Blue Jays Mailbag: Martin-Tulo Trade Value, and Prospect Talk

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 have shown signs of life! Is it too little too late to save their season? Probably not! But it was certainly too little too late to save this mailbag from a whole bunch of rebuild and prospect talk.

Fortunately, with things looking slightly upwards at the moment, my answers aren't quite as soul-crushing as they might have been otherwise! So let's dig in!

And 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…

Can you get anything for Martin and Tulo?

@daboohk

Well, let me start by saying that I'm not sure the club will necessarily be looking to move either of them.

For one, let's maybe cut the woe-is-us bullshit just a little bit. The Blue Jays have 13 losses right now; the Red Sox, who everybody wants to hand the division to, already have eight. A good week from the Jays and the hole doesn't look nearly so deep.

Secondly, on Friday at Blue Jays Nation, I wrote about a potential Blue Jays rebuild taking the shape of what they've done in Boston, trying to remain competitive while continuing to build from within.

In such a scenario—which I'd argue they're already in, given the way they approached this past offseason—they can still use guys like Tulo and Martin, whose contracts are full-on heading deep into their ugly phases, but who still certainly have utility on the field, and maybe in the club's thinking a lot of value off it. Granted, I'm just guessing on that bit. And the fact that the pair are somewhat injury prone at this stage (though Martin doesn't necessarily miss games because of it) is perhaps reason enough for the Jays to want to get out from under their deals. But the fact of the matter, to get back to your question, is that you probably can get something for them, but I don't think you're going to get much, especially without eating a lot of money.

And even if you do eat most of the money, I don't think you're getting much more than just an OK prospect in return.

Maybe I'm wrong—it's not like these guys have reached Melvin Upton, move-them-just-to-move-them territory yet—but I just can't help but wonder, would it be worth it? Might you not be better off keeping them on your team, helping the next generation of Blue Jays? And with due respect to Richard Urena and Reese McGuire, the Jays' top prospects at shortstop and catcher (and to Lourdes Gurriel, who is playing at short but most seem to believe won't stick there), it's not like you're dying to get those guys a bunch of big league reps. Plus, if the Jays choose to try to stay somewhat competitive in 2018, even if 2017 ends up as badly as it's started, Martin and Tulo certainly can help that club.

So, yeah, I don't think I worry much about moving them.

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Who are the top prospects for the 2018 draft? Since the Jays are likely to get one. Any Bryce Harper or Machado types out there?

Ryan

Hometown: Surface of the sun

I don't care, and neither should you. No, the Blue Jays are not likely to get one of the top picks a year from now.

I'll never understand fans whose emotions are so twisted up by a baseball season—and if you're bitterly declaring the Jays are looking at a spot at the top of the 2018 draft, you're certainly that—but who don't seem to have ever watched a baseball season before.

FanGraphs' projections still have the Jays as the fourth-best team in the American League going forward, and finishing with a record as good as, or better than, 14 teams.

No team reveals its true self in just 18 games. Ever. Relax.

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Hey Stoeten love the mailbag and glad to see you have made it big time now and don't need to hijack Gregor Chisolm's now that Richard Griffin has stopped doing them.

My question on the struggling Jays is this. Let's assume the Jays do turn this thing around, are we at the point now where even a second wild card berth seems highly unlikely. Isn't the worst thing for any team in any sports league to be is mediocre, just miss the playoffs and get a middle of the road draft pick instead of a top 5 pick. At what point do you say fuck it in June and start Pompey and Tellez every day and start trading assets for prospects. Like what does the record have to be for that to happen. At this point I'd do it even if they make it back to a couple of games below .500.

Chris M

Thanks for the kind words Chris, but that's legitimately fucking crazy!

For one, no, it's not the worst thing in every sports league to finish with a middling draft pick. Case in point: baseball. Talent doesn't enter the MLB draft nearly as fully-formed as in other sports, so there is quite a bit more variance at the top of the draft (though, yes, the long-term trends show that higher picks provide more value). Plus, there are more legitimate potential impact prospects than in other sports, too. Look at the way teams consider draft picks when it comes to free agents. A pick in the compensation round, which comes after the first round, is still really valuable. And teams like the Red Sox or the Cardinals can continue to produce some of the best minor league talent in the game, despite almost never picking at the top of the draft (granted, Boston's newest phenom, Andrew Benintendi, was taken with the 7th overall pick—but even that's low compared to where you seem to be aiming with your mid-June sell-off idea). The difference between picking 15th and 7th isn't nothing, but is it enough to be worth, say, punting on 2018 as part of a massive rebuild? Nah.

For two, it's funny, when a little bit of adversity comes their way, how quickly fans forget how willing they are to believe in their team. Does anybody remember the end of the 2008 season? I do, because I took a lot of shit from a lot of fans who did not want to hear that the Jays didn't really have a chance, even though they still had a small mathematical chance of catching the Red Sox for the wild card. The scenario: the Jays reeled off a 10-game winning streak, and woke up on Sept. 10 seven games behind Boston, with 18 games left, seven of which were against those very Red Sox. The Jays needed something truly spectacular, and ultimately it didn't happen, but people were ready. They wanted to believe. They felt that the team could really maybe even do it—not that they realistically would, but that they could. That was enough to get a lot of people back on the bandwagon, back into watching games, and back into full-throated spirit. And that was a situation that was much more daunting than the one they're in right now.

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We all know Goins is a better SS than Jose Reyes. My Q is: is he also better than Tulo?

Thanks, big fan.

@the_Zubes

Gah, not again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hello there Again Stoeten. Quick question this time out of all Jays Prospects not named Rowdy Tellez who is most likely to get called up before September to play in the show?

Keep up the great content like always,

Rian Gupta

Uh… let's maybe see if Rowdy can handle Triple-A before we worry about a call-up. Since his two home run debut for the Bisons, he's 6-for-46 with 12 strikeouts, nine walks, and zero extra base hits. That's a .130/.273/.130 slash line. Y'know?

I'm honestly not sure we'll see any of the "name" prospects get the call before September. Anthony Alford has looked great, but because of his weird development path—i.e. taking all that time off baseball to play NCAA football—I'd guess they'll not be so inclined to rush him.

If they start selling off pieces in July, I guess all bets are off, but this regime seems much more deliberate in having players move up through the system than the last one was. So I don't know if we'll see the guys who are currently at Double-A, and I don't know if anyone at Triple-A is really a prospect. Maybe Pompey. Maybe Dwight Smith Jr. But only as injury fill-ins—and even then, they're probably not going to be the first choices.

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Hello

During spring training Jose Bautista had some teammates over and they ordered a pizza. When the pizza arrived, an argument broke out over who would go to the door to get it. Jose suggested they roll a dice to settle the argument and despite Joe Biagini's warning that they would be creating 6 alternative timelines, they agreed.

A few weeks later we are stuck in the darkest timeline. How are we going to get out of it?

Joshua

Wins.

So far so good in Anaheim, at least!