Quote:
Originally Posted by bluejays
3rd - open
2nd - open
LF - Varsho (question as to if he can be an offensive contributor)
CF - open
RF - Springer (question if he can be healthy and produce offensively again)
1st - Vlad (gotta bring his numbers up to what he was from three years ago)
C - the tandem was pretty pathetic last year. Questions as to what they can do consistently
DH - open
There are definitely questions and holes in the offence.
The bench guys, aren't amounting to much production-wise. Biggio turned it on at year end but truly hasn't shown much throughout his career. Sure, start him at 2nd, but he's still a question from a consistency perspective. Pitching is on point though that was largely because injuries were a minimum. Romano showed cracks though, so that's something to keep an eye on, though probably not a huge concern like the bats above. So yeah, I think there's a lot to address overall this off-season.
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Varsho will be the CF, and he put p 2.1 fWAR last season despite being below league average with the bat (85 wRC+) ad he projects better defensively as a CF, so the OF hole is in LF
Springer had his worst batting season of his career (104 wRC+) and still put up 2.2 fWAR, that is not a hole, and I would bet his offense bounces back some
Kirk and Jansen combined for 3.6 fWAR and that was with Jansen injured and Kirk having a terrible year on offense, this is not a hole it's top 5 in all of MLB at the position
Vlad was pathetic with 1 fWAR, but the Jays still won 89 games and made the playoffs despite that, this is also not a hole in the line up. He needs to better for sure, but he was still a positive contributor and there is always a chance he has a resurgence, especially if they signed Ohtani which would take some of the pressure off of Vlad
And since this is a discussion about signing Ohtani, well then the DH slot would also not be open, it would be filled with one of the best hitters in all of MLB
So like I said, LF, 2B, 3B are the only holes I see after signing Ohtani and the Jays have a plethora of replacement level guys (with upside) to fill those holes cheaply, plus my bet is they would have no issue attracting more talent to sign with them after signing the best player in the game.
This is a team that prided itself on having no real holes in the line up last season. That's why they were able to win 89 games despite HUGE underperformances from a lot of their players like Vlad and Springer and Kirk and Varsho. There were no black holes weighing them down. Biggio ended up with 1 fWAR, Schneider had 2 fWAR in 35 games lol. Even Espinal finished the season at 0.1 fWAR and didn't drag the team down.