The Blue Jays were never going to sell Stroman for cents on the dollar
Throughout the offseason, there has been a relatively steady buzz of Marcus Stroman trade rumours. Clubs like the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres have had varied levels of interest, and the Toronto Blue Jays front office hasn’t made any categorical denials of his availability — although to be fair categorical denials aren’t really their style.
On Wednesday, though, new revelations seemed to suggest the Stroman trade market has cooled, or even died. First was a report from ESPN’s Jeff Passan where he said the following:
Interested teams simply aren’t offering packages commensurate with what the Blue Jays believe Stroman’s value to be, basing it off the expectation that he’ll return to 2017 form after a disastrous 2018. The prospects of the Blue Jays moving Stroman have decreased in recent weeks.
The Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins joined Sportsnet 590 The Fan’s Prime Time Sports and responded directly to the report”
“We’re not proactively looking to move Marcus Stroman and we have not gotten to the point where we’ve entertained something serious with him.I think if a team did get serious and wants to make a push it’ll be clear that we do have to roll up our sleeves on a Marcus Stroman potential deal. But that has not presented itself.”
He continued, interestingly taking a little stab at Passan’s reporting:
“If [Stroman’s] healthy he’s going to be one of the better pitchers in the game. So, is there some accuracy to some of the things [Passan] was saying? Sure. But there’s just so much more to it and I find it very interesting that he would have that insight. I don’t know how he would have it. It’s not happening the way that that’s described.”
You could see why Atkins would take umbrage with Passan’s comments in that they imply his valuation of Stroman is not in line with the rest of the league’s — and valuing players accurately is at the core of his job. It doesn’t really matter in the end, the real takeaway here is that you shouldn’t be expecting a Stroman trade any time soon.
The thing is that there was never going to be a Stroman deal. Yes, that’s a definitive statement, and yes, there’s enough offseason left for it to be proven wrong, but the timing of such a trade never made sense. Though the Blue Jays have made some mistakes in recent years when it comes to moving players at the right time (see Donaldson, Josh), but in this case it was always hard to see them doing something rash.
When you’ve got a pitcher whose top selling point is arguably his durability (Stroman’s 405 innings from 2016-2017 ranked seventh in baseball), selling him coming off a 102.1 inning year isn’t ideal. Similarly, when the biggest concern about the right-hander is an inability to miss bats, the fact he just put up a grisly 6.77 K/9 is not encouraging to prospective suitors.
Everyone knows how good Stroman can be, but other teams won’t offer value in a trade that corresponds to the best case scenario. You make trades based on what you think is most probable. Right now, it’s tough to pin down what that is for Stroman. As a result, no one is making a big offer.
Trading players at the nadir of their value only makes sense when there’s a sense of urgency involved. The Blue Jays ultimately moved Donaldson for virtually nothing because they were out of time and the alternative was literally nothing. Stroman is under control for two more years, which means they have three more chances to swing a good deal for him: the 2019 trade deadline, the 2020 offseason, and the 2020 trade deadline.
The 2020 trade deadline will probably be too late to get a premium return as the going rate for rentals continues to decline. The 2020 offseason means a team gets just one year of Stroman, again making it hard to get good pieces back. The goldilocks zone for this one is probably the 2019 trade deadline.
Firstly, the Blue Jays will almost certainly be out of it, putting them in a seller’s position. Also, that scenario allows for the possibility of a Stroman bounce back in 2019. If the 27-year-old puts together a strong few months, it would be much easier to conceptualize his 2018 as a mere aberration and restore the perception that he’s a reliable No. 2 or 3 starter for a contending team. If that’s a label that feels appropriate and you’re offering two months in 2019, a full 2020, and two playoff runs — all at a reasonable salary — you’ve got yourself a top-notch trade chip.
Now, that all assumes he restores his lustre in 2019, but if the Blue Jays didn’t think that was likely they would have moved him already. Considering his youth and relatively limited injury history (freak ACL tear in 2015 aside) that’s not bad bet. It’s a very different bet than the one the team made on a healthy season from Donaldson in 2018 when he was in his thirties and suffered through chronic calf issues the previous year.
Stroman is almost certainly going to be traded at some point because his window of club control doesn’t fit the Blue Jays’ potential window of contention. An extension is far from impossible, but if it were going to happen it probably would have already. So, more likely than not a trade is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’.
That ‘when’ never looked like it was going to be this offseason and it looks even less like that now.
