If Jays GM looking to make a splash, how about Bay?

[LittleOzzy]

Alex Anthopoulos is quickly putting his own stamp on the Blue Jays, reassembling the scouting and development staff, and good for him.

That's the best way to build for the long term. Plus, it also enhances his own job security. If and when Paul Beeston ever gets around to finding his own replacement, it will be difficult for the new man – or woman, because with Beeston you never know – to replace the head chef after he has restaffed the kitchen.

That said, the new GM also is in charge of shopping for the groceries now. So how about Jason Bay for a main course?

Shouldn't Anthopoulos be entitled to make one big free-agent splash when the market opens next month? He has Roy Halladay to deal with and also might have some good young arms in surplus for trading purposes, assuming they get, say, Shaun Marcum and Dustin McGowan back from injury.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/ ... -about-bay

[Hoopstarr]

No thanks. This would be a mistake similar to re-signing Wells, except Bay is even older at 31. Bay has never been a dominant hitter even in his prime and his fielding is awful. He wouldn't play a premium defensive position and his production isn't guaranteed going forward. And if you're going after Bay, why not just get Holliday?

[s e n s i]

I guess the idea is that Bay would fill a couple seats.

[Schad]

And Beeston has a Canadian player fetish. I'm not wholly against it, but have no idea what that means for the team overall...with or without Bay, we're still not a great team, and that would leave us with three weak-defense corner outfielders in Bay/Snider/Lind, plus makes it utterly impossible to move Wells anywhere even if an opportunity to upgrade CF does present itself.

[Avenger]

I'm not a big fan of this nonsense defence first philosophy that JP left us with so i would welcome Jason Bay with open arms. He would instantly be our second best hitter at worst and would help fill in those empty seats at the Rogers centre. Also go out and get Carlos Delgado as a relatively cheap .900 OPS option. I am sick of waiting around for our time to come and i know we will never actually make the PO's but i atleast wanna see some meaningful August and September baseball.

[Hoopstarr]

Nonsense defense first philosophy? Elaborate on that. What's the difference between scoring runs and preventing runs? Some have shown that defense is worth even more than hitting.

As for putting butts in seats, they can do that by bringing back Delgado. Most of them will come back simply because their boogeyman JP is gone.

[Schad]

I'm not a big fan of this nonsense defence first philosophy that JP left us with so i would welcome Jason Bay with open arms.

Not necessarily defense first. Defense second, maybe. Probably closer to defense third...he simply paid attention to it. However, that defense is the primary reason a bunch of ground-ball schlubs like Jesse Litsch threw up a league-leading ERA+ in 2008.

[Michael Bradley]

No thanks. This would be a mistake similar to re-signing Wells, except Bay is even older at 31. Bay has never been a dominant hitter even in his prime and his fielding is awful. He wouldn't play a premium defensive position and his production isn't guaranteed going forward. And if you're going after Bay, why not just get Holliday?

Bay has a career OPS+ of 131. Since 2004 (six seasons), he has had an OPS of .900 or better four times and just barely missed .900 in 2008 (.895). He is a very good hitter. Put him with Adam Lind (assuming Lind can repeat a .900+ OPS moving forward) and it would be a great tandem in the middle of the lineup.

Now, do I think signing Bay makes sense? Not unless the payroll jumps to $120 million or so. But adding Bay in general would be a major positive, defensive downgrade and all.

I doubt it will happen. Delgado might be a possibility. He'll probably come cheap and the Jays need a DH.

[zilby]

i wouldnt mind.

bay would fill rios' void and get a few seats filled. sign me up, also with the Wells/Bradley deal

[Hoopstarr]

No thanks. This would be a mistake similar to re-signing Wells, except Bay is even older at 31. Bay has never been a dominant hitter even in his prime and his fielding is awful. He wouldn't play a premium defensive position and his production isn't guaranteed going forward. And if you're going after Bay, why not just get Holliday?

Bay has a career OPS+ of 131. Since 2004 (six seasons), he has had an OPS of .900 or better four times and just barely missed .900 in 2008 (.895). He is a very good hitter. Put him with Adam Lind (assuming Lind can repeat a .900+ OPS moving forward) and it would be a great tandem in the middle of the lineup.

There's an even better stat than OPS+ for relative value called WAR (wins above replacement) and it includes fielding. Bay's WAR was 3.4. For comparison, Lind had a 3.7 WAR mostly from his hitting alone since he didn't play much OF. Other FA outfielders include Crawford (5.4), Cameron (4.3), and Holliday (5.6). Sure Cameron is 36, but the others are younger and better. I'm not completely against signing Bay, especially if they raise the payroll to $120M, but there are bigger priorities. Like keeping Scutaro (4.4) or finding a replacement and finding a 3B that can field and hit better than Encarnacion.

[Michael Bradley]

I am aware of the stat, but honestly, any stat that ranks Ben Zobrist ahead of Albert Pujols is not something I would use when constructing a team or comparing players.

Factoring defense is fine, and I think defense is very important, but there has to be some level of common sense as well. Teams can hide offensive players at 1B and LF (and DH in the AL) as long as that player helps with his bat. It's been done for years and will continue to be done. Bay is a good enough hitter to justify having him on the field or at DH in the AL. As long as he is putting up .900+ OPS numbers he is not hurting a team, or at the very least is helping more than he is hurting. Now if you feel his offense will slip in future years, then there can be an argument made that he would be a bad investment.

Where defense becomes more important is up the middle (2B, SS, CF, C). Putting a bad defender in those spots is very risky. That's why Wells was so bad in 2009. In the field and at the plate he was awful. You can't have a player that bad at CF who isn't at least hitting enough to compensate for it. Unless Bay is counted on to play CF (which he wouldn't be), I would gladly have him in LF or DH as long as he is hitting.

A more realistic (financially) and sensible approach would be trying to find a CF and moving Wells to one of the corners if defense is the biggest concern.

[SDM]

Out of active players the same age or younger with 3000+ plate appearances, only Pujols, Holliday, Howard, Teixiera, Cabrera, Wright, Dunn, and Utley have better OPS. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a .280/.380/.520 season from Bay sandwiched between Lind and Hill.

Also, I think Jays fans have been spoiled by our outfield defense for most of the decade. Johnson was solid, as was Rios, and Wells, until a couple years ago. We've forgotten what an average outfielder looks like, which is what Snider, Lind, and Bay are. Teams have gotten by with worse defensive players at LF and RF for years, so long as the bat compensates.

I do agree that CF is a more pressing need at this point. I was never that high on Wells as a player and I think he's done as an all-star level player, but an .800 OPS isn't out of the question if he's moved to a less demanding position, and I could probably live with that.

*sigh* A prime Jim Edmonds would solve two major problems on this team.

[Hoopstarr]

Like any other stat, it's not definitive and you can't use only one year.here's certain things you have to understand about WAR. I'll let Jonah Keri explain it:

FanGraphs ranks every major league player using a measure called Wins Above Replacement. WAR combines a player's offensive and defensive value, adjusts for park effects, the position he plays and other factors, then weighs that player's value against your typical 25th man or waiver-wire refugee. A one-win player is a good relief pitcher, half-decent fifth starter ora low-end starting position player. A four-win player is All Star-caliber. Anything above that and you're elite.

Mauer was worth 8.2 Wins Above Replacement for the Twins, an astonishing number that's up there with Albert Pujols' best efforts. Yet Mauer ranked just 2nd in the AL, trailing Zobrist and his off-the-charts 8.5 WAR. Zobrist's season was so astonishing that he actually finished a tick above Pujols (8.51 vs. 8.46 WAR). That's right: Ben Freaking Zobrist, by one measure, is the best position player in the world this season.

Let's get some caveats out of the way first. FanGraphs ranks Zobrist's defense alone as more than two-and-a-half wins better than a fringe player. The stat used to measure that number is Ultimate Zone Rating, a solid defensive measuring tool that's up there with anything we have today. But just as you would want three years of ballpark data before compiling park effects numbers, so too does UZR work best when looked at over a three-year stretch. Meanwhile, Mauer gets dinged because catchers' defense is not counted in UZR. Zobrist is a very good defender at second base and right field. We probably shouldn't expect him to be a mix of Frank White and Roberto Clemente for the next 10 years, though.

So yes, Zobrist did beat Mauer and Pujols, but that's because catcher's D isn't included in UZR and Zobrist's D was overvalued. Notice that Pujols blew away the competition in the hitting portion of WAR (http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?p ... 09&month=0). Still, everyone at Fangraphs (unlike some media members) agrees that Mauer and Pujols are the runaway MVP winners . Zobrist is no chump, though. He definitely deserves the most 2nd place MVP votes, which I'm sure will go to Derek Jeter.

[SDM]

Zobrist deserves nothing. He played for a third place team and this screams of career season.

[LieCheatSteal]

Unless Bay plays 3rd, SS or C, he's not going to solve this team's problems. Plus, Halladay's going to be moved soon so picking up Bay makes no sense (nor vice versa ie Bay coming here).

Truthfully, the money spent on Bay would be better divided elsewhere ie a solid D 3rd baseman (Adrian Beltrae), a dependable SS (Alex Gonzalez, Red Sox) and a veteran, platooning catcher to get JP Arencibia ready (Ivan Rodriguez). Since some of these players are on the downhill side of their careers (Rodriguez, Beltrae), they, plus Gonzalez, could be had for what the Jays will spend on Bay.

[kdot99]

Forget Bay, he won't help us much, we need to spend our money more wise and effeciently

Trade Lyle Doubleplay , Move Lind to first (and hope it bans out), Leave Snider in left, sign Beltre to play third and hopefully fill SS and RF with a Halladay trade.

Ah, Im dreaming. This team is a mess, it starts by trading Halladay and figuring out everything from there based on our needs and salary flexibility. F U JP

[Modern_epic]

I just don't understand the Lyle Overbay hate. Never have (2007 excepted) and never will. Since arriving, he has put up great numbers against righties, mediocre to bad ones against lefties (which the team's fault for either not having a player to platoon him with, or just playing him there) and the best 1B D in the AL. On my list of places to upgrade, 1B is maybe 5th.

Which is not to say that I disagree with teaching Lind 1B. If he can play there against lefties, you either DH or LF him against righties. But if you are looking to contend, sign Bay/another OF, and have Ruiz DH when you are facing LHP. Do something ike Figgins/Beltre, trade for Hardy and resign Barajas .

If you aren't, then whatever you are doing depends on the Doc trade. Just don't bring back a 2B, and everyone but Lind, Aaron and Snider can be shopped.