Comparison of Jays Past by Position

Saturday, January 25 2025 @ 08:18 PM EST

Contributed by: John Northey

Well, the winter keeps going and we're nearing Spring Training so what is the status vs past Jays teams?

Using fWAR by primary position (IE: a guy might have played at DH as well as C but all their stats show up at C due to how FG only has full splits from 2002 on and I want to capture the 83-93 contending stretch for comparisons)

Note: Players can be listed at multiple positions it seems as their 'primary position' thus Bautista and Encarnacion at 3B in 2010. Not exactly fair, but this gives a good idea of how strong or weak the Jays were at various positions over the years.  1987 shows how you can have a MASSIVE hole at a position (2B) and still win 97 games (Gillick really screwed the pooch that year by not improving 2B at any point as even 1 WAR there would've got them into a tie breaker at least).  DH was ugly in '89 and '85 (both division champs).  RF is funny - Bautista the main man both in the best year for our RF's and in the worst year for it.  We also see some bad years can have amazing performances at a single position but it is a team game (see RF in 2010 and 2011, both 4th place finishes).

So what is projected for this year and where does it land? Using ZiPS since it lists by position totals. If tied I list the years it ties with, if not then I list the year above and the year below (normally a 0.1 spread on each side).  This should give us an idea as to what to expect based on history.
Note: Put Santander's 2.2 projection in LF, the 2.0 for LF to DH figuring whoever would've been in LF would now DH given DH was at 0.9. At 0.9 DH would've been 27th tied with 2004.

Catcher is a top 10 all time Jays position right now with Kirk, our Starters despite the fear are also on the edge of being top 10 Jays all time.  If Alonso is added DH would climb from 0.9 to 2.0 to 3.0 (his ZIPs projection figuring DH would mostly be a mix of him and Vlad who is over 3 in projections) which would push it to 12th all time (tied with 2005).  Bregman would push 3B to 3.3 from 2.0 - a similar jump if you assume DH is now at 2.0 - and goes from 25th all time to a tie for 17th (1987).  Do both and that adds 2.3 wins to the projections overall which is very big (maybe more as the bench jumps then with Clement moving to a bench role, and the kids left in AAA or used to trade for more pitching).  Of course, this is all projection which can be very wrong, but it is the best guess we have for 2025.

I did a division comparison earlier with ZiPS where the Jays were 1st at 1B, 2B; 2nd at C, SS, CF; 3rd nowhere; 4th at LF (move to 3rd with Santander ahead of the Yanks), SP; 5th at 3B, DH (Santander in LF old LF to DH moves it to 1st in division), RF, RP and overall (ahead of the Rays & Red Sox overall with Santander added in over DH's).  Yeah, the DH's in our division suck this year - only Boston was expected to be at 2.0 pre-Santander signing.  Of course, I'm not factoring in any changes the 4 other teams in the division made since the projections were made as I don't feel like doing that much digging to be honest.  Once all ZiPs are done for all teams they'll have a good summary available to use just before the season starts and hopefully the Jays add more to make it look better.

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