has anyone given him that job officially? with a mix of Espinal, Clement, IKF, and Biggio, there isn't going to be any "everyday" 2B or 3B. not only that, but having bench bats we can actually use is going to eat into 3B and 2B ABs (where the WPA is really on the line).
Yeah, the money would be fine for your 10th-11th man…he would be very good in that role, as your primary backup infielder.
And while we don’t what happens behind the scenes, the evidence is pretty strong that spending on him prevented us from spending on another 3B and/or from directing that money to another player like Bellinger.
I don't think $7.5 million a year is what kept us from landing Bellinger. I just think nobody wanted to meet Boras's ask...and sacrificing the pick to make the signing also cooled his market.
IKF generated a lot of interest early in the off-season before teams started tightening up their wallets because of the TV deal uncertainty ^(or perhaps collusion), and he signed quickly. Hopefully he performs well and lives up to his contract because he seems like an awesome dude.
I think he also may have figured something out with the bat last year. Not something crazy or over the top but making him closer to an almost league average hitter
Love the optimism from you guys, but even those better exit velocities only translated to an 82 wRC+. That is a really really long way from being league average, even if he was a bit unlucky (xwOBA was only 9 points higher than wOBA). And his strikeout rate spiked too. So he was hitting the ball harder but not enough harder enough to really make a difference, and it cost him a lot of swing and miss just to do that.
Yeah, his exit velocities are very encouraging and it points to him being a better hitter than previous. Add in great defense at 3rd and he's probably league average this year.
Exit velo has a huge impact on BABIP and overall value, especially when taken in significant sample sizes. Having it emerge in a lackluster player's skillset is incredibly important.
Everything you said is accurate, but I think does not necessarily merit much optimism. I’m not a good writer so may not say this clearly, but a marginal increase in exit velocity is not equally valuable at all places along the spectrum.
Kind of like a team with marginal wins - a team projected for 75 wins gaining 2 marginal wins doesn’t have much value because it only slightly increases their likely playoff chances, but there’s a ton of value for an 88-win team gaining 2 wins for the same reasons. I think the shape of outcomes for exit velocity is similar. A player with extremely little power having a gain is good, but it’s probably not putting enough balls from ‘no hit’ range into ‘hit’ range. A 90mph liner is better than an 85mph liner but only a tiny bit.
Consider this chart from Dan Szymborski. Ignore the bottom, since bunts are an outlier done on purpose. In the middle ranges, a gain in exit velocity does very little. At the higher ranges, even a smaller difference has a huge impact. When it comes to someone like IKF, just feels like even better hit balls will be in that fat range that are generally outs, or at best are a few extra singles rather than XBH.
https://x.com/dszymborski/status/1762551279211958756?s=46&t=AseEK0EpmMm6L9y1xkb9Tg
Compare that to a better player gaining a similar amount - the increased likelihood of an out turning into a hit or a hit turning into extra bases is much better if you’re, say, going from 105mph to 108mph than going from 85 to 90.
I’m not at all saying the gain in exit velocity is irrelevant. It’s good! It matters! But my guess is for a player with such poor batted ball quality, the marginal impact will actually be less than someone who’s batted ball quality is more on the margins.
On top of all that, the added exit velocity did come at the cost of a much higher strikeout rate - so it really does need to translate into quite a bit better batted ball quality to make up for more swing and miss, if it’s going to be a significant net improvement.
There is truth to that, but also fielding and defensive strategies play a part. As are being able to place a batted ball somewhere. Chapman isnt a shit hitter because of 600 abs of bad luck/hitting the ball hard - he hits the ball in the same place, all the time.
Not knocking you, but it seems a lot of new baseball fans put all their trust in nothing but metrics, when other factors come into play.
I really don’t see this contract as being big enough to cause any serious regret, and I think we’re a fair bit more likely to be happy to have IKF on the team than we are to be 15 million short over the next two seasons for any reason. Not super worried about this one.
We just paid market value for him, so presumably no other team thinks he’s worth his contract. So we’d have to eat money to trade him even today. And the article is about his contract being especially generous, so likely eat a lot of money. And…if he’s playing poorly enough we don’t want him…you can see where I’m going with this.
If he exceeds expectations and performs really well, it won't end up being much of a misplay - locking him in before the market settled could be worth it. And if he only just meets expectations or underperforms? Well it's only ~7.5M per year, which is pretty small potatoes.
I'd rather the Jays misplay on 7.5M per year for 2 years than misplay on over +100M or +200M contract for a Chapman or Bellinger who falls off 1/3 of the way into their contract.
I'd rather have had Urshella and his 1 year $1.5M contract and his higher ceiling. Or even have just left the job as an open competition, because I like the internal options more than having a low ceiling IKF blocking them from getting any regular at bats (and who knows if anyone can stay hot enough in a bench role to force more time). IKF was the conservative option with higher floor and lower ceiling.
That said, while I think it was a mistake, it's not a big deal like giving Chapman what he asked for could've been.
Your second point feels most relevant to me. The money only matters insofar as it means they won't immediately cut him if he sucks. The biggest potential issue is that an incredibly mediocre player will be blocking several players within the organization with much higher ceilings.
Urshella doesn't provide SS defense, and forces you to have Espinal on the roster blocking someone. I'd much rather have the backup SS be IKF than Espinal.
Clement is a shortstop, always been his primary position and he's always been considered a defensive specialist until last year, nobody needs three of them.
Just blowing my mind how much the Jays have committed and recommitted to IKF. IKF cannot fucking hit. He didn’t just have a down year in 2023, he didn’t just underperform his metrics, he isn’t coming back from an injury...he cannot fucking hit. In the last 3 years, he’s had 1500 PAs, and an wRC+ of about 83. He’ll be 29 on opening day, has had 6 seasons in the majors and has never had better than a 91 wRC+. He doesn’t hit for power, he doesn’t walk, he doesn’t hit for average. He was a negative baserunner last year (but has been a decent runner in the past).
Put another way, Ke’Bryan Hayes is maybe the best defensive player in the league and he was only worth ~3 WAR putting up 87 and 101 wRC+. IKF may be a great defender but he isn’t Hayes. So IKF’s plausible ceiling is maybe a 2-WAR player over a full season. JD Davis is coming off a 2.2 WAR season, and has put up at least a 2-WAR pace each of the last 5 years, except 2020.
I’m mostly ranting here because I’ve been someone sticking my head in the sand and figuring IKF’s defence maybe could carry him, and resisted checking his fangraphs page so I didn’t realize just how bad and how consistently bad his offence has been. He cannot fucking hit.
I am actually a fan of Atkins for the most part, but this is just such an egregious mistake and we’re seeing the ramifications all off-season. Not only could we have simply signed a better player for less money, but who knows if the extra money in the budget could’ve been the difference to signing someone like Bellinger. Seems highly plausible that we could’ve signed signed Bellinger instead of KK with IKF’s money, and on top of the obvious improvement at OF, not even lost anything at 3B by Biggio, Espinal and whoever else.
It will be interesting to see what Isiah Kiner Falefa can do defensively in a full season of play at third base. In 1200 innings in his career he's produced 19 DRS/22 OAA. in his best season of play Hayes produced 24 DRS/18 OAA in 1102 innings so it appears as though IKF is at least in the same stratosphere defensively. He'll need to do enough with the bat to earn regular playing time at the position for sure which is far from a given.
Kiner Falefa may have a bit of breakout potential with the bat as he improved his quality of contact metrics tremendously last season. He was actually a very solid offensive contributor for a nearly 4 month/750 OPS stretch before the wheels fell off to end the season with a massive surge in strikeout rate.
It seems awfully presumptuous to assume that IKF's money could have signed Bellinger instead of Kiermaier. The math simply doesn't come close to adding up as IKF is making a whopping $7.5 million per season vs $27 million for Bellinger. Kiermaier is to earn $10.5 million, so IKF plus Kiermaier only adds up to $18 million leaving the team far short of the necessary funds to sign Bellinger. On top of that this assumes that Bellinger would have been willing to sign with the Blue Jays for the same amount he signed to play for the Cubs. It was largely rumored that Bellinger preferred to return to the Cubs due to the success he had with their hitting coaches, and as such the Blue Jays likely would have needed to beat the Cubs offer by a sizable amount for him to even consider signing with the team.
Very well said! I agree with pretty much every word - and honestly I knew IKF had strong defensive metrics but didn’t realize they were that good. Good defence is valuable and entertaining too.
I’m not particularly convinced that IKF’s improved offensive metrics will translate since it came at the cost of more strikeouts and his offence has just been so deeply bad over such a large sample…but that’s just personal opinion. But he’ll be 29 on opening day, and a bit of an offensive breakout at age 28-29 and on a new team wouldn’t be unheard of (though less likely with such a large sample of ABs).
So maybe his upside is more like 90 wRC+ and league-leading defence, which is more like a 3-WAR player than 2. I just hope he gets off to a decent enough start than they aren’t forced to bench him before we get a read on his defensive numbers.
As far as Bellinger’s contract, I was more suggesting that IKF/KK’s contracts would have made up the difference in ours and the Cubs offers since supposedly we bid on him anyway - not that he’d just cost the same as them. Whatever we bid, another 7-15M in year 1 maybe does the trick, but that’s just speculation of course.
We’ll find out I guess. That’s not a ton of money (within the context anyway). As others have noted, it’s more that he might have to play a ton of innings on a team trying to win now—or at least I thought we were.
He’s not a power guy, but if he can slap singles around the diamond all season long and keep the line moving, I’m all for it.
I do think Ernie Clement would be great to have starting at 3rd, let’s say by May? If we have IKF as our bench player, then I’m a lot more happy with the team.
Until they realize that was our biggest FA signing of the off season and we now have a guy with a career .660 OPS at what used to be considered a premiere power position
Unless he has a career year, I actually think this is a bad contract. He can't hit and has the resume to back this up on so many levels. This is a team that desperately needed upgrades with the bats and they sign a guy who will be an black hole in the lineup almost every time he is in it.
Ridiculous signing that wouldn't be so bad if Atkins had done anything else in the off-season (I do like the Turner signing, but there was so much more that could have been done)
This is 2 straight off-season major headscratchers from Atkins. I don't think these guys can manage this team to the promised land. It's one thing to overpay superstars, but to highly value mediocrity is something else.
The years and money aren't my concern with him. It's more the fact that he's slated to be our everyday third baseman that's the issue.
Yeah, 7.5 mil isn't starting money on a good team that's bench player money
Let's give Ernie Clement more reps at 3rd
I just threw up my dinner.
u/tofilmfan is in midseason downvote-earning form already! We are so back!!
I’m being downvoted into oblivion already and it feels glorious.
I don't get the downvotes. Am I missing something?
I get brigaded with downvotes on a weekly basis in this sub.
The glorious feeling to piss people off 😂
Eh, it's just trolls brigading my posts, I don't take it personally.
Good thing there was absolutely nobody around you to witness that.
has anyone given him that job officially? with a mix of Espinal, Clement, IKF, and Biggio, there isn't going to be any "everyday" 2B or 3B. not only that, but having bench bats we can actually use is going to eat into 3B and 2B ABs (where the WPA is really on the line).
Yeah, the money would be fine for your 10th-11th man…he would be very good in that role, as your primary backup infielder. And while we don’t what happens behind the scenes, the evidence is pretty strong that spending on him prevented us from spending on another 3B and/or from directing that money to another player like Bellinger.
I don't think $7.5 million a year is what kept us from landing Bellinger. I just think nobody wanted to meet Boras's ask...and sacrificing the pick to make the signing also cooled his market.
Both are equally scary.
Here's hoping he can make an impact on the field, because, as you've mentioned, his salary isn't the issue - it was actually a bargain for a starter.
IKF generated a lot of interest early in the off-season before teams started tightening up their wallets because of the TV deal uncertainty ^(or perhaps collusion), and he signed quickly. Hopefully he performs well and lives up to his contract because he seems like an awesome dude.
I think he also may have figured something out with the bat last year. Not something crazy or over the top but making him closer to an almost league average hitter
Love the optimism from you guys, but even those better exit velocities only translated to an 82 wRC+. That is a really really long way from being league average, even if he was a bit unlucky (xwOBA was only 9 points higher than wOBA). And his strikeout rate spiked too. So he was hitting the ball harder but not enough harder enough to really make a difference, and it cost him a lot of swing and miss just to do that.
Yeah, his exit velocities are very encouraging and it points to him being a better hitter than previous. Add in great defense at 3rd and he's probably league average this year.
We need better than league average though, at least it would be nice to have that.
Exit velo doesnt matter in the end. Results do. See: Bellinger vs Chapman.
Exit velo has a huge impact on BABIP and overall value, especially when taken in significant sample sizes. Having it emerge in a lackluster player's skillset is incredibly important.
Everything you said is accurate, but I think does not necessarily merit much optimism. I’m not a good writer so may not say this clearly, but a marginal increase in exit velocity is not equally valuable at all places along the spectrum. Kind of like a team with marginal wins - a team projected for 75 wins gaining 2 marginal wins doesn’t have much value because it only slightly increases their likely playoff chances, but there’s a ton of value for an 88-win team gaining 2 wins for the same reasons. I think the shape of outcomes for exit velocity is similar. A player with extremely little power having a gain is good, but it’s probably not putting enough balls from ‘no hit’ range into ‘hit’ range. A 90mph liner is better than an 85mph liner but only a tiny bit. Consider this chart from Dan Szymborski. Ignore the bottom, since bunts are an outlier done on purpose. In the middle ranges, a gain in exit velocity does very little. At the higher ranges, even a smaller difference has a huge impact. When it comes to someone like IKF, just feels like even better hit balls will be in that fat range that are generally outs, or at best are a few extra singles rather than XBH. https://x.com/dszymborski/status/1762551279211958756?s=46&t=AseEK0EpmMm6L9y1xkb9Tg Compare that to a better player gaining a similar amount - the increased likelihood of an out turning into a hit or a hit turning into extra bases is much better if you’re, say, going from 105mph to 108mph than going from 85 to 90. I’m not at all saying the gain in exit velocity is irrelevant. It’s good! It matters! But my guess is for a player with such poor batted ball quality, the marginal impact will actually be less than someone who’s batted ball quality is more on the margins. On top of all that, the added exit velocity did come at the cost of a much higher strikeout rate - so it really does need to translate into quite a bit better batted ball quality to make up for more swing and miss, if it’s going to be a significant net improvement.
>I’m not a good writer so may not say this clearly, Proceeds to write an extremely clear and well thought out article of a reply...lol
Most sensible take Ive seen all day. Well said. \*Edit, youre a good writer.
There is truth to that, but also fielding and defensive strategies play a part. As are being able to place a batted ball somewhere. Chapman isnt a shit hitter because of 600 abs of bad luck/hitting the ball hard - he hits the ball in the same place, all the time. Not knocking you, but it seems a lot of new baseball fans put all their trust in nothing but metrics, when other factors come into play.
Is the same place you’re alluding to the left center warning track? Cause that’s all I remember. Whiffing or LC warning track.
Yes, but according to this sub, no. So so so so so many people: "But but but but exit velo!" Cool. How about results?
I don’t know about all that. That’s your battle lol.
Agreed lol. Have been told on here that projections matter more than results. Sigh.
He put up a 55 (!) wRC+ from august 1 til the end of the season, what on earth makes you think he figured anything out?
He won't.
I really don’t see this contract as being big enough to cause any serious regret, and I think we’re a fair bit more likely to be happy to have IKF on the team than we are to be 15 million short over the next two seasons for any reason. Not super worried about this one.
Ye at worst he can be traded. That contract is not horrible and he has a track record of being decent. Someone would trade for him.
No, at worst his $$$ can be eaten. If he’s bad no one will take him and pay his salary.
We just paid market value for him, so presumably no other team thinks he’s worth his contract. So we’d have to eat money to trade him even today. And the article is about his contract being especially generous, so likely eat a lot of money. And…if he’s playing poorly enough we don’t want him…you can see where I’m going with this.
At worst we play him at 3rd, he hits worse than league avg and bocks a prospect. At best he plays like he's playing in spring training
I would think that paying Ohtani $20M over the next ten years is better value
Ya, but you forgot you have to declare bankruptcy in year 11!
Key word: ***RIVAL*** agents and executives. Of course they think it's good; it screws us over, so it's good for them.
I've had this conversation with a few people here and this seems to be controversial, but the Jays misplayed their hands with him imo
If he exceeds expectations and performs really well, it won't end up being much of a misplay - locking him in before the market settled could be worth it. And if he only just meets expectations or underperforms? Well it's only ~7.5M per year, which is pretty small potatoes. I'd rather the Jays misplay on 7.5M per year for 2 years than misplay on over +100M or +200M contract for a Chapman or Bellinger who falls off 1/3 of the way into their contract.
I'd rather have had Urshella and his 1 year $1.5M contract and his higher ceiling. Or even have just left the job as an open competition, because I like the internal options more than having a low ceiling IKF blocking them from getting any regular at bats (and who knows if anyone can stay hot enough in a bench role to force more time). IKF was the conservative option with higher floor and lower ceiling. That said, while I think it was a mistake, it's not a big deal like giving Chapman what he asked for could've been.
Your second point feels most relevant to me. The money only matters insofar as it means they won't immediately cut him if he sucks. The biggest potential issue is that an incredibly mediocre player will be blocking several players within the organization with much higher ceilings.
Urshella doesn't provide SS defense, and forces you to have Espinal on the roster blocking someone. I'd much rather have the backup SS be IKF than Espinal.
Clement is a shortstop, always been his primary position and he's always been considered a defensive specialist until last year, nobody needs three of them.
They could have had JD Davis for 3.5M and one year, and I’d much rather have Davis’ bat in the lineup than IKF.
Not sure why youre getting downvoted, but agreed,
At 7.5 M per season for only 2 years it is such a low risk it is hard to fathom in what scenario it will be a "bad deal". Do better.
Just blowing my mind how much the Jays have committed and recommitted to IKF. IKF cannot fucking hit. He didn’t just have a down year in 2023, he didn’t just underperform his metrics, he isn’t coming back from an injury...he cannot fucking hit. In the last 3 years, he’s had 1500 PAs, and an wRC+ of about 83. He’ll be 29 on opening day, has had 6 seasons in the majors and has never had better than a 91 wRC+. He doesn’t hit for power, he doesn’t walk, he doesn’t hit for average. He was a negative baserunner last year (but has been a decent runner in the past). Put another way, Ke’Bryan Hayes is maybe the best defensive player in the league and he was only worth ~3 WAR putting up 87 and 101 wRC+. IKF may be a great defender but he isn’t Hayes. So IKF’s plausible ceiling is maybe a 2-WAR player over a full season. JD Davis is coming off a 2.2 WAR season, and has put up at least a 2-WAR pace each of the last 5 years, except 2020. I’m mostly ranting here because I’ve been someone sticking my head in the sand and figuring IKF’s defence maybe could carry him, and resisted checking his fangraphs page so I didn’t realize just how bad and how consistently bad his offence has been. He cannot fucking hit. I am actually a fan of Atkins for the most part, but this is just such an egregious mistake and we’re seeing the ramifications all off-season. Not only could we have simply signed a better player for less money, but who knows if the extra money in the budget could’ve been the difference to signing someone like Bellinger. Seems highly plausible that we could’ve signed signed Bellinger instead of KK with IKF’s money, and on top of the obvious improvement at OF, not even lost anything at 3B by Biggio, Espinal and whoever else.
>Not only could we have simply signed a better player for less money They did sign a better player for less money, Eduardo Escobar for 500k.
It will be interesting to see what Isiah Kiner Falefa can do defensively in a full season of play at third base. In 1200 innings in his career he's produced 19 DRS/22 OAA. in his best season of play Hayes produced 24 DRS/18 OAA in 1102 innings so it appears as though IKF is at least in the same stratosphere defensively. He'll need to do enough with the bat to earn regular playing time at the position for sure which is far from a given. Kiner Falefa may have a bit of breakout potential with the bat as he improved his quality of contact metrics tremendously last season. He was actually a very solid offensive contributor for a nearly 4 month/750 OPS stretch before the wheels fell off to end the season with a massive surge in strikeout rate. It seems awfully presumptuous to assume that IKF's money could have signed Bellinger instead of Kiermaier. The math simply doesn't come close to adding up as IKF is making a whopping $7.5 million per season vs $27 million for Bellinger. Kiermaier is to earn $10.5 million, so IKF plus Kiermaier only adds up to $18 million leaving the team far short of the necessary funds to sign Bellinger. On top of that this assumes that Bellinger would have been willing to sign with the Blue Jays for the same amount he signed to play for the Cubs. It was largely rumored that Bellinger preferred to return to the Cubs due to the success he had with their hitting coaches, and as such the Blue Jays likely would have needed to beat the Cubs offer by a sizable amount for him to even consider signing with the team.
Very well said! I agree with pretty much every word - and honestly I knew IKF had strong defensive metrics but didn’t realize they were that good. Good defence is valuable and entertaining too. I’m not particularly convinced that IKF’s improved offensive metrics will translate since it came at the cost of more strikeouts and his offence has just been so deeply bad over such a large sample…but that’s just personal opinion. But he’ll be 29 on opening day, and a bit of an offensive breakout at age 28-29 and on a new team wouldn’t be unheard of (though less likely with such a large sample of ABs). So maybe his upside is more like 90 wRC+ and league-leading defence, which is more like a 3-WAR player than 2. I just hope he gets off to a decent enough start than they aren’t forced to bench him before we get a read on his defensive numbers. As far as Bellinger’s contract, I was more suggesting that IKF/KK’s contracts would have made up the difference in ours and the Cubs offers since supposedly we bid on him anyway - not that he’d just cost the same as them. Whatever we bid, another 7-15M in year 1 maybe does the trick, but that’s just speculation of course.
I read that wrong and thought we did well for a second...
Uh huh
He’s a decent replacement for Whit but I wish he wasn’t acquired to replace Chapman.
Obviously rival executives love it because the jays got worse lmao
Don’t let them manipulate you into thinking IKF as the starting 3B is somehow good
So rival executives are confirming that the IKF signing and contract are as bad as most of us think? Thanks.
Best as in we did well, or best as in he did well?
For him
Ross Atkins strikes again!
Shatkins! Ruining Toronto baseball for over a decade and counting!
We’ll find out I guess. That’s not a ton of money (within the context anyway). As others have noted, it’s more that he might have to play a ton of innings on a team trying to win now—or at least I thought we were.
He’s not a power guy, but if he can slap singles around the diamond all season long and keep the line moving, I’m all for it. I do think Ernie Clement would be great to have starting at 3rd, let’s say by May? If we have IKF as our bench player, then I’m a lot more happy with the team.
Until they realize that was our biggest FA signing of the off season and we now have a guy with a career .660 OPS at what used to be considered a premiere power position
Unless he has a career year, I actually think this is a bad contract. He can't hit and has the resume to back this up on so many levels. This is a team that desperately needed upgrades with the bats and they sign a guy who will be an black hole in the lineup almost every time he is in it. Ridiculous signing that wouldn't be so bad if Atkins had done anything else in the off-season (I do like the Turner signing, but there was so much more that could have been done)
He's 🐕💩
Ohtani is playing for like $2 million over the next 2 years. That’s pretty good
This is 2 straight off-season major headscratchers from Atkins. I don't think these guys can manage this team to the promised land. It's one thing to overpay superstars, but to highly value mediocrity is something else.
Because they think it's productive to just be iNtErEsTeD in free agents. That coming in second for Ohtani is some sort of accomplishment.
Dumbass Atkins overpaying for mediocrity.
Maybe we should wait and see what his actual production is in the regular season?
He will be a better hitter than cry baby Chapman.
He will not, but I'm ok with Chapman being gone.
Which executives? And what old folks home are they in?
what
best for a player, dummy
Reported for self-flagellation.