Today In MLBTR: Wednesday, November 29th

The Jays feature in a “market chatter” post, as we’re pointed to a Jon Morosi tweet from this afternoon, indicating that the club and the Atlanta bAArves “had brief contact this month about a possible Nick Markakis trade.” That’s… uh… scary. Or it would be if Morsi’s next words weren’t “but talks have failed to advance.” One one hand, sure, the Jays ought to check in on everyone. On that same hand, I can’t imagine they’d have had any interest in Markakis without the Braves paying a bunch of the freight. But on the other hand, would he even be that bad? His defensive metrics have fluctuated enough between good and bad over the last several years to make you think that he’s just about average, and though his power is gone he still hits doubles (38 or 39 in each of the last three years), and his last four OBPs have been .342, .370, .346, .354. That works.

In looking at eight potentially undervalued free agents, we come across several familiar names, and some that are just plain intriguing. Joe Smith is in there, and though the price tag will be higher than what they paid last year, the Jays could certainly take a look. There are items on other mid-30s relievers who the Jays might have interest in, like right-handers Yusmeiro Petit and Matt Albers, and left-hander Brian Duensing. Adam Lind is one of the names on the list. Rajai Davis gets name dropped (as he’s similar to other listed outfielders, Austin Jackson and Cameron Maybin, neither of whom seem great fits for the Jays, I don’t think), but the especially interesting one is Chris Iannetta. Decent catchers are hard to come by, so I’d imagine there’s starter money out there for him somewhere, but if not — and MLBTR suggests that he could be a fit for team looking for “a quality backup” — someone who slashed .254/.354/.511 with 17 home runs would look real good as Russell Martin’s caddy. Which, y’know, is why it almost certainly wouldn’t happen.

Bob Elliiott tweets that Jays scout Dana Brown might be another crony who is about to join Alex Anthopoulos in Atlanta. The rank odour of cronyism is hard to stomach, isn’t it? Unbelievable! (Can we use some of these guys to trade for Markakis? No? Well, then I AM OUTRAGED!)

This is more of a Daily Duce-ish item, but what the hell: over at Jays Journal a headline screams “Blue Jays need to lock up Hernán Pérez if non-tendered by Brewers.” Uh… yeah, no. They don’t. Pérez, we’re told, had a “very impressive stat line” in 2016 — a year, it should be noted, that was not 2017. His 34 stolen bases were cool, I suppose, and it’s neato that he plays a bunch of positions, and I can’t deny that he’s shown a little more pop in the last two years than he did earlier in his career. But… uh… his 2016 produced a slash line of .272/.302/.428, and this year it was a fugly .259/.289/.414. The Blue Jays do not need to “lock up” that kind of player at all, no matter how many positions he can field while being garbage at the plate. Nor does anybody. (Best of luck though Hernán!)

Apparently the San Francisco Giants have been in touch with the Pirates regarding Andrew McCutchen. Gamesmanship in the Giancarlo Stanton saga, perhaps? The Giants are definitely thought to be one of the strong suitors for the reigning NL MVP, but the former MVP, McCutchen, who put a lot of worries about his decline to rest with a nice season in 2017, would obviously look good there, too. Hey, how about we hear the Jays discussing this guy instead of Markakis, amiright???

We’re pointed in the direction of an interesting piece from Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, who suggests that the explanation that the market is being held up by Stanton and Shohei Ohtani is not quite correct. “Passan argues that front offices — now widely populated by similarly minded executives with significant analytical resources — have narrowing differences in player valuation and increasingly prefer not to build through the open market. Growing out of that executive trend, perhaps, is also an added recognition from teams that patience generally depresses prices in free agent negotiations. Enhanced discipline also allows teams to turn the new collective bargaining agreement’s luxury-tax penalties into what one agent describes to Passan as ‘significant salary depressors.’ Meanwhile, he suggests, there’s a sense in some quarters that individual players are no longer quite as interested in gunning for top dollar.” What’s interesting for our purposes is how well this lines up with some of what Ross Atkins was saying last week on At The Letters. Like, it lines up really well. Here’s Atkins: “What I’ve experienced in the last five to ten years is that more teams now value players in a similar way. So, I think that’s good for baseball, because that allows then more trade discussion. I think what that then creates is more patience in free agency — to understand what’s available to you throughout trade, throughout free agency, and to make sure you have a picture of the entire market. That also creates opportunities for teams to identify talents that they know they want, and to be more aggressive and assertive on. We just haven’t seen that this year.” Hmmm.

Lastly, apparently the Red Sox are considering trading with the White Sox again, this time looking at José Abreu. He would be an alternative to Boston going after Giancarlo Stanton — who some believe doesn’t really want to go to Boston anyway (they’re an “extreme long shot” according to Evan Drellich), and who Derek Jeter GODDAMN WELL BETTER NOT trade to Boston, to help the Yankees’ rivals — which… is… good? I mean, it would be better for those jowly, white haired, Ted Kennedy-lookin’ motherfuckers to not have Stanton, but Abreu is pretty good too. He’s yet to repeat the success he had in his rookie year of 2014, but after two years of “decline” (he still posted a 120 wRC+ in the worst of those two seasons) he came damn close to doing so in 2017. The Red Sox are a problem.