How the Blue Jays Finally Created a Deep Roster

With exhibition games starting up and the stars we know and love finally starting to take the field, fans are ready to embrace the optimism that comes around this time of year. With camps full of players from the 40-man roster, prospects hoping to impress, and veterans looking for one last kick at the can, the long winter shuffle is officially over.

I’m sure it wasn’t exactly the way Ross Atkins imagined his first offseason as a general manager was going to go. By the time he took his place on the hotseat, most of the heavy lifting had already been done. While acting as interim GM, Tony LaCava had added/re-signed J.A. Happ, Jesse Chavez, and Marco Estrada, addressing the one true area of weakness: the rotation. The big splash, the franchise-changing move…those doors were already closed to Mr. Atkins. But that doesn’t mean there was nothing left for him to do. In fact, the new head honcho had one very clear, public mandate: Add depth.

It’s often difficult for the common fan to care about what lies beyond the 25-man roster on Opening Day. Nobody wants to imagine a world where their star players aren’t on the field. Alas, that’s not how it usually plays out once the games begin. Players get hurt or under perform and need to be replaced. Just last year the AL East champion Blue Jays saw Chris Colabello play 46 games in left field, and Danny Valencia was out there for another 31. Neither of those men is an outfielder. In fact, when the season started, they were probably 7th and 8th on the outfield depth chart. Yet, there they were, stumbling around after fly balls.

Interestingly enough, depth was supposed to be Alex Anthopoulos’ specialty. He was always known as the man who would make a waiver claim on just about anybody, hoping to find a diamond in the rough. He certainly had some successes last season; Colabello turned in an incredible season at the plate, and Bo Schultz helped the bullpen before the trade deadline. Although, in spite of those successes, depth was still a problem for the 2015 Blue Jays. Prior to the David Price trade the rotation was in shambles, and the middle infield needed some external help.

Up until January, it didn’t look like this year’s group was going to be any different. There seemed to be a couple of options for the fifth starter position, but beyond that there were serious concerns around the diamond. Then, starting with the Revere for Storen swap, all of that began to change.

The Storen move opened up options for the Blue Jays. By adding another late inning reliever, Aaron Sanchez was officially put back into the mix for a role in the starting rotation. In turn, that left seven men whom could be reasonably counted on for solid or better work as starting pitchers. For the beginning of the season, that’s not an awful mark, but it isn’t enough. Nothing happened for a few more weeks until just before Spring Training. At this point, GM Ross Atkins made a flurry of moves that have drastically improved this club’s chances of surviving injury.

The first notable move was the signing of Gavin Floyd to a one year, $1 million contract. Coming off of his second broken pitching elbow in as many years, Floyd was thought to be done. Floyd may have his warts, but there is tremendous upside in the deal, especially if Floyd can continue to pitch the way he did last September.

The aforementioned upside is a common thread that joined every move that followed it. On the same day as the Floyd pickup, Atkins added David Aardsma (the guest on yesterday’s Artificial Turf Wars podcast), then in the following weeks picked up Domonic Brown, Tony Sanchez, and Rafael Soriano.

With the exception of Floyd, all of those players have minor league deals. This makes sense, given that all of these players have flaws, as can be seen in their PECOTA projections.

However, the depth advantage is that these players all have real upside. If any of them hits their 80th percentile projection, things look totally different.

As you can see, PECOTA says that every one of the recent additions has the potential for a very solid season. The reason the projections see this upside is simple: all of these players have done it before. This is the biggest departure from the Alex Anthopoulos moves of year’s past. In recent years, the Blue Jays depth moves included more AAA fodder than anything else. The “depth” comprised of the guys like Mauro Gomez, Brad Glenn, Cole Gillespie and Steve Tolleson. They’d never grabbed many guys who had previously shown the ability to play at an above major league average level.

What changed?

Well, under the last regime, the Jays had an anti-contract-incentives policy. Anthopoulos famously refused to offer them; almost certainly because he was often right up against the ceiling of his budget. In fact, the only time that he deviated from this policy was for Johan Santana, in a situation where he was recovering from injury. In that case, if Santana hadn’t rebounded, the Jays would have been on the hook for nothing, but if he had, he’d almost certainly be worth the money.

Until Floyd, it had been a long time since a “healthy” Blue Jay had potential to earn more money simply by staying on the field. If you’re not willing to offer a player the chance to earn extra cash, you’re never going to be able to get high end depth. It’s a simple truth: players will always bet on themselves. They wouldn’t be professional athletes if they didn’t.

With those pickups, the Jays now have at least one major league quality backup at every position, along with solid depth in both the rotation and the bullpen.

Position Player Backups

C: Tony Sanchez, Josh Thole
1B: Justin Smoak/Chris Colabello (whoever isn’t starting)
2B/SS: Darwin Barney (then Ryan Goins with Devon Travis returns)
3B: Matt Dominguez
OF: Domonic Brown, Dalton Pompey, Junior Lake, Ezequiel Carrera

Pitching Depth

SP: Marcus Stroman, R.A. Dickey, Marco Estrada, J.A. Happ, Jesse Chavez, Aaron Sanchez, Gavin Floyd, Drew Hutchison
RP: Drew Storen, Roberto Osuna, Brett Cecil, Aaron Loup, Jesse Chavez, Aaron Sanchez, Gavin Floyd, Bo Schultz, David Aardsma, Steve Delabar

Every single one of those position players has spent at least some time as a regular in the big leagues. Then when you add in guys like Pat Venditte, Chad Jenkins, Rule V draft pick Joe Biagini, and prospects Connor Greene and Chad Girodo, the Blue Jays have an awful lot of pitching depth. In fact, a couple of the other players are already showing value. Ambidextrous pitcher Pat Venditte and submariner Chad Girodo are ready to step in as the second lefty in the pen for the first few weeks of the season while Aaron Loup recovers from a forearm strain. In an admittedly small sample size, Venditte held lefties to a paltry .116/.191/.256 line in 2015, and Girodo has dominated lefties in the minors.

This 2016 Blue Jays roster is so talented that the only thing that could’ve sunk them completely would have been injury. Now that they have depth, one of their stars can go down and someone will be ready to step in. As a result, it’s a real stretch to imagine this team not being contenders in the American League East…unless the Baseball Gods simply decide to smite the city of Toronto.

The offseason was a job well done, Mr. Atkins. I look forward to seeing what you can do next.

Lead photo: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports