Marcus Stroman wants a long-term deal, more veterans, Vladdy on Opening Day

[Tanner]

Not sure about the long term deal and he’s wrong by just saying “veterans”. The team needs good veterans, and that I will agree with. Look everyone including the front office wants to rebuild but free agency is so cheap now that it has become the zag to everyone else’s zig. The Jays could still rebuild on the side while adding pieces like Morton, Brantley, Happ, etc, to upgrade the big league roster in the absence of prospects. If they aren’t doing that for the sake of rebuilding then why the hell is Stroman (and others) still on the team? Trade the vets, bottom out, and build the way 90% of baseball wants to build these days. Instead it’s a half ass measure.

I’m not saying “go for it” by being stupid but doing what everyone else is doing, and not even doing it better than them, is going to make this process a lot harder. Fielding a team that will be watchable, and hell maybe surprise and become good earlier is a hell of a lot better than seeing Richard, Shoemaker, Pillar, Smoak, etc, on a team with no intention of winning more than 75 games.

Atkins should have kept the rebuild going but used the depressed free agent to his advantage. A forward thinking org doesn’t follow what everyone else does, but here we are. If we want to be the Rays, believe me, the actual Rays will always be better than us. We have to be different.

TLDR: I can understand Stro’s point to some degree, though don’t agree with his approach.

[azorian]

I met him at my workplace and he was the worst. All this noise hes making is ridiculous. Just play the game. He hasnt even been any good

Sent from my FRD-L14 using Tapatalk

Exactly doesn't he know the organization doesn't want him and tried to trade him to places like San Diego
but nobody was offering more than a bag of pretzels.

What was he like at your workplace?

Is he really that bad in person? Explain

He was great with the kids but just rude and stuck up to the staff. Sanchez and Estrada were amazing and pleasant with everyone they came across. Stro just constantly has this chip on his shoulder.

I was a fan of his coming into the league and I want to be on his bandwagon but he needs to show some results and stop whining at this point.

Sent from my FRD-L14 using Tapatalk

[dagger]

Not sure about the long term deal and he’s wrong by just saying “veterans”. The team needs good veterans, and that I will agree with. Look everyone including the front office wants to rebuild but free agency is so cheap now that it has become the zag to everyone else’s zig. The Jays could still rebuild on the side while adding pieces like Morton, Brantley, Happ, etc, to upgrade the big league roster in the absence of prospects. If they aren’t doing that for the sake of rebuilding then why the hell is Stroman (and others) still on the team? Trade the vets, bottom out, and build the way 90% of baseball wants to build these days. Instead it’s a half ass measure.

I’m not saying “go for it” by being stupid but doing what everyone else is doing, and not even doing it better than them, is going to make this process a lot harder. Fielding a team that will be watchable, and hell maybe surprise and become good earlier is a hell of a lot better than seeing Richard, Shoemaker, Pillar, Smoak, etc, on a team with no intention of winning more than 75 games.

Atkins should have kept the rebuild going but used the depressed free agent to his advantage. A forward thinking org doesn’t follow what everyone else does, but here we are. If we want to be the Rays, believe me, the actual Rays will always be better than us. We have to be different.

TLDR: I can understand Stro’s point to some degree, though don’t agree with his approach.

Yes, but... when the time comes to extend all those good young players who arrive cheap but then become expensive, those eight and 10 year contracts for veterans at that point in decline becomes an opportunity cost sacrificed to some half-assing in 2019. Secondly, the really good FAs aren't coming to Toronto right now without MASSIVE overpay and some won't come at all. How many no-trade lists include the Jays? Seemingly most. The time you can entice a good FA with some prime left for a market price is when you have an enticing foundation of youth, so that older veterans actually see themselves as making the difference in putting that team over the top. Seriously, why would Bryce Harper see Toronto as a viable destination for him right now. The Jays are more than a Bryce Harper away from winning.

[Tanner]

Not sure about the long term deal and he’s wrong by just saying “veterans”. The team needs good veterans, and that I will agree with. Look everyone including the front office wants to rebuild but free agency is so cheap now that it has become the zag to everyone else’s zig. The Jays could still rebuild on the side while adding pieces like Morton, Brantley, Happ, etc, to upgrade the big league roster in the absence of prospects. If they aren’t doing that for the sake of rebuilding then why the hell is Stroman (and others) still on the team? Trade the vets, bottom out, and build the way 90% of baseball wants to build these days. Instead it’s a half ass measure.

I’m not saying “go for it” by being stupid but doing what everyone else is doing, and not even doing it better than them, is going to make this process a lot harder. Fielding a team that will be watchable, and hell maybe surprise and become good earlier is a hell of a lot better than seeing Richard, Shoemaker, Pillar, Smoak, etc, on a team with no intention of winning more than 75 games.

Atkins should have kept the rebuild going but used the depressed free agent to his advantage. A forward thinking org doesn’t follow what everyone else does, but here we are. If we want to be the Rays, believe me, the actual Rays will always be better than us. We have to be different.

TLDR: I can understand Stro’s point to some degree, though don’t agree with his approach.

Yes, but... when the time comes to extend all those good young players who arrive cheap but then become expensive, those eight and 10 year contracts for veterans at that point in decline becomes an opportunity cost sacrificed to some half-assing in 2019. Secondly, the really good FAs aren't coming to Toronto right now without MASSIVE overpay and some won't come at all. How many no-trade lists include the Jays? Seemingly most. The time you can entice a good FA with some prime left for a market price is when you have an enticing foundation of youth, so that older veterans actually see themselves as making the difference in putting that team over the top. Seriously, why would Bryce Harper see Toronto as a viable destination for him right now. The Jays are more than a Bryce Harper away from winning.

Not Bryce Harper or Machado (though I wouldn’t be against that if the price were reasonable enough). But players like Morton, Happ, Brantley, etc, signed to short term deals without costing a pick is exactly what we should have done. Maybe we have to add a year or a bit more AAV to beat out better teams but three years is more than enough time to get value and not have it impact payroll when Vlad and others gets expensive.

[Natural11]

No, no and no. In fact it's a safe bet the only reason he wasn't traded is because he simply had no value on the market. Let's hope he puts a decent first half together so we can unload him for something (anything).

[johanliebert]

You guys are taking the veteran comment out of context because of your disdain for Stroman lol.

As far as the vlad jr bit it’s something Jose Bautista would say in the past. We all know what this ownership is doing to the kid that’s the difference between the sox/Yankees and us their owners want to win the guys here love their profit margin.

[johanliebert]

Yeah, having all of those veterans really proved crucial in propelling us to 76 and 73 win seasons.

He wasn’t a kid on those teams and the vets he mentioned were here for playoff runs. Veteran pitchers wit a lot of experience.

[dagger]

You guys are taking the veteran comment out of context because of your disdain for Stroman lol.

As far as the vlad jr bit it’s something Jose Bautista would say in the past. We all know what this ownership is doing to the kid that’s the difference between the sox/Yankees and us their owners want to win the guys here love their profit margin.

Yes, the owners here like their profits, and if you think the Yankees and Red Sox don't like making money, you're wrong. Those are profitable franchises. But they too went through bad years while they developed young talent like Mookie Betts, Aaron Judge, Miguel Andujar, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, Brock Holt, Gleyber Torres and more. They laid in the base before making trades like acquiring Chris Sale and or signing an FA like JD Martinez. There was a logical progression. Build the foundation with high talent youth, then spend cash or prospect capital on the veterans to build the fancy superstructure. In that way, the total is affordable, and sustainable for several years. That's what Alex Anthopolous didn't do. Rather than wait for his best prospects to lay in a foundation, he swung big trades in the winter of 2010-11 and in the summer of 2015. In both cases, he overlaid veterans on veterans. It didn't work in 2010-11, it brought some short-term benefit in 2015, but it meant taking on some soon-to-be-deadweight salary. The day(s) those 2015 trades went down, some of us on this board forecast correctly that however sweet the ride would be that year, the ride would be short and there would be some bad consequences down the road. Hey, most of us knew the FA contract Russ Martin signed was going to be nice upfront, with backloaded misery. The money was backloaded.

The desire of ownership to make a profit probably explains why this team didn't do the obvious thing and start rebuilding in 2017. The lemon had been squeezed for all the juice it had, but rather than admit it and move, ownership with management's compliance pursued a couple of fake competitive seasons while spending large amounts of money. A payroll of $160 million does not suggest cheapness to me so much as a need to spend as much as required to keep people coming through the turnstiles and watching games because that was still a profitable situation. Now, the fans have stopped coming in such large numbers, and the team is ratcheting down spending for now to align with revenues. Signing a couple of big names in January or February would not sell enough tickets to justify the payroll number that would create. No one or two substantial signings will make this team a contender, let alone middle of the pack.

The current approach is the right one. The Jays now have a top 5 farm system, and appear committed to bringing up those talents rather than trading them off for veterans as part of a tread-water strategy to hoodwink the ticket-buying public. The Leafs did that for many years, but only got things right when they accepted to be really bad for a couple of years and rely on youth development. The Raptors were ready to be really bad when Masai took over, but got a bit lucky with some trades and drafting, and started upward. But they were in a pretty bad place when he took over. This is the road to sustained success - you build it from the ground up.

[phillipmike]

Not Bryce Harper or Machado (though I wouldn’t be against that if the price were reasonable enough). But players like Morton, Happ, Brantley, etc, signed to short term deals without costing a pick is exactly what we should have done. Maybe we have to add a year or a bit more AAV to beat out better teams but three years is more than enough time to get value and not have it impact payroll when Vlad and others gets expensive.

I agree in theory but the player has to want to sign here. These guys are on the wrong side of 30, this is likely the last time they hit free agency with sway and power to potentially pick and choose who they play for. Morton signed with a team who won 90 games and is expected to be a playoff team coming from a WS winner. Happ was just with us and won nothing, he picked one of the best teams in the league who many expect to be a WS contender. Same with Brantley.

If im Happ, Morton or Brantley having made 55M, 40M and 36M respectively i rather sign with a winning team for a shot at a WS than sign with a team for more money who i know will trade me to an unknown city the minute i am good. All these free agents know teams like the Jays arent signing them to keep them for a shot at a WS, they know they are signing them for that exact reason "to extract value." Unless im getting a NMC i dont see why i go there when you have a little more clout to go to better teams. Hence why you have to settle for the lesser guys to "extract value" in the Ohs, Smiths, Shoemakers, Gavlis etc. because they have no other choice or very little options.

[Tanner]

Not Bryce Harper or Machado (though I wouldn’t be against that if the price were reasonable enough). But players like Morton, Happ, Brantley, etc, signed to short term deals without costing a pick is exactly what we should have done. Maybe we have to add a year or a bit more AAV to beat out better teams but three years is more than enough time to get value and not have it impact payroll when Vlad and others gets expensive.

I agree in theory but the player has to want to sign here. These guys are on the wrong side of 30, this is likely the last time they hit free agency with sway and power to potentially pick and choose who they play for. Morton signed with a team who won 90 games and is expected to be a playoff team coming from a WS winner. Happ was just with us and won nothing, he picked one of the best teams in the league who many expect to be a WS contender. Same with Brantley.

If im Happ, Morton or Brantley having made 55M, 40M and 36M respectively i rather sign with a winning team for a shot at a WS than sign with a team for more money who i know will trade me to an unknown city the minute i am good. All these free agents know teams like the Jays arent signing them to keep them for a shot at a WS, they know they are signing them for that exact reason "to extract value." Unless im getting a NMC i dont see why i go there when you have a little more clout to go to better teams. Hence why you have to settle for the lesser guys to "extract value" in the Ohs, Smiths, Shoemakers, Gavlis etc. because they have no other choice or very little options.

You might be right, but some times adding a year (in addition to the extra money that comes with the added year) is enough to sway the decision. My point was mostly about adding good players without hurting the rebuild or long term flexibility. Free agency makes that possible nowadays.

[Schad]

If you're adding an extra year and/or more money with players in their mid-30s, you're also making them less desirable as trade assets. Happ for 4 years, or with an AAV above $20m and all three seasons guaranteed, is pretty seriously risky for any team that wants a short-term pitching upgrade, because he's reeeeeeally old. Same thing with Morton, whose mid-30s velocity spike is pretty atypical, which makes him the sort of player where you probably don't want to go nuts with term.

[SharoneWright]

We did take on extra term and AAV for veterans - Tulo and Martin. Still paying.

We had our fun while it lasted. Pay me now or pay me later.. We are in the pay me later phase now. (Actually since last offseason, when Donaldson should have been moved). It was always part of the deal.

[Tanner]

I wouldn't have gone over 3 years for any of those players (Happ, Brantley, Morton), but I think a 3 year offer would have been enticing for Happ and Brantley (not as confident about Morton). Most players in their 30's want to maximize years and dollars. The Jays would have been taking a bit of a risk for diminishing returns, but three year deals are pretty harmless. Plus those deals would have ended after the 2021 season, meaning Vlad's first arb year. If you think the team's window really begins in 2021/22, then it's the perfect time for those deals to end. In the mean time maybe you put a competent product on the field for 2019-20 without sacrificing any long term flexibility.

I just don't agree with the way this off season turned out. I'm with Stroman on this one. Why is he still on the team if they are making no effort to improve at all? From his perspective, coming from WC contention in 2014, and then playoff appearances in 2015-16,can you blame him for being confused/frustrated about his place on the team?

Shapiro from an optics standpoint has carte blanche to do whatever he wants now. The fans know he's rebuilding, and Rogers is ok with it. So why the half ass measure again? If anything this off season seems more directionless than the last one.

[Schad]

I wouldn't have gone over 3 years for any of those players (Happ, Brantley, Morton), but I think a 3 year offer would have been enticing for Happ and Brantley (not as confident about Morton). Most players in their 30's want to maximize years and dollars. The Jays would have been taking a bit of a risk for diminishing returns, but three year deals are pretty harmless. Plus those deals would have ended after the 2021 season, meaning Vlad's first arb year. If you think the team's window really begins in 2021/22, then it's the perfect time for those deals to end. In the mean time maybe you put a competent product on the field for 2019-20 without sacrificing any long term flexibility.

You're sacrificing flexibility in your capacity to make moves during that time period. Morales was just a three year deal, and on significantly less money; having Morales has been an impediment.

Also, Happ's deal has a vesting third year at a very achievable threshold. Morton has a weird vesting third season, too. So we'd have needed to not only offer a guarantee for those seasons, but likely more money.

I just don't agree with the way this off season turned out. I'm with Stroman on this one. Why is he still on the team if they are making no effort to improve at all? From his perspective, coming from WC contention in 2014, and then playoff appearances in 2015-16,can you blame him for being confused/frustrated about his place on the team?

Surely Stroman is a bright enough guy to figure out that we were good, and now we're not good, because our players got old and bad, and nothing we can do will change that. He's still on the team because he was bad himself last year, at least by traditional numbers, and consequently no one wants to give up significant value for him. That is a problem we have with a number of our vets: we have to hope that they have good first halves, so that they can be moved.

Shapiro from an optics standpoint has carte blanche to do whatever he wants now. The fans know he's rebuilding, and Rogers is ok with it. So why the half ass measure again? If anything this off season seems more directionless than the last one.

Rogers was always going to cut our budget, because attendance and viewership tanked, and no amount of random third-tier free agents will change that, Further, signing random third-tier free agents is not in fact a direction.

[Tanner]

Surely Stroman is a bright enough guy to figure out that we were good, and now we're not good, because our players got old and bad, and nothing we can do will change that. He's still on the team because he was bad himself last year, at least by traditional numbers, and consequently no one wants to give up significant value for him. That is a problem we have with a number of our vets: we have to hope that they have good first halves, so that they can be moved.

But from his perspective he sees a team that isn't trying to win and is also holding on to him and other vets (Pillar, Sanchez, Smoak, Giles, Morales, etc). He sees a player who should have been up last year being held back a few weeks for service time reasons. As fans we can see that the front office is waiting for value to come back in trades and in the case of Vlad adding an extra year of control, but I can definitely see the player side of it.

I'm a bit confused as well to be honest. Holding on to Stro, Sanchez, and Giles in the hopes that their value increases is understandable (at least with Sanchez and Giles.....less so with Stro), but why is Pillar, Smoak, Morales, etc, still on the team? Even if you trade the latter players now and get little back, you're likely not getting much back regardless.

If we are rebuilding, that's totally fine. But it just seems like this winter should have been an aggressive shift towards being bad in 2019 with the hopes of a quick turnaround, rather than holding on to vets too long in hopes of squeezing a bit more at the deadline in an era of baseball where teams aren't trading good prospects at all.

Rogers was always going to cut our budget, because attendance and viewership tanked, and no amount of random third-tier free agents will change that, Further, signing random third-tier free agents is not in fact a direction.

In 2018 they wanted to make the playoffs, tried to make incremental improvements, and failed. You could argue it was stupid to do that, which is fair, but at least there was some direction. I just don't see any direction here. What if the team overachieves and is somehow in contention for the 2nd WC at the deadline? That's not likely to happen but what if it did? Do we still trade Stroman and Sanchez knowing how Rogers is with optics and attendance? It just seems like if they were going to rebuild then we should have gone all in. Waiting for Sanchez to increase his value makes sense, but everyone else should have been fair game. Teams are smart enough to look at FIP with Stroman rather than ERA. I doubt teams are viewing him as a 5+ Era starter.

[Schad]

I'm a bit confused as well to be honest. Holding on to Stro, Sanchez, and Giles in the hopes that their value increases is understandable (at least with Sanchez and Giles.....less so with Stro), but why is Pillar, Smoak, Morales, etc, still on the team? Even if you trade the latter players now and get little back, you're likely not getting much back regardless.

If we are rebuilding, that's totally fine. But it just seems like this winter should have been an aggressive shift towards being bad in 2019 with the hopes of a quick turnaround, rather than holding on to vets too long in hopes of squeezing a bit more at the deadline in an era of baseball where teams aren't trading good prospects at all.

In 2018 they wanted to make the playoffs, tried to make incremental improvements, and failed. You could argue it was stupid to do that, which is fair, but at least there was some direction. I just don't see any direction here. What if the team overachieves and is somehow in contention for the 2nd WC at the deadline? That's not likely to happen but what if it did? Do we still trade Stroman and Sanchez knowing how Rogers is with optics and attendance? It just seems like if they were going to rebuild then we should have gone all in. Waiting for Sanchez to increase his value makes sense, but everyone else should have been fair game. Teams are smart enough to look at FIP with Stroman rather than ERA. I doubt teams are viewing him as a 5+ Era starter.

I'd have preferred that we move more of them as well; I don't think it's much of a secret that I'm the foremost proponent on here of burning this thing to the ground. I don't think it was for lack of intent, though...at various times, it was reported that we were open to moving Smoak, Stroman, Sanchez and Giles, but all of them took steps back in 2018, and our asking price on Stroman was apparently too rich for the tastes of teams in the market.

Unfortunately, things lined up badly; we didn't rebuild after 2017, when it would have been optimal, and now all of our options kinda suck. It's distinctly possible that Smoak further regresses and goes for nothing in particular, it wouldn't be surprising if Stroman/Sanchez/Pillar/Giles fetch less, too as their service time is winnowed. Still, I get waiting more at this moment from a tactical perspective than I did at this time last year.

On the bright side: I don't think that we're going to have to worry about being in the race. Our pitching staff could be absolutely awful (particularly backed by a really bad defense), and while our offense has talent, I'm dubious that it's going to be particularly good.