If you're the general manager of a Major League Baseball team that's floundering a few games below .500, you're probably shopping around some of your older players, looking for a place to start a rebuild.
The Toronto Blue Jays had MLB's oldest average hitters this year. They also had the American League East's worst record as of July 31, which is the non-waiver trade deadline. It should seem to be an easy decision to let the season go, with trade pieces not exactly the best players on the team. Grab a few prospects now, reload with some younger, faster free agents next year and try again.
But here's where Jays fans can be the biggest hold up in the whole thing: they're popular. Fans go to their games in droves. They were the first team to reach 2 million in attendance this year. They've clearly invested a lot into the Blue Jays' experience this season.
For better or for worse, the team has taken the fans' love for the team to heart, becoming extremely reluctant to perform a full scale sell off. Team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins were undoubtedly fielding offers on the team's best players. But when you've got bobblehead night and shirt/jersey nights for some of these guys in the coming weeks, what do you do?
Here's what most teams would have no problem doing. Sell. Sell the contracts that get off the books after this year and a few that get off the books next year. Sell even if you have to eat a bit of money to get rid of them. He prospects will stay. The old players will not.
The mentality allowed them Monday to deal struggling starter Francisco Liriano to the Houston Astros, who will likely use him out of the bullpen. It also let them send Joe Smith back to Cleveland in his home state of Indiana to be closer to a family member of his who is ill.
But who else could/should have gone?
Jose Bautista, who will make about $18 million in salary and bonuses, is not likely to be re-upped this fall by the Jays unless they really like paying absurd amounts of money to a 37-year-old guy with a .717 OPS this year, which is .134 lower than his career average. Sell him.
Marco Estrada was re-signed for $14 million in a deal that most at the time regarded as a bargain. Coming off his best year ever, Estrada's qualifying offer has gone to a player who has given up more hits and extra base hits in 114 1/3 innings this year than he did in 176 innings last season. Cut your losses and cut him lose. There's a feeling among fans that by keeping him through the non waiver trade deadline, it's a sign they may want to keep him for 2018 and hope he catches the magic of 2016. It's what gamblers call putting good money after bad and should be avoided if at all possible.
At $3 million, J.P. Howell is getting paid good money to sit on the disabled list this year. It's pretty decent money
Then you come to the difficult decisions. Former AL MVP Josh Donaldson has one more arbitration year before he can become an unrestricted free agent and sign wherever. Do you play the sell-high chip now and get a good package for him or do you want to overpay him before the 2019 season starts?
In the reality that we live in in 2017, the Blue Jays are no longer that plucky team of overachievers that stole the hearts of fans across the country with spirited playoff appearances and strutting and first inning fist pumping and bat flips. They're beyond that now, and dealing with being old and not very good. We'll see between now and the start of the 2018 season if they're built more on the nostalgia of two American League final appearances or the legitimate desire to get back there in 2018.
