Back in late July, I wrote an article about Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos. Scratch that, I straight up wrote a praise piece on the man. At the time, Anthopoulos had just dealt Edwin Jackson (who didn’t even spend enough time in the Jays organization to pick out a jersey number), Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski to the Cardinals for Colby Rasmus. Myself, as well as a great deal of saber-steady baseball analysts, thought that Anthopoulos had just made a great deal. Jackson will be a free agent this offseason and Rasmus is still under team control for three more years. However, Rasmus hit a horrific .173/.201/.316 over 140 plate appearances after joining the Jays, though he did battle through some injury issues.
It’s way too early to judge the moves Anthopoulos has made this season, as many were made with 2012 and beyond in mind. However, one thing is for sure: A good chunk of the trades Anthopoulos made are paying of big-time for teams currently playing postseason baseball.
Yesterday, the St. Louis Cardinals, down two games to one in the best-of-five NLDS, pulled out a victory and forced a deciding game five. They did so in large part to six strong innings from Edwin Jackson, who was the prized piece of the Colby Rasmus deal. The two other parts of the deal, Dotel and Rzepczynski, also pitched in the game combining for one inning with no runs allowed.
Edwin Jackson went 5-2 with a 3.58 ERA in 78 innings after joining the Cardinals. Dotel was good out of the pen, posting a 3.28 ERA in 24.2 innings with a 6.4 K/BB ratio. Rzepczynski wasn’t as good, but did find his niche as a LOOGY, limiting left-handed batters to a .163 AVG and .478 OPS.
Basically, all three players acquired by St. Louis aided in their amazing come-from-behind September surge. Now, the Cards are one win away from the NLCS.
Those weren’t the only former Blue Jays doing damage in last night’s ballgames. On August 23rd, The Blue Jays and Diamondbacks essentially swapped second basemen. Kelly Johnson went north of the boarder to Toronto while Aaron Hill headed to the heat of the Arizona desert. Neither player had lived up to their former offensive glory, or even close to it, but the D-Backs thought highly enough of Hill’s defense to make the move. Once Hill arrived in Arizona, he continued to play good defense, but he suddenly threw his offensive game into high gear hitting .315/.386/.492 with two home runs and five stolen bases after the trade. Last night, in an elimination game for his D-Backs, he went 2-5 with a home run. Hill is hitting .300/.357/.571 in the division series.
Perhaps the biggest move Alex Anthopoulos made in 2011 was dealing away the contract and declining skills of Vernon Wells. Without a doubt, this was a brilliant move. If nothing else, it freed up money that was used to sign potential AL MVP Jose Bautista to a five-year/$65M extension. That being said, the main player acquired from the Angels was catcher Mike Napoli, who was immediately flipped to the Texas Rangers in exchange for reliever Frank Francisco. I really don’t even need to point out — but I will anyway — that Napoli went on to hit .320/.414/.631 with 30 home runs in only 432 plate appearances for the Rangers in the regular season. He was worth 5.5 wins above replacement according to Baseball Reference and 5.6 WAR according to FanGraphs. Frank Francisco put up a decent 3.55 ERA, but was nothing more than a slightly above replacement level reliever for the Jays.
Napoli went 5-for-14 (.357) with one home run and four RBI in four games against a tough Rays pitching staff in the ALDS.
As I stated near the beginning of this article, the moves that Alex Anthopoulos made can hardly be judged on what happened from July 31st and on. Even the Napoli for Francisco trade can be sanctioned due to the presence of J.P. Arencibia as Toronto’s catcher of the present and future on top of the fact that Napoli had never even come close to approaching a season like he had in 2011. Regardless of what affect these trades will have on the Blue Jays down the road, they certainly helped the teams on the other end, at least for this season.
For the Cardinals, Diamondbacks and Rangers, the present is all that matters.
