Gap to Gap: At Blue Jays camp, spring's faux storylines start taking shape

Remember Greg Bird? He was the story of Blue Jays spring training circa 2022 as a minor-league free agent invitee, OPS’ing .958 while trading a walk for every strikeout in Grapefruit League play and generating progressively noisy buzz that he was forcing his way onto Toronto’s opening-day roster.

After all, clubs had two extra roster spots throughout the month of April to compensate for MLB’s lockout condensing spring training, and the Blue Jays needed a left-handed bench bat like Bird’s to help balance a righty-heavy lineup. The veteran assimilated well in the clubhouse; he carried name brand value with fans from his time with the New York Yankees; to many, he’d all but guaranteed himself a spot on the charter north.

The only issue was the Blue Jays didn’t want to add him to their 40-man roster. And upon learning of this in the final week of camp, Bird exercised an opt out in his contract and jumped back to the Yankees on a minor-league deal. Cue histrionics. How could Toronto’s front office allow this to happen? Did they not see the guy tearing the cover off the ball all spring? He’s exactly what the Blue Jays need and they let him get away to the Yankees?

As fate would have it, Bird never made another big-league plate appearance. The Yankees released him mid-season. Last summer, you could’ve made the trip up Autoroute 20 and caught him running around in left field for Capitales de Quebec. This winter, he led the Australian Baseball League with 11 home runs.

It’s an annual rite of spring: getting carried away with whichever recognizable veteran on a minor-league deal puts up numbers, whichever prospect shows out, whichever out-of-options player makes their case. With modern-day spring training nothing more than a six-week runway for pitchers to get built up ahead of opening day, constructing these false narratives certainly helps pass the time.

But it’s generally a misnomer to say there are jobs to be won during spring training. That’s just a story our shortcut-seeking brains reflexively like to tell. Sit down any general manager in the middle of February and they can tell you with near certainty how their 26-man roster will be composed come late March. They’ve already worked through the minor-league options, playing time considerations, longer-term controllability, and 40-man roster machinations. Preserving roster flexibility and depth has far more say in any decisions there are to make than whoever parked a few balls beyond some Florida or Arizona fences.

Maybe spring-training performances mattered once upon a time. But in 2024, most teams have around 25 spots spoken for with maybe one or two in flux at the end of the bench or edge of the bullpen. But even that’s only a choice between multiple optionable players who will regularly shuttle between triple-A and the majors throughout the season. Clubs are trying to build the deepest, most flexible roster possible for six months; not the most competitive roster possible for opening day.

Remember the topic that dominated discussion towards the end of Blue Jays camp last spring — who was going to win the 26th roster spot? In the running: Otto Lopez, a versatile defender, coming off a strong World Baseball Classic performance for Canada, who’d been clawing his way up the organizational ladder for a half-dozen seasons. Nathan Lukes, a minor-league grinder with impressive triple-A numbers. And Vinny Capra, a developmental success story who forced his way to the majors a season prior.

Ultimately, the Blue Jays went with Lukes, much to the dismay of those that saw Lopez — who easily had the best statistical spring of the three, OPS’ing .922 — as more deserving and likely to make an impact. The heartening story of the 28-year-old Lukes finally cracking a big-league roster in his ninth professional season was bittersweetly balanced by the unmeritocratic message sent to the quiet, professional Lopez, who couldn’t have done anything more to earn a nameplate at Rogers Centre.

Thing is, none of them made it to Rogers Centre for opening day. Lukes was optioned to triple-A only a week into the season —  the Blue Jays opened the schedule with 10 road games —  having not even made a plate appearance. Capra was shipped to the Pittsburgh Pirates at the end of April in a minor trade for depth catcher Tyler Heineman. Lopez followed up his strong spring with a .461 April OPS at triple-A. He didn’t even make it to camp with the Blue Jays this year, getting designated for assignment earlier this month and traded to the San Francisco Giants for cash.

For all the time and energy we spend at this time of year projecting opening-day rosters, designing lineup constructions, debating the marginal merits of one edge-of-roster player over another, pondering the possibility of waiver claims on out-of-options players, and inventing false camp battles to keep ourselves busy, it typically all becomes moot in the end.

Lukes was the only one from last year’s spring training battle to wear a Blue Jays uniform in 2023, making 31 plate appearances. Even Heineman made more with 37. Journeyman infielder Ernie Clement, signed to a minor-league deal two weeks prior to opening day, made 52. Stocky 28th-round pick Davis Schneider — who wasn’t even in big-league camp and didn’t approach last spring’s discourse — made 141. Season after season, whatever we talk about in March routinely seems ridiculous come September.

This all came to mind last week as the Blue Jays reached a pair of minor-league free agent pacts with players you’ve probably heard of before — Eduardo Escobar and Daniel Vogelbach.

Between their long-shot bids for roster spots, Alek Manoah’s one-man tourney in pursuit of the No. 5 starter’s job, an ostensible competition for a long relief role between the deserving Bowden Francis and the out-of-options Mitch White, and whichever top prospect goes on a Grapefruit League tear (just wait for the takes when Orelvis Martinez nukes a few get-me-over heaters onto the elementary school rooftops beyond TD Ballpark’s left-field wall), this spring’s faux storylines are beginning to take shape.

Escobar joins an already crowded infield mix on the heels of an underwhelming 2023 that saw him slash .226/.269/.344 across 309 plate appearances split between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Angels. The switch-hitter is only a couple years removed from an all-star 2021 campaign, and was good for above-average production in each full season played between 2017 and 2022. But ability can drop off abruptly once a player celebrates their 35th birthday, as Escobar did in January, and there are myriad cautionary signs in his profile should you go looking for them.

Escobar set a troubling trifecta of career highs in whiff, strikeout, and groundball rates last season, while notching his lowest average exit velocity and barrel rate since 2016. Long a dependable source of at least 20-homer power, he hit only six in 2023 and ran a hard-hit rate that would have ranked within the bottom 10 per cent of the league had he qualified. Meanwhile, he registered the lowest sprint speed of his career and below-average defensive marks at each position he played.

Now, this is baseball — crazy things happen. But with versatile infielders Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Santiago Espinal, Schneider and Clement already in the picture, plus prospects such as Martinez, Addison Barger, and Leo Jimenez waiting on the big-league doorstep, it’s difficult to envision Escobar’s pathway to a 40-man roster spot and bench role come opening day unless those circumstances alter substantially.

Vogelbach, meanwhile, at least maintained some of the better aspects of his offensive profile during a similarly dissatisfying 2023, running walk, chase, and hard-hit rates comfortably within the top-fifth of the league. His results — .233/.339/.404 with 13 homers across 319 plate appearances — produced a respectable 109 wRC+. That’s a big-league bat. But the question with Vogelbach is whether his production is enough to justify carrying a player with such limited roster utility.

The 31-year-old is one of the slowest players in the league, hasn’t started a game in the field since 2021, and faced a left-handed pitcher only 16 times last season. A platoon DH is an interesting luxury to feature on a deep, young, versatile team. But it’s a harder puzzle piece to make fit on a club such as the Blue Jays, who already carry a 39-year-old primary DH along with a 34-year-old right fielder, who gets a DH day about once a week.

Ultimately, these are low-cost, zero-risk fliers to take and provide the Blue Jays an added layer of insurance should someone get hurt during spring training. Meanwhile, the benefit for Escobar and Vogelbach is a productive training environment and regular Grapefruit League reps to demonstrate they still have something to contribute as big-leaguers.

But if the Blue Jays reach the regular season without making a 40-man condensing trade or having a pressing roster need materialize, it’s difficult to find a way to fit either player within the club’s opening day 26. And no one could fault Escobar or Vogelbach for declining a triple-A assignment at the end of camp to seek alternative situations presenting a clearer path to a big-league opportunity. Just as the Blue Jays will scrape the late-March waiver wire and release market for players such as Clement — or Jordan Luplow, who was plucked off waivers during the first week of the 2023 season — with profiles better fitting their roster construction and needs.

As much as our brains crave tidy camp-battle stories and narratives, particularly at this juncture in the baseball calendar as we spin the news cycle round and round for six weeks while pitchers complete throwing progressions, it’s always useful to remember lessons learned from springs past. How quickly we forget Greg Bird. Watch him hit this one over a house.