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Blue Jays Mailbag: Who Toronto Could and Should Target This Offseason

Go after Lorenzo Cain? Dee Gordon? Shohei Otani? Andrew Stoeten answers those questions and more in this week's mailbag.
Photos by Charles LeClaire, Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Andrew Stoeten answers your questions in our Blue Jays Mailbag, which runs weekly at VICE Sports. You can send him questions at stoeten@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter.

The playoffs are in full swing, and the Blue Jays are at home watching. But that hardly means there aren't big questions surrounding the club. Jays fans are already gearing up for what should be a fascinating, and perhaps even franchise-defining offseason.

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Will Josh Donalson sign an extension? Can the Jays land some impact players? Who stays, who goes, who should they be targeting? All these questions, in some form or another, come our way in this week's edition of the mailbag—so let's dig in!

If you have a Blue Jays question you'd like me to tackle for next week, be sure to send it to stoeten@gmail.com. As always, I have not read any of Griff's answers.

What do you think the Jays would have to give up to get Giancarlo? What free agent pitcher do YOU want them to get?
Ryan G.

1) I have absolutely no idea. I think I read Jon Heyman say this week that the Marlins will almost certainly have to eat some salary and get some prospects back, because the optics of a straight dumping of Stanton's contract would be so incredibly ugly, and that seems pretty reasonable. So… maybe they'd need to give up more than they'd be willing to, and we have a second reason—the first being the enormity of what's still owed on that deal—to think that this is never going to happen. Hypothetically, though, I don't think they'd need to give up Vlad or Bo from their minor league system, but beyond that I'm not really sure—though, as long as you're not giving up those two guys, does it really matter?



2) I don't think the Jays are in desperate need of another starter for 2018, to be honest. At least not one who isn't some kind of a free agent bargain or reclamation project. (Hey, how about Francisco Liriano? He should come pretty cheap!). But it would certainly behoove them to look beyond next season and consider the fact that Joe Biagini, Tom Pannone, and Ryan Borucki (let alone Conner Greene, Sean Reid-Foley, et al) are not going to be sufficient replacements for free agents J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada, and maybe look to bring in someone decent enough to warrant a deal of two or three years at mid-tier prices. I'd be very into that being Alex Cobb of the Rays, but I suspect a whole bunch of teams will see the appeal there too and the cost and term won't end up quite that low. So, uh… Lance Lynn? I don't even know.

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Have you changed your mind about Dee Gordon? Why or why not?
Ryan H.

Dee Gordon. Tell me why he's not as good as a casual look at his traditional stats show - but still could be good fit?
Terry

First, to Ryan's question, earlier in the summer I was a little cold on the idea of Gordon, because I wasn't really enamored with his bat. At Blue Jays Nation, I wrote about him just after the All-Star break, quoting statistics through the games of July 15, at which point his wRC+ for the season stood at just 85. The previous year his mark had been 73. And though in 2015 he'd produced a mark of 116, he ended up getting hit with a PED suspension early in the next year, which rendered that success a bit dubious.

I'm still not in love with the bat, but I must admit he finished this season pretty strong. From July 16 to the end of the season his wRC+ was 100, bringing his mark up to 95 on the season. And while that's still below average, it's mostly because of his lack of power—something he makes up for a little bit with his ability to steal bases. Gordon's OBP this season was .341, which isn't great but is good enough because of all the other things he does well. WAR certainly thinks so, pegging him as a 3.3 win player in 2017. (He was worth less the year before, though, in large part because he doesn't take walks, so his on-base is strongly tied to his BABIP, which dipped in 2016, producing an on-base percentage of .301, and led to a WAR of just 1.0 over 73 games.)

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If he's the guy that he was this year—the 95 wRC+, .341 OBP hitter—I'd be pretty thrilled with him in the Jays' lineup (it doesn't hurt that he's a lefty bat and would be a natural choice as the lead-off hitter, which is something the Jays don't have). But when it was looking earlier in the season like he might be trending closer to the guy he was in 2016 again, that's a bit scary.

I'd be a little more willing to take that risk given the way he ended this season. And he, of course, makes some sense for the Jays because he'd provide cover for Devon Travis at second base, though one of the two of them could certainly play left field, and he might be available at a reasonable price, given that the Jays would gladly take on much or all of his salary, and the Marlins might be motivated sellers. Plus, his contract is quite reasonable: $10.8 million in 2018, $13.3 million in 2019, $13.8 million in 2020, and a club option after that.

To Terry's question, Gordon is not as good as a casual look at his traditional stats would show because it's traditional to overvalue batting average and stolen bases—basically the only things he does well, offensively. He has no power whatsoever, and no on-base skills beyond legging out the many, many ground balls he hits (at 57.6 percent, he had the highest ground-ball rate of any hitter in the league in 2017). A lot of the time he makes it work, providing enough with his glove and on the base paths to be a pretty valuable player, but it's tenuous. Like I say, throw some bad batted ball luck his way, like he had in 2016, or an injury that costs him a bit of speed, and he might be a real drag on a lineup. That 73 wRC+ he put up in 2016? Not much higher than the nice mark of 69 achieved by Ryan Goins this year. So… yeah.

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That all said, I'd be happy to see the Jays give it a try, provided they can land him for the right price.

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Do u sign Otani if it means not signing Donaldson?
Jeff

Look, I don't think they're going to sign both of them—or either of them, frankly—but I don't know that we need to set up this false choice, either. For one, because the CBA forces teams to treat Otani like an international amateur player (subjecting him to the same bonus limitations as the 16-year-old kids who get signed out of Latin America every July 2nd), he's not going to be particularly expensive at first (unless some team figures out a particularly clever way around the rules that allows them to pay him more, but that seems unlikely, as the commissioner's office will be watching this all very closely).

The only big cost at first would be the $20 million posting fee that whichever club signs Otani will owe to his Japanese club, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. And while that, plus a Donaldson extension, would stretch the Jays' budget in the near term, they could absolutely make it work—especially if they save a few million dollars early in Donaldson's extension by backloading those dollars to later in the deal.



And as for the long term? It feels sometimes like the Jays' payroll is going to be bloated and unmanageable forever, but things are maybe not quite that awful. Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki will each make $20 million in 2018 and 2019, but then that goes away: Martin is a free agent after 2019, and though Tulo's contract continues for one more year (plus an option/buyout), at that point his salary drops to $14 million. The 2020 Blue Jays currently have just $16 million on the books, and while commitments to guys like Stroman, Sanchez, and Osuna will have to be added to that total, given that the club has been running about a $165 million payroll in 2017, that gives them a whole lot of flexibility.

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They could make it work. They all but certainly won't, but they could!

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Using your crystal ball 2018 lineup what positions will be a new starting name? No need for names or who they acquire. For example RF = New.
Steven

I'm not much of a crystal ball guy, to be honest, but I'd think someone different will be in right field, perhaps in left field, and definitely off the bench in terms of infield depth. How good the infielder is might determine what happens to the current pieces in left. Like, if the Jays go out and get an everyday player like Gordon, who we discussed about, that can cover Travis at second, or play left field (or force Travis there) when both players are healthy, then there's not much of a need for Ezequiel Carrera and Steve Pearce.

Some of this may also be dictated by what happens with the Blue Jays' upcoming 40-man roster crunch. Tammy Rainey wrote a great piece about this last month at BP Toronto, noting that there isn't much room on the Jays' 40-man roster, and a whole lot of minor leaguers the club will need to add to it in order to ensure they don't get taken in the Rule 5 draft. Some big league players currently on the 40-man may be moved out—released, non-tendered, or traded—in order to free up some extra 40-man space, and some prospects may be traded away to avoid losing them for nothing. Some deals may even start with those back-of-the-40-man types and expand from there. That could leave the Jays with some unexpected pieces on their roster by early December, at which point whatever our crystal balls are saying right now will likely be rendered useless.

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If St. Louis is going for Donaldson, what kind of return could you live with?
Vikas

The kind of return St. Louis wouldn't be willing to give up.

Like, Alex Reyes—the Cardinals' top prospect and maybe the best pitching prospect in baseball before missing this year with Tommy John surgery—definitely gets my attention. But why would they give up a guy like that for just a year of Donaldson? Maybe the Jays can get more in return by allowing the Cardinals—or another team—the chance to sign Donaldson to a contract extension before the trade goes through, like the Mets did when dealing R.A. Dickey to us. But the thing with that trade was that the Mets weren't trying to be good the next year. The key guys they got back were still in the low minors. Trying to get young big leaguers from a team that's got designs on contending is a whole other thing. Why would the Jays be interested in anybody's big league jetsam?

Photo by John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports

Hard to see a Donaldson deal lining up with anyone until the Jays are really willing to accept taking a step back and getting players in return who are a little farther away. Maybe that time comes in July. Maybe it never comes. Maybe they extend him and we no longer have to think about it.

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Lorenzo Cain, 5 yrs/75M. Who says no, Jays or Cain?
@EvilSuperOmario

Both? Cain is a year older than Dexter Fowler was last winter, when he got five years and $82.5 million from the Cardinals, but is coming off a season nearly as good, a four or five year stretch that has been quite a bit better, has generally been the healthier player, and plays the more important position. I haven't thought about what else might be on the market in centre too much, or who might be lining up for his services, but I have to believe Cain can get what Fowler did.

But I'm also not sure he's the kind of guy the Blue Jays are going to look at.

The Jays may only have four months of Donaldson left, so signing up for five years of Cain, who will turn 32 in April, probably doesn't make enough sense. Especially since they have a lot of players already that look like their ideal spots will be in centre. Having an exceptionally athletic outfield would be a pretty great and exciting thing to watch, but they're going to need some guys who can hit, too. Moving toward a future outfield of something like Alford, Cain, and Hernandez is setting the offensive bar a little too low for my taste—they'd need those two youngsters to really get to the peak of their potential for that to work, and as we all know that rarely happens.

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What should the Blue Jays hashtag slogan be in 2018? They've sadly already used "Let's Rise."
Kate

ExtendDonaldson