The MLB season begins in mere days, so we polled Sportsnet’s baseball writers about the upcoming season.
Will Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion return? Which players could break out? And who’s the biggest threat to the Blue Jays in the AL East? Our writers weigh in before the season opener:
CLOSER TO HOME: Watch Stephen Brunt’s TV special Roberto Osuna: Sinaloa to the Show on Sportsnet, April 2 at 4 p.m., following Red Sox vs. Blue Jays in Montreal
The Blue Jays should score plenty of runs, but is their pitching good enough?
At this point it looks like it is. Between Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez they’ve added enough potential upside to cushion the loss of David Price, but they’ll need J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada to cover for Mark Buehrle’s steadiness.
I don’t know if it’s good enough … but it should be deep enough. I’m a J.A. Happ skeptic, to be honest, and there are obviously going to be innings concerns with Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman. But the depth of the bullpen ought to make up for that. I’m expecting a lights-out season from Brett Cecil in a walk year.
As unlikely as it seemed a couple of months ago, the Blue Jays actually seem reasonably deep in the starting rotation. The group’s light on upside, and the bullpen lacks a second legitimate lefty, but the pitching doesn’t have to dominate. League-average production will be more than enough for a team that should still have baseball’s top offence.
Probably. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in Josh Donaldson’s ‘our pitchers don’t have to be great, they just have to be average’ theory. If the five Blue Jays in the opening day rotation all pitch to their career average ERA’s (all below 4.00 with the exception of JA Happ’s 4.13) I think the Blue Jays will win more often than not, considering they scored five-and-a-half runs per game in 2015 and arguably have a better all-around offence this year. What’s also encouraging is that the next wave of replacements, who will inevitably have to make starts at some point this season, is stronger than it was in 2015. I’ll take Gavin Floyd, Jesse Chavez and Drew Hutchison over Felix Doubront, Scott Copeland and Todd Redmond any day.
A year from now, are Bautista and Encarnacion still Blue Jays?
No.
No, although I think the organization is more likely to have a shot at signing Bautista than Encarnacion – especially if they’re in contention at the deadline and crowds are good. But if there are no in-season extension, they’ll both walk – and both will have to lower their demands to get that extension.
Honestly I doubt it. They’ve been such exceptionally productive hitters, but that means they’ve positioned themselves for massive contracts. Considering the Blue Jays need to get younger, rather than older, it’s an imperfect fit. It’d be a blow to lose such talented hitters, but the Blue Jays still have them for at least one last push. If they make another deep playoff run, everyone wins.
As it stands today, no. For starters, it doesn’t sound like the Blue Jays line up on value or term with either player, which is a significant impediment to negotiations. There’s also the fact that the Blue Jays already have $84.5 million on the books for just five players in 2017 with no indication from anyone involved that payroll is going to significantly increase from the $130-140 million range it’s hovered at for a few years. Even in the highly unlikely scenario that the Blue Jays were able to talk both players down a bit -— say, Bautista at $25 million per year and Encarnacion at $20 million —- it would be next to impossible to fill out the rest of the roster under the current budget with $130 million already committed to seven players. All that said, I’m firmly entrenched on Team Pay Bautista. But I really don’t see it happening.
Which AL East team poses the biggest threat to the Blue Jays?
I’m picking the Boston Red Sox as my second wild card team, because I think they have too many question marks to win the division. I just don’t think there’s a team in the division that is, on balance, as good or as motivated as the Blue Jays. If any team steps up to challenge the Blue Jays, it will be the Tampa Bay Rays because of their pitching. Love the addition of Corey Dickerson, too.
The Red Sox have their issues, no question. But Boston will score runs and their bullpen looks much improved. If they can get reasonably decent starting pitching behind David Price, we’re looking at a playoff team.
The Red Sox are the easy choice, but let’s go off the board and take the New York Yankees. You can draw a pretty straight line between the Blue Jays winning the AL East by six games in 2015 and the team’s 13-6 record against New York. If just four of those contests go the other way, the Blue Jays are playing in the AL wild card game. Is this a good time to mention that David Price started four games against New York down the stretch and pitched brilliantly in each? Also, don’t forget the Yankees scored the second-most runs in the majors last season and went 81-62 against every team not named the Toronto Blue Jays. You can try to count them out every year, but the Yankees will make you pay.
The Tampa Bay Rays because they have the deepest pitching staff in the division.
What MLB team will you go out of your way to watch in 2016?
I’m going to watch as many Cubs games as possible. Even if you set aside the history, the ballpark and the appeal of weekday afternoon games, that lineup is stacked.
The Arizona Diamondbacks because they’re going to be a wild ride one way or the other.
Can it be anyone other than the Chicago Cubs? Even their spring training has been must-see television with crazed circus ringmaster Joe Maddon subjecting his players to mimes, on-field karaoke competitions, and interactions with actual live bears as they’ve prepared for the season in Arizona. And when it comes to the far less important matter of playing baseball, watching the Cubs means you get see one of the most shrewdly constructed lineups in baseball, with young superstars like Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo continuing to evolve, plus warhorse veterans like John Lackey and Ben Zobrist doing their thing. Jason Heyward also plays for this team. Jake Arrieta, too. I mean, Jorge Soler and Javier Baez are going to be on their bench. The only thing that would make the Cubs more entertaining is if Bartolo Colon played for them.
Has to be the Washington Nationals. They have the game’s most exciting player in Bryce Harper – sorry, Mike Trout – and a throwback manager in Dusty Baker whose handling of pitching has often been called into question. The Nationals could go wire to wire … or be a huge train-wreck.
Who’s one MLB player capable of breaking out?
I think Kyle Schwarber could be a quiet monster in an already-stacked Chicago Cubs lineup after he hit 16 homers in just 273 plate appearances as a 22-year-old last season. Philadelphia’s Maikel Franco is also super intriguing, considering he has plenty of power (he hit 14 homers in half a season last year) and good contact skills (his strikeout rate was just 15.5 percent). Corey Seager’s another; he posted a 12.4 percent walk rate while hitting .337/.425/.561 in his brief debut for the Dodgers last season, which is pretty remarkable for a 21-year-old.
Paul Goldschmidt’s a player everyone’s going to start appreciating for who he is. He’ll go from being the player who’s always under the radar to a star player on a team capable of legitimate contention.
I’m really intrigued to see how Carlos Correa of the Houston Astros builds on last season. He’s young, but I have him as a darkhorse Most Valuable Player candidate.
It’s easy to believe in Rougned Odor after seeing the way he finished the 2016 season. He returned from the minors on June 15, hit .292 with 15 homers and an .861 OPS the rest of the way and essentially matched that production in the ALDS against the Blue Jays. Still just 22, Odor could take another big step forward in 2016.
What’s one issue you’ll be watching as MLB’s CBA talks pick up with the MLBPA?
Tanking and by extension MLB’s entire draft system. Tanking is becoming a major sticking point for players and teams, and the system offers too many incentives to lose big as it stands.
Probably the whole issue surrounding qualifying offers. Seems to me it’s something that could be bargained away by ownership or dropped as an issue by the MLBPA for concessions elsewhere.
The future of the qualifying offer system. I think a relatively simple solution would be to remove the provision that says a team forfeits a draft pick for signing a qualified player. I think the team that loses the player after making him a qualifying offer should still get a draft pick in a supplemental round after the first 30 selections. But with the signing team not forfeiting a pick, players wouldn’t see their value unfairly submarined in free agency.
We can talk about the qualifying offer, the international draft and the joint drug agreement all day, but to me none of those issues are as important as the luxury tax. The luxury tax didn’t increase during the last round of negotiations, when the U.S. economy was emerging from a recession, but revenues around baseball have grown meaningfully since then. Even so, teams like the Angels and Yankees are working to stay under the threshold, which has seemingly become an increasingly powerful disincentive for teams considering big investments. Tony Clark and the MLBPA will presumably argue that it’s time for the luxury tax to increase.
“Historically the competitive balance tax has increased as the industry value has increased,” Clark said this month, speaking in general terms in Dunedin, Fla. “[We] are excited that the industry grew to the fashion that it did, and are looking forward to having a conversation about how that may manifest itself in an area like the competitive balance tax.”
The stakes are high, with hundreds of millions at stake.
Look for the roundtable’s playoff and award predictions on sportsnet.ca Friday.
