Major League Baseball has officially approved the substitution of Joey Loperfido for Anthony Santander on the Blue Jays’ playoff roster. Manager John Schneider told reporters (including Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet) this evening that Santander was dealing with back stiffness. His season is over.
Teams set their postseason rosters at the beginning of each series. They can only make changes mid-series in the event of an injury. A player removed midway through a series is ineligible for the following series if his team advances, so Santander could not participate in the World Series if the Jays come back to beat the Mariners.
Injuries essentially ruined Santander’s first season in Toronto. He was out between the end of May and the middle of September with a left shoulder issue. He didn’t return until the final week of the regular season. Santander has appeared in five of the Jays’ seven postseason games. He missed Game 2 of the ALCS with lower back soreness. Santander returned to the lineup for Game 3 but was replaced by Myles Straw as a defensive substitute in the fifth inning. He finishes his postseason with a 3-15 showing with a pair of runs batted in.
While Davis Schneider drew into the lineup when Santander was out for Game 2, it’s Isiah Kiner-Falefa who picks up the extra playing time tonight. He’s in at second base and batting eighth against Luis Castillo. That pushes Ernie Clement to third base and Addison Barger from the hot corner to right field.
The Jays have carried the same 13 position players for their Division Series and the ALCS. Loperfido had been inactive for both series despite hitting .333/.379/.500 across 41 games during the regular season. He was the only real candidate to join the roster as a left-handed bench bat in Santander’s place. Bo Bichette and Ty France are injured and weren’t ready to go for the beginning of the series. Leo Jiménez finished the season on the Triple-A injured list, leaving light-hitting outfielder Jonatan Clase (who spent the entire second half in Triple-A) as the only other healthy position player on the 40-man roster.
Mitch Bannon and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first reported that Santander would be removed from the roster. Nicholson-Smith was first to confirm that Loperfido would be the replacement.
And the award for worst contract of the year goes to the blu jays !
It’s not as if the Jays are alone in that category.
Tanner Scott (LAD), Sean Manaea (NYM), Christian Walker (HOU) and Tyler O’Neill (BALT) are a few other good options for that award.
At least with Santander, his poor performance is primarily, or at least partially related to injury. He should be better next year, one would hope.
What was Walker’s salary? 27 HR 88 RBI and only ten points below his career BA.
Yeah, and you left out how the prior 3 seasons he had an OPS+ of 120 or more each year versus a 97 this season, and that he had 3 straight gold gloves prior to this year and then went out and posted a -7 DRS this season.
In the past 3 seasons, he posted bWAR’s of 5.0, 3.7, and 2.6. This season, he managed a 0.2
He was bad at the plate and bad on defense.
There’s been a downward trend to his career.
He was signed for 3 years. This year he was barely startable. Next season he’ll barely be bench worthy, and in year 3, he’ll barely be rosterable.
As bad as Manea was, I’d say that Frankie Montas was worse, since they’re going to be paying for his player option next year when he’ll be recovering from TJ after getting nothing this year. There’s a at least a chance that Manea will recent to his 2024 form next year.
Manaea was also injured, although he isn’t having surgery for some reason.
Kirby Yates would like to have a word with you. Preferably while you’re holding his beer.
And the constant “Commenting Without Thinking First” award goes to chandlerbing!
Fido is a good doggie!
The Montas contract was awful from the minute it was signed, and looks flat out atrocious now. Manaea at least has the chance to bounce back next year. The Montas deal was a complete and total failure.
It’s been one injury plagued year…. let’s wait and see how it goes before we get our panties in a bunch
Alex Cobb was a wasted signing.
EXACTLY
Tanner Scott enters the chat.
If Tanner can get his mind right, his stuff was good enough to be effective.
He has two years to change the narrative. Not sure he will, but if he can be a huge part of a future winning season, he might redeem his contract.
A blessing. Get well soon.
Anthony Rendon made $38,571,428 this season and he didn’t play a single game…
Arte Moreno.
Hopefully bo has made strides, if not will be loperfido
Still guaranteed $76.3 million, including a $5M buyout on a $15,000,000 Team Option going into 2030. There is plenty of time to get good value from him but, with a bad back and how important that is to hitting at this level, that is looking unlikely at the moment.
Rehab starts yesterday, hopefully.
really unfair Toronto was able to defer so much of his salary but that’s how it goes these days
Unfair? To who? All those deferred $$$ are accounted for in their payroll in the years EARNED, not paid.
If anyone has gamed the system, you ought to talk to the Dodgers.
thanks for missing the joke
“Really unfair to Toronto that so much of Santander’s production was deferred alongside his salary”
…would have been closer to funny ( even if technically untrue since the info I see shows deferred money kicking in next year.)
agree, wasn’t a good joke but yours was pretty funny. cheers.
Spotrac shows him getting paid mostly beginning 2035
@toptimrubies
Spotrac has to be the worst baseball site with Bleacher Report a close second. After all these years, Spotrac refers to baseball players as Unrestricted Free Agents (UFA) to distinguish them from Restricted Free Agents. Just a bad baseball site.
No those $ are not accounted for in payroll. Their taxable payroll is reduced in each of the 5 years of his deal by $4.8 million due to this deferral. That means a reduction in their luxury tax payment for ‘25 of nearly $1.6 million. And that deferred money simply evaporates – they don’t have to account for those deferrals at any point.
That said the Jays are taking advantage of payroll treatment within the current CBA rules. And yes the Dodgers use of this is far more significant – Ohtani’s deferral treatment alone is almost 6 times larger on a present value basis than this. And since about 50% of tax payments get sent to revenue sharing recipients as added $, you could say deferrals are unfair to those clubs.
Might be interesting to see if owners push for some adjustment to this in the next CBA – the Players Association surely won’t.
Given that the payroll $ are adjusted for the current value of the deferred $, I would argue that they are accounted for.
Nothing unfair about something that is in the CBA.
Less unfair than service time manipulation, which is basically stealing years from players. But it’s also in the current CBA.
obviously
I completely missed it, as I’m not familiar with his contract lol.
Watching the pitchers duel Dodgers Brewers is turning into and saw deferred and unfair in the same sentence.
To be fair, I still haven’t looked at his contract, but I do appreciate the joke regardless.
no, it just wasn’t a good joke but his salary is heavily deferred
The argument is that this may be unfair to other owners as the Dodgers’ deferrals cut their tax bill this year and again next by $40 million. That money would have been distributed as supplements to revenue sharing. That’s why I said above that it could be the other owners that find it unfair.
With the Dodgers $100 million over the top tax rate threshold this year not counting the deferral impact atop that (the 4 thresholds now are only $20 million apart, topping out at $301 million) could we see a new threshold set in the next CBA that might be called “the Dodger rule” like we saw the 4th added (“the Cohen rule”) in the last CBA?
All that said I think the Yankees are foolish to not take advantage of this now like other teams.
How about a Santander for O’Neill swap?
Bring Tony back to Baltimore and send Tyler back up to Canada. Work out any cash difference
I don’t think the Orioles would do it. If they weren’t willing to give Santander the contract he got last offseason, why would they take it on now after a season where he was mostly hurt and awful when healthy? O’Neill is due half of the amount of money and years that Santander still is, and should offer similar or better production if healthy.
Present value of Santander’s deal is much lower than the dollar figure because of deferrals. I also think Elias wanted that draft pick and slot $.
I don’t think it’s likely but O’Neill is bad money and constantly injured.
Hallelujah.
“injured” 😉 wink wink