Jays' interest in Encarnacion hard to quantify

Steve Phillips

TSN Baseball Insider

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Edwin Encarnacion is still free. But he isn’t free. He is actually quite expensive.

His agent told TSN’s Rick Westhead that there were 11 interested teams a couple of weeks ago. Rick is now reporting that talks are continuing with 5-6 teams, including the Jays. This makes sense because as time passes, we separate the men from the boys. I believe that this number will be whittled down even more to two or three clubs by the time the calendar changes. In fact, the agent likely already has a real sense as to who is really in and who is hanging around to see what happens.

It seems that all of the speculation about the Boston Red Sox’s interest in Encarnacion, going back to the All-Star game, was just that... speculation. Their president, Dave Dombrowski, repeated that they are looking for a left-handed bat to replace David Ortiz. I am sure Edwin’s agent would prefer that to have remained behind closed doors. It certainly would help his market to have the Red Sox pursuing his slugger.

Yet, there are still some power hungry clubs interested. The Rangers and Astros continue to lead the way with desire. I think the Orioles, Mariners and Yankees could be sleepers as well.

The Jays' interest is hard to quantify. The move to sign Kendrys Morales seemed like a Plan B move to losing Edwin. I figured they heard Edwin had a five-year offer on the table and decided to move on. The Jays could still be involved for the sole purpose of running the price up on other suitors. Remember, they have Justin Smoak signed to a two-year contract that would be difficult to trade if they signed Edwin, too.   

Don’t expect Edwin or any of the other big draft-pick compensation free agents to sign until after December 1. The CBA expires on that date and the new rules governing the relationship between clubs and players will begin starting December 2. Clubs and players seem inclined to wait and see if losing a first round draft pick will still be the penalty for signing free agents in the new agreement. Plus, the new competitive balance tax thresholds will be known as well. This will give the high spending clubs an idea as to where they are in relation to the luxury tax levels and its implications on their budgets. It is unclear how the new rules will apply to this year’s free agent class but it certainly won’t hurt to wait and it may very well help.  

I still think Edwin’s return to Toronto is unlikely. The Astros are being very aggressive this hot stove season. They have already signed pitcher Charlie Morton (two years/$14M), outfielder Josh Reddick (four years/$52M) and traded for Brian McCann (two years/$34M). Edwin would put a ribbon on a tremendous off-season for Houston. The Rangers beat the Astros all season long (15-4), and they want to beat them again for Edwin. I will be surprised if he doesn’t end up playing in the state of Texas.  

I mentioned how the CBA is impacting the decision-making for players, agents and clubs this fall. That impact may be felt in other ways as well. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports has reported that one of the possible changes in the new deal will have to do with roster sizes. I could never understand why we play five months of the season with a 25-man active roster and then in September, the roster can expand to as many as 40 players.

Of course, clubs need access to players in September when the minor league seasons end, but allowing teams to play games with different-sized rosters has never seemed fair. A large market team might add 10 extra players in September while a small market team might only be able to afford five extra players. I have always been a proponent of allowing teams to call up whatever number of players they want, but only allowing clubs to have a specific equal number of players available for each game.  

The Players Association doesn’t want to limit service time or player call-ups in September. They want as much service time as they can get. It sounds like the trade-off for active player limits in September that the clubs prefer is expanding the roster for the regular season to 26 players.  

It will be interesting to see what clubs do with the extra roster spot. The likelihood is they will add an extra reliever but some teams may carry a defensive specialist or a speedster to steal bases. I could even see some clubs possibly transitioning to a six-man rotation. It will certainly add to the major league payrolls, although most franchises will go young and cheap to fill the spot.  

There will very likely be additional attempts to affect the pace of game in the new CBA. If the extra roster spot is a used for a reliever, then it may work against pace of game. Commissioner Manfred suggested he would like to see limitations on the number of relievers used in games. I think such limitations are unlikely. Don’t be surprised if there is a pitch clock though. This is a priority for the Commissioner and it isn’t going away.  

The qualifying offer which has become a big issue for free agent players will likely be changed and maybe even eliminated. I would like to see it remain in place. The issue isn’t the qualifying offer, the problem has been that teams and players have misread their markets and gotten burned. They are the problem, not the offer itself.

An expected change will be that a club losing a player to free agency will still gain a draft pick as compensation, but the signing team will not forfeit their first round pick as a penalty for the signing.

One of the more interesting potential changes is the addition of an international draft. Most major league clubs would favor this as a way to level the playing field a bit more and to control costs on player acquisitions. This would mean that cases like the Red Sox signing of Yoan Moncada for $31.5M plus a 100 per cent penalty or Lourdes Gouriel’s $21M deal with Jays may not happen in the future unless he was drafted by Toronto.  

There has been talk about shortening the season to 154 games. I can’t imagine owners agreeing with this unless there was a commensurate reduction in players’ salaries to cover the reduction in revenues.  

I am anxious to see what other tweaks there will be to the system. I am sure there will be some surprises and probably some unintended consequences that will need to be adjusted later.  

Spitting Seeds

I can’t imagine who the Astros thought they were competing with to give Charlie Morton a two-year, $14 million deal, let alone a one-year deal. He pitched in only four games in 2016 before tearing his hamstring. He has also had Tommy John surgery in his career as well as hip surgery. He is 46-71 with a 4.54 ERA in his career. There is no way there was a bidding war for him.

The Yankees rebuilding process continues with the trade of Brian McCann to the Astros. It clears $34M off the payroll and adds two more young pitching prospects. There is all kinds of speculation that the Yankees are stockpiling prospects to ultimately make a deal with the LA Angels for Mike Trout. Of course, there is no evidence that Trout is available. Plus, if he is ever made available, every team in baseball will make an offer to get him. It may take a Herschel Walker-type deal to pull it off, if and when the time comes. If I were the GM of the Angels, I would never trade Trout. I would keep him no matter what. He is a future Hall of Famer. Even if it takes some time to figure out the formula to build around him, I would never part ways with him. He is the one player in MLB that should play for one team his entire career.

Justin Verlander got robbed. He should have won the AL Cy Young Award. Rick Porcello had an excellent season. It was the second best season in the AL to Verlander. I agree with Kate Upton, Verlander’s fiancé, who went off on Twitter after the horrific decision by the BBWAA AL writers. How could two Tampa Bay writers leave Verlander completely off their ballots? One of them admitted that he submitted his ballot a week early and didn’t take Verlander’s final two starts into account, in which he threw a combined 14.2 innings and gave up only one run. They need to clean this process up. If it is a regular season award, then shouldn’t the writers have to wait until the end of the season?  

Max Scherzer (20-7, 2.96 ERA) won the NL CY Young Award because the baseball writers loved his workhorse nature. He led the league in innings pitched, strikeouts and WHIP. But his ERA was ranked 8th in the NL. The ERA leader was Kyle Hendricks (2.13), who does it differently than Scherzer. He doesn’t get as many strikeouts but he does miss the sweet spot of the bat and he throws strikes as he had the second best WHIP. Hendricks was my pick. Hendricks’ ERA dominance in the NL should have gotten him the award. Consider that although he did throw 38 less innings than Scherzer, Hendricks would have had to give up 30 earned runs in those additional 38 innings to reach Scherzer’s ERA and innings pitched total. Plus, Scherzer allowed 31 homers compared to only 15 for Hendricks.

The WBC has a chance to be really exciting this year. So many of the game’s best players are making a commitment to play. I have had the privilege to broadcast games multiple times while at ESPN. It is a great international event that has a chance to be even better this time around with so many of the game’s greats participating.  

There are two teams that are very confusing to me: Atlanta Braves and Chicago White Sox. I can’t figure out why the Braves appear to be going for it and the White Sox are not. The Braves have a very young team that lost 93 games in 2016. Sure, they went 20-10 over their last 30 games, but they are nowhere near ready to compete for the postseason in 2017. They didn’t have good enough pitching or offense to truly compete. So their investment in veteran pitcher Bartolo Colon and RA Dickey and expressed interest to trade for Chris Archer, Sonny Gray or Chris Sale seems ill-timed.  

The White Sox have an ace in Sale and a solid #2 in Jose Quintana. They have a solid closer in David Robertson. Adam Eaton is an outstanding table-setter and they have sluggers in both corner infield positions. They have the foundation of a winning team but just can’t get it right. They aren’t that far away from being a playoff contending team. So it makes no sense for them to consider trading Chris Sale, yet his name is out there. If they trade Sale, they may as well disassemble the whole thing.