Kuzul

Baseball’s offseason player movement is in full swing at the moment, albeit with a certain team from New York being much quieter than anyone expected. Today, word came out that the Blue Jays had joined in on the fun and signed a free agent. “Fun” might not be the best word to describe the Jays’ dip into the free agent market, as they appear to have re-signed not-so-old friend Edwin Encarnacion to a one-year deal worth 2.5 million dollars with an option for a second season.

It wasn’t so long ago Jays fans thought they had seen the last of Edwin when he was claimed off waivers by the Oakland Athletics. But they cut him loose, he hit the market, and he came right back to Toronto to lock himself up with a roster spot for 2011. Encarnacion hit .244 with an uninspiring .305 on-base percentage but still managed an above average .339 wOBA thanks almost entirely to his career high .238 isolated power and 21 homers. It was a nice bounce-back from his disappointing 2009 season but still not quite up to par with his trio of .350-plus wOBA seasons with Cincinnati back in 2006-2008.

The principal reason for any lack of joy amongst most Jays fans, however, comes from Edwin’s by and large horrid defensive ability. He’s been affectionately know as “E5” for some time now in reference to the frequent number of defensive miscues from the third base position (the fifth defensive position for scoring purposes). In what can only be considered a Festivus Miracle, the fans and UZR are both in agreement with regards to Edwin’s defense; the defensive metric has him pegged as a -11.5 per 150 defensive games in his career at third.

The simple solution, besides not adding him to the team, would be to move the defensively challenged player to first base or DH. Which is all well and good except that his bat isn’t quite good enough to justify occupying any large number of at-bats at those two premium offensive positions. This type of player can be tough to find at-bats for because you either have to sacrifice defense and play him somewhere where his bat will be above average or hide his defense at first or DH for less than average production from those spots. Again, the problem could simply be solved by not signing the player in the first place.

The money being spent on Encarnacion is not that big a deal, but the roster spot he now occupies could have just as easily been given to twenty-four year old Brad Emaus, whom the Jays just lost in the Rule Five Draft to the New York Mets. Emaus had a solid 2010 season at both Double- and Triple-A, hitting a combined .290 with a .397 OBP, a .186 ISO, 15 homers and 13 steals in 15 attempts. The Jays would’ve been better served handing him a 40-man roster spot and giving him a shot at the Opening Day roster.

He might not have out-produced Edwin at the plate, there’s no way Emaus could equal his power, but with anything close to average defense, his value might have matched Encarnacion’s at a fifth of the cost. More so than the cost of his salary, the Jays would’ve gotten a good luck at Emaus’ potential and possible future with the club. Emaus’ ceiling is probably that of a utility infielder, but every team needs one and he’d be cheap for years to come if he could do the job. Now the Mets will get to find that out, while the Jays get to see more of the same from another, unnecessary, season of the Edwin Encarnacion Experience.

Even after the loss of Emaus to the Mets, the Jays still could have gone into the free agent market and come home with someone more useful and worth rostering than Encarnacion. That someone would be Bill Hall, formerly of the Milwaukee Brewers, Seattle Mariners and most recently the Boston Red Sox (who are having themselves quite a Christmas). Hall put up extremely similar numbers to Edwin as he too enjoyed a bit of a bounce-back 2010 season. Hall hit .247 with a .316 OBP and a .209 ISO while hitting 18 homers. Very similar numbers to Encarnacion’s.

Their abilities are not so similar when trotting out to man a defensive position. Hall is rated for his career to be above average at both shortstop and third base and slightly below average at second. He’s also spent time in both outfield corners, making him an extremely versatile guy to have around. Hall might end up costing more than Encarnacion but he’d have been worth it for his defensive ability and versatility.

In the end, this, like most of the Jays’ moves this off-season, isn’t a significant development. It is however, for this writer anyways, the first head-scratcher of a move that initially appears indefensible for why it was made. It’s not a long-term move, and with the Shaun Marcum trade a solid sign that the Jays aren’t going for it in 2011, it’s not much of a short-term move aimed at pushing the team into contention, either. Not that signing Encarnacion would push the Jays closer to contending. For now, though, don’t dwell on it too much, and remember that the American League East team currently having the worst off-season is in New York, not in Toronto.   

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Over the weekend the Blue Jays made the latest in a series of deals aimed at building a championship caliber club a few years down the road. This one saw the Jays second best starting pitcher from 2010, Shaun Marcum, head to Milwaukee in return for top prospect Brett Lawrie.

Unlike last offseason’s Roy Halladay trade, Marcum was dealt despite two remaining years of arbitration eligibility. The Jays were at no risk of losing Marcum until at least 2013 and after missing all of 2009 with an injury and making just $850,000 this season, he would not have been expensive to keep around.

With no imminent threat of him leaving or becoming too expensive there are still several reasons why such a player would be parted with. Perhaps most importantly was the fact Marcum missed all of 2009 after having Tommy John surgery and came back and pitched 195 innings over 31 starts in 2010.

Going from zero big league innings one year to 195 the next is a massive jump and there had to be some concern on the part of Blue Jays GM, Alex Anthopoulos, if Marcum could hold up enough to take the ball another 31 times in 2011.

The Blue Jays’ strong pitching left Anthopoulos with the option of foregoing all that risk because he has enough healthy, young, arms to absorb Marcum’s loss of production.

The Milwaukee Brewers reside in a completely different universe when it comes to starting pitching depth making them an ideal partner for the Jays to work with. The Brewers almost have to take a risk like this with little depth behind Yovani Gallardo and a lack of funds to chase after the likes of Cliff Lee in free agency.

And Marcum didn’t just comeback and survive 31 starts, he put together a fabulous campaign that finished up with a 3.64 ERA, 3.74 FIP and career bests in both his strikeout and walk rates.

And a healthy Marcum certainly could repeat those numbers, despite being the veteran of the Blue Jays starting rotation he’ll still be just 29 on Opening Day 2011. The possibility of a few seasons like 2010 from Marcum was enough for the Brewers to depart with top prospect, Brett Lawrie.

The loss of Marcum leaves Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow and Brett Cecil as the front men for the Blue Jays young and talented starting rotation. Romero now becomes the senior member of the staff at the ripe old Opening Day age of 26.

That could be cause for concern as younger pitchers are routinely held to pitch counts, innings limits, extra time off between starts and extra caution with arm injuries now more than ever with new manager John Farrell on board, who came over from a Red Sox team that went to great lengths to protect its pitchers.

It was talked about after Clay Bucholz’s no-hitter in 2007 that he was going to be pulled, no-hitter in tact or not, if he hit his pitch count limit.

With that in mind, the Jays may want to bring a veteran starter to chew up some innings at the back of the rotation or at the least carry a true swing man able to switch from the ‘pen to the rotation when needed.

Farrell’s Red Sox teams, despite their massive payroll, always like to have someone like a Tim Wakefield or Julian Tavarez around to soak up some innings in spot starts and take the occasional “one for the team” pounding for the sake of the team’s other more valuable arms.

Getting back to Anthopoulos’ latest prospect grab, Brett Lawrie has the makings of a future star. He did more than hold his own as a 20-year-old in Double-A hitting .285 with a .164 isolated power and drawing a walk 7.7 percent of the time.

The power wasn’t overwhelming but drawing an average amount of walks and hitting for a solid average when facing Double-A pitching at such a young age bodes well for his future. He currently plays second but as with many young players a move to another position could be in his future. A move to third would open the clearest path to Toronto if his defense at second doesn’t figure to make the grade.

As with the Brett Wallace for Anthony Gose deal back in July, Anthopoulos looks very comfortable giving up near term production for long term, hopefully, superior production a little more ways into the future. Lawrie joins a group of positional prospects that continues to get deeper and more talented seemingly every couple of months since Anthopoulos has been at the helm.

As with most of his deals, only time will tell what exactly Anthopoulos is building this team into. In the meantime, it’s hard not to be impressed with the young talent he’s collected as baseball as a whole shifts evermore to valuing these types of players more than ever before.

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Yesterday, the Toronto Blue Jays made a minor deal with the Oakland As by acquiring outfielder, Rajai Davis. In return the Jays sent a pair of minor league relievers, Trystan Magnuson and Daniel Farquhar, to Oakland. Both players spent all of 2010 with the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Although he’ll be thirty next season, Davis still has three years of arbitration remaining. That should keep his salary down while providing the Jays with help in some key areas.

The first thing to jump out about Davis is his speed on the basepaths.  In 2010, he swiped 50 bases in 61 attempts, an excellent 81.9 percent success rate. On his career, spanning back to 2006, Davis has stolen 143 bases against just 38 failed attempts. Davis nearly stole as many bases as the Blue Jays did as a whole last season. The Jays swiped just 54 bags last season.

Now, stealing lots of bases does not equate to winning games, one only need and look at the one team that stole less bases than the Jays. That would be the World Champion San Francisco Giants. But having someone with this level of base stealing ability is never a bad occurrence. That speed is also a key factor for Davis at the plate. He is not a power hitter, he doesn’t even have average power, with a career isolated power of just .102. To help paint that picture a little better, Davis has just a dozen homers in 1455 trips to the plate.

Without the power, Davis has routinely hit plenty of groundballs and used his speed to dig out base hits. Davis’ BABIP has been better than the league average in three of the last four seasons, including 2010 when he had a career low 15.5 percent line drive rate. Keeping your BABIP high with a low line drive rate is awfully tough but he was able to do it successfully with his speed a key culprit for why.

In his career Davis has hit .281 with a .326 BABIP. Davis doesn’t walk or strikeout much making his ability to keep his average up paramount to being a productive hitter. Davis drew a walk in just 4.6 percent of his at-bats last season, well below the league average and well off his 6.7 percent mark in 2009. If he walked more he’d be a prototypical lead-off hitter but as it stands he’s probably better suited to hitting lower down the line-up. Maybe not so much with the Jays though as they don’t have a clear cut choice for a lead-off hitter in 2011.

Finding a spot for Davis in the line-up is jumping ahead a bit with incumbents Vernon Wells, Fred Lewis, and Travis Snider lined up as the ideal outfield trio. The defensively challenged Adam Lind and third baseman/right fielder/home run king Jose Bautista might also be looking for outfield playing time next season. That being said, Davis is considered an above average defensive outfielder capable of handling all three outfield spots. Right away he’s probably the best centerfield option for the Jays, from a purely defensive standpoint.

Davis has played 342 games in center, 57 in left and 35 in right during his career. With Lewis, Snider, and Lind all hitting left-handed there should be plenty of opportunities to get the right-handed hitting Davis into the line-up against left handed pitching. Davis has a career .331 wOBA against lefties, compared to a .308 wOBA against righties. That difference comes mostly from hitting .292 against lefties to .277 versus right-handers and walking 2.7 percent more against lefites than righties. His isolated power and BABIP are essentially even against either type of pitcher.

How much playing time he gets will determine the end value of this trade. But for a pair of minor league relievers the Jays added a proven base stealer who can effectively play three outfield positions and hit lefties, all at a reasonable cost. A small move sure, but it’s good to see Alex Anthopoulos go out and address a need without appearing to give up too much in the process.

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It will be almost impossible as the off season wears on to go into all that much detail about every rumored player the Blue Jays will have interest in acquiring. The what ifs almost always turn out to be nothing more than that and just about anything passes for news during baseball’s off season. But as of now there isn’t all that much going on with the Jays, leaving the opportunity to explore the one big rumor sitting out there in some detail.

That rumor is that the Florida Marlins are looking to deal Dan Uggla and, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney, the Blue Jays are the front runners to acquire the power hitting second baseman. Uggla has established himself as one of the top hitting second baseman in the game over the last five seasons. He’s gone deep over thirty times in each of the past four seasons while also collecting his fare share of doubles and walks.

Last season he hit 33 homers, collected 31 doubles, walked in 11.6 percent of his plate appearances and had a career high .381 wOBA. He also had career highs in batting average(.287), BABIP(.330) and on-base percentage(.369). His walk rate was actually the lowest it’s been since 2007 but still well above average, same for his .221 isolated power, an excellent showing but also a mark he’s bested in two of his three previous campaigns.

Uggla has been a very healthy player in his career playing in at least 146 games in each of his five seasons, and missing just seven games in the last two seasons combined. The only downside to Uggla’s game has been his less than impressive defense at a position of relative defensive importance. Uggla will also be 31 next season leaving no reason to think his defense will improve, but his offense should remain strong for several more seasons.

The first issue with acquiring Uggla is his contract expectations. It’s been reported today that he turned down a four-year, forty-eight million dollar offer to stay with the Marlins. The Jays wouldn’t be wise to go much beyond that type of offer in either money or years and essentially pay for his prime years of production in Florida while playing out his decline stage in Toronto. There’s also no guarantee that Uggla would sign with Toronto in the first place if they did land him, he could simply play out his last arbitration season(for which he’ll be payed well) and go into the open market in 2011.

In that scenario the Jays would be giving up some prospects(determining whom exactly that would be is almost a pointless excercise) for one year of Uggla and a couple of 2012 draft picks. If the Jays are looking at 2011 as a win now season then maybe it’s the right approach. But if they’re not, keeping the prospects they already have would be the better route if the plan is to compete in 2012 and beyond.

If Uggla was just going to cost an expendable amount of money(i.e. cheap) in return for draft picks that’d be one thing. But eight or nine million dollars, plus two-three prospects for two draft picks in 2012 hardly seems practical. The Blue Jays do have two organizational positions of strength to deal from with their plethora of catching and starting pitching prospects. The problem with that is that if you could choose two positions to be deep in it would be catching and starting pitching.

If the Jays did get him and sign him, the issue with Uggla would move to where he plays on the field. Obviously, this would also be the issue if he was only going to be around for 2011 as well. Olney’s report cited one scout who thinks most of Uggla’s fielding issues involve throwing issues. The scout when on to say he might fare better at third because the ball arrives quicker, therefore leaving more time for Uggla to make solid throws. Uggla could also play first and naturally make even less throws but finding someone who can field first base isn’t exactly hard or a major concern.

Uggla’s bat would still be above average at third and maybe his defense would creep closer to average. That’s great in of itself but if the Jays want a power hitting third baseman who walks a lot and may struggle defensively…they already have one. Jose Bautista would fill that role quite well and the Jays have already gone through the trouble of acquiring him. Playing Bautista at third also opens up playing time in the outfield.

Keeping Uggla at second is another, poorer, option that would require moving Aaron Hill to third or trading him. The latter is a horrible idea, selling low on a twenty-eight year old, cost controlled player coming off the worst year in his career to bring in a thirty-one year old, coming off a career year for more money is not the ideal way to go about one’s business. Neither is moving the defensively superb Hill off his position to make room for an inferior fielder at an up the middle position.

It’s early in the off-season and there figures to be loads more options to come about for the Blue Jays. They won’t all be discussed in such length as this one, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be better.

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No player on the 2010 Toronto Blue Jays has had more words spoken or written about him than Jose Bautista. The most surprising offensive performance in all of baseball will do that for a player. Breaking down Bautista’s 2010 campaign isn’t easier or harder than any other player that saw regular playing time throughout the year. Figuring out how such a player could have such a season is much more of a daunting task.

The only reason anyone believes that Bautista hit 54 home runs and had a .422 wOBA is becuase, well, he did and there’s sufficient evidence to support it. The best way to explain a player with 59 home runs in 2038 career plate appearances hitting 54 in his next 683 might be to say it’s unexplainable and leave it at that. You could also write an incredible in-depth analysis that explores every minutia of Bautista’s career and test every theory about the ability to hit home runs against it. Problem is both acts could likely lead to the same conclusion.

What follows is an attempt to shoot down the middle of the two above options and take a look at some of the other forgotten parts of Bautista’s season. Besides the obvious one, Bautista set several career high marks in 2010. A career .244 hitter at the completion of this season, Bautista hit a career high .260, besting his previous mark of .254 in his only other full season back in 2007 with the Pirates.

He was able to do so despite a .233 BABIP, easily his lowest career mark(besides his .190 in 11 games in 2005). Even when trying not to discuss his homers, it has to be mentioned here because there’s no way he hits .260 with a .233 BABIP without a bunch of home runs. The poor BABIP probably had a lot to do with just a 14.4 percent line drive rate, career low 31 percent ground ball rate and a whopping 54.5 percent fly ball rate, easily a career high. Worth mentioning here, the 21.7 percent of his fly balls that went for homers was the highest in the AL and way above his 13.8 percent career mark.

The second biggest value adding portion of Bautista’s offensive goodness was his 14.6 percent walk rate, again a career high and third best in the AL. The walks were less of a surprise than the homers were, Bautista had put up 11.1, 9.4 and 13.9 percent marks in the past three seasons before 2010. His .378 on-base percentage soared above the league average of .325.

Bautista showed some defensive flexibility spending 45 games at third and 113 in right field. UZR wasn’t particularly impressed with his defense at either spot, but he has received high praise for his cannon of an arm in right field. UZR agrees about the arm, rating him at 6.2 outfield arm runs above average in 2010.

For just the second time in his career Bautista enjoyed significant playing time, getting into 161 games and making 683 trips to the plate. He had previously topped 140 games and 600 plate appearances just once in 2007. The playing time and excellent production gave Bautista a 6.9 WAR season, trumping the collective 1.8 WAR compiled in the rest of his career and 2009’s 1.9 as well.

Bautista had a season for the ages and, more than likely, a season that will go down as the best of his career. It’s not often a player breaks out at age twenty-nine in the way he did. He’ll be thirty next season and his production will be watched closely by more than a few people. 

Luckily, for the Blue Jays they can bring him back next season on his last year of arbitration eligibility and not have to make a multi-year commitment. He’ll be in line for a decent raise from last year’s 2.4 million, but the Jays won’t have to decide where his true talent lies right away. If he reverts to his career norms or somewhere in between and enters free agency the Jays won’t be stuck paying for 2010 beyond 2011.

That he regresses, at least somewhat, is almost a guarantee. It’s been mentioned that a new swing had a lot to do with the home runs. It’s also been kicked around that Bautista used some bad stuff to hit the homers as well. The latter isn’t a fair accusation as Bautista has never been suspected or caught with anything, ever.

But the speculation, however unwarranted, can’t be helped to try and explain the unexplainable. The steroid issue aside, Bautista’s season was a reminder about what makes the game as great as it is. You never what your going to see and even when you see it, you don’t always believe it.

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After completely missing all of 2009 thanks to Tommy John surgery, Shaun Marcum returned to the Blue Jays rotation in 2010 with mixed expectations. Many pitchers have successfully come back from TJ surgery in the past but that success is far from guaranteed. Marcum didn’t just get back to his old self, he turned in the best season of his career.

For just the second time in his career, all of Marcum’s appearances were starts. He first became a full-time starter in 2008 turning in 25 starts in 25 appearances. In 2010, Marcum took the ball from the start 31 times and hurled a career high 195 1/3 innings. He compiled a 3.64 ERA and was worth a career best 3.5 WAR. Marcum only had one real injury concern in 2010 missing a few weeks in July with elbow inflammation. It’ll be interesting to see how his arm reacts next season going from almost no work in ’09 to nearly 200 innings at the big league level in 2010.

Despite coming back from injury, Marcum finished the season strong with a 3.31 FIP in 38 1/3 September innings. Marcum only turned in one bad month all season in August when both his ERA and FIP were north of five and he gave up eight homers in just 32 innings of work for the month. The homers have always been a nuisance for Marcum in his career as he consistently posts worse than average HR/9 innings marks. His 1.11 HR/9 IP in 2010 was the best of his career but still on the wrong side of the league average .96 HR/9 IP.

He may have staved off homers at a better rate than in year’s past but how much he had to do with it, isn’t clear. Marcum had generated groundballs on more than 40 percent of his balls in play in both 2007 and 2008 but failed to do so in 2010 with a meager 38.4 percent groundball rate. His 43 percent flyball rate was the second highest of his career. He’s not going to become an extreme groundball pitcher and may be hurt by long balls again in the future. But for 2010 anyways, it wasn’t a major roadblock to success.

Marcum’s 3.74 FIP was far away the best of his career, never before putting up a FIP under 4.46. That’s what tends to happen when you strike out a career high 7.60 batters per nine and walk a scant 1.98 per nine. The strikeout rate wasn’t drastically higher than his career average of 7.28 and it was the third time he’s had an above average strikeout rate. The career high in Ks was supported by a solidly above average, and career high, 10.9 swinging strike percentage.

The biggest contributor to his excellent FIP, and season as a whole, was the walk rate. In 2007 and 2008 Marcum displayed walk rates of 2.77 and 2.97 across 159 and 151 innings, respectively. That control was taken to a whole new level in 2010 with the AL’s fourth best walk rate and third best strikeout to walk ratio among qualified starters.

Marcum is primarily a fastball-change pitcher, with those two pitches accounting for 70 percent of his pitches thrown last season. He also mixed in cutters, curveballs and some occasional sliders. The fastball averaged just 87 MPH, with the change-up zipping across at about 80 MPH. The change was so effective that Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Madden tried to neutralize it by having his switch hitters bat right handed against the right handed Marcum. FanGraphs rated Marcum’s change as the second best change among all AL starters narrowly behind Felix Hernandez’s change-up.

Marcum was pitching in his first of three arbitration seasons at age 28 and turned in a bargain of a season for the Jays who only had to layout 850,000 dollars for his services. That number is going to rise by quite a bit for Marcum’s age 29 season but Marcum figures to be worth the expense. Even with some regression in his home run and walk rates, if healthy, Marcum will continue to be a solid top to mid rotation pitcher. After “out-pitching” his FIP with markedly lower ERAs for a few seasons, Marcum had a season that impressed both new and old stat heads alike. 

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Almost assuredly the most disappointing performance from the 2010 Blue Jays was that of Aaron Hill. No one expected Hill to duplicate his 2009 performance that saw him hit 36 home runs while batting .286 and putting up a powerful .213 isolated power. That outburst at the plate came on the heals of a disappointing and injury filled 2008. But he was above-average at the plate in 2007 as well, which had Hill looking like a premiere second baseman headed into 2010.

We now know that Hill was anything but that in 2010, but how he fell so far so fast is an intriguing and troubling issue. If and how he can rebound in 2011 is also a major concern, but that’s a topic for another time. There are enough mysteries from this past season to try and figure out before trying to predict the future.

There were bright spots to his season that were mostly dragged down and forgotten due to his other struggles. Hill has never, and will never, be exceptional at drawing walks, but his 7.1 percent walk rate was his best in any season since 2005. Last year’s .286 batting average made up for his career low 5.7 percent walk rate. Hill had his second highest career strikeout rate, going down on strikes 16.1 percent of the time. That’s of little concern though as it was still well below the league average of 20.7 percent.

The walks weren’t what sent his on-base percentage plummeting to .271, his .205 batting average did the damage. Players like Hill who don’t strike out often become dependent on a good batting average on balls in play (BABIP) to hit for a high average. This is even more so for Hill, who also walks less than average. That became a big problem for Hill because he wound up with an almost unfathomably low .196 BABIP.

Complicating matters, Hill managed to hit 26 homers and maintain a .189 ISO, both marks were only bested once in his career (2009). The ISO remained above average with only 22 doubles collected in 528 at-bats. He hit more doubles than that in all four years of his career with at least 400 at-bats.

He managed to keep hitting homers while not hitting much of anything else thanks to hitting flyballs 54.2 percent of the time. Flyballs are good for hitting homers and not much else, line drives are where it’s at for picking up base hits that don’t end at home plate. Hill hit line drives in only 10.6 percent of his at-bats, far and away the worst mark of his career. It was also the worst mark in all of baseball, and by quite a bit too.

The combination of no line drives, and lots of flyballs killed his offensive production to the tune of a career worst .291 wOBA. Even more alarming is the trend continued all season long, he never hit more than 14.9 percent of his balls in play for line drives in any one given month. Likewise, his BABIP never pushed higher than .254, and it’s no coincidence that both those numbers were both in July either.

Whatever it was that had Hill incapable of making sound and true contact, it appears that Hill doesn’t know what to do about it, or what it is for that matter. At the least, Hill can take comfort that his normal exceptional defense didn’t desert him this season too. He had above average defensive stats across the board, like he has many times in the past.

Hill was just twenty-eight in 2010 and should be enjoying the peak years of his career. It’ll be a long offseason for Hill, hopefully long enough to figure out what went wrong in 2010, or just forget about it completely and move on to 2011. Jays fans would probably be better served doing the latter.

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If there was one player on the 2010 Blue Jays who was predicatively unpredictable, it was closer Kevin Gregg. After spending just one season with the Chicago Cubs, and not a particularly great one either, Gregg signed with the Blue Jays on a one year deal with club options for 2011 and 2012. Gregg quickly moved into the closer’s role converting six saves in six chances in April. He would keep the job all season despite some drastic ups and downs.

Converting or not converting saves is ultimately what closer’s are judged by, despite the flaws of the statistic. Gregg’s perfection in April was supported by his other, more telling, stats including his .82 ERA, .81 FIP and an unprecedented (especially for Gregg) .82 walk per nine innings. The good times quickly came to an end for Gregg and he was fortunate to still have the closer’s job come July.

In May and June, Gregg made good on twelve of fifteen save opportunities. That wasn’t far off his poor pace from 2009 that him blow seven saves in just thirty chances. Again, the rest of Gregg’s numbers supported the interpretation of  his questionable save rate. Gregg posted ERAs of 5.11 and 8.10 in May and June. His walk rate spiraled completely out of control, walking 17 batters in 19 1/3 innings of work. He did manage to keep setting down hitters on strikeouts in his toughest of times striking out 21 in those same 19 1/3 innings.

The month to month numbers are extremely small sample sizes, one outing can drastically alter the numbers for a months worth of work. But it’s still hard to ignore the fluctuations. After striking out at least 9.49 batters per nine innings across the first three months, he struckout 6.52 in July and 5.06 in September. And in between July and September he mowed down 10.38 per nine.

Manager Cito Gaston was rewarded for sticking with Gregg through his spat of ineffectiveness, as Gregg posted FIPs of 2.87, 3.31 and 3.64 in the last three months of the season. The save statistic mirrored this return to success as Gregg settled down and closed out twenty of his final twenty-three save chances. Gregg somehow managed that 3.64 FIP in September despite walking AND striking out 5.06 batters per nine, not an easy feat to pull off, nor one that anyone should try and emulate in the future either.

Gregg worked justed 59 innings on the year, his lowest total in any full season dating back to 2004. The lighter work load might have contributed to his overall success, 2010 saw Gregg post both the second lowest ERA(3.51) and FIP(3.57) of his career. His 86 percent save conversion rate also happened to be the second best of his career.

Gregg rebounded nicely from 2009 and did so in baseball’s toughest division. His proneness to wide performance fluctuations makes him a less than ideal closer. However, he’s proven himself to be a durable reliever by making at least 63 appearances for four straight seasons now. He’s also had a FIP under 4.00 in four of the last five years.

The Jays are probably not going to exercise his 4.5 million option for 2011 but he could still come back to the team if he were to accept an arbitration offer or resign for a lesser amount. Another season of 60-70 innings of better than average relief work would be worth somewhere around 3 to 3.5 million dollars, a number that seems fair to both sides. The Jays definitely got their money’s worth in 2010, although it wasn’t always easy to watch. If Jays fans can stomach another season of the unpredictable, they might get their money’s worth again in 2011.

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After establishing himself as one the AL’s better outfielders from 2003 to 2006, Vernon Wells failed to produce at the dish in 2007 and again in 2009. Injuries almost certainly played a part in his rough ’09 campaign, but with two off years sandwiching a productive 2008 season, there were lots of questions to be answered in 2010.

Fairly or unfairly for Wells, he will spend the rest of his time in Toronto with the burden of his massive contract hanging over his head day in and day out. That contract will be paying Wells over twenty million a season for the next four seasons. Needless to say, quite a bit of production will be expected from a player making such a lofty sum of money. That’s understandable, but at the same time it’s not as if Wells is writing his own checks either. 

2010 showed us that Wells can still be an above average player. Whether he can keep that going through 2014 is a question to try and answer at a later time. For now the Jays fans and front office alike can relax a bit with a solid, healthy season in the books. Wells played in 157 games and made 646 trips to the plate, topping 150 games played for the second season in a row and sixth time in nine seasons since 2002.

Wells stormed out of the gate in April hitting .337 with eight homers and a monthly season high wOBA of .468. After April however, his production dropped in each of the next three months. Wells walk rate dropped from 7.9 percent of his plate appearances in April down to just 5.8 percent in June. His batting average dipped down to .240 and .236 in June and July. Only his continued power output allowed him to post above average wOBAs in May and June with isolated power marks of .222 and .250.

The decline hit rock bottom in July, a month that saw Wells go deep just once with a slash line of .236/.289/.348. At that point it was hard to have any optimism that Wells could get his act back together. August was slightly better, he still only hit .248 but he managed a .198 ISO thanks to three homers and nine doubles.

In September, Wells could do no wrong at the plate. He drew a walk in 11.8 percent of his trips to the plate, the third highest monthly mark of his career, and had more home runs, eight, than strikeouts, seven. He also tossed in a .298 batting average, .386 on-base percentage and had a .288 ISO.

The strong start and finish left Wells with some impressive end of season numbers. He topped 30 homers and 40 doubles for the third time in the same season finishing with 31 homers and 44 doubles. His 7.7 percent walk rate was almost a full point higher than his career average and the best rate since 2006. The .242 isolated power was the best mark of his career. His final wOBA of .362 was well above the league average mark of .321.

According to the defensive metrics, Wells had his best defensive season since 2007. Those metrics also suggest he might be better off moving to an outfield corner spot. Whether or not the metrics are accurate, Wells is definitely not getting any younger and a move to a corner spot would be nothing more than the usual fate of centerfielders reaching their mid-thirties. If he produces like he did in 2010 his batting numbers would be fine for a corner fielder and are excellent for a centerfielder in the meantime.

The Jays will have Wells on the payroll for the next four years and he doesn’t figure to produce twenty million dollars a year of value but at this point two or three more seasons like 2010 will do just fine as the team tries to build a winner around him and the other veterans.

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The 2010 edition of the Toronto Blue Jays was full of surprises and provided many promising glimpses into the team’s future. Whether or not anyone besides Blue Jays fans noticed is another matter entirely. The Jays were widely expected to finish at the bottom of baseball’s toughest, deepest division, the mighty AL East. They only wound up one spot above the basement but they also went 85-77, the kind of thing that can only happen in AL East.

The fourth place finish despite the winning record is both a reason for optimism and cause for concern. The winning record is something to build on and at least shows the club is headed in the right direction. They were able to compete despite the loss of both Roy Halladay and Alex Rios from a year ago and survived disappointing seasons from Aaron Hill and Adam Lind, a pair who never came close to matching their 2009 breakout campaigns.

The cause for concern stems from the daunting task of taking this team from 85 wins to 95 wins. A big part of the Jays success stemmed from the excellent performance of it’s young starting rotation. Will that rotation be able to perform better collectively in 2011 and 2012? Will it be able to stay healthy? And then there’s figuring out how repeatable Jose Bautista‘s 2010 performance will be going forward. There’s also questions about the situations at first base, third base and catcher to consider.

But what to do we know now that we didn’t before the start of the season? First and foremost, Blue Jays GM Alex Anthropoulos has asserted himself as a man who knows what he is doing. He brought in Brandon Morrow and gave the kid a chance to pitch a full season as a starter. Morrow took the ball 26 times and pitched a career high 146 1/3 innings and finished up the season with a 3.16 FIP. Anthropoulos picked up Fred Lewis for next to nothing from the Giants and the twenty-nine year old turned in a solid season hitting .262/.332/.414 and stealing 17 bases in 23 tries.

Anthopoulos also made a pair of moves to sure up the teams future at the hard to fill position of shortstop by first signing Cuban shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria and then spinning the aging Alex Gonzalez for twenty-seven year old, Yunel Escobar. Hechavarria is a few years off but held his own in Double-A at just twenty-one years of age.

Escobar had fallen out of favor with the Atlanta Braves organization after two excellent seasons at the plate and in the field. The Jays picked him up in the midst of his worst season but he rebounded to hit .275 with a .340 on-base percentage. Anthopoulos picked up a cost controlled shortstop in his prime, the type of player that can often be impossible to go outside an organization and acquire.

Anthopoulos also made the controversial move of shipping first baseman of the future, Brett Wallace, to the Houston Astros for a relative unknown in center fielder, Anthony Gose. Several years will have to pass before seeing if the gamble pays off. But once again, Anthopoulos went out and got a talented up the middle player, a definite weakness in the Blue Jays player development system.

Vernon Wells is about to become an incredibly expensive player starting next season. It’s unfathomable that Wells will be able to provide twenty million dollars plus worth of production over the next couple of years. In 2010, Wells turned in a solid performance hitting 31 homers, his first season of 30 or more since 2006. He stayed healthy playing in 158 games and hit .273 with a career high isolated power of .242. He isn’t likely to produce All-Star caliber numbers anymore as he’ll be 32 entering next season. His 2010 did show that not all hope is lost for the Jays highest paid player.

In addition to Morrow, Ricky Romero and Shaun Marcum were an impressive 1-2 combo at the front of the rotation. Romero’s 3.73 ERA and equally impressive 3.64 FIP were fueled by his tremendous 55.2 percent groundball rate. Marcum walked just 1.98 batters per nine innings and sported a 3.74 FIP and a 3.64 ERA. Brett Cecil had a solid performance as well with a 4.03 FIP and above average control walking only 2.81 batters per nine.

Down in the minors several players showed promising development and moved closer to contributing to the big club in the future. Catcher J.P. Arencibia hit 32 homers for Triple-A Las Vegas while showing the best plate discipline of his career. Arencibia hit .301 with a .359 on-base percentage and a thunderous, even for the hitting happy Pacific Coast League, .325 ISO. If John Buck leaves in the off season, J.P. is ready.

The other prized prospect, pitcher Kyle Drabek, performed well enough with Double-A New Hampshire to earn a late season call up to Toronto. Drabek struckout 7.3 per nine innings and had a 3.87 FIP in 162 innings. It’s possible Drabek will start 2011 in the Jays rotation.

Another player from New Hampshire to keep an eye on is right fielder, Eric Thames. In just his second pro season at age twenty-three, Thames hit 27 homers while batting .270 with an 8.4 percent walk rate and a .238 isolated power.

There’s an awful lot to discuss this off season about the direction of the Blue Jays. 2010 has to be considered an organizational wide success. The team added talent, got younger, and pumped new life into it’s player development system. The Tampa Bay Rays have shown twice now in three years that Boston and New York can be bested, The Jays are starting to look like they have a path of their own to the top.

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