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Before the 2016 season started, the Toronto Blue Jays wanted to ship Michael Saunders to the Los Angeles Angels as part of a three-way deal to acquire Jay Bruce from the Cincinnati Reds.
Bruce, by the way, is having a resurgent season, slugging .544 with an OPS of .858 and 17 dingers - The kind of numbers that make Jays executives weep about the trade not working out.
At least they would if the guy they failed to trade - Saunders - wasn’t having the best season of his career.
Saunders is now one of the Blue Jays’ best hitters and that’s saying something because the team isn’t light on great hitters. Saunders has been better than Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Kevin Pillar and Troy Tulowitzki, sporting a career-best wRC+ at 140.
wRC+, or weighted runs creation, is a metric that measures runs per plate appearance, scaled, where 100 is average. It is both league and park adjusted and based on weighted on-base percentage (wOBA).
A wRC+ of 100 is average. Any wRC+ above 100 represents an above average big league hitter, and Saunders is at 140, or worth 40 runs more than the average major leaguer. Only Josh Donaldson is besting Saunders with a 151. Bautista is at 118 while Encarnacion is at 133.
What was Saunders’ highest wRC+ before this season? It was 126 in 2014 - the year the Jays felt he was a player about to break out and worth acquiring. I think it’s safe to say that Saunders has broken out.
By comparison, Jay Bruce’s wRC+ is 123. He would have made an impact in Toronto, just not the profound impact that Saunders has made.
As it stands, the best potential free agents in baseball as ranked by wRC+ are Yoenis Cespedes, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, Michael Saunders, Mark Trumbo, Franklin Gutierrez, David Freese, Carlos Santana and Luis Valbuena. Note that there are three Blue Jays on that list, good for over half of the Jays’ current home run production. Saunders is the youngest of those three Blue Jays and is also among the youngest going on the free agent slugging market. That makes him much more desirable assuming he sustains his power production.
And this newly-found power production is something everyone will be scrutinizing. How, exactly, has Saunders become this good this fast?
Many would say his results this season is what happens when a good player finally gets healthy. Others would even argue that Saunders had a lot to prove going into a walk year, coupled with a chip on his shoulder because the Jays tried to flip him out of town. Or is it that he’s simply gotten better?
All of the above.
