The 2014 Toronto Blue Jays Thread

[Chev-boyar-sky]

This deal will be horrible in a few years IMO but I get that Anthopoulous and the Jays brass are trying to maximize the contending window with Joey Bats and EE.

Reyes
Martin
Donaldson
Bautista
Encarnacion

Pretty solid 5 bats. The rest of the lineup so far......

Also I don't think they do a heck of a lot better without adding an arm of significance.

 

[L K]

Might as well go for broke now and splash on one of those front end starters.  They could still really use Melky or someone else to bolster the outfield.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Damn, he's been worth almost 15 wins over the last 2 seasons?  And under control for 4 years?

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5038&position=3B

Also:

ESPNStatsInfo

Josh Donaldson reportedly traded from A's to Blue Jays. Donaldson is 2nd behind Mike Trout in WAR among position players last 2 seasons.

 

[Chev-boyar-sky]

Can one of you baseball heads chime in (Nik, Busta?)

From a layman's understanding of things if Lawrie had played a full season (and continued with similar production) he would've hit 24 HR and had 72 RBI's. Not exactly as lofty as Donaldson's numbers but I wonder about things like quality of AB's (i.e. was Donaldson hitting 4 or 5 with lots of runners on when he came up vs. Lawrie hitting 2 or 6-9 with less quality AB's).

I'm under the impression Lawrie is the better defensive player. So it looks like this really comes down to can Lawrie stay healthy ,or as I stated in my last post, effectively trading for a Lawrie equivalent who's at his ceiling now.

Donaldson's good but he really only has 2 years of production, albeit in a park that is difficult for hitters.

 

[Captain Canuck]

I like this trade! The Jays have to go for it before EE and Bautista get too old and the team has to go into rebuild mode.
Donaldson is WAY better than Lawrie, hence why we gave up 3 solid prospects as well in the deal.

The strange part of this off-season is upgrading 3B and C when we didn't necessarily have to, while the real needs at 2B,OF,and bullpen remain.
I'm sure AA isn't done yet, but interesting approach he has taken thus far.

 

[Kin]

Can one of you baseball heads chime in (Nik, Busta?)

From a layman's understanding of things if Lawrie had played a full season (and continued with similar production) he would've hit 24 HR and had 72 RBI's. Not exactly as lofty as Donaldson's numbers but I wonder about things like quality of AB's (i.e. was Donaldson hitting 4 or 5 with lots of runners on when he came up vs. Lawrie hitting 2 or 6-9 with less quality AB's).

I'm under the impression Lawrie is the better defensive player. So it looks like this really comes down to can Lawrie stay healthy ,or as I stated in my last post, effectively trading for a Lawrie equivalent who's at his ceiling now.

Donaldson's good but he really only has 2 years of production, albeit in a park that is difficult for hitters.

Well, for starters, RBI is not really a stat that's given a lot of weight these days among the calculator set. So the important thing to look at with regards to offensive value are things like WAR or OPS+ which take things like park factors into effect. Lawrie, playing 74 games, was rated as contributing 1.5 wins above a replacement level hitter at third base. Donaldson, playing a full season, was rated as contributing 5 wins above that level with his bat. This can be partially attributed to his splits because, as you note, Oakland's a tough park to hit in. If you just double his numbers playing on the road this year he'd have hit 36 homeruns with a .276/.361/.513 slash line.

And while defensive evaluation can be tricky to pin down, Donaldson rates as being phenomenal defensively by most evaluations, at least as good as Lawrie if not better.

 

[Kin]

Just to highlight the splits a little here are their career home/road numbers:

Donaldson
Home OPS: .772
Away OPS: .835

Lawrie
Home OPS: .815
Away OPS: .683

 

[bustaheims]

Can one of you baseball heads chime in (Nik, Busta?)

From a layman's understanding of things if Lawrie had played a full season (and continued with similar production) he would've hit 24 HR and had 72 RBI's. Not exactly as lofty as Donaldson's numbers but I wonder about things like quality of AB's (i.e. was Donaldson hitting 4 or 5 with lots of runners on when he came up vs. Lawrie hitting 2 or 6-9 with less quality AB's).

I'm under the impression Lawrie is the better defensive player. So it looks like this really comes down to can Lawrie stay healthy ,or as I stated in my last post, effectively trading for a Lawrie equivalent who's at his ceiling now.

Donaldson's good but he really only has 2 years of production, albeit in a park that is difficult for hitters.

Firstly, as fun as it is to expand on prorated numbers, that's just not how things work in the real world. Lawrie's inability to stay healthy is a major issue and significantly impacts his value. You can't really proceed with expecting him to play more than 100 or so games. Also, as Nik pointed out, park factors play in significantly here, as well as things like pitch selection, etc. Donaldson, for instance, has almost as many walks last season as Lawrie has in his entire MLB career. He's a significantly better bat that Lawrie.

As for defence, Lawrie is likely the flashier defensive player, but, in terms of overall defensive ability, it's probably pretty close. Donaldson's defensive metrics are among the best in the game for his position.

Also, on top of being an equivalent fielder and a better bat, Donaldson is a year further away from free agency. So, the extra year of team control adds to his value, as well. Lawrie gains a little value from his defensive flexibility - he can play 2B as well as on the corner, while Donaldson is a pure corner guy - but the Jays got a significantly better asset here without giving up any really significant pieces of their MLB roster, or as prospects who were likely to make a significant contribution in the near future (if at all - Nolin projects to be a middle to back of the rotation starter, Graveman only has one full professional season under his belt and Barreto, probably the best of the 3, is only 18). Even if Lawrie can stay healthy, I doubt he'll come anywhere near Donaldson's number offensively - especially playing in Oakland for half his games.

 

[Kin]

Donaldson, for instance, has almost as many walks last season as Lawrie has in his entire MLB career.

Yeah, one of the things that jumped out at me when looking at Lawrie's numbers is his walk rate. Donaldson, who has an excellent eye, walked every 9.1 plate appearances. Lawrie, in his first year, was actually pretty close to that walking every 10.7 PA's. Since then, though, Lawrie's walk rate has dropped pretty dramatically, falling all the way to a walk every 17.6 PA's.

That's pretty bad. What's worse is it's not really the sort of thing you can attribute to injury either. If Lawrie is going to be a productive player I think he's going to have to make some changes to his approach in addition to finding a way to stay healthy.

 

[Rick C.]

I chuckle every time I see this clip of Lawrie on Jose Reyes bobblehead day

 

[L K]

The one thing I would say in defense of Lawrie is, he's 24 years old.  Plenty of time to mature as a player.  Donaldson didn't establish himself with a big season until he was 27 so the fair comparison might be Lawrie's performance 3 years from now.  That being said, the Jays window is closing with the current makeup of the team.  Their 1-5 hitters are deadly right now with Reyes (the worst of the bunch) - Martin - Encarnacion - Bautista - Donaldson.  If the Jays decide to bring back Melky he could slot in as the 2nd hitter or 6th guy.  It makes having Ryan Goins useless bat more tolerable given that he is such as ++++ defender. 

If the Jays really do have 20-30 million left in cap space getting Melky for 12-15 seems reasonable.  They would still have the opportunity to bring in one of the front line starters, especially if they package Navarro + Happ for something.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

The one thing I would say in defense of Lawrie is, he's 24 years old.  Plenty of time to mature as a player.  Donaldson didn't establish himself with a big season until he was 27 so the fair comparison might be Lawrie's performance 3 years from now.  That being said, the Jays window is closing with the current makeup of the team.  Their 1-5 hitters are deadly right now with Reyes (the worst of the bunch) - Martin - Encarnacion - Bautista - Donaldson.  If the Jays decide to bring back Melky he could slot in as the 2nd hitter or 6th guy.  It makes having Ryan Goins useless bat more tolerable given that he is such as ++++ defender. 

If the Jays really do have 20-30 million left in cap space getting Melky for 12-15 seems reasonable.  They would still have the opportunity to bring in one of the front line starters, especially if they package Navarro + Happ for something.

I think it was less believing that Lawrie would reach his potential and more that AA felt he couldn't rely on Lawrie to be healthy on a team he wants to contend right now.  If you go in with Lawrie and he gets hurt again it really leaves a big hole.  I know Donaldson could get hurt too, but based on history so far there's at least a history of health whether that's fair or not to Lawrie.

 

[Kin]

The one thing I would say in defense of Lawrie is, he's 24 years old.  Plenty of time to mature as a player.  Donaldson didn't establish himself with a big season until he was 27 so the fair comparison might be Lawrie's performance 3 years from now.

I don't know how much I'd attribute Donaldson's relatively late start to his not "establishing himself" as opposed to the efforts that the Cubs and A's made developing him as a catcher. He hit really well at every level but they brought him along slowly, probably for defensive reasons.

Anyways, I don't think Lawrie needs defending. He's a good player. Who could be a very valuable player if he figures out a way to stay in the lineup. The point I was making re: his walk rate was that his problems aren't entirely injury related and some things are going in the wrong direction besides his games played numbers.

 

[Kin]

Lawrie attributes injuries to playing on Turf

Honestly, the fact that the Jays haven't addressed this is getting embarrassing. Every year we hear about players not wanting to play on Turf with good reason and the Jays are moving at a glacial pace on the issue because...nobody wants the Argos to die? They want to keep the Dome as a concert venue?

The Jays need to stop tying their hands behind their back. They're at enough of a disadvantage already.

 

[TML fan]

I attribute it to too much Red Bull and steroids.

Not saying I disagree that the Jays should replace the turf, just that Lawrie's injuries probably have more to do with him being a reckless meathead than the turf he barely played on.

 

[Derk]

Yeah, I feel the same way as you do Nik. Get grass in there already.

Not really sure that Lawrie's injuries can be attributed to turf, though - particularly the broken hand. Those oblique strains are puzzling though (National Post Article), but those seem to have more to do with throwing and batting. Granted, the body is an entire organism, so who knows if some sort of compensation from playing on turf was going on....

Also, in an interesting move, Jays did not tender to Smoak, Dirks and Mayberry Jr. It will be interesting to see where they go now.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

I figured by now there would have been some sort of study out comparing the number of injuries in MLB during the period when there were a number of stadiums with turf compared to periods after.

 

[bustaheims]

Also, in an interesting move, Jays did not tender to Smoak, Dirks and Mayberry Jr. It will be interesting to see where they go now.

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see some, or even all, of them back with the Jays. This was really more about not wanting them back at arbitration level prices.

 

[Kin]

Not really sure that Lawrie's injuries can be attributed to turf, though - particularly the broken hand. Those oblique strains are puzzling though (National Post Article), but those seem to have more to do with throwing and batting. Granted, the body is an entire organism, so who knows if some sort of compensation from playing on turf was going on....

Yeah and Lawrie's not a doctor so we shouldn't take his word for what caused his injuries. The key thing from that article for me was more that Lawrie didn't want to play on Turf and how that seems to be a pretty common viewpoint.

As to the way turf actually affects injuries, there are studies out there on it, including this:

Synthetic Playing Surfaces and Athlete Health

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Also, in an interesting move, Jays did not tender to Smoak, Dirks and Mayberry Jr. It will be interesting to see where they go now.

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see some, or even all, of them back with the Jays. This was really more about not wanting them back at arbitration level prices.

They just signed Smoak to a 1 year, $1 million deal.