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	<title>Toronto &#187; Shohei Ohtani</title>
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		<title>Artificial Turf Wars Ep. 82: Time to ZiP(S) Up for Winter</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/06/artificial-turf-wars-ep-82-time-to-zips-up-for-winter/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Dec 2017 11:52:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Artifical Turf Wars]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Aledmys Diaz]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Shohei Ohtani]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=14501</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Episode 82 ESPN&#8217;s Dan Szymborski stops by to discuss his ZiPS projections for the Blue Jays in 2018, with specific discussion about the middle infield, Aaron Sanchez, and the general direction of the team. Greg, Josh, and Nick then discuss the Aledmys Diaz pickup, Shohei Ohtani not joining the Jays, the non-tenders of Ryan Goins [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/turfpod"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-9098" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/02/patreon_logo-300x94.png" alt="patreon_logo" width="252" height="79" /></a><br />
<strong><br />
Episode 82</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/DSzymborski" target="_blank">ESPN&#8217;s Dan Szymborski</a> stops by to discuss his ZiPS projections for the Blue Jays in 2018, with specific discussion about the middle infield, Aaron Sanchez, and the general direction of the team. Greg, Josh, and Nick then discuss the Aledmys Diaz pickup, Shohei Ohtani not joining the Jays, the non-tenders of Ryan Goins and Tom Koehler, the Marcus Stroman/Jeff Blair feud, and Gregg Zaun being fired by Sportsnet. They also answer listener questions and bring on a Patron to play Swing and a Drive.</p>
<p><strong>Note: The show is now going biweekly unless something important breaks, but there will be occasional special bonus episodes of &#8220;Extra Pellets&#8221; with in depth content exclusively for <a href="https://www.patreon.com/turfpod" target="_blank">Patreon donors</a>. </strong></p>
<p><strong>Podcast</strong>: <a class="powerpress_link_pinw" title="Play in New Window" href="http://d1at8ppinvdju8.cloudfront.net/1/044/show_10445925_2017_12_06_03_40_46.mp3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Play in new window</a> | <a class="powerpress_link_d" title="Download" href="http://d1at8ppinvdju8.cloudfront.net/1/044/show_10445925_2017_12_06_03_40_46.mp3" rel="nofollow">Download</a></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/blue-jays-plus-podcast/id705699884?mt=2"><img class="alignnone wp-image-63" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/03/itunes1.png" alt="itunes" width="168" height="62" /></a><a href="https://soundcloud.com/turfpod"><img class=" wp-image-9054 alignleft" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/02/soundcloud.jpg" alt="soundcloud" width="123" height="60" /></a></p>
<p>Follow the guys on twitter: <a title="@coolhead2010" href="https://twitter.com/coolhead2010" target="_blank">@coolhead2010</a> and <a title="@JoshuaHowsam" href="https://twitter.com/JoshuaHowsam" target="_blank">@JoshuaHowsam</a>.</p>
<p>Intro music is Slow Burn (<a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/" rel="cc:attributionURL">Kevin MacLeod</a>) under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" rel="license">CC BY 3.0</a>.</p>
<div><strong>Podcast Email</strong>-<a href="mailto:artificialturfwars@baseballprospectus.com" target="_blank">artificialturfwars@baseballprospectus.com</a> Please drop us a line if there is a guest you&#8217;d particularly like us to interview, to submit a question to <strong>Stump the Josh</strong>, or to simply give us feedback on the podcast. We&#8217;d love to hear from you!</div>
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		<title>Ross Atkins’ Hands are Tied by Shohei Ohtani</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/23/ross-atkins-hands-are-tied-by-shohei-ohtani/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/23/ross-atkins-hands-are-tied-by-shohei-ohtani/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Nov 2017 11:39:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tammy Rainey]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shohei Ohtani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shohei Otani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto Blue Jays]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=14305</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thanks to a last minute agreement between the NPB and the MLBPA, reports are now out there that Shohei Ohtani will finally be posted on Dec 2. This will come as a considerable relief to all the teams who consider themselves candidates to sign him, not least among them the Toronto Blue Jays. In fact, [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Thanks to a last minute agreement between the NPB and the MLBPA, reports are now out there that Shohei Ohtani will finally be posted on Dec 2. This will come as a considerable relief to all the teams who consider themselves candidates to sign him, not least among them the Toronto Blue Jays.</p>
<p>In fact, probably the single biggest factor in Toronto&#8217;s offseason plans is whether or not they can sign Ohtani, not just because he&#8217;s a generational talent but because of the implications he brings for further roster construction. This is compounded by the fact that they are a team with a legitimate clear path to offering what he seems to want most: a chance to be a legitimate two-way player.</p>
<p>Certainly, this is true of teams other than Toronto. This is a big reason why off-season player movement has been almost unprecedentedly slow this year. And while one would not necessarily expect it to be a problem for all teams, it&#8217;s absolutely a problem that goes beyond the teams who legitimately are in play for Ohtani.</p>
<p>Let me illustrate. As far as we know, Baltimore doesn&#8217;t give any indication of being in tough on Ohtani, but they have spawned some rumors that they covet some of the more desirable free agent starting pitchers. Let&#8217;s take Lance Lynn for example.</p>
<p>From Baltimore&#8217;s point of view, the play would be &#8220;while the other monied teams are looking at japan, let&#8217;s swoop in and grab Lance Lynn&#8221; but the problem with that is that Lynn&#8217;s agent is certainly telling him &#8220;be patient, only one team can sign Ohtani and a lot of those failed suitors will check in on you after he signs.&#8221; Thus, the O&#8217;s are blocked from making the big move that might be the linchpin of their offseason as well. Even teams not specifically looking for a SP or OF as their primary acquisition may well be hedging their use of available finances against those sub-markets. Likewise players at other positions may be waiting to entertain the idea of signing until they see how Ohtani contenders shift their plans in the wake of not signing him.</p>
<p>Because of this concern, it limits any potential moves in the mean time. Let&#8217;s explore why for a moment. The Blue Jays, by consensus, have three primary needs and two secondary needs to fill. They would like to add an impact SP (Ross Atkins has said &#8220;an impact pitcher either as a starter or in the bullpen&#8221; but let&#8217;s be real, your major impact is going to come in the rotation) both as an upgrade and not a little bit because they cannot be fully confident Aaron Sanchez will be back to his 2016 health. They absolutely must add an above average (at least) outfielder, preferably in a corner. They also really need a productive player as a reserve capable of stepping in at SS or 2B without hurting the team. Beyond that, if the dollars allow, a better reserve catcher and some veteran depth in the bullpen are concerns.</p>
<p>In regards to the opening for a starting pitcher, the potential availability of Ohtani freezes any impact move. If you add him, there&#8217;s no obvious role for any other high profile FA you might be thinking of. You can neither spend crazy money on Yu Darvish or try and score an upside play like Tyler Chatwood if you can&#8217;t offer them a regular turn in the rotation. Literally the minute Ohtani signs with anyone, GMs across the league will be blowing up the phones of the agents representing their preferred option. But for now, everyone waits (unless they recognize themselves to not be a player for Ohtani in any case).</p>
<p>Similarly, the Jays can&#8217;t make a serious move for corner outfielder without considering Ohtani. While it&#8217;s not a complete blockade &#8211; the acquired OF could always move to the other corner, but the situation does pose a consideration in terms of allocation of resources. Would Toronto, or any team, be as anxious to add &#8211; for example &#8211; Andrew McCutchen at a cost of prospects and over $14 million if they have already added a bat like Ohtani&#8217;s to their team. To be clear, I certainly would, and I&#8217;m inclined to think that the Jays would. But I&#8217;m not at all sure that they would do so BEFORE knowing whether Ohtani is on their roster.</p>
<p>The other positions are not as directly impacted, but the major impact is money. To return to the McCutchen example: the money he makes comes off the top of their available budget for off-season acquisitions so whether or not you could, again for example, go offer Eduardo Nunez, his likely eight million dollars a year is tied to whether or not you&#8217;ve spent that money in the outfield &#8211; money you are much more likely to have spent if Ohtani didn&#8217;t sign with the team.</p>
<p>The same basic principle applies with the catcher need and the potential for adding relievers. The team can field a good bullpen with current personnel, but in a situation where you are going for it, more depth can only help. There are opportunities to add a lefty (the bigger need) and a right-handed veteran and in so doing push kids like Ramirez, Dermody, and Mayza back to Buffalo for crucial depth. There is solid depth in the relief market and the Jays probably wouldn&#8217;t act early in any case, but if they did have a particular target they wanted to scoop the market on, then again they&#8217;d have to make a calculation on the price point depending on the aforementioned implications.</p>
<p>SImply put, the entire team budget situation changes by getting an impact player like Ohtani for the league mimimum.</p>
<p>I should also acknowledge the possibility that I&#8217;m being too optimistic here. While the Jays management has been nothing but consistent in asserting that they are fully committed to contending in 2018, it&#8217;s not completely impossible that this is an example of messaging which is relevant to luring Ohtani. There&#8217;s a non-zero possibility that if/when he signs elsewhere, the front office re-evaluates the opportunity cost of making that run and decides that the long term interests of the club are better served by some strategic subtraction rather than ramping up.</p>
<p>In any case, now that the Ohtani Sweepstakes has a certain date, those of us trying to get warm by the hot stove can start to feel the heat in earnest.</p>
<p><i>Lead Photo © Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports</i></p>
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		<title>Shohei Ohtani, Bo Bichette, and a Window Into the Minds of Blue Jays Fans</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/17/shohei-ohtani-bo-bichette-and-a-window-into-the-mind-of-the-blue-jays-fan/</link>
		<comments>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/17/shohei-ohtani-bo-bichette-and-a-window-into-the-mind-of-the-blue-jays-fan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Nov 2017 11:45:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joshua Howsam]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shohei Ohtani]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=14202</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thanks to a late end to the postseason (the final game World Series game was played on November 2nd), we sit here on November 17th and the Hot Stove is still sitting comfortably on &#8220;low.&#8221; The only move of consequence so far was Ryon Healy going from Oakland to the Mariners for a couple of players who [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Thanks to a late end to the postseason (the final game World Series game was played on November 2nd), we sit here on November 17th and the Hot Stove is still sitting comfortably on &#8220;low.&#8221; The only move of consequence so far was Ryon Healy going from Oakland to the Mariners for a couple of players who most fans would describe as &#8220;let me Google that guy.&#8221;</p>
<p>For that reason, people tend to turn to idle speculation and hypotheticals. I am not immune, so I posted the following on Twitter.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">If Shohei Ohtani were to come to the Blue Jays and say he&#39;d sign only if they can get to a certain cap space level and the trade to get it somehow requires Bo Bichette going the other way, would you do it?</p>
<p>&mdash; Joshua (@JoshuaHowsam) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshuaHowsam/status/931257882078842882?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 16, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>It&#8217;s an absolutely silly question (and a bit of a run-on sentence to boot). In what world would it take a prospect of Bo Bichette&#8217;s calibre to get a little bit of international bonus pool money? But that wasn&#8217;t really the point. I asked this question to get a window into the fan perspective of the very unusual situation in which we find ourselves with Shohei Ohtani coming over as a bonus pool-limited free agent.</p>
<p>On the surface, this should be a landslide in the &#8220;yes&#8221; department. Bo Bichette is definitely a great prospect, but if the choice is between a top prospect in high-A and an MLB-ready talent like Ohtani making the league minimum, it should be pretty clear. Ohtani has the potential to be a generational talent &#8211; thanks to his potential to add some value with the bat &#8211; and at minimum projects as a future top of the rotation starter who is already advanced enough to help right now. Those types of players just don&#8217;t come along very often.</p>
<p>But when you look in at the results, the &#8220;yes&#8221; vote is only leading with 54 percent of the tally after 550 votes. That&#8217;s very close for something that seems pretty one-sided.</p>
<p>So why does this happen? I asked a couple of the people who openly voted no why they chose to lean the way they did.</p>
<p>There were reasons given ranging from general concern about pitchers and their durability to simply not being able to wrap their head around the idea of trading a player in order to acquire a free agent, but the ones below were the most fascinating.</p>
<p>The first reason was the one that I expected, but I wanted to discuss it further:</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/11/equiv.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14210" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/11/equiv.png" alt="equiv" width="528" height="235" /></a></p>
<p>This is a case of comparing two different types of unknowns (and not the only such reply I received).</p>
<p>Ohtani&#8217;s scouting reports are excellent. He seems like he has all the tools to succeed and nobody (who isn&#8217;t motivated by prejudice towards &#8220;Japanese Pitchers&#8221;) thinks he&#8217;s anything but a top-level talent. On the flip side, Toronto fans have been hearing glowing report after glowing report about Bichette ever since he laid waste to the Gulf Coast League in his professional debut. As a result, people can&#8217;t help but book a ticket for the hype train and expect Bichette to turn into a superstar who will hit the major league ground running as early as September 2018.</p>
<p>As a result, this false equivalency is created between &#8220;prized prospect&#8221; Bichette and &#8220;prized prospect&#8221; Ohtani. They absolutely <em>are</em> both prized prospects, but they&#8217;re not the same. Ohtani would be the number one prospect in baseball. Bichette is not. But when we&#8217;re confronted with a situation like this, it&#8217;s the natural inclination to lean towards the more familiar of the two unknowns. In this case, rightly or wrongly, that&#8217;s Bo Bichette.</p>
<p>Another reason I was given for picking the Toronto prospect in this poll was even more fascinating and one that we ignore far too often:</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/11/road.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14211" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/11/road.png" alt="road" width="526" height="305" /></a></p>
<p>Sentimentality.</p>
<p>When I put it up there as a one word sentence, it reads as though I am dismissing sentiment as a ridiculous thing, but it&#8217;s the opposite. Far too often when debating various roster moves, we ignore the very real emotional attachment that people build with players on the roster. That’s an odd thing too, because this very same attachment is the number one reason for fandom. Without it, all stadiums would look like those in Miami or Tampa and the game actually <em>would</em> be dying. We all have players we get attached to and simply don&#8217;t want to see moved. For me, that&#8217;s Anthony Alford. He&#8217;s the nicest guy in the world and I don&#8217;t want to see him traded for anybody. I know it&#8217;s not rational, but I don&#8217;t care.</p>
<p>In the case of Bichette (and Vlad Guerrero Jr.; it&#8217;s often hard to separate the two), the prospect of building a home grown, franchise hitter is incredibly appealing. It hasn&#8217;t been done since&#8230;Vernon Wells? Carlos Delgado? Some of us think of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion as home grown because they became stars here, but they came from elsewhere. Even Devon Travis was picked up in trade. So the dream of seeing Bichette rise through the system as &#8220;our&#8221; guy and then becoming a star has a tremendous appeal. It can even lead to choosing a situation that is likely a bit worse (in this case Bichette over Ohtani) but that is much more enjoyable if it works out.</p>
<p>The big takeaway here is that there truly is no right way to appreciate this game. There are moves that are objectively better for the team, but they may not be better for the fan. Emotion, messaging, and attachment play a <em>big</em> part in how we view our own players and how we cheer for them and forgive their flaws. As a result what seemed like an obvious decision became incredibly less so.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s pretty cool.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
<p><em>Thank you to everyone who responded to the poll and to <a href="https://twitter.com/The_Road_Guy" target="_blank">@The_Road_Guy</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/W_McComb89" target="_blank">@W_McComb89</a> for letting me use their tweets. </em></p>
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