Blue Jays Mailbag: Smoak Is Hitting His Way into the All-Star Conversation

Andrew Stoeten answers your questions in our Blue Jays Mailbag, which runs weekly at VICE Sports. You can send him questions at stoeten@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter.

The Blue Jays are coming off an actual, meaningful series of baseball, and now head west looking to continue their climb up the standings with a string of games in Oakland and Seattle. The bad vibes of April are a fast fading memory. We're actually going to have a real summer in these parts!

And so yet again, as we open up this week's Blue Jays mailbag, we're greeted with the vaguely positive! Or, at the very least, not the hopelessly, desperately negative. (Which I think I've been saying here just about every week lately, but that's only because I cannot underline enough just how incredibly awful the month of April was.)

If you have a Blue Jays question you'd like me to tackle for next week, be sure to send it to stoeten@gmail.com. As always, I have not read any of Griff's answers.

Does Smoak make the all-star team? If he does is it like that time when Saunders made the all star team??
James

All stars in the fan vote are frequently made based on hot starts to the season. So, does Smoak have a chance given the rest of the AL 1Bs?
Jonathan

I… uh… I really couldn't possibly care less.

It would be nice for Smoak if he made the All-Star team. It would be great for the Jays and their fans if he kept hitting well enough for it to happen. But… I dunno. Meh. It'll either happen or it won't.

It's certainly not crazy to think it might, though. As a group, American League first basemen (and designated hitters) are weak enough so far this year that Smoak's numbers may indeed be good enough to get him to Miami next month. Among qualified AL hitters classified as first basemen by FanGraphs, he's tops in wRC+ at 139. However, Logan Morrison is a better baserunner and the defensive metrics like him better, so he passes Smoak in WAR for that reason. And also, a pair of non-qualified hitters, Marwin Gonzalez of the Astros and Yonder Alonso of the A's, bypass both of them if you change the threshold from qualified hitters to guys with at least 150 plate appearances. So, I still probably wouldn't bet on it just yet, but… maybe?

And as for him being another Michael Saunders… also maybe? I do like that it seems he's made a tangible change to a part of his game—his contact rate on pitches in the zone—which seems to have powered the change in production we've seen so far from Smoak, and that makes me think it's possible this isn't a blip and we're really seeing him come into his own. On the other hand, when hitting from the left side, against right-handed pitching, his wRC+ is just 117 so far, and his slash line is .253/.313/.514. Good numbers. Improved numbers, for sure. And I'd take a full season of that from Smoak, absolutely. But he's hit like a Hall of Famer from the right side so far this year (a 217 wRC+ and a .395/.467/.737 against lefties), and that's sure to regress. How much it regresses will make all the difference in his season, I think.

However it goes, though, it's great for the Blue Jays that he's already produced what he's produced for them so far. You can't take that away from him!

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Hi Stoeten

One of the hallmarks of the Anthopoulos era was a farm system stocked with good pitching prospects who could be traded to acquire position players or fill in at the big league level. A year and a half into the new regime and the best prospects on the farm are mostly position players.

Given that the majority of players in the system were drafted/signed by Anthopoulos do you think we are seeing a shift in the player development focus by [Ben] Cherington/[Gil] Kim?

Thanks!
Josh

Well, Cherington has only been in the organization since, like, September, so I wouldn't go giving him too much credit for anything just yet. And I certainly don't think the fact that the club's most exciting prospects currently are position players reflects any sort of change in focus. Mostly it reflects that Anthopoulos traded away a bunch of pitching prospects in 2015, and maybe that the development of a guy like Conner Greene has gone a bit sideways, while the Guerreros, Alfords, and Bichettes of the world have been exceptionally good.

That's on the players, not a development focus that has decided to ignore pitchers, or whatever your question might imply.

Where we will possibly see that newfound preference for position players is in the early rounds of the draft. The Jays still took plenty of pitchers in their first year of the Shapiro-Atkins regime, last summer. Of their 40 selections, 24 were pitchers. The Jays took fewer pitchers than that in each of their previous four drafts (at which point I stopped counting, but the trend may well go back farther), but the difference was at the top. Only two of the club's first seven picks last year were pitchers, compared to 6 of the first 8 in 2015, 5 of the first 10 in 2014, and 9 of their first 9 in 2013.

A fair guess would be that we'll see more early-round position players taken next week at the draft, but that the trend in the overall toward pitchers will continue. Ben Lindbergh essentially summed up why taking position players with valuable early picks, and then pitchers late, makes sense as a draft strategy in a piece from 2015 for Grantland:

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Assuming the Jays are in a similar position re: WC spot on July 15, how would you balance mortgaging the prospect pool with winning now?
Dave

Uh… well, at no point am I "mortgaging" anything. Especially not for a wild-card spot.

Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but that kinda makes it sound like dealing a whole lot of prospects in a 2015-esque pushing in of all the Jays' chips, which obviously doesn't make the same kind of sense this time around.

The thing about this Jays team, though, is where would they be looking to improve? Left field is the obvious place, but beyond that, as long as everyone's healthy, after that it's what? A bullpen piece? A backup catcher? Certainly not third or second or even first base. Or shortstop. Or catcher. Or centre or right field. Or DH. Or any spot in the starting rotation. Or closer.

I mean, I don't want it to sound like these Jays are some kind of super team, but the threshold at all of these positions is pretty high. And while I'm sure there will be upgrades available for huge prices at spots where the Jays can use them, I imagine their focus would be smaller deals where they can solidify those few spots that do need attention.

Then again, they got rather creative last season with their deal of Drew Hutchison to Pittsburgh for Francisco Liriano and a pair of prospects, so I wouldn't rule out the front office throwing a curveball at us. I just maybe wouldn't count on it.

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Marlins putting Yelich, Ozuna & Realmuto on the block. All could be great fits for Jays but price too high/don't have the prospects, right?
Terry

Paying a boatload for Realmuto when you still have Russell Martin under contract for two years after this one doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me, but the other guys? Yeah, they'd be great. MLBTR has some good background on all three and their situations here. But the thing is, like you say, they're going to be crazy expensive. And the thing isn't so much that the Jays don't have the prospects—I'm sure an Anthony Alford or a Vlad Guerrero Jr. would get the Marlins' attention—it's that it's hard to envision them having both the prospects and the wherewithal to outbid all the other teams that could certainly use young, underpaid players of this calibre.

July blockbusters simply aren't made by teams that think a deal might get them into the wild-card game—the Jays' trades of 2015 being exceptions to this rule. At some point the cost-benefit stops adding up, and for a team as old and as expensive as the Jays, keeping their own prospect pipeline intact is crazily important. I just don't see it.

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Extend Russ? Leadership worth lesser offence? Havana, Mexico City, Montreal? Which is likelier to get an expansion team?
Stephen

Ext… what??? Extend Russ? Is there some other Russ I'm not aware of? Because surely you're not suggesting anybody even think about extending the 34-year-old catcher with two years remaining on his contract after this one, are you???

Which is to say nothing against Russell Martin. He's great and I'd love to see him spend a long time with the Blue Jays, if he remains useful and reasonably paid and willing to shift into a lesser role when the time eventually comes. An extension is something we can start thinking about in the middle of 2019. No point doing it any sooner.

As for the expansion question, unfortunately I don't see a team for any of those cities any time soon. Mostly that's because MLB isn't going to expand until they're through using the threat of relocation to better their situations in Oakland and Tampa Bay, and I'm not sure how close we are to resolution there. And who knows what other stadium/market issues may crop up by the time those issues are dealt with.

Once the league is ready to expand, I'm not sure any of those cities are at the top of the list, to be honest. American cities like Portland, San Antonio, Austin, or Charlotte will absolutely be in the mix, as well. If I'm an American owner, I probably think some of those places are safer bets. The idea of a team becoming in the Mexican national TV market what the Blue Jays are in Canada would have an appeal, but geographically it's a long way off the map—Monterrey has been touted as a possible option, and being half the distance from Houston that Mexico City is probably has something to do with that, and so maybe it works instead. Montreal would be great, obviously, and I think a smashing success (in a centrally located ballpark) despite the way the Expos franchise went out, but I'd understand if there was trepidation, too. (I'd also understand if there was push back from a Blue Jays franchise that wanted the Canadian market to itself—though I think two rival Canadian teams pushing each other would be great for the game and for Canadian baseball). And while I can't say that I know a whole lot about the Cuban economy, even in a post-Castro, post-Thaw world, I'd be surprised if it was viewed as the kind of financial boon to the league that a team in the Sun Belt would, and that's really what it's going to come down to.

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Andrew,
I was just reading the news regarding the suspensions of Harper and Strickland. What I thought was interesting is MLB suspended Strickland for intentionally throwing the ball at Harper and "inciting the benches clearing" yet I watched Julio Teheran intentionally hit Bautista last week. I don't want to get in the Gregg Zaun debate about playing baseball the "right way" versus "having fun" but I do think the league has to get some consistency with this as right now it seems like a bit of a joke. Do they really use bench clearing brawls as the threshold to start suspending players?
Gary

After a tense 2015 game with the Royals, which saw Josh Donaldson buzzed inside, then later hit, and Troy Tulowitzki hit as well, Aaron Sanchez ended up the only player suspended, because he hit a batter, Alcides Escobar, and was ejected for it. After the late Yordano Ventura hit Josh Donaldson in the first inning, home plate umpire Jim Wolf warned both benches, but still, later on, Ryan Madson hit Tulowitzki in the seventh and then buzzed Donaldson way up and in. Tempers flared, benches emptied, John Gibbons was ejected, but no other action was taken. Sanchez was tossed in the eighth for hitting Escobar, and as such received a suspension. I have no idea why Madson wasn't tossed as well, but MLB followed the lead of its umpire, regardless of how badly he handled the game. They could have thrown the book at Ventura and at Madson and at Sanchez, and sent a message that these sorts of incidents aren't to be tolerated, but because Sanchez was the only one the umpire saw fit to toss, he was the only one who was suspended.

All of which is to say: you're damn right this stuff is a mess. I honestly don't know if following what the umpire did is always the standard, but that's mostly because I make it a point not to think too much about the league's twisted suspension logic. One day, perhaps, they'll actually start to take this stuff seriously.

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LF is still a huge fucking shit-show, right?

Joshua

Ahhhhh, no. I wouldn't go nearly that far. It's a place where the Jays could certainly use improvement, but Ezequiel Carrera has more or less held his own there. His BABIP is a bit high, and he's… y'know… Ezequiel Carrera, so I'm not saying he's necessarily going to keep it up, but so far he's been worth half a win, posting a league-average 102 wRC+, a rather tasty .346 on-base percentage, while playing defence that's not great, but not horrific.

I mean, I think we've all seen positions that are shit shows before. Running Saunders and Melvin Upton out there in left for the second half of last year? That was a shit show. Hanging on with ol' Zeke while Steve Pearce gets healthy is not exactly the worst thing in the world—especially with Smoak having earned himself a whole lot of playing time at first base, meaning that, once healthy, Pearce won't be needed so much there. And having Dalton Pompey around as a possibility—once he gets over his latest injury issue—could also give the position a boost, at least theoretically.

No, it's not exactly great, but it's entirely fine for now. Not every position requires an All-Star.