Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos met with the media, including Sportsnet.ca’s Ben Nicholson-Smith and Shi Davidi (Twitter links) and the National Post’s John Lott, for 50 minutes today before Toronto’s season finale against Baltimore. Here are the highlights:
- Anthopoulos declined to put a figure on the team’s 2015 payroll, but expects to have the financial flexibility to make moves and has “some ideas on trades and free agents.”
- The Blue Jays will make a competitive offer to Melky Cabrera, but Anthopoulos reiterated the club’s policy of limiting contracts to five years “is still firmly in place. That’s not going to change.”
- On the Jays’ starting rotation, “I wouldn’t feel good going into the season with five,” Anthopoulos said. “Philosophically speaking, you want to hoard as much as you can, keep as much depth as you can.” To that end, Anthopoulos hinted J.A. Happ‘s $6.7MM option will be exercised and Aaron Sanchez (“frontline starter potential“) will be stretched out in Spring Training. He will, however, at least consider trade offers for established arms.
- The Blue Jays will eschew big-name relievers and focus on set-up arms in an effort to rebuild their bullpen. Sanchez may pitch in relief sometime during the course of 2015, but only to manage his innings.
- “Yes,” was Anthopoulos’ reply when asked would he hire John Gibbons if he had a managerial opening next season.
- Brett Lawrie is slated to play third base next year, but could be moved to second if an impact third baseman is acquired. As for evaluating the other position players, Anthopoulos will place a premium on durability.
- Nicholson-Smith opines bench upgrades will most likely be accomplished through trades rather than free agency.
Why is it taking this long for Anthopolous to re-sign Melky?!
He’s waiting for the higher ups to give him a figure on how much to spend next season. He has a corporation in-charge of payroll, not a singular owner. Multiple people have to sign off on giving him the good to go on signing someone when he’s over budget on payroll already.
Cabrera will test the market as any player would. Foolish not to
He has said he wanted to return here. If he does want to return, money should not be a factor.
Money is always a factor.
Would you be saying that if you were a Blue Jays fan and not a Cardinals fan?
I’m a Jays fan, and I don’t get your point…money is always a factor. Even though he wants to return, if we don’t offer something fair money-wise, he will leave.
Because EVERY ball player puts money before their personal desires…
You’re basically saying Melky could go somewhere that he might outright hate… if they offer him enough money.
He very well might. I’m not saying loyatly is irrelevant, I’m saying we can’t low ball him because we know he wants to return. We need to offer him something fair (or market value) and if he wants too much, he will leave for the team that is willing to offer more.
Exactly. If another team is going to blow the Jays’ offer out of the water, it’s only reasonable for him to leave.
Money is always a factor regardless of your fan allegiance.
Would you work somewhere you didn’t like if they offered you a high pay?
No, but if another company was willing to pay me significantly more than my current employer was, I would take the offer.
Even if you hated that other company?
Read my post again and you’ll find the answer to that. Does Melky hate the other 29 teams?
He hates New York and Atlanta. He burned bridges in San Fransisco. That still leaves 26 other teams.
Do you really think Melky hates every team but Toronto?
Why would he hate the other company. In this hypothetical you would be doing the same exact job. I’m a Yankees fan, but I would certainly admit there would be a situation where I would play for the Sox.
“I want to return” means I’d rather you give me the money than another team, but i want the money.
If someone paid you 2X as much wouldn’t you take it?
Most players say something along those lines.
You would have a preference on team, but if Jays only offered $40MM/3 and someone else offered you $100MM/6 which would you take?
Even if he says he wants to return he should wait to see on the offers.
He’d be silly not to test free agency. Even if he wants to return to Toronto, having other options gives him leverage in his negotiations…. Free agency 101.
Jays wasted their probable best year to compete, how many years are both the Yankees and Red Sox not going to make the playoffs in the same season? Also, how many more seasons are we going to waste of Jose Bautista?
Sorry, but if this team doesn’t resign Melky and get a 2-3WAR position player to play either second/third/centre, this team is in trouble of blaming everything on injuries for the 3rd straight season.
In no way should Brett Lawrie, Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista, Adam Lind or Edwin Encarnacion be expected to play anything close to an entire season at this point. Lineup depth is needed for when 2 or 3 of those guys goes down with their routine yearly injury. I said the exact same thing last season, everyone on this team is injury prone. Does it have to happen 3 straight seasons for you people to get a clue?
AA should see what Detroit wants for Ian Kinsler, who’s good but a bit of a drain of their resources. They gave Fister away for free, maybe AA could entice him with a Tim Horton’s gift card and some magic beans,
Brett Cecil for Kinsler straight up? Free up a little money for Detroit for more bullpen pieces and now you have your first solid pitcher for next year (and the year after that, FA in 2017). Cecil got paid 1.7m last year, that’s chump change for Detroit. They can allocate those funds to possibly retaining Scherzer/Shields? (I feel like Lester isn’t going to Detroit for some reason)
Also side note it is irrelevant for this discussion, but do you have a subscription for mlb.tv? I just got it this year, and I LOVE watching games from like 2010 (my senior year in high school) and was wondering if I’d be able to watch archived games until next year? You seem very knowledgeable about the game and kinda assumed you utilize it.
Probably need another piece to get the job done, but that’s not a bad starting point.
I’m pretty sure MLB.tv runs for most of the offseason until the new one kicks in.
Its all song and dance right now, we shall see how things go when free agency actually does begin and moves are able to be made. I hope to see some cash spent this year.
Getting rid of Rasmus and Morrow will help a bit with payroll. Need to make a decision on Janssen if Sanchez will be tried out as a starter, also probably need to cut ties with McGowan. Happ could go either way. Lawrie is a solid 3B, but the line-up would be much better with an overall upgrade at 2B, which has been a revolving door ever since Hill left.
I know hindsight is 20/20 and at the time I was a huge supporter of the trades AA made in 2012 off season, but here is an idea of what the Jays lineup would have looked like this year without the Marlins and Dickey trades:
Line up:
Escobar 2B, Cabrera LF, Bautista RF, Encarnacion 1B, Lind DH, Lawrie 3B, Navarro C, Rasmus CF, Hechavarria SS
* Escarbar would have likely been traded regardless given how his tenure with Toronto ended but we’ll keep him in there.
Bench:
Marisnick, Gose, d’Arnaud, Goins, Valencia
Starting Rotation Depth:
Alvarez (12-7 2.65 ERA), Stroman, Hutchinson, Happ, Sanchez, Syndergaard, Norris, Nicolino
Its debatable if this lineup is any stronger, but you cant deny the quality of the bench and how strong and deep the starting rotation would be for YEARS to come!
Also, if you subtract Buehrle (18/19M), Reyes (16/22M) and Dickey (12/12M) you save about 46 million on payroll in 2014 and 53 million in 2015. Imagine what you could do with the core roster above and an extra 50+ million to spend this off season.
Again, at the time I would have done, at least the Marlins trade, over and over again, however its just something to think about…
I see where you’re coming from,
without those trades we probably would’ve spent the last 2 years with much less fan interest (2 wasted seasons), much less experience in meaningful games, much less hope going into next season (we’re pretty close imo), much less contentment & buy-in from guys like JB and EE (pretty important) and the rest of the team + fanbase, etc., etc.
We also probably don’t see Dalton Pompey, Dan Norris, and other guys that we’ve seen. Marisnick took a long time to show his tools. We don’t have unlimited playing time, so where does Gose, Pillar, Marisnick, Pompey all get playing time?? Would we have even signed Melky??
Henderson Alvarez is better suited for the NL with his lack of strike-out stuff..
So we can also look at what-ifs, but I prefer the situation we’re in now, and I’ve always appreciated the work of AA, whether it be sitting tight at the trade deadline & keeping all of our young talent (this year), making under-the-radar moves like acquiring Valencia, not extending Colby last off-season, etc. etc.
I think he knows the game well enough, & has his finger on the pulse of the team, & I’m looking forward to seeing how the Jays fare in 2015, & the moves we make this off-season.
And then again, just looking up Hech’s #’s.. even though in ’13 Reyes was clearly a better SS, this year, all things considered, they are pretty much equal (Reyes slightly better ‘O’, Hech’s far superior ‘D’). For the next 3 years, Reyes is set to earn $70 M (with his buyout), and Hech maybe ~8-10 M, with quite possibly better value to his team. So that’s a clear win for Hech, unless Reyes can back to .780 OPS or higher… his defence really hurts.
Then adding in Buerhle’s $20M, and Dickey’s $10M, Nicolino’s nice #’s at AA, and Syndergaard still being a good-looking power arm, and the fact those 2 still have 6 years of team control at low cost, and it’s clear who you’d rather have going forward… For the ~$52M in cap space next year, and ~$45 this year, the Jays could certainly could have afforded to go out & sign some top flight free agents, like Yu Darvish, or Tanaka (probably not), or others, so going the no-trades route in the ’12 off-season could’ve definitely turned out better for the franchise (other than the injection of energy into the fan-base, which is now lowering…) So would we be in better overall shape today? For sure. But if we had made the World Series, or even just gotten to the ALCS, it would’ve paid off…
Personally I was neutral on both of those trades at the time they were made, entirely because of the large sums of $$ we committed to diminishing players who wouldn’t be worth it & the quantity of quality prospects we sent, and now I would say I am still neutral on them… I still think we’ll need 2 more years to have an almost final say..
+ also one can’t quantify the value of a guy like Buerhle’s impact on the young pitchers & players he mentors… like how much will that benefit their careers & add value to future teams? like $5M? $10M? these things are tough to quantify… although Reyes almost certainly detracts.. & Dickey doesn’t seem like a joy to be around either (the opposite of the Munenori effect). However they are still steady & reliable veterans (R.A. and Mark)
Tribe fan here…just testing the market up in Toronto a little bit. What would it take to pry Edwin Encarnacion away from you in a deal with Cleveland? Would Chiz, Lindor, and Salazar/Bauer be enticing at all?
EE for Kipnis,Lindor and Bauer.
Done. Nice doing business with ya!