The Blue Jays are finally acting like the large-market team that they are. They just landed the best free agent on the market, George Springer, addressing a huge hole on their depth chart, and they managed to do so for less than the top free agent gets in most winters, with the deal reported at six years, $150 million.
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Toronto got plenty of production from center field last year, thanks to the breakout season from Teoscar Hernández, but in 2019, their outfield was a disaster, hitting a composite .227/.287/.449. Center field was still a weak spot for the team when Hernandez played the corners, with Randal Grichuk taking most of the reps there for the Jays in 2020. Grichuk just isn’t a good hitter, with his .312 OBP last year well above his .295 career mark, and most of his damage came against left-handed pitching, but at least he’s also a terrible defender in center.
If the Jays’ plan is to just stick Springer in center and leave almost everything else alone, they’re probably six wins better in 2021 as long as Springer has a typical performance. Three times in the past four years he’s posted at least a .359 OBP and slugged at least .522, and his wRC+, a park-adjusted measure of total offense, has been at least 140 in each of those seasons. (A wRC+ of 100 is league average.) The Jays were above league average in OBP and slugging in 2020, and thus third in runs scored per game in the American League, but there’s plenty of reason to think their offense, or at least the offense in their outfield, will regress. Hernández is wildly talented, but still struck out in 30.4 percent of his PA last year, and his .348 BABIP was a career high. He’s still extremely vulnerable to breaking stuff and he’s just going to see more of it going forward. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. also had a career year in 2020, some of which looks sustainable (he boosted his walk rate and cut his strikeout rate) while some doesn’t (the .351 BABIP is the highest he’s posted at any level in pro ball).
The Jays do still have some weak spots they should address to boost their odds of returning to the playoffs in 2021, especially with two very strong teams ahead of them in the AL East. Bo Bichette is a star, but they’ll probably have two problem spots in the infield. Santiago Espinal is just a placeholder at third base, a nice utility player who shouldn’t man a corner spot every day. The Springer agreement probably cements Cavan Biggio’s return to second base, where he’s a below-average defender, and his inability to hit major-league quality fastballs — exploited by Tampa Bay in the playoffs — makes him a liability at the plate as well. Meanwhile, their rotation has two potential aces at the top if Nate Pearson stays healthy behind Hyun-Jin Ryu, but Tanner Roark was below replacement level last year, and the last two spots right now might go to Trent Thornton and reclamation project Robbie Ray. They need at least one more starter, given Pearson’s injury history and the extreme uncertainty around the next three guys. They do have some starter depth, at least, with lefty Anthony Kay a possible sixth starter, right-hander Patrick Murphy very effective but rarely healthy, and right-hander Alek Manoah someone who I thought could zip through the low minors when the Jays took him in the first round in 2019. This could be a 95-win team with some pitching help, and maybe another infielder.
The Jays’ ownership has long acted as if they’re somehow a small-market team, but the truth is they play in Canada’s largest city, in a market that is huge by MLB standards. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has 6.4 million people, which ranks sixth among MLB markets, and not only do the Jays not have to share their city with another team — three of the top five MLB markets have two teams each — they have a whole country of over 37 million people in their broadcast area, more than half of that in their exclusive zone. The team is owned by Rogers Communications, with assets of over $29 billion, which also owns their broadcast properties. This is a large-market team with the revenue potential to spend on any player. It’s about time they flexed that muscle.
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Meanwhile, the Astros just lost one of their best players, and they don’t have an in-house replacement. Kyle Tucker might have finally locked down one of the corner outfield jobs, but that leaves two more spots to fill, and the Astros’ other outfield options are all fourth outfielder types or up-and-down guys such as Myles Straw, Chas McCormick or maybe Ronnie Dawson. They might be the perfect team to go after Jackie Bradley Jr., who’d fill their center field hole and give them a hitter with untapped potential they can try to access with a new set of voices from coaches and R&D.
(Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
