2015-2016 Blue Jays Off-Season Thread

[howard_the_duck]

I can't wait for the season to start. I think a lot of people who are getting bent out of shape will be pleasantly surprised that the club is still in excellent shape.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by howard_the_duck

I can't wait for the season to start. I think a lot of people who are getting bent out of shape will be pleasantly surprised that the club is still in excellent shape.

Zips projections has the jays at 88 wins, which is the highest they have projected them to finish in a long time. That's great.

It also is good for 3rd place only 2 games ahead of Baltimore in their predictions. That's not good. Business as usual.

[JayP]

Originally Posted by Scornfire

No words. As a recently converted baseball fan this has been incredibly dissapointing. I don't know how you lifers have survived thus far if this is par for the course with rogers

Don't listen to the people losing their minds - they have no idea what they're talking about. It's barely December and people are acting like this is the final roster. Spring training is 3 months away.

It's just a lot of converted hockey fans that don't realize the baseball off-season is very different than the hockey off-season. Hockey revolves around July 1st and to a lesser extent the couple weeks after - then there's a complete dead period in August where nothing happens. Baseball will have trades and signings filter down from November and into January. It's a lot more drawn out.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by JayP

Don't listen to the people losing their minds - they have no idea what they're talking about. It's barely December and people are acting like this is the final roster. Spring training is 3 months away.

It's just a lot of converted hockey fans that don't realize the baseball off-season is very different than the hockey off-season. Hockey revolves around July 1st and to a lesser extent the couple weeks after - then there's a complete dead period in August where nothing happens. Baseball will have trades and signings filter down from November and into January. It's a lot more drawn out.

Exactly.

It's one of the dumbest things about hockey, GMs not negotiating and blowing their load on July 1.

Originally Posted by jayswin

I'm willing to take his words at face value considering he just got his client signed to a long term deal, there's nothing left to gain by putting out false information. It also fits with what most people figured....

whether it was $28mil, 6 years or $31mil, 7 years, the Blue Jays simply weren't interested in paying big money for an Ace, and despite Girlysports saying there's no budget restraints (not sure how she could possibly think that) this was simply a budget decision, and with the winning suitor being Boston, likely a budget decision that separates a playoff team from a non playoff team.

I was saying there were no budget constraints when AA was GM. After awhile Rogers got tired of it and hired Shapiro for this reason. So there was no way AA would be around to make an offer to Price (it's a make-believe situation). There are definitely budget constraints now. Rogers actually should have fired AA on July 1 when they signed Shapiro or make AA President and GM and continue to give him an unlimited budget.

Rogers chose to reign in the budget and hired Shapiro without firing AA which caused this awkward situation.

[JayP]

Originally Posted by Fire of the Phoenix

Why couldn't that 3.9m Smoak got have been directed toward Lowe?

Lowe would've cost more than 3.9 but having a terrible bat like Smoak just seems dumb when the bullpen needs a guy like Lowe.

And then you have Chris Collabello as your lone option at 1B - a 32-year old journeyman who's put up one one good partial season that was largely driven by batted ball luck. The bullpen gets help, but now there's a big hole at 1B.

[Roof-Daddy]

Yeah, I don't mind Smoak coming back. He's got a steady glove, and he's coming off a season where he posted his best OPS, and he's still only 28.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

I was saying there were no budget constraints when AA was GM. After awhile Rogers got tired of it and hired Shapiro for this reason. So there was no way AA would be around to make an offer to Price (it's a make-believe situation). There are definitely budget constraints now. Rogers actually should have fired AA on July 1 when they signed Shapiro or make AA President and GM and continue to give him an unlimited budget.

Rogers chose to reign in the budget and hired Shapiro without firing AA which caused this awkward situation.

There has always been budget restraints while Rogers has owned the team. Are you saying that AA could have spent up to the Yankees all those years but just didn't? I'd have to see some proof of that because from everything I've heard AA always had to operate under a budget.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by howard_the_duck

Quite honestly I don't get the hand-wringing. This is Rogers - we know what they've afforded the Jays over the course of their ownership.

The Jays are working under a budget, and Price was going to bust it. My theory is that's why their was quarrel between AA and Shapiro before AA's departure, and why I'm sure there is some truth to the rumor that Shapiro 'scolded' AA in September when they met. Not only was it prospect capital that AA gave up, but it was never a realistic dream to re-sign Price in Toronto without constructing a roster filled with gaping holes elsewhere.

Let's not forget that this is a hell of a team as it currently stands. They're much better than the one that started last season, and a couple of bullpen arms from being the odds on best in the division IMO. Things could be much worse, and have been over the course of our tenures as Jays fans over the past 20+ years.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding going on in this back and forth. Nobody is saying the Blue Jays won't be a very good baseball team, we're saying the way things are going we will likely be a 3rd place team, with the faint possibility of a wildcard spot.

Also, again with the "people are acting shocked like they don't know Rogers is like this, they need to understand they're a company that.....etc". Nobody in here doesn't understand how Rogers operates, trust me, we've been talking about it forever.

I guess some of us just had some hope that after 22 years with no playoffs and finally seeing a championship caliber roster, plus a $100mil windfall for Rogers that maybe just maybe we'd see them say "you know what this is incredible, the fan base is ready to explode with Blue Jays fever, we have a core that can do it again if we add and keep pace with the contenders, we have an extra $100mil, let's go for it!".

And they predictably aren't. And as much as I don't appreciate the shots of "Haha, these guys are like new hockey fans they don't understand how anything works, lulz!!!!!!", I do understand that we've shored up some minor positions with lots of money that suggests there isn't much left to spend, and baseball insiders seem to agree. Yes, the offseason works differently but now we're into trade only scenarios of making the team better after trading a lot of our good prospects to get us to contender status.

Could a trade be made that puts us up to contenders again? I guess so. Is it likely? Not really, unless we destroy another GM in a trade. But again, thanks for the condescending "new baseball fans" talk in this discussion guys. Yes, some of us might not have been following religiously (still watching though), but I think most of us have enough knowledge of the situation to join in discussion without the ****ty remarks.

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy

Yeah, I don't mind Smoak coming back. He's got a steady glove, and he's coming off a season where he posted his best OPS, and he's still only 28.

I don't care how good his defense is, a backup 1st baseman who is almost 30 and has a career OPS of .699 is a 'luxury' this team can't afford given it's budget. Total waste of 3.9m IMO.

[Roof-Daddy]

Originally Posted by Fire of the Phoenix

I don't care how good his defense is, a backup 1st baseman who is almost 30 and has a career OPS of .699 is a 'luxury' this team can't afford given it's budget. Total waste of 3.9m IMO.

He played in 132 games. He wasn't the back up.

But yeah, he's paid too much, and his bat isn't great, but he has some pop, plays solid defense, and will likely start 130 or so games again.

If they didn't sign him, I don't think there were any realistic, better options for this team.

[JayP]

Originally Posted by jayswin

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding going on in this back and forth. Nobody is saying the Blue Jays won't be a very good baseball team, we're saying the way things are going we will likely be a 3rd place team, with the faint possibility of a wildcard spot.

Why though? No one has explained it. Yes, the Red Sox are better with Price and Kimbrel. They were also a 78 win team. Those guys put them in the conversation for 85-90 wins, potentially more.

The Jays were a 93 win team last year. However, the important point is that to finish the year the team they were fielding (with Price, Stroman back, Tulo, etc.) was a 100+ win team if they played together for a full season. The Jays have lost Price and Lowe from that team. Maybe Estrada doesn't have a career year. That still easily puts them in 90-95 win range and competing for the division.

Also, again with the "people are acting shocked like they don't know Rogers is like this, they need to understand they're a company that.....etc". Nobody in here doesn't understand how Rogers operates, trust me, we've been talking about it forever.

I guess some of us just had some hope that after 22 years with no playoffs and finally seeing a championship caliber roster, plus a $100mil windfall for Rogers that maybe just maybe we'd see them say "you know what this is incredible, the fan base is ready to explode with Blue Jays fever, we have a core that can do it again if we add and keep pace with the contenders, we have an extra $100mil, let's go for it!".

Your two paragraphs are in direct conflict of each other. You say you understand how Rogers operates and then are surprised when a publicly traded company that has obligations to it's shareholders doesn't just dump $100m to the Jays to chase a championship. Unfortunately, winning a championship does nothing for Rogers shareholders. The financial windfall of that sort of run would, but that's a hard number to speculate on and there's also the risk that the Jays just have a bad season (due to injuries, bad luck, etc.) and that $100m invested in them goes down the drain.

And they predictably aren't. And as much as I don't appreciate the shots of "Haha, these guys are like new hockey fans they don't understand how anything works, lulz!!!!!!", I do understand that we've shored up some minor positions with lots of money that suggests there isn't much left to spend, and baseball insiders seem to agree. Yes, the offseason works differently but now we're into trade only scenarios of making the team better after trading a lot of our good prospects to get us to contender status.

Trade scenarios also acquire cost controlled players. This allows the Jays to use the money saved on these players to plug holes in free agency in future years. It's all about opportunity cost. It's easy to say signing free agents is free because it's only money, but that's not true. Signing free agents to multi-year deals prevents the team from making other moves in the future. It could be the difference between having some extra cash available at the deadline to acquire a starter at the deadline after Happ and Chavez both have season ending surgery (or something to that effect).

Could a trade be made that puts us up to contenders again? I guess so. Is it likely? Not really, unless we destroy another GM in a trade. But again, thanks for the condescending "new baseball fans" talk in this discussion guys. Yes, some of us might not have been following religiously (still watching though), but I think most of us have enough knowledge of the situation to join in discussion without the ****ty remarks.

The problem is that somehow the Jays aren't contenders anymore because they lost a pitcher that made 10 starts for them last year - worth 2.4 WAR. Stop the doom and gloom about how the Jays are .500 team because they didn't mortgage the future of the franchise and give David Price $217 million dollars and maybe people will take your talking points seriously.

The same people that are complaining that the Jays should've been all in on Price are the ones who won't be watching in 5-7 years when Price blows his arm out and the Jays are paying $31 million to a guy with a 5.00+ ERA and sitting at the bottom of the AL East because of it.

[VERVE]

Different philosophy for the Jays' management. Not even trying to offer Price a contract to negotiate on is perplexing. His presence alone would provide some breathing room and confidence for the rotation as well as stopping any Blue Jay slide along the way. The Jays shelled out too much money for Happ and to some extent Smoak. I doubt Happ can carryover last season success in Pitts. If the Jays are not going to sign an ace or close to it ('cause most are signed) then Sanchez has to go back into the starting rotation esp if Hutch is having issues again. We still need a strong lefty in the bullpen and not sure what the farm has to offer. Perhaps a trade of one of the top 4 bats maybe imminent. The window of opportunity to advance further into the post season is slowly closing.

[TheAlpineOracle]

Originally Posted by jayswin

There has always been budget restraints while Rogers has owned the team. Are you saying that AA could have spent up to the Yankees all those years but just didn't? I'd have to see some proof of that because from everything I've heard AA always had to operate under a budget.

If someone can actually sit there and say that the Jays GMs aren't under a spending restraint, they clearly have no idea as to what it is they are talking about.

Until the 2013 seasons, the Jays were consistently in the bottom half to bottom third of the league in payroll since Rogers acquired the team back in 2001. There was one small exception in there for the 20072009 seasons where they did increase payroll which lead to lackluster results as it was a drop in the bucket compared to the Yankees and Red Sox.

In fact, that 2007 increase is likely one of the key contributing factors to Rogers' frugality today. BJ Ryan's albatross of a contract was so bad that it showed up on their corporate financial statements, and required a separate note disclosure. This did not please the Rogers shareholders one bit.

Leading up to the 2013, interest in the Jays locally and nationally had hit an all time low. Jays fans were getting very vocal, so much so that is was starting to rub off negatively on the Rogers brand. As a result, Rogers up the Jays budget by an estimated 40M. This resulted in the Jays 2013 payroll jumping up 41.3M dollars which was one of the single biggest increases in payroll for any MLB since the 2000 season. It was the first time in Jays history that their team payroll exceeded 100M.

[VERVE]

Originally Posted by TheAlpineOracle

If someone can actually sit there and say that the Jays GMs aren't under a spending restraint, they clearly have no idea as to what it is they are talking about.

Until the 2013 seasons, the Jays were consistently in the bottom half to bottom third of the league in payroll since Rogers acquired the team back in 2001. There was one small exception in there for the 20072009 seasons where they did increase payroll which lead to lackluster results as it was a drop in the bucket compared to the Yankees and Red Sox.

In fact, that 2007 increase is likely one of the key contributing factors to Rogers' frugality today. BJ Ryan's albatross of a contract was so bad that it showed up on their corporate financial statements, and required a separate note disclosure. This did not please the Rogers shareholders one bit.

Leading up to the 2013, interest in the Jays locally and nationally had hit an all time low. Jays fans were getting very vocal, so much so that is was starting to rub off negatively on the Rogers brand. As a result, Rogers up the Jays budget by an estimated 40M. This resulted in the Jays 2013 payroll jumping up 41.3M dollars which was one of the single biggest increases in payroll for any MLB since the 2000 season. It was the first time in Jays history that their team payroll exceeded 100M.

Rogers communications generate close to 13 billion $ in revenue for its shareholders. The Board has its own agenda and that is to maximize profitability for them. Paying large salaries to athletes is not high on the rung of corporate ladder priorities. However, the selling of the brand is for certain. Nothing sells or have greater influence than having a massive live audience watching a professional sports. After the big trades for Price and Tulo, they had numerous sellouts crowds; tv ratings sky rockets as well as data usage; advertising dollars goes up esp in playoffs; upselling jerseys, hotdogs and beers etc; and the customer relation with fans and Rogers users would be better. Though Blue Jays affects a small part of Rogers business, the end results are that brand recognition and the selling of all aspects its business would increase which means a better bottomline. Rogers should take a chance and spend more to build a championship team, the payoff would be brand loyalty and profitability.

[ben voyonsdonc]

Last year, some people predicted Hutch would be a Cy Young contender. If he could figure things out enough to even be a 4th starter, that would be absolutely massive for us.

[cross16]

I don't really understand the whole "at least make an offer" argument. If you can't make a legitimate offer what do you gain by making one at all? Everyone in the baseball world knew Price was getting 200 million or more and that never made sense for the Jays so why make an offer you know won't be accepted? I would argue offering him somethign like 5 years and 170 is more insulting that anything else because you know fell well he isn't turning down an extra 2 years and 40 million dollars.

No dobut in my mind that if AA was the GM it would have been the same thing. The Jays are not set up to add another 30 million to their payroll, not with Donaldson, Tulo and Martin going forward. i think to sign someone like Price you need an ulimited budget, Dodgers, or an array of cheaper/younger players like the Red Sox to be able to pull that off. Tying up 1/5 of your budget is 1 player is almost never smart business.

[VERVE]

Originally Posted by cross16

I don't really understand the whole "at least make an offer" argument. If you can't make a legitimate offer what do you gain by making one at all? Everyone in the baseball world knew Price was getting 200 million or more and that never made sense for the Jays so why make an offer you know won't be accepted? I would argue offering him somethign like 5 years and 170 is more insulting that anything else because you know fell well he isn't turning down an extra 2 years and 40 million dollars.

No dobut in my mind that if AA was the GM it would have been the same thing. The Jays are not set up to add another 30 million to their payroll, not with Donaldson, Tulo and Martin going forward. i think to sign someone like Price you need an ulimited budget, Dodgers, or an array of cheaper/younger players like the Red Sox to be able to pull that off. Tying up 1/5 of your budget is 1 player is almost never smart business.

If you really want a legit ace, you make an offer. That is the business world of sports. Everything is up for sale and negotiation. If the counter offer is too high and there is no way both parties can come to an agreement, then you walk. Simple. If you don't ask, you will never know especially if Price really enjoyed playing here. He could have taken a discount since all players were coming back from last year. BoSox's offer was ridiculous and probably Price was not expecting that but desperate teams do desperate things. For the Jays, what was there to lose except an answer of "No thanks". I guess the Jays does not want Price that bad afterall.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by VERVE

If you really want a legit ace, you make an offer. That is the business world. Everything is up for sale and negotiation. If the counter offer is too high and there is no way both parties can come to an agreement, then you walk. Simple. If you don't ask, you never know especially if Price really enjoyed playing here. He could have taken a discount since all players were coming back from last year. What is there to lose except an answer of "No thanks". I guess did not want Price that bad.

I don't agree with this whatsoever. What most don't understand is it's not like buying a used car. You just don't go in and make an offer. There are discussions back in forth to give an understanding of what's expected. It's quite conceivable that the Jays waited to see what others were offering and would come in if it was in their ballpark, rather than getting into the bidding war. In my mind, if Price really wanted to come back, his agent would be saying, "the Sox offered $32M for 7 years", we'd be willing to stay with the Jays for $31M at 6 years, or something to that extent to get the talks started again. If the Jays made the half assed effort and gave 5 years at $26M, they'd be criticized even further for making that lazy effort. It would also look bad on them in the FA market.
With the money Price went for, I'm glad the Jays walked. It doesn't fit in with their cost structure and it's a bad contract. I'm more upset with the lack of other FA activity which could address their SP and RP needs.

[GirlySports]

I don't believe Rogers would have allowed AA to make the Marlins and Mets trade if there were budget constraints. That budget went way up. From 70 mill to 120 mill in a month.

[REDVAN]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

I don't believe Rogers would have allowed AA to make the Marlins and Mets trade if there were budget constraints. That budget went way up. From 70 mill to 120 mill in a month.

If there's no budget, why didn't they offer Darvish more money a couple years ago?

Why didn't they offer Price market value this season? They could have easily signed him for one or two years at 30 Mil is there was no budget.