When the Blue Jays acquired Colby Rasmus from the Cardinals on Wednesday, the first thing that popped into my head was, “Alex Anthopoulos is, AMAZING!” What he has done in such a short time as the GM of the Toronto Blue Jays takes most GM’s years to do. That is, get rid of aging players with bloated contracts without hanging onto any cash, make trades for young, team controlled players with star potential and sign players to team-friendly deals.
Anthopoulos’s first big trade was sending perhaps the Jays’ most popular player at the time, Roy Halladay, to the Phillies for a collection of prospects. The move was, however, made strictly for monetary purposes. Since then, it’s been almost all about what’s been coming in, not what’s been sent out.
Speaking of moves for monetary purposes, Anthopoulos made one of his best moves when he fooled the Angels into taking on Vernon Wells’s contract in exchange for Mike Napoli, who was then flipped to Texas for Frank Francisco. Francisco, if he is offered and rejects arbitration, would probably be worth at least a type-B compensatory pick in next year’s draft. In a way, that trade enabled the Jays to acquire Colby Rasmus, as they had to take on Mark Teahen’s salary to acquire Edwin Jackson, who was flipped to St. Louis for the young centerfielder. Anthopoulos, overall, has done a great job in the trade market. Last season, having noticed that the Seattle Mariners saw Brandon Morrow as nothing more than a reliever, he traded away one of his best relievers (Brandon League) to obtain Morrow, who was immediately transitioned back into a starter. While Morrow’s ERA looks unimpressive, his ability to miss bats gives him tremendous upside and his current 4.7 K/BB rate is the sixth best in baseball. Even though League is the closer for the Mariners, he has put up 5.1 fewer wins above replacement (WAR) than Morrow since the two pitchers switched teams. Also last season, Anthopoulos took the Braves to school by selling high on Alex Gonzalez and his career .688 OPS and buying low on their talented shortstop, Yunel Escobar, who’s attitude did not mix well with Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox. The Rasmus deal was also made possible due to a contention between player and coach.
The other part of the equation has been the players Anthopoulos has signed to long-term, team friendly deals. Ricky Romero was signed to a five-year/$30.1 million dollar deal in August of 2010. This season he’s making only 750K while putting up a 3.08 ERA and 3.56 xFIP. Over the length of that deal, Romero won’t make more than $7.5M in a season unless the Jays decide to exercise their $13.1M club option in 2016. If Romero continues to pitch as he has over the last two seasons, he’ll provide the Jays with value well beyond his actually salary. Yunel Escobar’s deal is another example of this. Anthopoulos signed Escobar to a two-year/$10M extension that kicks in next season. The deal also carries two club options for $5M each in 2014 and 2015. Escobar has already provided about four WAR this season and would easily surpass $5M in value even if he only put up around two WAR per season going forward. Essentially, the Jays have their shortstop signed to a team-friendly deal through 2015, but can escape the deal should something go awry over the next two seasons.
Of course, the biggest signing of them all came this past offseason when Anthopoulos dished out five-years and $65M to Jose Bautista, who, to that point in his career, had only one huge season on top of, well, a lot of nothing. Bautista, remember, made his major league debut way back in 2004. The signing seemed like a huge risk at the time, as there were many people in the baseball world that saw Bauista’s 2010 breakout as one amazing lightning strike, rather than something he could sustain year-to-year. However, lightning has indeed struck twice and this time it’s an even more glorious scene. Bausista is about to surpass his WAR total from last season and we aren’t even to August yet. He’s basically the ultimate hitter, with both AVG, on base skills — a walk rate close to 20 percent (!) — and light-tower power, which he shows off frequently. If Bautista were to hit the open market this offseason, you can bet he’d bring in more than the $14M he’ll make annually from 2012 through 2015. Oh, and once again there’s that team-friendly 2016 club option tied on for $14M in 2016 should he still be producing at a high level then.
It’s hard to compete in the American League East. It’s REAL hard. But that hasn’t stopped Anthopoulos from making some of the best roster moves in the division in hopes that he can help bring a pennant back to Toronto. The Jays will probably need to bolster their pitching staff if they want to compete with the big-boys of the AL East in 2012, but there should be roughly $30M coming off the books in the offseason, depending on a few arbitration numbers, so there is room for more additions in the near future.
Currently, the Jays are 53 and 52 on the season, 12 games back of the division leading Red Sox. If they were in the AL Central, they’d be only two games back of the Detroit Tigers for first place. The Jays have a good team loaded with young up-and-coming talent like Colby Rasmus, Travis Snider, Eric Thames and J.P. Arencibia. They have every chance to compete in 2012 and beyond and you can put a lot, if not most, of that optimism on the shoulders of their amazing GM, Alex Anthopoulos.
WAR stats based on calculations from FanGraphs
All contract info from Cots Contracts
