2021 Toronto Blue Jays Spring Training Preview (Part 3: The Infield)
Part 1: The Bullpen
Part 2: The Outfield
Spring training games are underway! The yearly optimism inherent to this time of the year is in a death-match with the existentially dreadful sinking realization that nowhere near enough people in the stands are wearing masks!
Fuck all that though! Time to get the positional preview back underway!
After the outfield, we jog over to the infield, where 19 candidates hope to at least turn some heads. At the end of the day, there are probably only six spots available in the big leagues though (Maybe seven if the Jays defy expectations and only carry 13 pitchers instead of 14), but even among the extreme longshots, there are some interesting names to get to. But for now, let’s start with the five players all but guaranteed to make the team.
LOCKS
Bo Bichette, Shortstop (Pictured, right)
Cavan Biggio, Third base/super utility (Pictured, left)
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., First/third base (Pictured, middle)
Marcus Semien, Second base/Shortstop
Rowdy Tellez, First base
For a while, it looked as though Bo Bichette may have been a candidate to move from shortstop to second base in the event of the acquisition of another shortstop with a good glove, such as Francisco Lindor or Andrelton Simmons. For now, though, Bichette remains entrenched at his preferred position, with an assurance that the starting shortstop job is his, despite the signing of Marcus Semien.
Bo should hit, few people have any doubts about that. Beyond a lack of walks, his aggressive offensive game has paid dividends. In his short big-league career, Bichette has slashed .307/.347/.549 with a 134 wRC+ (albeit in only 75 games and 340 plate appearances), with the Statcast analytics to suggest he can keep this up. He has also been the subject of my favourite scouting report in baseball history, in which Keith Law describes his baserunning with the phrase “he tends to run the bases like something large is chasing him.”
There are but two questions left for Bo to address (besides maybe taking more walks). The first is durability. He has yet to play a full season at the Major League level, and a knee sprain limited him to only 29 games in 2020. A healthy season should go a long way towards establishing Bichette as the all-star shortstop we know (and he knows) he can be.
The bigger question is his defence. Even when he was a prospect, many projections had Bo eventually moving over to second or third base. It’s still too early to rule him out of being a defensively solid big league shortstop, and I think a lot of the recent pessimism regarding his fielding has more to do with recency bias regarding the two errors he committed in the second game of last year’s ill-fated Wild Card Series. For their part, the defensive metrics are more mixed on him. In 578 ⅔ innings, he has 3 Defensive Runs Saved, -0.1 UZR, and -6 Outs Above Average.
Bichette will certainly hope to put together a consistently good defensive season, and he should get every opportunity to do so. If he falters though, Marcus Semien may be asked to step in at short. A move to second may even be inevitable, depending on how involved the Jays are in the absolutely stacked shortstop free agent pool next offseason, and how the Jays’ myriad of shortstop prospects develop. Bo will look to make that decision as difficult as possible.
Speaking of positional changes, Cavan Biggio finds himself moving to third base, as the signing of Semien has bounced him from second. While Biggio will certainly continue to move around the diamond as he has in the past, he looks to get most of his reps at the hot corner. He didn’t light the world on fire at third in 81 innings last year, but the Jays will hope that more consistent playing time at the position will allow him to play at least in the same ballpark as his solid, if not spectacular, metrics at second (1 DRS, 0.9 UZR, 5 OAA in 2019-20).
Oddly enough, despite his very, very solid production thus far in his big league career (owing in large part to a 16.1 percent walk rate), the bigger questions about Biggio regard his offence. His excellent 2020 stats (.250/.375/.432 slash line with a 124 wRC+ in 59 games) are somewhat undercut by some somewhat troubling Statcast metrics.
The abysmal hard hit rate is especially concerning, considering that MLB is apparently slightly deadening the ball this year. With that said, it’s worth mentioning that his Statcast percentiles from 2019 are a little less concerning, if not exactly terrific.
Another interesting metric is that surprisingly awful strikeout rate in both years, despite his inhuman eye. Matt W at Bluebird Banter did an excellent analysis of this, with the conclusion being that his supernatural plate vision is actually working against him. His patience actually results in a more passive two-strike approach, laying off objective balls that are nonetheless called strikes by mistaken umpires.
For his part, Biggio seems to be taking steps to address this. Hopefully, a more productively aggressive two-strike approach can prove that his success thus far is more than just smoke and mirrors.
2020 was a second straight year in which the 21-year old Vladimir Guerrero Jr. failed to live up to his massive expectations. Granted, a 112 wRC+ isn’t bad at all and, I repeat, he is but a boy at 21 years old. There is still more than enough time for Vladdy to live up to his offensive potential.
Of course, the biggest story regarding him in the offseason was his weight, which, as I mentioned in my news dump, the sooner we can stop talking about it, the better. After losing a ton of weight in the 2019-20 offseason, the already big-bodied Guerrero came to summer camp out of quarantine in… Sub-optimal shape. Sub-optimal enough that he apologized to his teammates, and was immediately shifted from third base, where he had already ranked as the worst defender at the position in 2019, to first base, where he struggled to get used to a new position. The positional move surely wasn’t an expected one this early in his career, in part because his strong arm plays up at third base and is largely wasted at first, but it’s not unfair to say that the Jays felt that Vladdy’s conditioning had forced their hand.
Nowadays, Guerrero is giving sportswriters plenty of opportunities to flex their thesauruses with the use of the word “svelte”. He put in some serious work in the offseason, losing 42 pounds on top of the weight he during the regular season. Hopefully, his much-improved conditioning culminates in the offensive breakthrough that we know he’s capable of having. At least we can expect to stop talking about Vladdy’s body weight like ghoulish creeps.
One big question is how much time he’s going to get at third base. The answer appears to be “not zero, but not much”. He’s expected to be the everyday starter at first, with the condition for moving back delivered from management apparently being “become a gold glove first baseman”. That’s maybe a little harsh for someone who has worked so hard to reclaim the hot corner, but it’s not unfair considering both how bad he was at third in 2019 as well as the fact that the Jays don’t have a ton of leeway to dick around with their defence if they intend on competing in 2021. With that said, he’ll still see some time at third in spring training and may see some time there in the regular season if necessity dictates. Especially if the only other options there are Biggio, Joe Panik, or Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (as an absolute last result).
Marcus Semien’s 2020 season was undermined by a pretty awful first half, in which he slashed .202/.256/.339 with a 65 wRC+. His second half was much improved (.253/.369/.425, 127wRC+), leaving his offensive numbers at a merely mediocre .223/.305/.374 slash line and 92 wRC+.
Lest we forget that Semien’s 2019 season was absolutely phenomenal. He finished that year with a 7.6 fWAR, good for fifth-best in MLB behind some pretty good company in Alex Bregman (8.5), Mike Trout (8.5), Christian Yelich (7.8), and Cody Bellinger (7.8). Granted, that may be something of an anomaly. His previous high was his still-great 3.9 fWAR in 2018, and before that, he had only eclipsed 2 fWAR once, with a 2.1 in 2016. If he can be somewhere closer to his 3.9 mark, then I think the Jays will be pretty happy with themselves.
If he can be near his 2019 mark, it’s time to plan the fucking World Series parade (I kid, I kid. Kind of).
Semien was a full-time shortstop during his tenures with the White Sox and Athletics, with pretty lacking results. He’s worked pretty hard to improve his defence, but the metrics are still divided. The Jays paid Semien a premium to move off of shortstop to either second or third. He chose the former based on familiarity, as he often moves to that area of the field when he’s in the shift. Mike Petriello writes about why the move to second should help Semien’s defence play up, at least in theory. Basically, as long as he can handle the new double play turn, there’s no reason to believe that Semien won’t be able to play a capable second base.
In an injury-shortened 2020 season, Rowdy Tellez turned some heads. Essentially a one-tool power hitter in 2019 limited to first base, Tellez appeared to break out in 2020, crushing the ball to the tune of a 133 wRC+. Bluebird Banter’s Expo45 has a great breakdown of Rowdy’s new approach, but the long story short is that he’s stopped chasing bad pitches out of the strike zone and got more aggressive on pitches in the zone. From 2019 to 2020, Tellez took a katana to his strikeout rate (28.4 to 15.7 percent) and increased his hard hit rate. This resulted in the aforementioned wRC+, as well as the fourth hardest-hit ball in MLB last season, absolutely vaporizing a badly placed Vince Velasquez fastball.
As the old saying goes, nature abhors a 35-game sample size. Reverting back to the .227/.293/.449 slash line and 91 wRC+ marks he slumped to in 2019 would spell doom for an offence-first player who’s likely competing for playing time, mostly at designated hitter. However, if he keeps his new approach intact, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he can’t be closer to his 2020.
COMPETING FOR A UTILITY ROLE, EVEN IF ONLY NOMINALLY SO
Joe Panik, Second base, non-roster invite (pictured)
Santiago Espinal, Shortstop/second base, options
Breyvic Valera, Super utility, no options
Richard Ureña, Shortstop/second base, non-roster invite
Tyler White, First base, non-roster invite
Joe Panik was always a singles hitter with little power, with his solid results low-strikeout, no-pop, high-contact approach yielding a .282/.345/.408 slash line and 106 wRC+ from 2014 to 2017. In 2018 and 2019, however, the only value he provided was his solid defence at second, with his wRC+ plummeting to 75, possibly at least in part due to a measly .263 BABIP, noticeably lower than a career mark of .299. Panik bounced back a little bit with the Jays after winning a backup infield job, at least eventually. In his first 42 plate appearances, he had an unthinkably terrible wRC+ of 15, but he became a singles machine in the second half, slashing .247/.385/.358 with a 112 wRC+ in 99 plate appearances.
With the Jays, Panik also went from a strict second baseman to more of a utility type, logging 116 ⅓ innings at second, 94 ⅓ at short, and 73 ⅓ at third. He’s still a solid, if not spectacular second baseman. His metrics at short and third are mixed at best, but it's a small sample size with both, and going by the ever-reliable eye test, he’s roughly serviceable at both. He profiles a little better at short, lacking the arm strength to consistently play a good third base.
If he were to make the team, which I expect him to, he probably doesn’t see as much playing time as last year. He’s blocked at second by Semien and probably Biggio, at short by Bichette and Semien, and at third by Vladdy and Biggio, though I think the latter may be his best shot at playing time as a defensive sub. Unless Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is ahead of him on the third base depth chart, which doesn’t seem especially likely.
Santiago Espinal was one of the best stories on the 2020 Jays, winning a backup infield job to start the season seven months after the death of his mother in December 2019. He bounced up and down between Buffalo and the alternate site in Rochester, but when he was with the Jays (for a grand total of 27 games and 66 plate appearances) he filled in admirably at shortstop for an injured Bo Bichette, as well as occasionally spelling Panik and Travis Shaw against lefties.
He’s the definition of a role player, with a fairly poor, slap-hitting bat with next to no power (.267/.308/.333, 73 wRC+). Most of his value comes from his great glove and his versatility, as he’s also capable of playing second, third, and center field. He definitely has that over Panik, who sometimes looks like more of a nominal utility guy, but his weak bat and the fact that he has options mean that he’s probably bound for Triple-A to start the season. Don’t be surprised to see him a fair bit in the Majors this year, though.
From 2019 onwards, Breyvic Valera has been claimed off of waivers no less than four times, bouncing from the Orioles, to the Giants, to the Yankees, to the Blue Jays, to the Padres, to the Blue Jays again. Over that time, he’s logged 54 games and 138 thoroughly underwhelming plate appearances in the Majors, slashing .223/.294/.298 with a 62 wRC+. Nonetheless, he had a solid chance to compete for a backup infield spot pre-COVID. Once summer camp resumed though, he was unable to leave his home country of Venezuela for reasons that have not been disclosed, finding himself on the Restricted List. He has been reinstated in time for this year’s spring training and hopes to carve out a niche for himself in a very crowded Blue Jays infield.
Like Espinal, Valera is versatile. Maybe even the most versatile player between himself, Panik, Espinal, and Richard Ureña. He’s mostly played second base but has played at least one professional inning at every position save for pitcher and catcher, with this past winter season in Venezuela seeing him mostly play center field for the Bravos de Margarita. However, his defence isn’t as positively rated as Espinal, and his bat doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. He’ll need to outcompete both Panik and Ureña at least to have a hope of making the team, and his lack of options leads me to believe that Valera’s days on the Jays’ 40-man are numbered.
Some may remember Richard Ureña from the 2016 edition of MLB’s Blue Jays prospect list, in which he found himself at the very top of the heap after the Jays’ trade deadline splurge in 2015 left the prospect cupboards pretty bare. Joining him in the top five were Sean Reid-Foley, Anthony Alford, Reese McGuire, and Harold Ramírez.
Grim stuff! I suggest scrolling through the rest of that list for some more repeated waves of profound despair.
Since getting called up by the Jays in September 2017, Ureña has slashed .253/.300/.336 with a 72 wRC+ in 91 games and 263 plate appearances. After a particularly underwhelming 2019 campaign, he was designated for assignment and picked up by the Baltimore Orioles, who stashed him at the alternate site for the whole of the 2020 season. The Jays signed him as a minor league free agent in December, and he’s a dark horse for that utility infield spot. He’s a high-strikeout, low-power hitter whose offensive value essentially needs to be buoyed by BABIP. He’s been a disappointingly poor defender at shortstop, playing better at second base. He can also play third base in a pinch.
Ureña has the toughest path back to the Majors out of these four middle infielders, lacking the versatility of Espinal and Valera or the track record of Panik, failing to distinguish himself as anything but well below average with the bat, and needing to have space cleared up for him on the 40-man if he is to make the team.
I’ll be honest, I almost forgot that the Jays had signed Tyler White to a minor league contract. As someone limited to first base (though he’s apparently played a not-insignificant amount of time at each of the other infield positions too) he’s very unlikely to make the team barring injuries to both Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Rowdy Tellez, which is a horrifying thought that I refuse to continue entertaining.
White debuted in 2016 with the Houston Astros, and his breakout season came in 2018, when he played in 66 games, slashing .276/.354/.533 with a 144 wRC+ in 237. His Expected Batting Average (.244) and Expected Slugging (.425) suggest he was at least a little bit lucky, and this was substantiated by his crashing down below replacement level in 2019, in which his line plummeted to .208/.308/.304 with a 71wRC+ in 279 plate appearances with the Astros and Dodgers.
White hoped to rebound in Korea, signing a contract with the SK Wyverns of the KBO. This did not come to pass, as he slashed .136/.367/.318 in only nine games. Oddly enough, his wRC+ was just under league average at 97, which I’m going to chalk up to a weirdly high on-pace percentage in a very tiny sample size.
He won’t make the Jays but will hope to play well enough in spring training to earn consideration soon, be it for Toronto or another team. At the moment, I think Panik has to be considered the leading candidate with Espinal starting the year in Buffalo. If possible, Valera, Ureña, and White would all be handy pieces to keep in Triple-A.
FUTURRRRRRRRRRRE
Austin Martin, Second base/outfield, non-roster invite (pictured)
Jordan Groshans, Shortstop/third base, non-roster invite
Kevin Smith, Shortstop, non-roster invite
Otto López, Super utility, options
Orelvis Martínez, Shortstop/third base, non-roster invite
Leonardo Jiménez, Shortstop/second base, non-roster invite
Miguel Hiraldo, Shortstop/second base, non-roster invite
Austin Martin, considered by Keith Law (paywalled) to be the best prospect in the 2020 draft, fell to the Blue Jays at the number five pick. In his Top 100 Prospects list, Law ranked Martin at 14. That’ll play!
Fangraphs and MLB Pipeline are a little less high on him (he’s ranked at 44 and 22, respectively), but the consensus is that Martin has the potential to be really, really, really good. Martin slashed .368/.477/.532 at Vanderbilt, and that bat appears to be legit, at least at this point in time. In his rankings, Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs said the following.
“The portion of his offense that drove his amateur stock, namely his elite plate discipline and feel for contact, will carry him to production on par with an above-average regular, à la Ben Zobrist. Martin’s swing decisions are fantastic, and the combination of selectivity and his gorgeous, natural swing loft give him an excellent chance of hitting for some power despite middling raw juice.”
There remain a couple wrinkles with regards to Martin though. The first is that he has yet to play in a professional game, which should give us at least a tiny bit of pause. The second is his defence. Martin was drafted as a shortstop, but he bounced around the diamond at Vanderbilt, shifting around from second to third, to center field. The Jays will try him out at shortstop, but he’ll likely end up at one of those positions, where his defence should be passable enough to let his offence carry him to greatness.
Jordan Groshans has a little more professional stats to go off of, though certainly not as much as the Blue Jays would like. The 21-year old shortstop smacked A ball around for 23 games before plantar fasciitis ended his season. Thanks to the pandemic, Groshans hasn’t played an actual game since May of 2019, but projections are still high on Groshans, with Fangraphs and MLB Pipeline ranking him at 77 and 46 on their Top 100 lists.
“The tools package here, arguably a Josh Donaldson starter kit with similar swing mechanics, still gives Groshans a pretty huge ceiling if he can actually hit like he did for the first month of 2019.”
Last I checked, Josh Donaldson was at least an okay baseball player, so this sounds pretty okay by me! Groshans is also likely bound for third base, but, uh, it’s not like the Jays have a locked-in long-term solution at third right now, so that shouldn’t prove to be much of a concern!
Oddly enough, there has never been a Major League ballplayer named Kevin Smith. For a while, it looked like the Jays’ shortstop prospect would have a pretty good shot at making history, but his path to glory was stalled by a poor first season in Double-A in 2019. He’s still just 24, and Fangraphs is still relatively high on him. They rank him at 14th on the Jays’ prospect list, where he’s compared to Freddy Galvis, minus Galvis’ plus defence.
That projection isn’t exactly elite, but the Jays obviously still like him enough to invite him to spring training. He’ll start in either Double or Triple-A, and may reach the Majors before Martin or Groshans, even if it’s just for a cup of coffee.
22-year-old Dominican-Canadian shortstop Otto López’s greatest asset is his versatility. He’s mostly played shortstop in the minor leagues, as well as a ton of second base in winter ball with LIDOM’s Leones del Escogido (along with fellow Dominican-Canadian Vladimir Guerrero Jr.). He’s also logged time at third base, left field, and center field. He doesn’t project as a plus fielder at any position, and his offensive potential depends largely on his ability to hit for contact. But if he performs to the level that Fangraphs and Keith Law (who have ranked him at 23rd and 19th among Jays prospects, respectively) suggest, he could be a solid MLB super utilityman.
Orelvis Martínez’s stock has risen quickly among the prospect rankings, with Longenhagen and Law ranking him at 89 and 98 respectively on their Top 100 lists. He’s still a teenager, so he’ll require some patience to develop, but his power and plate discipline have led projections to believe that he could be someone special. But again, he is 19, so he is still very much in the wait-and-see territory.
Fellow 19-year-old shortstop Leonardo Jiménez, who both Law and Longenhagen have at 18 on the Jays’ list, projects as a plus defender, but his 2019 season, in which he “hit an empty, BABIP-aided .198” according to Longenhagen, wasn’t encouraging. With that said, he still has time to develop into a contact-oriented shortstop with good defence, although we may need a full season to have a better idea of the young Panamanian’s ceiling (as is the case with just about every prospect, to be fair).
Fangraphs and Law also share the same ranking on Miguel Hiraldo, who sits at 9th on both of their Jays prospect rankings. He projects as a shortstop but is likely bound for second base. Longenhagen said the following on the 20-year old.
“He has a short, high-effort swing, and his hands load high and take a curt, direct path to the ball with plus bat speed that Hiraldo generates with effort and violence. It’s a swing-happy, pull-heavy approach to contact that would ideally become more polished, but there’s rare bat speed and vertical plate coverage here, so Hiraldo has a talent-based shot to both hit and hit for power.”
So that’s good! Probably? It’s a little hard to talk about the likes of Martínez, Jiménez, or Hiraldo at this stage because they are very, very young. We’re not going to see the likes of them play in Toronto for at least a couple years, if at all. That said, the front office clearly likes them enough to give them some time in big league camp, so it’s worth keeping them in mind for now, if only so you can look really smart in front of your buddies when they get called up in 202X.
WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH WAR MOTH
ALSO CULLEN LARGE
Logan Warmoth, Shortstop/second base, non-roster invite
Cullen Large, Third base/second base, non-roster invite
Despite his absolutely legendary name, Logan Warmoth’s stock has plummeted since being drafted in the first round with the 22nd overall pick in 2017. Eric Longenhagen said the following in 2019’s team prospect list, where Warmoth was located in the “Bench Types” section.
“He may end up with an average bat and fringe power but he’s not likely to stay at short based on pro looks.”
In 2021, he was included in the “Role-Playing Bats” section, where this was his blurb.
“Warmoth is a former first rounder and should be monitored because of his pedigree.”
Talk about damning with faint praise. And it’s not even like Warmoth’s stats were atrocious, for the most part. He hit terribly in Double-AA, but he hit substantially less badly (albeit still fairly poorly) in High A ball, and he had a good, short stint in the Arizona Fall League in 2019. The Jays clearly still value him enough to invite him to big league camp, which is more than I can say for poor fellow first-round pick Jon Harris. It’s safe to say that expectations shouldn’t be sky-high for Warmoth, but he’s still worth remembering. And I’m only 70 percent saying that because of his name.
Cullen Large’s single favourite thing on Earth is hitting. At least that’s what this 2019 article from Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith conveys. The 25-year-old Large was a fifth-round draft pick in 2017 and doesn’t feature on any top prospect lists that I could find. In 171 games in the minors, he’s slashed .266/.355/.403. He has good walk rates, but he strikes out a bit much, and his .137 Isolated Slugging seems to indicate that he doesn’t hit for a ton of power. Still, he’s likely to start at Double-A next year, and the invite to big league camp seems to indicate that the Jays have faith in him and his approach.
Another great read ! Keep it coming!