OT: The Toronto Blue Jays

[Pwner]

Didn’t need to trade for Varsho at all when you can guys like Kiermaier and Michael Taylor for free.

And next year, Varsho will cost as much as those guys, then one more year and he’s a FA too. That’s when Moreno will hit his arbitration years (if they don’t extend him first.)

So the Jays will get a 3 Win player for $10 mil? Nice! That is a big win and a great bit of business!

Also, if Moreno is as good as you say he is (one of the best Catchers in Baseball) then what would his Arbitration awards be? Surely not low.

So are we using WAR/650 now? Cool, no one said Moreno sucks, but what is the probability a Catcher will play near a full season? Would a CF's probability of reaching a full season be higher?

FACT: The Jays have gotten more real value (innings played) out of Varsho than The D-Backs have gotten out of Moreno.

I will restate my position for hopefully the last time. I think Shatkins are a middling front office. Not great, not bad, somewhere in the middle (not bottom 5). They are bad at PR. Their early work wasn't great but they did uncover some legit players (LGJ, TEO), plus they have been legit great at pitching reclamation projects. And have been the only FO to get Rogers to spend up to their potential (though with rate of inflation AA got that too).

Shatkins loves the smell of their own farts. Loves their own algorithms and wants everything done their way (their hitting approach baffles the mind but I am sure they have a data set that leads the way. Also like hard hit ball data is great and all but players still need to make contact...)

I think they are not aggressive enough (much like the Leafs FO, I wonder if Rogers has something to do with it...) and are much more comfortable hitting singles then swinging for the fences (years of control and all).

They have made the play-offs 3 out of the last 5 year (I know, super easy, barely an inconvenience) and have generally made The Jays feel like a big time organization.

But it also seems like most of their moves come in a vacuum, and that there are no through lines or "grand plan" in their player acquisitions.

All of this makes their teams feel disjointed and confusing. But that doesn't mean that they don't or can't make good decisions. Varsho was one of them. He is their second best player. FACT. I don't love that he was stuck playing LF and not the best position for his talents in CF, but Shatkins loves Defence now - over hitting

As I have said, there are a lot of things to ding or hate about Shatkins but Varsho and IKF are bad avatars for that.

It truly feels like the Dubas discussions in Dubas's early years. Now in hindsight the Dubas haters were proven right, and I suspect that the Shatkins haters will be too, but that doesn't mean you can't acknoledge the things they got right.

I know it is hard for you, and your hate of this FO is your main vibe - which to be fair is the vibe of most of the posters in this tread - but give up the Varsho hate, he is probably a good return for Moreno (not great but good).

 

[axlsalinger]

Let’s try this, see if it sinks in…

WAR/650

2023
Moreno: 3.9
(Gurriel: 2.3)
Varsho: 2.3

2024
Moreno: 4.8
Varsho: 4.3

Surely you must be aware of how disingenuous this argument is, since catchers never come close to 650 plate appearances.

Also, one thing to understand is that over the past few years, Rogers Centre has become a pitchers park, especially pronounced after the renos. Not sure this was intentional in the planning or not, but they definitely leaned into valuing defense more last year and it worked quite well as the pitching and D were stellar all year. Plus it was likely a market inefficiency to begin with.

This year, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, but they definitely under-emphasized the hitting side.

 

[manny]

Surely you must be aware of how disingenuous this argument is, since catchers never come close to 650 plate appearances.

Also, one thing to understand is that over the past few years, Rogers Centre has become a pitchers park, especially pronounced after the renos. Not sure this was intentional in the planning or not, but they definitely leaned into valuing defense more last year and it worked quite well as the pitching and D were stellar all year. Plus it was likely a market inefficiency to begin with.

This year, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, but they definitely under-emphasized the hitting side.

It’s not disingenuous at all. Using WAR as a rate stat shows that Moreno was and is more valuable when he’s in the lineup. When a player isn’t in the lineup, the team gets value out of whoever is playing. If the backup is an average player, that’s about 2WAR/season. Arizona hasn’t had a good backup C last few years so Moreno has been even more valuable to them.

Agreed on one thing, which is that OF defence is a market inefficiency. That’s why it is available for next to nothing, and that’s why the Jays didn’t need to trade one of the best prospects in MLB for it.

 

[MindzEye]

So the Jays will get a 3 Win player for $10 mil?

Maybe not, but a 2 war defensive outfielder...sure. That extra .5-1 WAR isn't worth giving up a fringe all star 23 yr old catcher for. The idea behind trading for Varsho was never that he was a glove only defensive specialist, but a sneaky elite 2 way player.

FACT: The Jays have gotten more real value (innings played)

That's not what real value is. The /650 argument holds weight here. The entire point is to put together a team good enough to win in the fall. You need 2 catchers. If your 1A catcher plays 110 games, puts up ~2.5 WAR in "real value" but has the in game impact of a 3.5-4 WAR player when he plays....well, when you're not resting him in October, that kind of fucking matters. This is like arguing a middle of the rotation guy who put up 2 WAR in 30+ starts is better than a front of the rotation guy who put up 2 war in 20 starts. Who do you want on the mound for game 1?

I will restate my position for hopefully the last time.

afuckingmen to that

But that doesn't mean that they don't or can't make good decisions. Varsho was one of them.

Truly and simply was not. We received less actual value for what we sent than what we got (all of these conversations conveniently forget that Lourdes exists and had 1 cheap season left on his deal at the time of the trade, and he almost matched Varsho in WAR by himself last season) and when you're trading a BA #1 prospect away and you're not getting significant perceived value on top, you fucked up. So in just pure value, we traded 7.8 WAR and received 4.8 WAR back, and we got absolutely zero skill premium for the perceived value of an elite prospect (who was obviously MLB ready as we've since seen)

Moreno was the most valuable part of the trade, but we paid a premium for Varsho instead. Moreno has been the best player since the trade on top of that, full stop. If you were putting together a starting lineup for a playoff team and could only pick one of the three players for it, and you didn't pick Moreno, you should have your head examined.

The primary pro Varsho argument was that he was a good stick on top of being elite defensively. That he was a 4-5+ WAR player, not a 2-3 WAR player. He's missed performance expectations by about half at this point, that's a fucking disaster when the trade was at best even up if what we were getting was a 4-5 WAR player.

 

[Pwner]

Maybe not, but a 2 war defensive outfielder...sure. That extra .5-1 WAR isn't worth giving up a fringe all star 23 yr old catcher for. The idea behind trading for Varsho was never that he was a glove only defensive specialist, but a sneaky elite 2 way player.



That's not what real value is. The /650 argument holds weight here. The entire point is to put together a team good enough to win in the fall. You need 2 catchers. If your 1A catcher plays 110 games, puts up ~2.5 WAR in "real value" but has the in game impact of a 3.5-4 WAR player when he plays....well, when you're not resting him in October, that kind of fucking matters. This is like arguing a middle of the rotation guy who put up 2 WAR in 30+ starts is better than a front of the rotation guy who put up 2 war in 20 starts. Who do you want on the mound for game 1?



afuckingmen to that



Truly and simply was not. We received less actual value for what we sent than what we got (all of these conversations conveniently forget that Lourdes exists and had 1 cheap season left on his deal at the time of the trade, and he almost matched Varsho in WAR by himself last season) and when you're trading a BA #1 prospect away and you're not getting significant perceived value on top, you fucked up. So in just pure value, we traded 7.8 WAR and received 4.8 WAR back, and we got absolutely zero skill premium for the perceived value of an elite prospect (who was obviously MLB ready as we've since seen)

Moreno was the most valuable part of the trade, but we paid a premium for Varsho instead. Moreno has been the best player since the trade on top of that, full stop. If you were putting together a starting lineup for a playoff team and could only pick one of the three players for it, and you didn't pick Moreno, you should have your head examined.

The primary pro Varsho argument was that he was a good stick on top of being elite defensively. That he was a 4-5+ WAR player, not a 2-3 WAR player. He's missed performance expectations by about half at this point, that's a fucking disaster when the trade was at best even up if what we were getting was a 4-5 WAR player.

Hold on. Weren't you the one that said you pay a premium from going from 2 WAR to 3 WAR and it is harder to upgrade going from 2 WAR to 3 WAR? I am pretty sure that was you.

Who knows maybe it wasn't you and I gaslighted myself.

 

[MindzEye]

Hold on. Weren't you the one that said you pay a premium from going from 2 WAR to 3 WAR and it is harder to upgrade going from 2 WAR to 3 WAR? I am pretty sure that was you.

Who knows maybe it wasn't you and I gaslighted myself.

You're not wrong, you're just misusing what I've said in the past.

WAR is not linear in value imo because of rarity, yes. But a 2.5 WAR player isn't significantly less rare than a 2 WAR player. Less rare, sure, but not to the point where it's worth paying a significant premium for the player. Going from a 2 war player to a 4-5 war player though? Absolutely work a bucket. Even from 3.5-4 to a ~5 WAR player is a big jump. It's a huge competitive advantage to have elite players on your team. There were 16 position players in all of MLB last year with 5+ WAR. Massively valuable.

If you wanted a more accurate representation of it, you could graph it. But long story short, 2.0 WAR was 130th in MLB last year and 2.5 war was 100th. 4 WAR was 44th, and 4.5 was 28th about double the difficulty in improving the same amount of raw value.

 

[manny]

Kiermaier put up 2.8 fWAR last year in 400PAs.

 

[MyNameIsJonas]

There is a reason peak Kevin Pillar was never paid. Those dudes are undervalued. Varsho needs like a 110 WRC for the deal to be good for the Jays and he not to simply be a defensive wizard with mild pop that hits 8th on a good team

 

[manny]

You're not wrong, you're just misusing what I've said in the past.

WAR is not linear in value imo because of rarity, yes. But a 2.5 WAR player isn't significantly less rare than a 2 WAR player. Less rare, sure, but not to the point where it's worth paying a significant premium for the player. Going from a 2 war player to a 4-5 war player though? Absolutely work a bucket. Even from 3.5-4 to a ~5 WAR player is a big jump. It's a huge competitive advantage to have elite players on your team. There were 16 position players in all of MLB last year with 5+ WAR. Massively valuable.

If you wanted a more accurate representation of it, you could graph it. But long story short, 2.0 WAR was 130th in MLB last year and 2.5 war was 100th. 4 WAR was 44th, and 4.5 was 28th about double the difficulty in improving the same amount of raw value.

This is the same idea that the analysis showing 1 WAR was worth around $9M in free agency was based on. $9M is roughly the value of the incremental increase from a league average (i.e. 2 WAR player) to a 3 WAR player, and then another $9M to get to 4 WAR and so on. Pretty sure Pwner here still doesn’t understand this. That’s partly why he was happy with the IKF contract, because IKF projected to be around a 1 WAR player. Those guys are available all the time for free. 2 win defensive OF are too.

Anyway, it’s pretty weird to argue on one hand the Atkins and Shapiro are smart to recognize a market inefficiency in OF defence, and then on the other hand that it’s tidy work to pay top dollar for that exact skill set. The reason teams like Tampa are able to win on 30% of our budget is because they recognize market inefficiencies and then pay for them accordingly.

 

[manny]

There is a reason peak Kevin Pillar was never paid. Those dudes are undervalued. Varsho needs like a 110 WRC for the deal to be good for the Jays and he not to simply be a defensive wizard with mild pop that hits 8th on a good team

Yes, this, and also defensive aging curves are not pretty. Varsho was probably at his peak defensive ability last year (age 26 season). We can expect a gradual decline until 30 and then a steeper dropoff.

His D is so good that he’ll probably still be a good defensive CF for a while, but soon enough it’s not going to be enough to make up for the weak bat. Kevin Pillar, in other words.

 

[zeke]

I'm all for criticizing the FO but you gotta admit the deal hasn't exactly been a disaster.

Gurriel is the extremely replaceable mediocrity most of us thought he was - 102wrc+, 2.0war/650 since the trade. And he was a free agent. And he's 30 turning 31 this year. Not anything to care about there.


The other two are good not great young prime players.

Since the trade

Varsho 90wrc+, 4.8war, 3.2war/650
Moreno 104wrc+, 4.6war, 4.3war/650

obviously moreno's pace looks better but you couldn't expect him to maintain that pace playing every day.

The projection systems still see Varsho's babip eventually coming up, but admittedly that might no longer be a realistic hope. The projection systems see all three of Varsho, Moreno, Kirk as similar going forward still.

Varsho 104wrc+, 3.8war/650
Moreno 111wrc+, 4.8war/650
Kirk 112wrc+, 5.1war/650

it's a loss but it's not any kind of disaster.

 

[manny]

It was a really, really bad trade. The D-Backs won big in year one, which is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen when you trade your established MLBer for a prospect (and a throw-in).

Here’s a very on-point article from way back about 3 weeks ago. Fangraphs rates Moreno as #34 in trade value among all players in baseball.

2024 Trade Value: Nos. 31-40

The top three position player prospects in baseball share space with a plethora of young hitters who play up-the-middle defensive positions.

blogs.fangraphs.com

He might be an excellent defensive catcher. He’s a good receiver. He’s one of the best in baseball at controlling the running game. He’s athletic and young. He’s almost certainly an above-average hitter, too; he has excellent bat control, a solid approach at the plate, and average power. It’s not quite the same, but Yasmani Grandal springs to mind as an overall value comp; plus-plus defense and plus offense, even if the offense is weirdly shaped at times.

Arizona could trade Moreno right now for 5 Varshos. The trade is maybe not a “disaster” in that Varsho is still a useful player. And yet it’s one of the worst trades from a value standpoint in recent memory.

 

[zeke]

"useful" is a dumb way to describe him. He's top-50 in WAR this year. He's top-50 in WAR the last 3yrs. And that's without getting complete full playing time. He's a very good player.

 

[MindzEye]

I'm all for criticizing the FO but you gotta admit the deal hasn't exactly been a disaster.

Gurriel is the extremely replaceable mediocrity most of us thought he was - 102wrc+, 2.0war/650 since the trade. And he was a free agent. And he's 30 turning 31 this year. Not anything to care about there.


The other two are good not great young prime players.

Since the trade

Varsho 90wrc+, 4.8war, 3.2war/650
Moreno 104wrc+, 4.6war, 4.3war/650

obviously moreno's pace looks better but you couldn't expect him to maintain that pace playing every day.

The projection systems still see Varsho's babip eventually coming up, but admittedly that might no longer be a realistic hope. The projection systems see all three of Varsho, Moreno, Kirk as similar going forward still.

Varsho 104wrc+, 3.8war/650
Moreno 111wrc+, 4.8war/650
Kirk 112wrc+, 5.1war/650

it's a loss but it's not any kind of disaster.

I don't see how it's not at least a small disaster. Varsho in his first year here was worth nearly the same as Gurriel, even ignoring the Moreno bit for a moment. That's the first glowing red flag. You just traded the #1 prospect in baseball for a 26 yr old and the guy you targeted didn't out perform the throw in. It was also the last cheap year on Gurriel's deal. 5.4 million for 2 WAR? Sure why not.

Just the opportunity cost here is fucking immense. There's a lot of players you could have targeted if you were willing to part with Moreno for them. They got a 2.5 WAR outfield instead whose carrying tool is elite outfield defence while being built like a fire hydrant. It's a body type reknown for maintaining elite athleticism into it's 30's.

As for the projections, I'm going to continue respectfully disagreeing on Varsho and Kirk as I have for a few seasons now. Kirk has 10 weeks of elite All star performance in his career carrying a lot of water for him, and it's now way in the rear view mirror. He's a no power slap hitter that happens to be the slowest base runner in baseball, turrible babip is just baked into his phsyical profile and will continue to sewer whatever chance he has of being an average offensive player going forward. The game gets harder as a 5'8 fat guy as you get older, not easier.

Varsho has terrible contact skills and some pop. He looks to be at best a league average stick that you have to stash down the lineup because his on base profile is terrible and you'll take it if your 8 hitter puts up a .290obp but hits 20-25 hr and runs the bases pretty pretty good. But there's no way he's in the top 5-6 of a batting order on a good team.

 

[MindzEye]

"useful" is a dumb way to describe him. He's top-50 in WAR this year. He's top-50 in WAR the last 3yrs. And that's without getting complete full playing time. He's a very good player.

Meh. He's a very, very, very good defensive OF who can work on a team that has bangers around him and you don't need him to be a consistent provider of offence at all. When one of his 20-25 HR's shows up at random, it's lovely. The rest of the time he's close to being a black hole. But an absolute gem to drop into CF and make your pitchers lives better, sure.

 

[zeke]

He's got a 96wrc+ this year. 96wrc+ the last 3yrs. 96wrc+ career.

Slightly below average hitter, while being the best defensive OF in baseball.

 

[manny]

"useful" is a dumb way to describe him. He's top-50 in WAR this year. He's top-50 in WAR the last 3yrs. And that's without getting complete full playing time. He's a very good player.

All of it defensive value. He is negative offensive value over the past 3 years (and all of the positive value he put up was in Arizona).

“Useful” is accurate in this context because, again, all of his value comes from the skill that is maybe the least valued skill in baseball. Doesn’t mean it isn’t good, just that you don’t really have to pay for it. So you can get good defensive OF who can’t hit AND keep your other good players.

They could have waited two years and picked him up as a DFA. Team would have been better last year with Gurriel and Moreno and it would be better this year too.

 

[mbow30]

Whatever his war is having a 205 hitter in your lineup, at a premium offensive position for most of those abs here is a fucking disaster.

 

[zeke]

still don't think people understand how the defensive component of war works.

 

[manny]

Just straight up weighing the WAR of a guy who has negative value other than OF defence with a plus hitting, plus plus defensive C comes off as pretty uninformed tbh. It’s a little bit like comparing starting P and relief P WAR. You could conclude that Mariano Rivera during his peak was roughly equal in value to Steve Traschel. Both sort of 1.5-2.5 WAR pitchers, disingenuous to say Rivera brought more value per inning, etc.