The mid-season point is upon us and the Jays are not where we wanted them to be. The Jays have a losing record, are 4.5 games back of the Yankees and 4 games back in the wild-card. The Jays have played 91 games, they have 71 left. The Jays will need to go 45-26 to finish with 90 wins. Fangraphs projection system believes that 82 wins will get a team into the wildcard game. That seems to be overly optimistic or pessimistic, depending on your point of view. Baseball reference has the same numbers. Both systems give the Jays a 26%-28% chance to make the playoffs. A 40-31 finish will give the Jays 85 wins a decent shot. If the Jays can live up to their pythagorean record from the first half they can do that. But they need shutdown relief pitching and fewer errors.
Given that information what would you do?
First, are you for it and forget about the future? Will you hedge your bets and trade for value if its there and perhaps not overpay for rentals? Or would you sit relatively pat and just tweak the roster?
If a trade is available for a dependable starting pitcher, who would you be willing to give up?
Specifically, who would you deal from the following lists? Assume you need to deal a prospect from list A and a prospect from list B, who are your choices to trade?
List A is Daniel Norris, Jeff Hoffman, Dalton Pompey and Anthony Alford.
List B is Matt Boyd, Richard Urena, Jairo Labourt and Sean Reid-Foley.
If you had to trade a player off the big league roster, which of the following would you trade? Danny Valencia, Chris Collabello, Ryan Goins or Dioner Navarro.
The expected challenge in the trade market this year is the number of teams still in contention. This is more of an AL issue than an NL issue. There are just four teams realistically in play for the NL wild card. There are around ten teams in the AL. This could set prices higher if fewer teams are selling and more are buying. How would you play the sellers market?
I would try and improve the team, hopefully by trading for assets that would be under control for a couple of years. I would almost go for it but not at any price. From my lists I would trade Jeff Hoffman, Sean Reid-Foley and Chris Colabello. In general hitters are less risky than pitchers but pitchers who have already had TJ surgery are at an increased risk of seeing material damage done to their careers.
The 30% chance that the Jays have to reach the playoffs seems right to me. They have the capability to pitch better but I would prefer if the Jays could pick up a starter and move a pitcher, say Sanchez, to the pen. They could also hopefully pick up another seasoned reliever. That would give two extra strong pillars in the pen.
What would you do?
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