .302/.377/.598 slash line and is tied for fourth in all of baseball with 27 home runs.</p>
<p>Better than most others, Blue Jays fans have seen something like this before. Jose Bautista transformed himself from a league average bat to an elite slugger, and while most were skeptical of that production lasting in the long run, he&#8217;s proved us and everybody else but Alex Anthopoulos wrong. On the flip side, we also saw Michael Saunders hit .298/.372/.551 in the first half just last season, followed by a .178/.282/.357 second half, a .205/.257/.360 line with the Phillies in 2017, and his eventual release once they grew tired of him.</p>
<p>Thankfully, that much-maligned contract extension he received last summer gives the Blue Jays—and other teams—extra time to view Smoak with a dubious but intrigued eye without having to pre-emptively commit serious coin in support of this breakout. He&#8217;s under control for 2018 at a modest salary of $4.1 million, with a club option for 2019 that starts at $6.0 million and contains playing time incentives that could push it to $8.0 million. Smoak is the eighth most valuable player in the Blue Jays organization as of this summer, but not unlike the two men behind him, could shoot up the list if he can continue to prove that the last four months are more relevant than the previous seven years. If the Athletics move Yonder Alonso in the coming days, that would set the absolute floor for a Justin Smoak trade if the Blue Jays were to push him to market with the sustainability questions still lurking.</p>
<p><strong>#7: <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=107491">SS Bo Bichette</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/7-Bichette.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12584" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/7-Bichette.png" alt="#7 Bichette" width="466" height="101" /></a></p>
<p>The Blue Jay with the seventh most trade value is the first of two prospects to make the list, shortstop Bo Bichette. Bichette has taken the prospect world by storm this season, hitting nearly .400 with Single-A Lansing as a 19-year old, and ascending from the back end of the organization&#8217;s top ten to inside the top fifty in all of baseball (#29 on the <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=32224">Baseball Prospectus</a> mid-season update; #44 on <a href="http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2017-midseason-top-100-prospects-july-7/#YwyoFbAuhiRBP8uX.97">Baseball America&#8217;s</a> list).</p>
<p>Bichette is an exceptionally interesting prospect, as his ranking on both of those lists—and this one as well—is an attempt to find the balance between his immense upside and the legitimate concerns about how his swing will hold up against more advanced pitching. Some evaluators see him as a 6/6 bat and power guy, which at an up-the-middle position is an unbelievably valuable piece for any organization. There are others, however,  who see his fielding necessitating a move to third base and his bat wrap causing issues when he reaches the upper minors. Still, there are plenty of teams who would gamble on the former, and it&#8217;s why despite being in just the Florida State League he could be the main—or only—trade chip used to acquire a legitimate big league talent.</p>
<p>Last summer the Cubs used Gleyber Torres (BP midseason #34) to land Aroldis Chapman, and Cleveland sent Clint Frazier (BP Midseason #26) to the Yankees to land Andrew Miller. More recently, Blake Rutherford (BA Midseason #36) was sent to the Chicago White Sox as the centerpiece for a package of David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, and Todd Frazier. Each of those three prospects falls in the neighbourhood of Bichette&#8217;s current ranking, and provides comparables for the type of return he could potentially net.</p>
<p><strong>#6: <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=46084">LHP J.A. Happ</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/6-Happ.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12585" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/07/6-Happ.png" alt="#6 Happ" width="466" height="101" /></a></p>
<p>I went back-and-forth between Bichette and Happ on who should be six and who should be seven, and in reality, it probably is more of a 6A and 6B situation. Just last summer a pair of left handed starters with similar production and contract status were moved, with the Padres landing Anderson Espinosa for Drew Pomeranz and the Tampa Bay Rays receiving Lucius Fox (and Matt Duffy) for Matt Moore. Those returns aren&#8217;t dissimilar to the value most are placing on Bo Bichette today.</p>
<p>J.A. Happ will be 35-years old next season, but he&#8217;s yet to show any signs of age catching up to him. His average fastball velocity has remained steady at around 92 miles per hour for the last four seasons, and he ranks in the <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/pitchfx/leaderboards/index.php?hand=L&amp;reportType=pfx&amp;prp=P&amp;month=&amp;year=2017&amp;pitch=FA&amp;ds=velo&amp;lim=200">upper third among left handed starters</a> by that metric. One potential drain on Happ&#8217;s value is that he&#8217;s only under contract for one more year after 2017, and while it&#8217;s certainly below market value given his performance the last three years, the 13 million he&#8217;s owed isn&#8217;t nothing to a team like Milwaukee or Pittsburgh trying to make a push.</p>
<p>Starting pitching is always in demand, but the type of that demand varies greatly between the summer and winter. Almost every team is looking to bolster their rotation in the offseason, but the market takes a bit of a shift at the trade deadline. The bubble teams may be salivating over someone like J.A. Happ, but the division leaders with plenty of heft at the front end of their rotation might be hesitant to give up a ton of value for someone who would be their fourth starter and might only make one start in the postseason. The Washington Nationals, for example, could see the Blue Jays lefty as a perfect plug for the fifth spot in their rotation over the next two months, but might barely use him come October behind Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Gio Gonzalez.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/26/the-top-10-blue-jays-by-trade-deadline-value-5-1/" title="The Top 10 Blue Jays by Trade Deadline Value (No. 1 – 5)" target="_blank">Click here for the rest of the list</a> as we run from number five down to the most valuable player in the Blue Jays organization.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Reinhold Matay-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>Bold Predictions for the Blue Jays in the Second Half</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/07/07/bold-predictions-for-the-blue-jays-in-the-second-half/</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Jul 2017 11:05:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nick Dika]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aaron Sanchez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Josh Donaldson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kendrys Morales]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russell Martin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=12176</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Monday night’s game against the Yankees marked the official midpoint of the 2017 Blue Jays’ season. While the season hasn’t played out the way Blue Jays fans would have liked thus far, there are 78 games still to be played. And a lot can happen in 78 games. Speaking of a lot happening in 78 [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Monday night’s game against the Yankees marked the official midpoint of the 2017 Blue Jays’ season. While the season hasn’t played out the way Blue Jays fans would have liked thus far, there are 78 games still to be played. And a lot can happen in 78 games. Speaking of a lot happening in 78 games, this season has given us plenty of surprises so far: Justin Smoak raking, a month of Kevin Pillar walking, and the Rogers Centre roof being closed almost every damn day.</p>
<p>Making predictions might be a fool’s errand, but you can’t say I told you so if you don’t make them. And given the Blue Jays recent losing streak, looking to the near future may be more appealing than venting or unpacking the team’s current struggles. With that in mind, here are some bold predictions for the second half of the 2017 season. Bold, bold. Not Doritos “bold taste” bold, but that Indian place you have to remind yourself not to get the hot option bold.</p>
<h4>Russ Martin Moves to Second, Josh Donaldson to Catcher</h4>
<p>So far this season, injuries and poor performance have wreaked havoc with the Blue Jays starting lineup. John Gibbons has been forced to start players out of position. Jose Bautista has seen time at third base and Russ Martin has started at both second and third. With the Blue Jays trading for catcher Miguel Montero today, there is some speculation that Martin could play even more second base.</p>
<p>Stars playing out of position will go to an even further extreme in the second half when Gibbons experiments with starting Josh Donaldson behind the plate. Donaldson, who last caught in 2012, will push Russell Martin to second base &#8211; allowing Martin to avoid the physical tolls of catching everyday and Gibbons to keep Ryan Goins on the bench. Despite playing below average defense at the position, Donaldson’s bat makes him worth 4.5 Wins Above Replacement in just over 40 innings. Donaldson becomes the most effective Blue Jays catcher at stopping the running game. We still don’t see Kendrys Morales in the outfield.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>The AL East Continues to Get Great Production from Unexpected First Basemen</h4>
<p>Forget Miguel Cabrera, Edwin Encarnacion, and the rest of name brand first basemen of the AL Central. The AL East provides more first base production for a fraction of the price. Seeing Justin Smoak and Logan Morrison on the American League offensive leaderboards has been a surprise to everyone. So much so that no one seems to notice the Red Sox’s Mitch Moreland having himself a nice little season of his own – posting a .264/.350/.468 slash line through Sunday.</p>
<p>Expect the trend to continue in the second half when James Loney signs with the Orioles and posts a career highs in home runs, on-base percentage and RBIs – all in half a season while filling in for the injured Chris Davis.</p>
<p>And speaking of Justin Smoak…</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Justin Smoak’s Success Leads to Many Emulating His Approach</h4>
<p>As Smoak continues to mash the baseball from both sides of the plate, his unorthodox diet begins to catch on with the rest of the team. Players like Jose Bautista and Russell Martin, known for their dedication to healthy eating and training, begin to emulate Smoak’s nutritional regiment and start eating pasta topped with mayonnaise instead of their preferred tomato sauce.</p>
<p>Bautista and Martin also begin to listen to country music and chewing Skoal brand tobacco. Their production spikes accordingly.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>The Blue Jays Sign Taz Tulowitzki</h4>
<p>With Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the midst of impressive seasons with the single-A Lansing Lugnuts, the Blue Jays front office begins to believe they have identified a new market inefficiency in the quest to build a winning baseball team: employing the children of former major league players.</p>
<p>In a piece of shrewd business, Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins sign Troy Tulowitzki’s 3-year-old son, Taz, to a 30-year contract reminiscent of shady backroom dealings that happen in professional soccer. Scouts project Taz to contribute on both offense and defense in the middle of the diamond but fear a steep drop in his offensive production during his early 30s. The younger Tulo is paid a signing bonus significantly higher than that given to Cavan Biggio.</p>
<p>The contract will run through Taz’s age 34 season &#8211; which is the age the Blue Jays had wished his father’s contract would have expired.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Kendrys Morales Hits the Longest, Hardest Single of the Season</h4>
<p>Kendrys Morales has always hit the baseball hard. The Blue Jays designated hitter is regularly atop Major League Baseball’s year-end exit velocity leader boards. Unfortunately for Kendrys, a lot of his scorched balls are hit on the ground, where they do minimal damage. In another spat of bad luck, Morales hits the longest single of the season when he laces a 400-foot line drive off the top of the centre field wall at the Rogers Centre.</p>
<p>The ill-fated combination of Morales’ lack of footspeed and an incredibly well-struck baseball leaves Kendrys standing at first base and the proud owner of baseball’s longest and hardest hit single of the season (and the Statcast era).</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Blue Jays High Performance Department Hires Eddie Van Halen to work with Aaron Sanchez</h4>
<p>With more traditional baseball remedies remaining ineffective, Gil Kim enlists the help of 80s guitarist Eddie Van Halen to help keep Sanchez’s blister’s and fingernails in check. Kim, who was impressed with the famous guitarist’s ability to practice for hours on end without ruining his hands, hopes Eddie will be able to transfer some of his hand preservation secrets to the Blue Jays’ young ace.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>After Winning the World Series, the Jays are Invited to Meet PM Trudeau. Several Players Elect to Not Attend.</h4>
<p>After being eliminated in the American League Championship Series two years in a row, the Blue Jays finally do the dang thing and advance to the World Series, where they beat the Nationals in seven games.</p>
<p>As per tradition, the team is invited to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the offseason. However, several notable players don’t show up.</p>
<p>The consummate professional, Troy Tulowitzki elects to remain at the Blue Jays’ spring training facilities in order to not disrupt his offseason workouts. Coming off another MVP-caliber season, Josh Donaldson, who recently purchased Battlefied 4 for Xbox 360, has some buddies over to his place to play multiplayer and declines the invitation (but he does invite PM Trudeau to join their online game). And like the Cubs’ <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2017/6/28/15891598/cubs-carl-edwards-jr-skipped-white-house-visit-for-dinosaur-museums">Carl Edwards Jr.</a>, Joe Biagini skips the meeting in order to take in the dinosaur exhibit at the nearby Museum of Natural History in Ottawa.</p>
<p>Before you call these too bold, go ahead and pull up Justin Smoak’s 2017 stats. And after you do that, remember that what makes baseball so great is all of the improbable things that happen each and every season. And with that in mind…cue the second half comeback, Blue Jays!</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>Justin Smoak is Finally Having Fun Playing Baseball</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/06/08/justin-smoak-is-finally-having-fun-playing-baseball/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jun 2017 11:34:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rachael McDaniel]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=11472</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In BP Toronto&#8217;s preseason Bold Predictions, I picked Justin Smoak to be the biggest bust of 2017. Other than Josh Donaldson being the most valuable position player, it was the pick I was the most confident in. I knew only two things about Smoak. First, that he was a failed top prospect, and second, that [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/30/bp-torontos-bold-predictions-for-2017/">BP Toronto&#8217;s preseason Bold Predictions</a>, I picked Justin Smoak to be the biggest bust of 2017. Other than Josh Donaldson being the most valuable position player, it was the pick I was the most confident in.</p>
<p>I knew only two things about Smoak. First, that he was a failed top prospect, and second, that while with the Blue Jays, he had always been an uniquely depressing player to watch. I saw no reason to dig any deeper. Sure, he would have the occasional hot streak. And when he did manage to square up a ball, he would almost uniformly crush it. But none of that ever inspired much hope. If anything, it seemed a cruel reminder of Smoak&#8217;s career of failure: seven major league seasons, only three of those over replacement level. The occasional glimpses of talent threw the more common outcomes &#8211; the RISP hopelessness, the eternally gritted teeth, the uncomfortable, twisted swing &#8211; into sharper relief.</p>
<p>None of this seemed surmountable. I, like most observers, figured that the narrative of Smoak&#8217;s career was set. He had been a disappointment, someone who had never lived up to the expectations; by this point, that would never change.</p>
<p>I was wrong.</p>
<p>As Smoak continues to be among the Blue Jays&#8217; best hitters, and as analysis <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/16/justin-smoaks-showing-signs-of-improvement-in-crazy-2017-season/">continues</a> to <a href="https://www.fanragsports.com/mlb/blue-jays/whats-deal-justin-smoak/">suggest</a> that the changes in his approach might very well be sustainable, I looked into Smoak&#8217;s past &#8211; from his days as top prospect in Texas, to his heralded arrival in Seattle, and the six seasons of futility that followed. What I found was a player who was indeed haunted by disappointment, whose struggles were in no small part due to the pressure he placed on himself, carrying the burden of great expectations.</p>
<p>For the first time in his career, it seems like Smoak has been able to that burden go.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">***</p>
<p>Almost a decade ago, Justin Smoak was the future face of the Texas Rangers. He was drafted 11th overall in 2008 out of the University of South Carolina, the holder of multiple school records, one of the top college players in the nation. Before that, he’d been the 2006 MVP of the prestigious collegiate Cape Cod Baseball League; before that, an All-American in his senior year of high school. He was a player of whom great things were expected, whose career had been characterized by consistent excellence. <a href="http://www.baseballamerica.com/statistics/players/cards/75446/justin-smoak">Baseball America&#8217;s 2008 organizational rankings </a> projected Smoak as a middle-of-the-order power hitter with a shot at superstardom.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Among the earliest interviews I can find with Smoak is from </span><a href="https://youtu.be/JMe20yu4a9I"><span style="font-weight: 400">April 9th, 2009</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">. Smoak had just returned from his first major-league spring training, and was getting ready to start the year at double-A Frisco. While the video plays, various facts and figures scroll across the bottom of the screen, showing how high the Rangers and their fans were on Smoak: the comparisons to Teixeira and Chipper Jones, Smoak’s gaudy stats from college and A-ball, his impressively long list of achievements and awards.</span></p>
<p>The interviewer, speaking to the camera, starts off by calling Smoak “the future of the organization,” before turning to him and quipping, “No pressure there, Justin!”</p>
<p>Smoak laughs. “Not at all,” he responds.</p>
<p>He’s joking, of course. Far from there being, “no pressure,” pressure is omnipresent in Smoak’s words. “There’s always gonna be pressure, no matter where I’ll be or what situation I’m in,” he says of being fast-tracked to double-A. Receiving the news from the Rangers that he’d been drafted was, “a weight off [his] shoulders.”</p>
<p>Smoak speaks slowly and deliberately, in a deep monotone, looking down at his hands often. He seldom smiles, even when he’s talking about his own excitement. The stats and prospect rankings flashing beneath his face might be gaudy, but everything about Smoak, only 22 years old, speaks to a heavy seriousness &#8211; an acute awareness of the weight he carries. In Smoak’s case, this weight is the expectation of greatness: expectations which are not only his own, but now of an entire major league franchise and its millions of fans. 3.5 million dollars’ worth of expectations.</p>
<p>There is one moment, though, where the young Smoak’s face lights up. It’s when one of the interviewers mentions fishing. That’s the first thing he did when he got to Frisco, he says, grinning &#8211; drive around looking for fishing spots.</p>
<p>The interviewers are delighted by the potential for punnery: “We’ll get a picture of you fishing in a bass boat, and we’ll put that up. Smoak on the Water.”</p>
<p>“That’d be great,” Smoak says, still smiling. Not at the thought of himself as the top prospect, the first-round draft pick, the future of the organization, but of himself perched on the swivel seat of an small aluminum boat, floating peacefully on the surface of a lake.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"> ***</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Two months into Smoak’s stint in Frisco, he hit a three-run walkoff homer and was</span><a href="https://youtu.be/ame88onWTRI"><span style="font-weight: 400"> treated to his first-ever shaving cream pie in the face</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">. Compared to the first interview in April, Smoak seems notably more relaxed. With country music (</span><a href="https://youtu.be/0p6h9EB6CV4?t=1m27s"><span style="font-weight: 400">Smoak’s preferred genre</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">) audible in the background, he smiles easily and often, good-naturedly cursing out his teammate for the pieing. The interviewer asks him how he’s feeling at the plate, if there’s any anxiety; Smoak says he feels great, that his timing has come around, and that his swings from both sides are comfortable. </span></p>
<p>When the interviewer asks about what Smoak’s biggest takeaway from major league spring training was, Smoak’s expression turns thoughtful. “Just trying not to do too much, I think,” he says. “Sometimes, I get in the habit &#8211; when I start going into funks, it’s when I start trying to do too much.”</p>
<p>Of course, the tendency to overcompensate increases when one is struggling. It&#8217;s a vicious cycle. You fail, so you try harder; trying harder makes you fail even more. But to that point, whatever struggles Smoak might have experienced were vastly outweighed by his achievements. He had never had to deal with extended periods of failure, never had to contend with the scrutiny that comes with long-term underperformance. He was raking, as everyone had expected him to. He was fully meeting expectations.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"> ***</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Smoak was traded to the Seattle Mariners in mid-2010, the cornerstone piece in an exchange for Cliff Lee. Smoak hadn’t made a particularly good showing in his first half-season of major league play, batting a rather underwhelming</span> <span style="font-weight: 400">.209/.316/.353 with eight homers in 70 games. But he was still young, still inexperienced. There was no reason for anyone to give up hope. In fact, the trade seemed to be a win-win. The Rangers, who were in playoff contention, got an excellent starting pitcher, and the Mariners got the kind of exciting young player you can build a team around &#8211; whose set of skills amounted, for most observers, to as close to a guarantee as one can have in baseball. On the day of the Smoak-Lee trade, </span><a href="http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/7/9/1561945/this-has-not-been-an-easy-day-for"><span style="font-weight: 400">Jeff Sullivan</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> had this to say (emphasis mine):</span></p>
<div style="margin-left: 3em"><span style="font-weight: 400">&#8220;Potential is by definition never a guarantee, but he&#8217;s a very good bet to end up an annual candidate to go deep 20-25 times while getting on base a ton and flashing a solid glove. </span><b>Smoak&#8217;s a special talent</b><span style="font-weight: 400">. What he lacks in unfathomable upside, he gains in certainty. </span><b>There is very, very little chance that Justin Smoak doesn&#8217;t succeed.&#8221;</b></div>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Smoak, meanwhile, instead of being the lynchpin of a high-profile trade, had thought he was going to be sent back down to Triple-A. “Just try to relax,” </span><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/newest-mariner-justin-smoak-was-taught-well-by-his-father/"><span style="font-weight: 400">he said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> of his plan as a Mariner. Trying to relax instead of trying too hard, lengthening his swing, trying to prove himself worthy of not only a spot on a major league roster, but of the expectations of yet another franchise. Those were Smoak&#8217;s perils.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">In his first 16 games with Seattle, Smoak hit only .163/.180/.244. But when he got sent down to triple-A Tacoma, he absolutely raked in the Pacific Coast League playoffs, reaching base 22 times in eight games. The difference in his hitting, </span><a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/news/story?id=5621266"><span style="font-weight: 400">Keith Law noted</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">, was that Smoak had “stopped pressing” following his demotion.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center"> ***</p>
<p>On April 19th, 2011, Smoak left the Mariners and flew home to Goose Creek, South Carolina. His dad Keith, who had taught him how to play baseball, coached him as a kid, and been his biggest supporter and confidant, had died of lung cancer. He’d been diagnosed the previous summer, only months before Smoak was traded.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2_sYUmN48Mc" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" ></iframe>
<p>You can see the tiredness in Smoak’s eyes, though he doesn’t betray it while speaking. In the same deep, steady voice as always, what Smoak expresses most is not grief or pain, but gratitude for what his dad had given him, the experiences they’d shared. His dad was in attendance at Smoak’s first major-league game, the fruition of all their years of work together. And they’d played a game of catch together for one last time on the diamond at the University of South Carolina, where Keith had attended every game Justin played in. “It’s cool to know that he was there for all this,” Smoak says. “And, you know, he’s still going to be there for all of these in the future.”</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">There were, naturally, concerns about how this tragedy would affect Smoak’s performance. Prior to going on the bereavement list, it had seemed like Smoak was rounding into form somewhat, hitting .294/.403/.491 with four home runs through his first 17 games. Smoak homered in his first two games back, seemed to answer to such concerns. But </span><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/justin-smoak-faces-big-adjustment-with-death-of-his-confidant-father-mariners/"><span style="font-weight: 400">in this piece in the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Seattle Times</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400">, Richard Wieters &#8211; the father of Matt Wieters, and a lifelong friend of the Smoak family &#8211; wasn’t so sure that Smoak’s exterior calmness reflected the truth of the situation:</span></p>
<div style="margin-left: 3em">
<p> “He’s a quiet kid,” said Richard Wieters, a longtime friend of Smoak’s father. “He keeps a lot inside. I’m sure he’s hurting right now. With all he went through … the family really went through a lot.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">“It was hard on Justin. Keith didn’t want him worrying about it with all the other stuff he had to face, the pressure of trying to live up to all the expectations.”</span></p>
</div>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">As it turned out, Smoak never did live up to the expectations the Mariners had for him. His numbers after returning from the bereavement list in 2011 plummeted, largely due to being stricken with injuries: a sprained thumb, a broken nose. In 2012, he hit so poorly, with an ugly .191/.257/.316 line and a 23-percent strikeout rate, that he was demoted to triple-A in July. The Mariners felt that Smoak needed</span><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/justin-smoak-demoted-to-aaa-tacoma/"><span style="font-weight: 400"> “a different environment without the pressure of the big leagues”</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> to get himself right, to hasten the return of the qualities that had made him a top prospect to begin with &#8211; power, line drive ability, plate discipline &#8211; and which had apparently abandoned him at some point during the previous three months. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Smoak’s swing, once admired for its ease and smoothness, had become long, ugly, belabored; the mature batting eye, so lauded by scouts, was subsumed by proclivities both for chasing unhittable pitches and for watching fastballs in the zone sail by. The funks of which he spoke in 2009 &#8211; those times when he tried too hard, his swing got long, and his approach lost its discipline &#8211; had become the norm.  Mariners manager Eric Wedge </span><a href="http://m.mariners.mlb.com/news/article/38155012"><span style="font-weight: 400">said that Smoak’s desire to compete and be successful</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> was hindering any in-season fixing of his broken swing, but he offered assurances that they would work it all out in the offseason. Smoak, after all, was not just a garden-variety bad baseball player, for whom there was no precedent for greatness. He was, for better or for worse, Former Top Prospect Justin Smoak.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">By this point, fans were beginning to give up hope. Smoak was no longer young and inexperienced; he was reaching the age of peak production and had yet to be even a replacement-level player. The disappointment of Justin Smoak was the impetus for </span><a href="http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/3/18/4099480/when-do-prospects-break-out"><span style="font-weight: 400">this 2012 piece on prospect breakout windows from Beyond the Box Score</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">, and the conclusion was a foreboding one for Smoak: his window of breakout potential, though still open, was closing rapidly. It would need to happen soon if it were to happen at all.</span></p>
<p>But it didn’t happen in 2013. That year was Smoak’s best season with the Mariners, but it was still nothing like what had once been expected of him. He was still plagued by strikeouts, and wasn’t worth even one win above replacement.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"> ***</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">A few months after the 2013 season ended, Smoak </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKPqjZTSizY"><span style="font-weight: 400">attended an event at his alma mater</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">. The video opens with a recounting of how Smoak had utterly obliterated the program’s long-standing home run record. (The record was 48, hit over four years; over his three-year college career, Smoak hit 62.) This recounting is greeted by a hearty round of applause. But after the reminiscing ends, when the reporters begin to ask him questions, almost the first words out of Smoak’s mouth are about his own underachievement. </span></p>
<p>“It’s been a lot of &#8211; I’ve failed a good bit,” he tells the gathered reporters. “And I’ve had to learn from my failures. It came easy to me in high school and college, and in the minor leagues, but -”</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">He smiles a little bit. He doesn’t complete that thought, and he doesn&#8217;t need to. There’s no story to be told of superstardom achieved in spite of struggle, or of rising above adversity to the heights of success. The story of Justin Smoak in 2013 was an ongoing story of failure, of stalled potential and heights never reached, a downward trend with an uncertain endpoint.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span style="font-weight: 400">***</span></p>
<p>The Blue Jays claimed Smoak off waivers from the Mariners and then signed him as a free agent in late 2014, after another sub-replacement level season during which he played 56 games in the minors and slashed a lowly .202/.275/.339 in the majors. At one year and one million dollars, the signing was hardly a bank-breaking or hands-tying move by the Jays, and thus was largely met with either apathy or mild consternation. Some didn’t like that the Jays were paying actual money to a player who had never proved himself to be a quality major leaguer and, because he was out of options, couldn’t be used as positional depth; some bemoaned the implications of the move for Adam Lind. Some expressed optimism &#8211; maybe Smoak would turn out to be another successful Jays reclamation project, the next Jose Bautista or Edwin Encarnacion. But such expressions of optimism were always mild, always speculative, always the minority.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">If one read a sentence with Smoak’s name in it, some variation on the word “disappointment” as almost sure to follow, to the point where the two words could almost be synonymous. “The waiver claim brings to an end what has to be characterized as a </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">disappointing</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> tenure in Seattle for Smoak,” says this </span><a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/10/blue-jays-claim-justin-smoak.html"><span style="font-weight: 400">MLB Trade Rumors article</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">; “</span><a href="http://m.mlb.com/player/475253/justin-smoak"><span style="font-weight: 400">Justin Smoak</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> will have an opportunity for the fresh start he was looking for after five rather </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">disappointing</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400"> seasons in a Mariners uniform,” Gregor Chisholm </span><a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/99865528/blue-jays-claim-first-baseman-justin-smoak-off-waivers-from-mariners/"><span style="font-weight: 400">writes</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> for MLB.com. Smoak was someone who had, once upon a time, shown he had all the tools to succeed. He had been given every chance to succeed, and just </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">hadn’t</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">. Disappointment was the most defining aspect of his career.</span></p>
<p>Unlike the Mariners, the Blue Jays were not expecting to build their roster around Smoak, and Blue Jays fans were thus never treated to the specific kind of discontent that comes of observing failure when success is expected. Smoak was already cemented in his position as a bad, disappointing player. And yet Smoak still became one of the most maligned players on the roster of the 2015 and 2016 Blue Jays.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">There’s a fan behavior known in sports psychology as blasting, where </span><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/04/28/why-are-blue-jays-fans-masochists/"><span style="font-weight: 400">fans with high team identification</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">, instead of disassociating themselves from the team as a whole when things go wrong, will externalize their negative feelings by choosing someone upon whom to pile blame, someone who embodies any struggles the team is having. For a lot of Jays fans, Smoak was that guy. The strikeouts, the slow-footedness, the right-on-cue swings over top of two-strike breaking balls &#8211; Smoak was all the qualities of the Blue Jays’ offensive game that people found most frustrating, combined conveniently into a single six foot-four inch package. And unlike the team itself, Smoak had little success to help fans forget his failures. Even though he didn’t play full-time, he played just enough to be infuriating. When Smoak struck out on a curveball with runners in scoring position, the familiarity of the outcome did nothing to quell the disgust that greeted it. If anything, it made it all the sharper.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">It was with a heavy heart, a feeling of inevitable doom, that one watched Justin Smoak come to the plate. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Oh, god. Here we go. </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400">And when he struck out, an inevitable, infinite chorus of jeers: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Of course. Fucking Smoak. Fire Smoak into the sun. Why are we paying this guy again?</span></i></p>
<p>And, inevitably, Smoak walked back to the dugout, slowly, shoulders stooped, like the bat in his hands was a weight too heavy to bear.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"> ***</p>
<p>Before the start of 2017 spring training, Smoak announced a new approach. He was no longer going to give a crap.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">“I think in the past, I’ve just cared too much and was harder on myself than anybody. I haven’t taken failure well. I worried about the wrong things,” </span><a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2017/03/12/blue-jays-justin-smoak-to-ditch-all-or-nothing-approach"><span style="font-weight: 400">he told the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400">Toronto Sun.</span></i></a> <span style="font-weight: 400">“This year, my mindset is to enjoy the game game [sic]. You’re on a good team. You have an opportunity. Make the best of it.”</span></p>
<p>The themes here are the same ones that have been present throughout the entirety of Smoak&#8217;s career: his acute awareness of pressure, his aversion to failure and subsequent tendency to try too hard at the plate. What is new, though, is the not giving a crap. Before, it had always been that Smoak was going to <em>try </em>to relax, to <em>try </em>not to do too much &#8211; all with the underlying implication that if he could just force himself to try harder, to do the relaxing better, he would finally break through.  In 2017, though, Smoak set out to abandon all such paradoxical imperatives. It was such a paradox that had held him back for his whole career. He was going to shed the weight of caring about the past, and with <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/07/blue-jays-extend-justin-smoak.html">the knowledge of the Blue Jays&#8217; faith in him</a>, shed the weight of the future. He was going to go up to the plate with nothing to prove, no need to be a hero.</p>
<p>It was a nice thought. But Blue Jays fans knew better than to hope. Everyone was ready for Smoak to lose his job, if not by May, then at least by September.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">***</p>
<p style="text-align: left">As I write this, Smoak is among the top 30 hitters in the American League by fWAR. He&#8217;s second in the League in home runs. Two of those came on Wednesday, lifting the Jays past their sloppy defense to salvage a victory over Oakland. Over a Blue Jays season defined thus far by inconsistency and chaos, Smoak has been an anchor, and often a hero.</p>
<p style="text-align: left">But after Wednesday&#8217;s game, when <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/smoak-not-thinking-star-game-donaldson-thinks/">asked</a> if the All-Star game had been on his mind given his success, Smoak was nonchalant. &#8220;Not really, honestly,&#8221; he says with a flip of his hand: he is as steady and serious as he has always been, through the early success and the years of failure. That has never changed, whether times be good or bad.</p>
<p style="text-align: left">In 2017, times have been good for Smoak. That&#8217;s the extent to which he&#8217;s willing to praise himself: &#8220;It&#8217;s been good.&#8221; Of his new approach at the plate &#8211; well, whatever happens, happens, he says. The most important thing for Justin Smoak is this: he&#8217;s just having fun playing baseball.</p>
<p style="text-align: left">And whatever happens after this, for these past two months, it&#8217;s been fun watching him.</p>
<p style="text-align: left"><em>Lead Photo: © John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>Which Blue Jays are Putting the Barrel on the Ball?</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/23/which-blue-jays-are-finding-the-barrel/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/23/which-blue-jays-are-finding-the-barrel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 May 2017 10:51:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Greg Wisniewski]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blue jays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Devon Travis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jose Bautista]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kevin Pillar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Non-Roster Invitees]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=11056</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Back in February I wrote an article around the Statcast &#8216;Barrels&#8217; metric and how the Blue Jays (new and returning) stacked up in regards to that metric. If you haven&#8217;t heard much about Barrels and their &#8216;official&#8217; definition, that article would be a great spot to brush up on them. You can see the leaderboard here. Just [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Back in February I wrote an <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/02/17/barrels-of-fun…the-sweet-spot/">article around the Statcast &#8216;Barrels&#8217; metric</a> and how the Blue Jays (new and returning) stacked up in regards to that metric. If you haven&#8217;t heard much about Barrels and their &#8216;official&#8217; definition, that article would be a great spot to brush up on them. You can see the leaderboard <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_leaderboard" target="_blank">here.</a> Just the other day, Tom Tango tweeted out some visualizations of the different definitions of contact.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">These are the six categories of the Radial Launch Profile.<a href="https://t.co/oZpa2tqSwu">https://t.co/oZpa2tqSwu</a> <br />Top line is Teddies, bottom line is ?!?Alfredos <a href="https://t.co/sja9MQhhXJ">pic.twitter.com/sja9MQhhXJ</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Tangotiger (@tangotiger) <a href="https://twitter.com/tangotiger/status/866271088413749251">May 21, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>These are some nice tight visual groupings. And some R scores very close to 1. This means that from 2015-2016, the same batters generally had similar batted ball profiles. That&#8217;s a good indication that it isn&#8217;t a statistic that is a product of luck (like hitting with RISP vs. bases empty). Players who know how to barrel the ball one year tend not to forget how to do it the next. But can you change your batted ball profile if you know what you want to do differently? Let&#8217;s explore.</p>
<p>When we look at the 2016, we can see some winners and losers based on Barrels per Batter Ball Event (Brls_DIV_BBE).</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/05/barrels-jays-20161.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11060" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/05/barrels-jays-20161.png" alt="barrels jays 2016" width="737" height="462" /></a></p>
<p>Who might be interesting to look at? Well, I highlighted them for us. Especially since we want to see what&#8217;s happened to their numbers this season. This is the 2017 chart.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/05/barrels-jays-2017.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11059" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/05/barrels-jays-2017.png" alt="barrels jays 2017" width="773" height="464" /></a></p>
<p>Ah, yes. I&#8217;ve left Ceciliani and Stroman on the chart. That&#8217;s really to demonstrate how intuitive &#8220;Barrels&#8221; are. Both of them have a home run and a double in very limited PA and, as a result, have unsustainable numbers in the barrels categories. Instead, let&#8217;s look at a few of the players that are more worth highlighting.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Justin Smoak&#8217;s Made Real Changes</h4>
<p>Smoak&#8217;s always been at the top of the ranking when considering batted ball events, but fell off significantly in Brls/PA in 2016 because he struck out 32.6% of the time. He simply did not make enough contact to do damage in a high percentage of his plate appearances. The 2017 version of Justin Smoak is more disciplined, and, back in the spring, he mentioned making a conscious decision to <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2017/03/12/blue-jays-justin-smoak-to-ditch-all-or-nothing-approach">not try to hit a home run every time</a> he got to the plate.</p>
<p>As a result, he&#8217;s jumped from barreling the ball in 6.5% of his plate appearances to 10.5%, which tops everyone on the Jays who plays regularly. This follows along with his strikeout rate, which dropped from 32% to 19%. Another way to measure this change in approach is with contact rate in the zone. According to FanGraphs, his zone contact rate jumped from 82% last year to 94% this year. Not swinging like everything needs to clear the fence has paid huge dividends for Smoak.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Jose Bautista Might be Worth Worrying About</h4>
<p>Bautista was once one of the great power hitting threats in all of baseball. We know that these kinds of hitter have a barrel per batted event percentage of between 18 and 25 percent, and a barrel per plate appearance percentage of between 9 and 11 percent. When Bautista makes contact, he does so with authority, showing up with a high rank in average flyball distance. He also has one of the better peak and average exit velocities on the team. What it doesn&#8217;t quite translate into, however, is barrels. Alex Avila, Aaron Judge and Miguel Sano can barrel the ball over 20% of the time. Jose can only make it happen 9% of the time, which is Jean Segura and Kyle Seager territory. At this point in his career, Jose is still able to get on base, but not do the kind of damage he once did. You could certainly keep him up in the lineup, but it&#8217;s possible that the cleanup spot isn&#8217;t where he&#8217;s meant to be anymore.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Kevin Pillar&#8217;s Making Good on His Promise</h4>
<p>Much has been made of Pillar&#8217;s very public declaration to change his approach at the plate. In 2016, he barreled up the ball about as often as Ryan Goins, which is to say, not often at all. In 2017, he&#8217;s taken a great leap forward, going from barreling the ball in 2.7% of his batted balls to 6.7%, and from barreling the ball in 1.9% of plate appearances to 5.3%. Kevin Pillar now hits the ball with authority, even slightly more often than Bautista does over all his plate appearances. This is very strong evidence that he has been able to make a meaningful change in his approach. Remember, Barrels are about process, not results. In Pillar&#8217;s case the results have certainly followed. His tAV has jumped from .232 to .302 with the new approach, his walks are up significantly, and his strikeouts are down. Pillar wanted to confine his swings to pitches that were really hittable, and every measure we have has shown him to be successful in that regard.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Steve Pearce and Devon Travis&#8217; Numbers Are Diverging</h4>
<p>I grouped Steve Pearce and Devon Travis together for a reason. In 2016, in a platoon role, Pearce was the far superior power hitter, and Travis looked like a middle infielder with little to no pop in his bat. In 2017, Travis got of to a rough start, but he&#8217;s been tearing the cover off the ball recently. Meanwhile, Pearce got incosistent playing time and then got hurt. Their Statcast profiles, however, come out incredibly similar in 2017. They max velocity, average distance, barrels per batted event, and barrels per plate appearance are all within a digit or two of one another. It&#8217;s no surprise Pearce&#8217;s tAV sits at .215 and Travis&#8217; sits at .224. Again, the process predicts the results—both players have been worth -0.2 WARP. We should watch and see if their fortunes diverge once Pearce returns from injury.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>The Blue Jays Aren&#8217;t Barrelling</h4>
<p>Looking at the chart as a whole, one other thing becomes clear. The Blue Jays are not, as a group, barrelling up the ball nearly as much as they did in 2016. Jose Bautista&#8217;s 8.8% and 4.8% were buried in the middle of the list last year, but now his 9.0% and 5.2% are, essentially, fourth on the team. The lineup simply isn&#8217;t made up of guys who hit a lot of homers or doubles into the gap. That isn&#8217;t the only way to score runs, of course, since the 2017 team has scored 186 runs after 45 games, and the 2016 team has scored only 183. Maybe some of John Gibbons&#8217; bunt and squeeze tactics are a result of him not seeing anyone who can hit the ball with authority and reacting accordingly.</p>
<p>Either way, there are things that we can learn from barrelled balls. First off, we can see that, over and over again, the nature of the contact with the ball is consistent with the quality of the result. There is no way to defend against a barrelled ball, and if you&#8217;re aware of a way to nudge the launch angle and exit velocity into a certain zone as a hitter, you should absolutely do that. The other lesson, from Smoak and Pillar, is that a change in approach can help a hitter with a hole in his game. Smoak didn&#8217;t need to make harder or better contact, he needed to make it more often. Pillar didn&#8217;t need to make more contact overall, he needed to make it in the strike zone. Teams can use this type of data (obviously with more sophistication) to target players where small changes might offer big payoffs. The small sliver of Statcast data that the public has access to offers an opportunity to change what skills are valued in the game, imagine what teams will be doing with the whole database at their fingertips.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo:</em> <em>Nick Turchiaro</em>-USA TODAY Sports</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>The Fly Ball Revolution Has Arrived in Toronto</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/17/the-fly-ball-revolution-has-arrived-in-toronto/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/17/the-fly-ball-revolution-has-arrived-in-toronto/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Mar 2017 10:04:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Elie Waitzer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Devon Travis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Edwin Encarnacion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Josh Donaldson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russell Martin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troy Tulowitzki]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=9322</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[2016 was an odd year for home runs; they went up by 14% between 2015 and 2016. The last time we saw so many home runs was in 2000, when the home run leaderboard looked like this. When this historic spike began to come into focus down the stretch last season, baseball writers had a [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>2016 was an odd year for home runs; they went up by 14% between 2015 and 2016. The last time we saw so many home runs was in 2000, when the home run leaderboard looked like <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2000-batting-leaders.shtml">this</a>. When this historic spike began to come into focus down the stretch last season, baseball writers had a field day trying to explain it. They enlisted physicists and statisticians. They said that the balls might be <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-juiced-balls-the-new-steroids/">juiced</a>. They blamed the historically bad Reds&#8217; bullpen. They thought maybe steroids were back.</p>
<p>But when nobody could find a satisfying stats-based explanation for the long ball lunacy, a few writers began to turn to philosophy. The explanation here isn&#8217;t as easy as hitters closing their eyes and meditating about glorious dingers. According to interviews with several players, any explanation behind the power surge starts with the general shift in the Majors from a line drive-based approach to a fly ball-heavy hitting philosophy. Leading that group of players are Josh Donaldson, J.D. Martinez, Marlon Byrd, and Justin Turner.</p>
<p>This theory has two parts. The first is that it just makes more sense to go for fly balls. In 2016, batters hit <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&amp;stats=bat&amp;lg=all&amp;qual=0&amp;type=1&amp;season=2016&amp;month=18&amp;season1=2016&amp;ind=0&amp;team=0,ss&amp;rost=0&amp;age=0&amp;filter=&amp;players=0">.241 with a .715 slugging mark on fly balls</a> versus a .238 average and .258 slugging mark on ground balls. The second part is that when this approach turns someone like J.D. Martinez or Justin Turner into a superstar, other Major League hitters take notice and try to emulate it.</p>
<p>At Fangraphs, Jeff Sullivan and Travis Sawchik have been compiling mostly anecdotal evidence for this theory that you can read about <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/has-the-fly-ball-revolution-begun/">here</a>, <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/j-d-martinez-debunks-conventional-wisdom-thinks-a-tipping-point-is-near/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mlb-hitters-are-getting-off-the-ground/">here</a>. I won&#8217;t go any deeper into the weeds, because what interests me in this is Josh Donaldson&#8217;s role at the vanguard of this fly ball revolution.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Just say NO&#8230;. to ground balls. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MLB?src=hash">#MLB</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/striveforexcellence?src=hash">#striveforexcellence</a> <a href="https://t.co/6YANrOZHQE">pic.twitter.com/6YANrOZHQE</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Josh Donaldson (@BringerOfRain20) <a href="https://twitter.com/BringerOfRain20/status/837061212705812488">March 1, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>There&#8217;s that tweet, and there&#8217;s this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyWNCrxVzPU">amazing video</a> on MLB Network. You could argue that Donaldson has been the highest profile proselytiser for the fly ball approach, which makes Toronto the perfect test case for this theory. If I was a struggling bat in the Jays lineup, I would take every piece of advice I could from Donaldson. Players on the same team talk, a lot. That&#8217;s why the Rays pitchers all throw the <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-power-of-pitch-lineage/">same change up</a>.</p>
<p>Now, the Jays are one of only six teams that actually hit <em>fewer</em> home runs in 2016 than in 2015. So Toronto&#8217;s offence was explosive independent of whatever mystery juice may have crept into baseball last season, but let&#8217;s see if we can find any evidence of how Donaldson&#8217;s philosophy has shaped the Blue Jays.</p>
<p>The best place to start is at the root of this philosophy: average launch angles. Unfortunately, Statcast data only goes back to 2015, so we can&#8217;t compare the pre-Donaldson Jays to the current core, but even the past two years are revealing. For starters, the team&#8217;s average launch angle rose from 8.8° to 10.5°. Here are the batters who gained the most lift on average.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img class="aligncenter  wp-image-9573" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/03/launch-angle-gainers.png" alt="launch angle gainers" width="510" height="229" /></p>
<p>Donaldson practiced what he preached, adding 4.5° on average according to Baseball Savant. Travis and Martin had big jumps. Encarnacion had one of highest average launch angles in the league (top 20). And at the very top of the list is Smoak, who exemplifies the kind of struggling hitter who might try to seek advice from a successful hitter such as Donaldson. Seven degrees makes me want to bust out a protractor.</p>
<p>Now that we&#8217;ve identified Donaldson&#8217;s disciples, let&#8217;s see if those increased launch angles translated into more fly balls.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img class="aligncenter  wp-image-9583" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/03/fb-gainers1.png" alt="fb gainers" width="510" height="295" /></a></p>
<p>Again, Smoak and Travis saw big increases. Somehow, Tulowitzki managed to increase his fly ball percentage by 10% despite only raising his average launch angle by 2.2°. That massive jump in FB% pushed his home run total up from 17 to 24 and raised his ISO from .160 to .189, but Tulowitzki&#8217;s slugging percentage actually remained the same due to a corresponding drop-off in doubles. This could be a sign of Tulowitzki over-emphasizing fly balls at the expense of line drives to the gaps.</p>
<p>Of those six Jays, Tulowitzki was actually the only home run gainer on a rate basis. You might expect Donaldson and Encarnacion to take small steps back after beastly 2015 campaigns, but Smoak and Travis seemed like candidates for power surges according to their FB% and launch angle gains.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img class="  aligncenter wp-image-9622" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/03/hr-gainers1.png" alt="hr gainers" width="499" height="263" /></a></p>
<p>Again, we only have average launch angle data for the past two years, but for an entire team to jump from an average 8.8° to 10.5° seem significant to me. What&#8217;s more, the team&#8217;s hard hit rate jumped from 29.7% to 33.1% while the team&#8217;s HR/FB and average exit velocity remained essentially the same. That suggests that the Jays got a little unlucky with homers in 2016.</p>
<p>It&#8217;d be interesting to talk to Tulowitzki, Smoak and Travis to see if they&#8217;ve intentionally adopted Donaldson&#8217;s fly ball heavy approach. Looking at stats can only tell us so much. Still, if those three maintain their launch angle and fly ball gains from 2016, they could be primed for juicy home run totals this year.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: © Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>How to Get the Most Out of Steve Pearce</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/01/20/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-steve-pearce/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/01/20/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-steve-pearce/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2017 12:01:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Passador]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ezequiel Carrera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Melvin Upton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steve Pearce]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=8660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Steve Pearce is one of the most unheralded signings of the offseason. It’s not hard to see why, given the contentious sentiment surrounding Toronto’s higher-profile negotiations, but Pearce was a nice get and he should help in multiple ways. A player who can play in either outfield corner, first base, and occasionally chip in at [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Steve Pearce is one of the most unheralded signings of the offseason. It’s not hard to see why, given the contentious sentiment surrounding Toronto’s higher-profile negotiations, but Pearce was a nice get and he should help in multiple ways. A player who can play in either outfield corner, first base, and occasionally chip in at second or third is nothing to sneeze at. How the Blue Jays will deploy him in a crowded mix remains to be seen, though he does present a decent upgrade at at least one spot on the diamond.</p>
<p>The Jays, finally capitalizing on a cautious free agent market, brought back franchise icon Jose Bautista. That’s a nice move with fairly little risk involved and solves one problem spot in the outfield. Both John Gibbons and Ross Atkins have hinted at <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/gibbons-theres-chance-bautista-plays-first-base-blue-jays/" target="_blank">Bautista potentially playing some first base</a> this season, though Gibbons also referred to it as, “<a href="https://twitter.com/TAMacKenzie/status/821752982027038720" target="_blank">not something we’re really looking at.</a>”</p>
<p>Still, the smart money points to Bautista playing some infield and sharing the DH role with Kendrys Morales in addition to his outfield adventures. With Melvin Upton, Ezequiel Carrera, Steve Pearce, Dalton Pompey and any potential (i.e. hopeful) leftover lefties from the free agent market scrounging for playing time, it makes sense to open up right field from time to time.</p>
<p>How the team divvies up the playing time at the corners is worth looking into. <a title="Ezequiel Carrera and the Need for Another Outfielder" href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/01/17/ezequiel-carrera-and-the-need-for-another-outfielder/" target="_blank">None of the in-house options can be trusted against right handed pitching</a>, and that will be compounded with Kevin Pillar’s similar struggles. It would seem that Upton, a sound defender and a decent hitter against lefties in his own right, will get all of the starts against southpaws. It’s an odd spot, as all of the candidates perform better against left handed pitching with the exception of Pompey and his incredibly small sample size. The team has created several redundancies without acquiring a complementary fix: there are four right shoes and no left ones.</p>
<p>You’d think that one is still available (Brandon Moss, namely), but it remains to be seen if outside help is on the way given budget constraints and the team’s weird affinity for Carrera. Pearce could see some starts in left or right, but given the lack of a pure platoon opportunity it doesn’t look like that will be his main role.</p>
<p>Later on in the clip above, Gibbons was non-committal when asked whether newcomer Pearce would be his primary first baseman. Edwin Encarnacion and his 74 starts at first are gone, and it’s been thought that Pearce would form a platoon with Justin Smoak, with the holdover switch hitter getting most of the at-bats against righties as well as his usual late-inning defensive replacement work. Morales and now Bautista might get some spot duty there as well, but Pearce and Smoak are the main characters for now.</p>
<p>Pearce obviously will get at bats against left handed pitchers, presumably coming at the expense of Smoak given the abilities of Toronto’s outfielders. Surely you have to give Smoak some at bats (<em>hint: you don’t- you don’t even have to keep him on the roster, if push comes to shove</em>), so he’ll take the other half of the platoon.</p>
<p>That would be fine and dandy if Smoak performed better against righties than Pearce. Smoak’s career righty splits (.224/.316/.403), compared with Pearce’s (.245/.322/.406) seem to suggest that he shouldn’t be getting regular work in that situation either. One would hope that common sense prevails, but we’ve been subjected to separate leadoff stints for Ben Revere and Kevin Pillar, so it’s no slam dunk.</p>
<p>On the defensive side of the ledger, there’s no real reason to prefer Smoak either. While defensive metrics can be fickle, Pearce has a career +12 DRS and +8.9 UZR in 1,585 innings at first base. In 6,007 innings at first, Smoak has produced -16 DRS and +0.6 UZR. To be fair, 2013 exists as a massive outlier with -8 DRS and a -4.2 UZR, but even discrediting the anomaly, defense hardly seems to be a feather in Smoak’s cap.</p>
<p>The only real (and very real) reservation that the team should have in regards to Pearce is his durability. He underwent season-ending elbow surgery in September and was given a recovery timetable of 4-6 months, meaning he may miss a chunk of spring training. On top of that, Pearce has never appeared in more than 102 games, which he did in 2014 with Baltimore. Asking a player who has sustained elbow, hamstring and oblique injuries since 2015 alone to take on a full workload may be a bit of a stretch. The team could work to get him some time at DH, though Morales, Bautista and any half-days for Josh Donaldson should be the priority there.</p>
<p>Still, Pearce is, at present, the Jays’ best option at first and a passable option in left against right handed pitching. The injury concerns will probably keep the Jays from giving him regular at bats out of left field, instead Voltroning some kind of ineptitude out of Carrera and Upton.</p>
<p>Pearce is a player with some degree of versatility and a bankable skillset: he mashes left handed pitching. It’s a handy profile that makes him a fit on just about any roster, and it’s now up to the Jays to make the most of his presence. Making him the primary first baseman is a start, and a sprinkling of time in the outfield wouldn’t hurt. The Jays did well to acquire an eminently useful guy like Pearce. Finding him adequate playing time while keeping him healthy will be the challenge.</p>
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		<title>The Unfortunate Result of a Clash of Baseball Ideologies</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/01/16/the-unfortunate-result-of-a-clash-of-baseball-ideologies/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/01/16/the-unfortunate-result-of-a-clash-of-baseball-ideologies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jan 2017 13:20:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Smoak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mark shapiro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ross atkins]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=8558</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s the middle of January and the Blue Jays have yet to make any big moves. Of course, there is technically still time. The free agent market is all but depleted of big names, but the team could still make a splash through trade. However, with each passing day, the possibility that a big trade [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It’s the middle of January and the Blue Jays have yet to make any big moves. Of course, there is technically still time. The free agent market is all but depleted of big names, but the team <i>could</i> still make a splash through trade. However, with each passing day, the possibility that a big trade happens before the season begins is becoming increasingly meager.</p>
<p>With that situation comes one major affirmation: the Blue Jays aren’t pushing to compete in 2017. This possibility had been suggested by some for a long time, but with no clear indication from management about their direction, and a Blue Jays team that probably <i>should </i>be pushing to compete, we had no confirmation as to whether or not it was true. However, with just 77 days left until Toronto’s first game of the 2017 season, a lackadaisical approach to 2017 is all but certain.</p>
<p>After two straight seasons of Blue Jays playoff games (and a helluva lot of excitement), fans are understandably uneasy about the shift in philosophy. Myself included.</p>
<p>The Jays didn’t get Dexter Fowler, nor did they sign Edwin Encarnacion. The coups—a term I use very lightly—of the offseason look like they’ll be Kendrys Morales and a <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/report-jose-bautista-active-contract-discussions-blue-jays/" target="_blank">36 year-old Jose Bautista</a> set for a full statuesque season in a corner outfield position. That’s bad.</p>
<p>Well, bad <em>IF</em> the aim is to seriously push to contend for a playoff spot. &#8216;Pushing&#8217; being, at the very least, filling out the roster holes with average players. But, as we determined above, that probably isn’t the case. If you get past the poor emotional optics of that idea, in the abstract, not mortgaging the future (prospect or payroll-wise) to contend in 2017 isn’t actually a crazy idea. The Blue Jays had the <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/rosters/_/sort/average_age/order/true" target="_blank">fourth oldest roster in the league</a> in 2016. With the departure of R.A. Dickey that average should come down slightly, but the roster still contains quite a few major pieces inching towards their mid 30s in Donaldson, Tulowitzki, Happ, Estrada, Morales, and Martin.</p>
<p>The problem, however, is that the 2016 offseason doesn’t happen in the abstract. Decisions made now must take in to account those made over the last few years, even prior to the Shapiro/Atkins regime. Specifically, in his last couple of seasons at the helm of the Blue Jays, Anthopoulos set the team on a trajectory: World Series contention.</p>
<p>It matters not that Mark Shapiro <a href="http://www.thescore.com/news/866843" target="_blank">didn’t want the Blue Jays to “[go] for broke,”</a> when he signed on with the team. By trading away Daniel Norris, Jeff Hoffman, and others, that’s the path that Anthopoulos and fans had rallied behind.</p>
<p>That presented an issue. Anthopoulos had <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/40363638/" target="_blank">already used a glut of young players to acquire major league talent a few years sooner</a>, and the 2015 trades only further depleted the pipeline. It was for a good cause: a shot at a World Series victory. However, as you begin to trade away each new emerging talent, the major league club begins to lose its pipeline for depth. Now, in 2017, the Blue Jays <a href="https://www.thestar.com/sports/bluejays/2017/01/13/blue-jays-will-dig-deep-for-rotation-insurance-griffin.html" target="_blank">main rotational depth</a> comes in the form of <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=102603" target="_blank">one starter who struggled in AA</a>, and another who has <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=103743" target="_blank">yet to pitch above A-ball</a>. Elsewhere, there&#8217;s an <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=67078" target="_blank">outfielder who the team refuses to acknowledge</a> and a <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58320" target="_blank">26 year-old &#8216;Catcher of the Future&#8217; who hasn&#8217;t yet had an MLB plate appearance</a>. That&#8217;s kind of it.</p>
<p>Of course, once a team has, &#8220;[gone] for broke,&#8221; with an aging roster there are ways to compensate for it. But, those ways include spending a lot of cash on a lot of players to fill a lot of positions. The Blue Jays could have done this&#8230;and I tend to think that Anthopoulos would have done this. He created a leviathan and he was going to keep feeding it until it went belly up. However, at the peak of the execution of Anthopoulos&#8217; vision, he was hung out to dry by a franchise in dire need of a modernized business direction. In came Mark Shapiro.</p>
<p>In Cleveland, Shapiro built a lot of wins on not a lot of cash. How? By creating and sustaining a pipeline of talent. A team can save a lot of money just by being able to fill out the edges of a roster with usable pre-arbitration players. In Toronto, the Blue Jays had high upside talent, but lack the talent at the upper minors. The pipeline was turned into a shot at the playoffs not once, but twice.</p>
<p>With an Anthopoulos-less Blue Jays team dropped in to his lap, Shapiro then had a new set of incentives and would have to create his own vision for the team. If his time in Cleveland is any indication, that vision is a sustainable winner. If he were to continue the trajectory that AA had set the team on then he&#8217;d be unlikely to reach that goal. The Blue Jays would have been much closer to a smart version of the 2012 Phillies than to the dynastically inclined Cardinals. In order to fix that the Jays don&#8217;t have to hit the brakes, but it does require easing off the gas a little bit. That means holding back on going for broke in 2017 in an attempt at future success. In doing so, Shapiro has to treat things like the David Price trade as a sunk cost. In economic terms, that makes perfect sense, but in emotional terms, it&#8217;s tough to accept.</p>
<p>People don&#8217;t like waiting, especially when the ultimate goal (a World Series victory) looks so incredibly attainable. Shapiro&#8217;s vision, if it is as I described, will likely result in more Septembers with meaningful baseball over the next five seasons. But, the further away from the present that you&#8217;re projecting, the more risky it is that anything you&#8217;re attempting to achieve comes true. As such, I&#8217;d love to see the team make a greater effort this season, but I can also see the strategy behind waiting. Further depleting the system and adding backloaded contracts will restrict the team of its resources in the years to come. However, so many resources have already been dedicated to this window: the Blue Jays aren&#8217;t far from serious contention in the AL East. In the end, there probably is no right answer from a strategic point-of-view, but it certainly doesn&#8217;t help your argument when you&#8217;re handing out <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=58692" target="_blank">multi-year extensions to below replacement level players</a>.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: © Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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