2021 Toronto Blue Jays Spring Training Preview (Part 2: Outfield)
As the march towards the regular season continues, our gaze from the crowded bullpen competition to the comparatively vacant outfield, in which there might be a spot up for grabs if you really squint.
Luckily for me, there is nowhere near as much to talk about with regards to the Jays’ outfield situation. If the relief pitching situation was as locked in as a bullpen ever really gets, the outfield is, thanks to the signing of the best Free Agent position player on the market, is about as locked in as it gets, barring injury of course (and don’t you dare put that evil on me).
LOCKS
George Springer, Center field
Teoscar Hernández, Right/left field (pictured)
Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Left field
Randal Grichuk, Right/center field (pictured at the top of the article)
Oh man, I totally forgot we signed George Springer. Kind of slipped through the ol’ memory cracks amidst the Joe Panik minor league signing and the Joel Payamps waiver claim(s).
Anyways, George Springer is a Blue Jay. George Springer is good. Life is good.
The former Houston Astros outfielder signed a six-year, $150 million deal on January 23, 2021, beating out Vernon Wells’ seven-year, $126 million extension for the longest contract ever inked by the Toronto Blue Jays. Springer figures to slide into the starting centre fielder role, where defensive metrics like him just fine. From 2018 to 2020, Defensive Runs Saved has him at +8, UZR at +0.9, and Outs Above Average at +2, all over 1461 ⅔ innings. Those aren’t Kevin Kiermaier numbers or anything, but they’re better than anything Randal Grichuk (-8 DRS, -5.5 UZR, +2 OAA) or Teoscar Hernández (-7 DRS, -6 UZR, -2 OAA) put together in center over the same period.
But why the hell am I talking about George Springer’s defence? Especially when he can RAKE, BABY.
Some may come out of the woodwork and point at his trash can-assisted 2017 season as evidence to be concerned about. Which would be… Strange? All signs would point to George Springer still being an excellent hitter, with or without garbage receptacles. Since 2018, Springer has hit to a tune of a 138 wRC+, good for 14th in Major League Baseball. You like traditional slash lines? .276/.363/.512. How about Statcast? He looks good on that front too.
No matter how you slice it, there’s no reason Springer shouldn’t be the team’s best position player, at least until Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. put it all together.
I mean, I guess you could keep taking issue with the Astros cheating thing on an ethical level. Far be it from me to say that the trash can scandal isn’t bad. Because, it is. It was a bad thing for him to be a part of. But it seems selective to hold that against him for the rest of his career while also cheering on other former Astros who we may talk about shortly. Granted, it could be argued that their culpability may not go as far as that of the Alex Coras or Carlos Beltráns of the world, but if we’re getting into a discussion of who does and doesn’t get to be a good person based on how many plate appearances they had with the team that year... That just seems like a stupendously lame and pointless discussion to have.
Also, all signs point to George Springer being a really, really cool dude. So if you’re not fine with it, I don’t know what to tell you.
Speaking of the 2017 Astros, Teoscar Hernández!
Since being recalled from Buffalo on June 5, 2019, Teo has put up a 133 wRC+, good for 33rd in all of MLB just behind Pete Alonso and Corey Seager. Not to jinx anything, but it seems like he’s finally figured it out as a hitter, and if he can keep that pace up (he had 3.4 fWAR in 136 games in the same period) as well as his impressive Statcast metrics, he should prove an excellent player.
Now in those rankings, you might have noticed a couple holes in Hernández’s game. He still strikes out a lot, which at this point I kind of doubt is ever not going to be a part of the package with Teoscar Hernández. However, this high-strikeout, low-walk approach has been complemented by mechanical tweaks. Also helping matters is a more selective approach that combines increased patience with mashing the ever-loving shit out of fastballs, as this fantastic article from Chris Black of Sportsnet lays out. So long as this remains the case, he should be fine.
A question that does not show signs of going away is that of his defence. While he has a strong arm, Teo’s defensive game as a whole has not been good, to put it generously. He’s moved from left, to centre, to right field, going from awful, to awful, to merely bad, respectively.
Ben Nicholson-Smith recently tweeted that Hernández was taking reps in both left and right field in Dunedin this spring training.
Being that this is Spring Training, this could mean something for the regular season, or it could be absolutely nothing. I only really see him starting a game in left field if Lourdes Gurriel Jr. or even Cavan Biggio aren’t options. I think he’ll still mostly play in right, with a sizeable chunk of playing time coming at DH, and the occasional infrequent start in left field.
Speaking of left field, since being called up in 2018, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has a 120 wRC+, equaling the mark of none other than, funnily enough, Francisco Lindor, a player he was rumoured to be included in trade discussions for.
I’m by no means saying that he’s better than Lindor, but that’s certainly not nothing. Gurriel doesn’t walk much, but he has good bat-to-ball abilities that he combines with some really solid power metrics. This makes him equally likely to spray base hits past all sections of the infield as he is to smash dingers to left and centre fields, while occasionally neatly depositing one in right.
He also has a gorgeous swing, though that might also be my personal presence speaking.
If you watched the above video, you may have noticed three things about Gurriel’s Gold Glove-nominated defence. First; he has an absolute cannon of an arm. Second; he makes an awful lot of really athletic plays in left field. Third; boy do his routes ever look plain wonky sometimes. This adds up to some pretty mixed-to-negative results from defensive metrics in left field, though he’s absolutely playable there.
The Jays are at least dabbling with giving him some time at first and third base. While he has spent a little bit of game time at first base, a position he is unlikely to play unless Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Rowdy Tellez, and maybe Cavan Biggio are unavailable, third base is a bit more open. Neither Biggio nor Guerrero project as plus defenders there.
Those of us who remember his defence at second base may cringe at that idea, but Andrew Stoeten’s new article talks about why that may not be the worst idea. Namely, he has the reflexes to play shortstop, which should play up at third, and his arm strength should be a massive plus at the position. He also wouldn’t need to cover the same angles that gave him so much trouble at second.
Does that mean he’s gonna see a lot of time at third base? I kind of doubt it, but there is a rationale there. For the moment though, I still see him getting the bulk of starts in left field over Hernández or Biggio.
I will say that if Randal Grichuk is your fourth outfielder, you probably have a really good outfield. Also, the acquisition of Springer means that Grich won’t be seeing as many reps in center field, but in right field, where he is mostly seen as a solid defender.
Fourth outfielder or not though, he’s still going to see plenty of plate appearances, be it as the defensive-minded option in right field or at designated hitter. And since his solid 2018 season, the holes in Grichuk’s game have continued to be exposed, with his overall offensive production oscillating between just below or just above league average. It looked for a while like he might’ve figured something out in 2020, but a September and October with a 71 wRC+ brought him back to just above league average. Maybe that’s the 60-game sample size talking, though.
Despite his starting role becoming somewhat compromised, he should still get a lot of chances to prove that his first-half breakout was the real deal. And if he doesn’t? Well, the good thing about the sheer strength of the Jays’ offence is that he may not even need to.
INJURY CALL-UPS
Jonathan Davis, Center/left field, options (pictured)
Josh Palacios, Center/right field, options
Forrest Wall, Center field, non-roster invite
I’m a big Jonathan Davis fan. His style of play may not technically be the most valuable, but it’s always been appealing to me, for obvious, aesthetically pleasing reasons.
The Blue Jays seem to like him too, considering he’s been in the organisation since 2013. The speedy 28-year-old outfielder is probably never going to develop into an everyday player, but I don’t think anyone’s expecting him to at this point. His ceiling is as a defensive sub or pinch-runner who makes okay contact but is never going to be considered a real power threat, or a plus offensive player in general.
When you look at Davis’ 2020 stats, it looks like he accomplished that and a whole lot more last year, slashing .259/.364/.444 with a 120 wRC+. Then your eyes scroll to the left and you see that it was throughout 13 games and 34 plate appearances.
When you take his complete big league stats (70 games, 156 plate appearances), he slashes .200/.286/.296 with 60 wRC+. His plus speed and defence just aren’t enough to make up for that.
Reports out of the alternate training site in Rochester last year suggested that he was hitting the ball well, so maybe he’s a late bloomer. But as of right now, he doesn’t look likely to start the year in the Majors barring an injury to one of the four guys I mentioned above, especially if the Jays only have three bench spots available. He seems likely to either be a fixture on the taxi squad or, worst-case scenario, he may be the first one on the DFA bubble if space needs to be made on the 40-man roster.
25-year-old Josh Palacios has shown up just outside of Eric Longenhagen’s Top Jays Prospects lists in both 2020 and 2021. In the 2021 list, he appeared in the “Role-Playing Bats” section, with Longenhagen saying the following.
“Palacios is a lefty stick tweener outfield type who runs well, takes good at-bats, and has doubles pop. He plays hard and endeared himself to the org at the alt site, so much so that they put him on the 40-man.”
Sounds grand to me! In 2019, Palacios had a 134 wRC+ in AA New Hampshire, and if he can carry those results into AAA this year, he should have a shot as a big league backup before too long, perhaps even leapfrogging Davis.
Fellow 25-year-old Forrest Wall was acquired by the Jays on July 26, 2018 (along with the previously discussed Bryan Baker, and Chad Spanberger) as part of the return for Seung-Hwan Oh. While his contact tools and speed kept him in prospect conversations for a while, he doesn’t get brought up as someone with super promising projections anymore. In Fangraphs’ 2019 list, Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel said this about Wall.
“He can still run but maybe not well enough to play center field, which means he’s a contact-only left fielder.”
I’m reading that as ‘Ezequiel Carrera, but he makes more contact’. Which honestly, that doesn’t sound that bad as a fourth outfielder.
For his part, Wall has continued to hit well in the Jays’ system, earning a call-up to AAA after he knocked around AA pitching to the tune of a 129 wRC+. Unfortunately, he’s probably not sticking in centre field, and it doesn’t sound like his bat is gonna play in the corner, even with those solid AA stats. He’s also not on the 40-man, so his path to the Majors is a little less clear than that of Palacios. That said, if he can hit well again in Buffalo, it’s within the realm of possibility that he gets at least a cup of coffee with the Jays, though it may take a lot of things going wrong for that chance to materialize.
NO CHANCE, BUT HELL YEAH, IT’S CHAVEZ YOUNG
Chavez Young, Center/right field, non-roster invite (pictured)
Out of all the non-Big League outfielders I’ve listed, 23-year old Bahamian Chavez Young is probably the one projected to have the biggest impact at the Major League level, which I do hope he does have, considering how hard he’s worked to get where he is. Per Fangraphs (where he ranks at 31 on the Jays’ prospect list), his standout tools are his plus speed and excellent arm strength. His hit tools are going to be what determines his ultimate role in the big leagues, be it anything close to an everyday player, a solid fourth outfielder, or a depth guy.
In 2019, Young slashed .247/.315/.354, which doesn’t look great, but was oddly enough about league average for the Florida State League. Young’s stint this past winter with the Canberra Cavalry of the Australian Baseball League was unfortunately cut short by injury. We did, however, get this brilliant clip of him calling a Robbie Perkins home run during an exhibition game.
He’s also very easy to root for, as his little blurb in a January 2019 Fangraphs article from David Laurila would indicate.
““Every time I step on the field I’m a kid,” Young told me. “I’m a kid to the game. It’s my dream to play in the big leagues, and I’m going to keep pushing to get there, but I’m still going to have fun. And whenever I see a young fan, I want to make their day. I was in those same shoes once. I was always, ‘Hey, I want to play on a big stage, too.’ Now that I’m here, I’m not going to be ‘big league’ and showboat anybody. I’m going to be a kid, because I’m playing the game I love.”
Fuck yeah, Chavez! Get it.