Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson exited Thursday’s contest with what appears to be an aggravation of the calf injury that has plagued him on and off since early in Spring Training, as MLB.com’s Gregor Chisholm writes. Donaldson doubled into the right field corner but came up lame after rounding first base and ultimately hobbled into second base. There’s no word on the extent of the injury just yet, but Donaldson began to walk off the field almost immediately after play had halted, and Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi tweets that a trip to the disabled list is a possibility. The 2015 American League MVP missed a significant portion of Spring Training and had a brief flare-up of the injury this past weekend.
Elsewhere in the AL East…
- Prior to the arbitration hearing that led to a controversial string of comments from Yankees president Randy Levine, right-hander Dellin Betances was offered a two-year deal that would have guaranteed him between $8MM and $8.5MM, reports Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports in his latest AL Notes column. However, with Betances’ camp seeking as much as $5MM in arbitration, they elected to go on with the trial. Rejecting the deal seems reasonable, from my vantage point, as even after losing the trial Betances took home a $3MM figure for the 2017 season. Betances figures to earn more than $4MM next year in arbitration, so the downside in aiming high with the arbitration hearing was relatively minimal.
- Baseball America’s Ben Badler penned a harsh critique of the Orioles’ paltry investments in international free agency, noting that the O’s spent just $260K on international talent this period and signed only five players. As Badler notes, it’s nothing new, as Baltimore has routinely eschewed significant investments on the international market — much to the detriment of the farm system. Badler points out that even the cash-strapped division-rival Rays spent more than $3MM on 36 international amateurs in 2016 despite being in the metaphorical penalty box for shattering their pool in a previous signing period (thus preventing them from spending more than $300K on a single player). “[O]wnership’s antiquated approach toward Latin America prevents the Orioles’ international scouts from having the resources they need to do their jobs,” Badler writes. Indeed, Baltimore’s total spending is a pittance relative to the rest of the league; on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Padres spent nearly $80MM on international amateurs during the current signing period alone. Notably, the O’s traded their top international bonus slot to the Brewers tonight to acquire recently designated reliever Damien Magnifico.
- The Orioles will turn to Alec Asher to start versus Toronto on Saturday, writes Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun. His selection to face a heavily right-handed lineup suggests that Baltimore plans to utilize its upper-level pitching depth on a case-by-case basis to fill Chris Tillman’s spot in the rotation while Tillman is out, Encina adds. Manager Buck Showalter elaborated on that concept a bit, telling Encina: “We know that has potential to be a moving piece until Chris gets back. We can play a little matchup there until we know for sure when we’re going to get Chris back. … The good news is we have some guys to pick from, not only there, but potentially in Bowie, too.” The Orioles added Asher in a minor Spring Training trade and also picked up several other potential options, including Gabriel Ynoa (in a trade with the Mets) and Richard Bleier (in a trade with the Yankees). Lefty Jayson Aquino was also a consideration for this weekend’s start, Encina notes, but the glut of righties he’d have faced led the team to turn to Asher instead. Tillman figures to be out until early May, so there should be quite a few more spot starts up for grabs among this group.
Not a good start for the jays
Jays are done they had a chance to be a wild card team but they blew it with this start… bullpen sucks, rotation is good but no depth and the bench is the worst in the league
While it is looking bad, they are in no case done. Every team goes on a stretch like this during the season, it’s just awful when it’s in the first week of the season. And the bullpen has by no means bin the problem, it’s 100% on the bats minus Tulo and morales
Small sample size.
Yeah, the Cubs had a 1-6 stretch last season followed closely after by a 1-9 stretch. You just notice those bad stretches more in the beginning of a season. No team is “done” yet. It’s been 10 games.
lol because the jays are the exact same team as the cubs right… i know they can always turn it around but when your only lefty in the pen is Loup and your only bench bat that is half way decent is salty then you know your team has Padres level problems
No, but, talent level tends to stabilize at some point. As is pointed out, FG has dropped the Blue Jays expected playoff odds. But if Toronto goes 7-0 this week, their playoff odds will stabilize almost to the point they were before the season started.
Ironically enough, the Padres actually have two good lefties in the ‘pen (Hand and Buchter) and the bats aren’t the problem. They have a better record than the Blue Jays, too, but there’s no way the Padres are going to sniff the playoffs, and I think the Jays can still turn it around.
The major difference between those two teams are what you think of their true talent level. If you think the jays are a true talent 85ish win team, they have just dug themselves a pretty big hole to climb out of in what looks to be a pretty competitive AL wild card race.
So while they are not done, they have pretty significantly lowered their playoff odds. Fangraphs covered this yesterday. fangraphs.com/blogs/the-blue-jays-upcoming-quandar…
Far too early to write off the Jays. Not at all sure what Shapiro’s plan is for the Jays, as his off season approach was less than focused, but it’s too early to forget about the Jays. This Jays team feels like a JP Ricciardi squad, a group of players that come close to complimenting one another, but fall short. Remember, Jays fans, when you all thought JP was the greatest GM in sports? Jays fans are adorable.
Thing is you would be hard pressed to find a single person who likes current Jays management.. long live AA
I loved AA and wish he was still with the organization. Why did he leave? I don’t remember
They brought in Shapiro above him so his level of power in baseball ops would have gone from #1 to #2 even with the GM title. Basically he was offered a demotion
“…a group of players that come close to complimenting one another, but fall short.”
Your remark begs the question: How could they compliment each other better? Some suggestions:
“I wish I could pivot like you, bro! Teach me?” “Nice bling and shirt combo there, Ace! From Eaton’s?” “Hey, that’s a pro haircut. Like the tapered burns too!” “That’s the way to scamper from first to third, buddy!” “Is that a new Volvo? Cool !”
These compliments do add to chemistry and morale, but as for on-field success, it would be better for a team’s pieces to complement each other too.
Haha!
By my math the Yankees guarantee of between $8 & $8.5MM let’s call it $8.25MM and the $3MM he ultimately got via arbitration means he has to get $5.25MM next winter via arbitration to equal what the Yankees were willing to guarantee him. Can he make more possibly, can he get less, absolutely. Seems to me since the universal consensus this past winter was that his asking price of $5MM was a loser from the start the smart thing to do would have been to take the Yankees guarantee of 2 years say $8.25MM.
Have to weigh that against what he’d have gotten had they won the case, though. Conservatively speaking, he’s going to come away with $7MM+ over the two years anyhow. If he wins at $5MM, that’s more like $11.5MM to $12MM over those two years. He effectively risked a million or maybe $1.5MM in an effort to up his earning power by as much as $3-4MM.
It seems he did weigh that, “Seems to me since the universal consensus this past winter was that his asking price of $5MM was a loser from the start”. You can disagree with the weighting he chose (which appears to be a 0% outcome probability), but it seems to me that the poster did that.
It’d be interesting to see what their internal evaluation on the probability of winning that arb case looked like.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Are the Jays haters saying the Reds will win the World Series because they’re 7-3?
No, but that’s not an equivalent jump. The Jays are not a WS team that has been written off by a 1-8 start. They are a fringy wild card team that needs to overperform for 5.5 months to get back to the wild card. That’s why this is not comparable to the Cubs of last year as well. There’s also the concern of WHY they’re 1-8. Russell Martin is even worse than last year, and Jose Bautista seems to have zero power. Those two aging bats may not ever bounce back.
Edwin Encarnacion isn’t exactly tearing it up, either. Could you imagine if he was performing the same way in the Jays lineup? They might be 0-9.
Tulo is old and oft injured too and now there are questions, at least in the short term, about donaldson as well.
They were a team that needed some sustained performances, some bounce backs, and some luck to be real contenders. That doesn’t appear to be happening at this point in the season.
It’s early, so you obviously can’t write them off, but it looks bad and they have really hurt their chances with this slow start.
Oh Orioles…
Not signing any international free agents is nothing new for the Angelos owned Orioles. They have never signed any. You almost never hear about them even having a scout at the workouts. Instead, they sign or trade for scrubs like the ones they picked up yesterday and today. It’s too bad we can’t fire the owner.
Wei Yin Chen, Hyun Soo Kim, Dariel Alvarez, Jomar Reyes, Henry Urrutia just to name some of the none they’ve ever signed. that’s just off the top of my head. there’s a Chinese kid in there too that escapes me. first baseman, they had issues with MLB because of his age if I recall.
Stage difference there is that the Asian guys are already professionals and don’t come with the same rules that Latin American prospects do. No matter how you look at it they don’t invest in international prospects for some unknown reason. No way around it
The difference*
Agreed! Whether you sign international players or college players or amateur players, I don’t see the difference.
Betances is under team control through 2019 and isn’t a free agent until 2020, his age 32 seasons. Chapman is the closer at least through 2019. Betances has proven several times that he is not a very good closer, but he is a great set up man. A lot of stuff can happen to a pitcher in 3 seasons. His agent is a moron for not taking the contract.