The Return of Griff's Baseball Mailbag

After a nine-year absence, we're back with your Q's and my A's

Welcome to subscribers of GriffsThePitch.com to a new iteration of an old friend, following a nine-year absence. It’s the return of the familiar comfort food that was Griff’s Baseball Mailbag. This new version of the popular old baseball Q&A, first published online in The Toronto Star will seem vaguely familiar to regular readers, similar in terms of sequel, to the redo of Magnum P.I. Different time, different cast, with its lead character not quite as charming or likeable as the first time around. It's Magnum with no Selleck and minus the snazzy Ferrari and Tigers cap. But, hey, we do our best. The mailbag plan is to try and post every Friday, but my announcement came mid-week, last week, so this one is on Wednesday. If you sent a question in “comments” and don’t see it here, trust it will be in next week’s edition. Keep the questions coming. Here we go.

Q- Hey Griff,

Agree with your nuanced piece on the Blue Jays with Romano ("failed save"). And there's (Yusei) Kichuchi to the Angels. Teoscar (Hernandez) next, staying put, or at least not returning to Toronto. I'm thinking there's an argument in favour of the Jays moving on, beyond being ruled by the heart, beyond doing what the fans may want. Would be grateful for your thoughts.

Kenneth M,

A-It’s tough to realistically consider repatriation of many of the fan-favourite old Blue Jays, since they didn’t win with them. So it’s not surprising that Kikuchi went to the Angels, or that there has been very little talk about Teoscar returning to Toronto. As for Danny Jansen behind the plate, the only reason they traded that fan fave and the longest-serving Jays player at the ’24 deadline was for the two months of his salary savings, to help make sure they slipped under the luxury tax threshold, since he was becoming a free agent at year end. Now that they are starting the luxury tax over in ’25, succeeding in avoiding the punitive “two-time offender” list of the CDT, Jano might be an internal consideration to return to the Jays on a reasonable two-year deal. They need a catcher who can start 70-85 games in order to keep C Alejandro Kirk fresh and that second catcher cannot just be a placeholder like Brian Serven, Tyler Heineman or Nick Raposo, who is currently on the Jays’ 40-man roster.

According to my calculations, in order to equal last season’s Opening Day payroll, which was the indication from president Mark Shapiro, the Jays (per Cot’s Baseball Contracts website) currently have available $53.7 million to distribute among eight 26-man roster players. How did I get there? Start with 8 guaranteed contracts, plus 6 arbitration-eligible estimates (per FanGraphs), plus five mortal locks from among the pre-arb, under control major-leaguers. That leaves eight players to sign, due to the Alek Manoah injury that will cost him much of the season. There’s money there to think about three $15-20 million free agents, plus extending Vlad Guerrero Jr.

Q- Hey Griff,

In the end, I would say 2024 for Romano went from Caesar's Palace to Snake River Canyon (NB: An Evel Knievel, reader’s reference to a Griff column that can be found in these archives.) It's just a shame for the player and the fans. Hometown closers with personality don't come around too often. I hope his arm bounces back and he gets a decent payday somewhere - he deserves it.

Rob, Australia

AND ALSO RE ROMANO…

Hey Griff,

Clearly if (Jordan) Romano would likely be ineffective until (say) July, I would have expected negotiation of a 2-year deal, circa $3.25MM for 2024, and a Club option for 2025 of $11MM against a $1MM buyout. Could still happen. If it doesn’t, (probably) means Jays expect he can never regain past performance level

Mel N.

A-Good news regarding Romano, if one can properly interpret the comments from GM Ross Atkins on Tuesday, when he met with the Toronto BBWAA at its annual meeting. On the surface the non-tender looked heartless and indefensible the way that the Markham (ON) closer was cut loose at the deadline. Atkins spoke about the emotional difficulty he had in the move and talked of the business aspect of the decision, including the fact that under terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, they could only cut him by 20% and would have had to offer at least $6.25M, not knowing when he would be ready to pitch in 2025. That being said, Atkins had encouraging words for fans of Romano who would still love to see him back.

“We remain interested in him and will be heavily pursuing his return and hoping that’s a potential reality. You know the rules on the maximum cut and what we felt was realistic based on the dialogue we had, we felt like the pursuit after he's a free agent was best for both parties. There are no concerns that he will (not) be back physically.”

Q- Hey Griff,

Do you think the Front Office would consider contracts with deferrals, or do they even understand them?

Randy W,

A-At the BBWAA meeting, I asked Ross for a Reader’s Digest explanation of deferrals and how they work, who they benefit the most and if it’s becoming a wave of the future. He said this:

“It’s complicated by the CBT threshold. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds of an accounting presentation, but it’s not as simple as if you had a $10M AAV and deferred half of that, it means only $5M is hitting your budget that year and therefore your CDT impact is less. There’s a different accounting measurement tool for the CDT impact. That’s one aspect. For the team, the benefits could be as simple as accounting, so if there’s ways for you to defer money, there is potentially, based on your accounting, based on your resources, there’s potentially some benefit to the team, beyond just the CDT hit. As it relates to a player, that’s all philosophical and would be based on investment strategies, personal interests, finance and accounting. It’s about more teams, agents and players being open to different solutions.”

Q- Rich

A couple of questions: with this front office, what faith or hope or whatever, can we have that SOMETHING right will get done to address the bullpen, the bench, starting pitching … Also, if u had to make a hard decision on Bo (Bichette) or Vlad (Guerrero Jr) - as in which one would u part with - which one would it be. Is there life after Vlad? And what’s a fair price for him, even though (Juan) Soto is gonna Jack the market? Any (Daulton) Varsho updates? Thanks Rich - keep up the good work! You have the best Jays (and baseball) intel going!

Mark Z, Toronto

A-Before we get to the bullpen, I will answer the other aspects of your question. Last off-season, I felt that the Jays needed to find a way to extend contracts for both Bo and Vlad because championship teams are most often built around at least two homegrown stars. But I have now settled on the need to extend Vlad for at least 12 years at the top of the corner infield salary charts. Bo needs to respond with a healthy, 190-200 hit, MLB-average defence season this year. I believe that a Vlad extension would represent to other free agents a show of good faith by the club in terms of its intention to win, right here, right now. Then you also have Vlad’s talent. I would give him Rafael Devers (Red Sox) money at about 12/$360. Here’s what the GM had to say about the positive impact a Vlad signing would have on free-agent perception.

“I don’t know. That’s hard to project. I think what I can tell you is that we have had a good number of … we know players like this market. They love this city. They love this country. They’ve seen the success this group has had. They’re aware we’re coming off a disappointing year, but I don’t think that’s anything that has been an inhibitor.”

As for Varsho and his rotator cuff surgery, Atkins suggested that the Gold Glove centre fielder would not be ready for opening day but that they expect him to return to full health. Here’s what Ross said about bullpen, when I specifically asked what he had learned between the success of the ’23 pen and the failure of the ’24 relievers, even with largely the same cast of characters.

“It was so interesting last year, because we had, at the start of the year, essentially Romano was set back, Swannie (Erik Swanson) was set back. Chad Green had a setback. Yimi (Garcia) had a setback and then Timmy Mayza got off to a slow start. That is the entire back of our bullpen. We had some guys here and there stepping up, but not to the level that could overcome that. We also had injuries in Triple-A. We didn’t have enough good stories in Triple-A and the takeaway from us was that we have to ensure that we have internal development stories to account for those setbacks, even when they are that big.”

I asked Atkins if the fact that there were over 100 relievers on the free agents market after the non-tenders were added, meant. that other than a key one-or two early additions, that fleshing out the pen with big arms can wait until the new year.

“The bullpen market is always one of the most difficult to understand, predict, project. It is really volatile and I think having depth there, whether it be internal or external, is definitely where you want to be. So, it’s a good starting point.”