A Blue Outlier: Or, Free Agency and Blue Jay Land

For those who are Blue Jays fans the Ryu signing is important for a number of reasons. It tells us something about the willingness of the Jays to spend money on free agents. I think, in part, this willingness came in response to being called on the smoke and mirrors "aggressiveness" discourse that really was not very aggressive (see my last post on this), but I also think it tells us a great deal about how the Jays think of their team at this point in time.

In my last blog, I tried to argue that the Jays had a certain development strategy forced on them their situation. With an old, increasingly unproductive, and expensive team (with contracts potentially weighing them down into the future), the Jays had little choice but to:

1. Try to shed players and payroll (particularly when less expensive minor leaguers would be ready to play particular positions in a relatively short time, hence the ditching of Donaldson who was, without doubt, still a productive player). 
2. Pick up what prospects they could by trading players from their roster
3. Or, bargain shopping for undervalued players and flipping them for the best prospects they could get

Ryu does not fit into this mold. The Jays paid him well. And, the contract is relatively long (4 years), which will put him into his later 30s (36) by the time it is done.  I've offered my views on this before. With very specific exceptions that are going to cost your team *a lot* of money for *a long* time, pitchers on the other side of 32 are always a gamble. This is not to say anything bad about Ryu.  He has pitched very well (in spite of missing time) over the last five or six years, but one never knows. Most players careers are in decline by 32 and many -- I'd guess most -- are done in the mid 30s.

For the Jays this signing breaks the Shapiro/Atkins mold (which has been to avoid long-term contracts and look to the middle/lower end of the free agent market to score a bargain). What does this signing tell us? 

First, it does not tell us how well Ryu will pitch. He's pitched well but there are a couple of matters that we should note before expectations get out of hand. (1) He was pitching at the Dodgers Stadium. Ryu pitched really well on the road, but has pitched superlatively at home and that is no surprise. Dodger Stadium is a pitchers park. Rogers Centre is a hitters park. What this means is that you can expect Ryu's numbers to be *not* as good as they were last year, if he pitches exactly the same.  Add in a bunch of games at New Yankee Stadium and Fenway ...  and what I mean is that I would not expect a 2.32 ERA. My best guess is the low 3 range but that is still very good. (2) Ryu has had injuries and he has never pitched more than 192 innings in a year and that was in his first year in the league. I know few pitchers pick up 200+ innings any longer but that really remains what you are looking for out of the guy who is supposed to be the ace of your staff. (I picked up these stats from Yahoo.)  His next highest inning total was 182.2 last year and he seems to have missed at least a little time every year in the majors. He's missed significant time 2016, 2017, and 2018. So, Ryu is a good pitcher but ... there are a couple of warning signs there as well. 

Second, it tells us that Marcus Stroman wanted a lot more than 20 million $/year or a contract much longer than 4 years.  To this point in their careers, Stroman has not been as good a pitcher as Ryu but he is significantly younger and that makes a difference. Stroman has had injuries but he has, generally, pitched more in a far less friendly park than Ryu. One might argue that his all-emotion-all-the-time approach and his semi-nasty comments wore out as well (a nicer way -- and thus likely the right way -- to say this is that Stroman did not fit into the clubhouse culture the Jays were looking to develop), but I suspect the key issue was how much Stroman was asking for. The Jays balked at this and so it must have been north of the amount for which they signed Ryu and by a fair amount. If not, I suspect they would have just resigned Stroman to the extension he wanted. 

It might also tell us something about Aaron Sanchez, although this is more difficult to judge because of his injury history. There is no doubt that Sanchez, like Stroman, is a good pitcher. He may have better overall talent, but he is more of a gamble. What we might say is that the decision to trade him, rather than try to negotiate with him also suggests the range that the Jays guessed Sanchez would want and, perhaps because of his injury history, that was a gamble they were not willing to take.  

Finally, it tells us something about what the Jays think of as their competitive window. I will confess that I don't like this term. What I mean here is not to suggest that the Jays feel they will be competitive for the next four years (because they likely won't be this year coming) but when they will start to be competitive. They are gambling that Ryu will be a really good pitcher for the next four years and that starting, say, in 2021 that will be important. To be sure, the Jays need front end pitchers this year after injuries, trades, and slower than expected development hampered their rotation and bullpen last year. They also, to be sure, need to think about the way in which they want to use their pitching staff (at times, last year, they seemed to be making it up on the fly with pitchers shuttling up and down to AAA with shocking regularity).  My guess, however, is that the Ryu signing is not about this year as much as it is about the years after that. The gamble that the Jays are making is that he will be part of a really good rotation in two-three years time that features not only him at least three pitchers out of their current list of prospects.