The Blue Jays announced on Monday that they’ve claimed right-hander Taylor Guerrieri off waivers from the Rays. Additionally, Toronto announced that catcher Rafael Lopez and right-handers Leonel Campos, Luis Santos and Taylor Cole have been outrighted off the 40-man roster after clearing waivers.
Arm troubles have persistently slowed the career of Guerrieri, a former first-round pick (No. 24 overall, 2011) that from 2012-14 was a consensus top 100 prospect in all of baseball. Guerrieri had Tommy John surgery back in 2013, which limited him to 9 1/3 frames the following season. He slowly built back up over the next two seasons, topping out at a career-high 146 1/3 innings at the Double-A level in 2016. However, further elbow complications limited Guerrieri to that exact same mark of 9 1/3 innings once again in 2017, though he didn’t require surgery this time around. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times tweets that Guerrieri is believed to be healthy and ready for Spring Training 2018.
Santos (27 in February) and Campos (30) made a handful of appearances each in Toronto this past season, totaling 31 1/3 innings between the two of them. While Santos posted a solid-looking 2.70 ERA in his 16 2/3 frames, he also walked four and served up four home runs in that time. He turned in a 4.07 ERA in 108 1/3 Triple-A innings, mostly as a starter. Campos, meanwhile, showed promising strikeout numbers but shakier control both in the Majors and minors — a common trend throughout his career.
Cole, 28, saw more limited action yet, missing most of the minor league season with an injury before going on a 12 2/3-inning scoreless streak and earning a late look in the Majors. He was hit hard in his lone MLB appearance and suffered a fractured toe after one inning, which cut short his chances of further auditioning.
Lopez, meanwhile, had a great season in Triple-A, hitting .293/.368/.551 in 223 plate appearances. The 30-year-old saw just 63 PAs with the Blue Jays late in the season, though, and has never established himself in the Majors to this point in his career (nor has he demonstrated the level of offensive prowess he did at Buffalo this season).
Lopez had more then 12 AB’s with the Jays.
That’s an intriguing pickup. Hopefully he can live up to his prospect status
Love it for the Jays. He could be a solid #4 by the end of 18
That’s funny. Thanks.
The jays have become a joke since AA left.
That’s because AA traded all of their prospects away.
AA did a great job to form the nucleus that got them [deep] into the playoffs TWICE. And the prospects he traded away are largely insignificant today. One player is playing okay in MLB and the rest have either been cut or are still in the monors. So spare us on AA traded away our future rhetoric.
The question is how will the current regime get the Jays back to the promised land? If you have been reading my past post in MLBRumors, you will note that it took Shapiro 14 years to build the Indians to what the current regime took over and the current Indians regime still had to clean up the inherited Shapiro mess of Bourne, Swisher etc..
Attention Jays fans: it is going to be a long time before you see a team in Toronto capable of winning a championship. The ‘draft and do not do much” current Jays mgmt philosphy will build a great farm system but we’ll have to wait 5-10 years more for a shot at being a champion.
I was a fan of AA as well and I always hated the « he traded our future aways » argument. As you said, it’s simply not true.
As far as the Shapiro/Atkins regime though, I am willing to give them a little more time before judging.
So far, I loved their Liriano trades (both of them) but I hated their 2017 offseason. So , we will see.
I am really curious about how they will handle Donaldson’s contract.
How Shaprio and Atkins handle Donaldson this year will be a telltale sign of what is to come in the future BlueJay years. When Donaldson is healthy, which seems to be 1/2 -2/3 of the time, he can carry a team. Teams will pay big money for that even if he is injury prone.
I hear that Shaprio and Atkins are gunshy of longterm high AAV deals. The longest that they have given out at the mlb level for the Jays is 3 yrs for Morales. The previous regime of AA with Beeston didn’t like to have any players on the roster for longer that 5 years and for pitchers preferably much less than 5 years.
Having said this, I project Donaldson playing for many more years if he wants too. I would project 6 more years for him but only 3 years would be on the field defensively. That means 3 as a DH. The question is how long is his bat good? My scouting eye would say no more than 5 years.
As I have wrote elsewhere, economics of baseball are about to change dramatically. We can see it by the ESPN subscription numbers. I beleive that ESPN is an indicator of what is to come, Paid subscriptions are tumbling through the floor. ESPN will be laying off another 100 ppl soon. The economic forecast of baseball cable and advertising revenues and sports in general are at a peak and about to tumble hard. That means all that cable money, MLB.com money and advertising money will dry up. Once that happens all the huge deals will go away. The only question is when this will happen not if it will happen; it is coming.
So knowing all these factors do I pay Josh, trade him, or let him go? I trade him at the deadline for a haul if it can be had.
The only relevant connection between ESPN and the Jays over the past 20 years is Dan Shulman. and a couple playoff games.