Rating the haul

The Blue Jays were fairly active at this year’s trade deadline, which came and went at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, swinging three deals, including one that was particularly confounding. Consumer confidence is not high in Toronto at the moment, and the front office’s decision to give up on Aaron Sanchez, and more, for a post-hype prospect who was never really all that hyped to begin with did not sit well with a fan base.

This comes on the heels of what many felt was the unnecessary trade of Marcus Stroman over the weekend, and what was perceived to be a light return for the team’s ostensible ace.
Whether the Astros can turn around Sanchez, the former American League ERA leader, is a story that will be followed closely in these parts over the rest of the season. In the meantime, Jays fans are picking up the pieces, remembering the good times of 2015 and 2016, and — as it feels like they’ve been doing forever — looking to the future.

I’ve already written quite a bit about the Stroman deal. There would be no point in going through any of that again in this piece. What you will find here, though, is a first look at the other prospects the club has acquired, plus the one — Cal Stevenson — who is going to Houston as part of the Sanchez trade.

I’ve also managed to squeeze in a few thoughts on Sanchez’s departure.

Derek Fisher — OF, Round Rock (Triple A)

Derek Fisher has never hit in the big leagues, though he has consistently been an above-average hitter everywhere else he’s played. The big-league numbers are concerning, no doubt, and the bet the Jays placed by acquiring him for Aaron Sanchez, Joe Biagini, and prospect Cal Stevenson is certainly a curious one. On first blush, maybe even a bad one. That certainly was the prevailing thought among Jays fans when news of the trade broke on Twitter and ultimately it might not be the wrong one. But there are a lot of dimensions here.
As easy as it could be to dream on Sanchez’s arm — to remember his 2016 and the prospect hype — the reality is that only once in his entire career as a starter has he had a season of fewer than four walks per nine innings. And in his past three seasons, he’s either been bad or hurt or both. Yet in his last two starts with the Blue Jays, he flashed as much promise as he’d shown in a long while. Sanchez walked none in each of those final two outings, and just three in total over his last four starts with the club — though he was also tagged for four runs in three of those starts, and 26 hits over 20 2/3 innings. He delivered hope in a hopeless season, and to see him jettisoned, along with two other pieces (one of them, Biagini, a lovable reliever-turned-starter-turned-reliever-again who has been a perfectly solid piece in the middle of the Jays’ bullpen, and who has three years of club control left beyond this one), for a player whose age and stat line echoes the likes of Teoscar Hernández, Billy McKinney and Sócrates Brito came as a shock.
Shouldn’t Sanchez have a whole lot more value than this? You might think so, but the fact the rest of the league wasn’t pouncing any harder on his availability suggests otherwise. (Though that might also suggest the Jays are way too high on Fisher.)
OK, but shouldn’t they have moved Sanchez back to the bullpen and cashed in on him as a reliever down the road? It’s an understandable idea, but one that doesn’t come without risk. Yes, the injuries account for some of Sanchez’s poor performance in recent years, but that poor performance has mostly come when he was going through an opponent’s lineup a second and third time. This season he has a 2.12 ERA the first time through the order, meaning that if he continues to fail as a starter, there’s still a chance might find success as a reliever. I’m not convinced that a move to the bullpen would immediately bring back the pitcher he was in the fall of 2015, but there’s a chance. That apparently isn’t something that interests him, though, or at least that didn’t while he was with the Jays. GM Ross Atkins told reporters in the wake of the trade that Sanchez is “driven to be a starter,” and as a long-tenured veteran on the club, asking him to go back to the bullpen (where he thrived early on in his big-league career) would have been tricky.
The Astros might have better luck on that front. Simply the fact that he’s with a new team might make him more amenable to a switch, and he should be especially interested in one come playoff time, given that Houston just added Zack Greinke to a rotation that was already fronted by Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole. Earmarking him as a bullpen weapon in October makes a lot of sense, though if any team could unlock his potential as a starter it’s probably the Astros. This is a good situation for a guy who, frankly, needed a new situation. But as much as there’s an interesting ceiling there, we’re still talking about a player who has given up a whole lot of loud contact and a lot of walks (his 1.69 WHIP is the worst among qualified starters this season by a sizeable margin over Dakota Hudson’s 1.54), and who could succumb to a blister or other ailment at any moment. I’ve seen fans criticize the front office for dealing Sanchez at the nadir of his value, but the fact they could use him to get anything back tells us that it wasn’t. Only two weeks ago, it seemed like his trade value was nil. The same was true at last year’s deadline when he was out due to injury and was otherwise mired in his second consecutive disaster of a season. And so the thing is, though his value today is indeed low, his history tells us that it absolutely can go lower.
Yes, the Jays could have stuck it out with him and hoped for a better return, but they evidently feared the risk enough, and liked the player they got back enough, to set Sanchez free. There’s nothing wrong with that, just like there would have been nothing wrong with holding onto him. And if you’re a fan of the Jays, or of his, you have to hope he gets his career back on track in Houston. Even if that will be a bitter pill to swallow.

So … Derek Fisher.
I bring up Hernández, McKinney and Brito because there is indeed a bit of a similar shape here. Brito is a 26-year-old outfielder and absolutely raked at Triple A last season, but has struggled against big-league pitching in 99 career games. McKinney, another outfielder, is just 24, has hit at every level but the majors. He’s played 92 games at the highest level so far. Hernández, 26, is the veteran of the group, having played 281 big-league games, and has been a better hitter too — though only about league average (102 wRC+) overall.
Fisher will turn 26 in August. Unlike the others, he is a left-handed hitter. He has played 112 big-league games, and other than the majors has hit everywhere he’s played. Of course, for the bulk of the past three seasons, that’s been at Triple A. He first reached the level in 2016, in fact.
Other than power, Fisher’s speed is one of his better tools — among Blue Jays, only Brito and Hernández rate faster in 2019, per Statcast — though the book on him is that he’s not a great defender because of his poor reads and his poor arm. He can technically play all three outfield positions, his best fit might be left.
Part of the reason Fisher has spent so much time in Triple A is he’s been blocked by some outstanding outfielders already in place in Houston — George Springer, Jake Marisnick, Josh Reddick, Michael Brantley, and before him, Marwin Gonzalez — just to name a few. Much of it, though, is because he’s never really seized an MLB opportunity.
Over those 112 big-league games, Fisher has slashed just .201/.282/.367. That gives him a wRC+ of just 77 for his career so far, and he’s struck out far too often — 35.3 percent of the time, though his rate has been a much more manageable 23.3 percent over 19 games in 2019. Bad luck isn’t necessarily to blame here, either, as his BABIP sits at a normal-looking .288 (though that’s perhaps a touch lower than you’d expect for a player with his speed). Yet in the minors, it’s a different story. This season he’s slashed .286/.401/.522 for Round Rock, and though that means he’s been playing in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, his home park is not at elevation (Round Rock is just outside of Austin, Texas) and plays somewhat neutrally compared to some of the other places in the league. The fact that Triple A teams are playing with the juiced MLB ball this season might have some effect, but he’s put up similar numbers at the level in previous years (before the MLB balls came into use in the minors).
Especially impressive was his 2017 season, during which he slashed .318/.384/.583 for the Express, with 21 home runs, and just a 19.3 percent strikeout rate. Heading into that season he was the No. 83 prospect (at the time they said he had “middle-of-the-order upside and 20-20 potential”), and thanks to his strong output, he ended up playing 53 games in Houston that year. Though he’s mostly been in the minors since he’s graduated from most prospect lists since then. In 2017, FanGraphs had him as the Astros’ No. 7 prospect, ahead of Hernández and behind David Paulino, who was acquired in last summer’s Roberto Osuna trade.

Are you underwhelmed yet?

It’s entirely fair if you are, but the Blue Jays believe there’s more here than meets the eye. The fact they have believed similar things, which we haven’t yet (or have only rarely) seen, from guys such as Hernandez, McKinney, Randal Grichuk and Brandon Drury — players who strikeout too much, walk too little, chip in with occasional power, but mostly comprise the “ugh, when are we going to get back to the top of the order?” part of the Jays’ lineup — doesn’t exactly fill the heart with high expectations.
It doesn’t mean that Fisher — or any of those guys — can’t still be an important piece for the team, though, either. The Jays are making a bet, much like we’ve seen them do on the pitching side, that if they keep acquiring guys with what could be star qualities if not for certain flaws holding them back, eventually, with the right kind of player development approach, a wellspring of potential might be unlocked. Not every great player in the league began as a highly regarded prospect, so it’s not exactly difficult to understand that sort of thinking. And it’s admirable, in a way, how little the front office seems to care about how the deals they choose to make will be perceived by their fans or by the industry. But it’s fair to wonder about this approach. Not so much in the outraged fan sense where it’s seemingly obvious that they don’t know what they’re doing — they do know what it is they’re doing — but that in that they’re actively choosing to do things that sometimes look unusual and that simply might not work out.

Of course, plenty of these moves might not work out — evidently, it is by design that they’re scooping up players they don’t necessarily expect to work out. It would just make everybody a little more comfortable, I think, if it didn’t sometimes seem like the goal is to put together a championship roster for the Buffalo Bisons.
There is plenty of good that the front office has done, which tends to get overlooked on days when the team pulls off something of a head-scratcher, and I think it’s entirely reasonable to have walked away from Sanchez and a couple of minor pieces to take a bet on this player whom they apparently really like. Former Astros hitting coach Dave Hudgens is, of course, the Jays’ bench coach this season, so there’s a strong voice in the organization who knows and has worked with Fisher over the years, which should give you a bit of comfort on this one. But you don’t have to like it. It’s weird. And one hopes that sooner or later some of these bets the Jays are making start to work out. (Though one suspects that, if a few do, we’ll still end up shouting at each other about the ones that didn’t.)

Cal Stevenson — OF, Dunedin (High A)

Stevenson was a 10th-round pick for the Blue Jays in last year’s draft and opened some eyes when he put up video-game numbers at Bluefield in his first taste of pro ball. He slashed .369/.511/.523 there, though the numbers are a touch misleading because he had been drafted as a college senior and so was old for the level. This year at Dunedin, his walk rate, while still good, is way down, and his strikeouts have ticked up. His slash line remains impressive — .298/.388/.393 — but the lack of power is a concern. Before the season started, in a study, Kiley McDaniel responded to a question about Stevenson by saying, “We’d like to see more. You had a great K/BB ratio as a 21-year-old in the Appy League and you have very little power. K/BB will regress against better pitching, then what’s really there beyond speed and CF fit?” Those criticisms seem to be playing out this season, but the fact that the Astros have remained interested enough to acquire him in the Sanchez/Fisher trade perhaps bodes well. He was ranked No. 16 among Blue Jays prospects by Baseball America in its recent mid season update, just behind Anthony Alford and Patrick Murphy, but ahead of 2019 third-rounder Dasan Brown. FanGraphs, for what it’s worth, had him as the Jays’ No. 33 prospect at the start of the season. But there’s still a greater-than-zero chance that he becomes the part of the trade the Blue Jays end up regretting.

Thomas Hatch — RHP, Tennessee (Double A)

Hatch, acquired by the Blue Jays in a trade for David Phelps, went back to Double A this season despite doing a reasonably good job at the level over 26 starts in 2018. This year, his ERA has gone up noticeably (from 3.82 to 4.59), but there are some encouraging signs. He strikeout rate is up (though still a little below one per inning), his walk rate is down and some of the poor results can be attributed to a worse BABIP and strand rate. He helped get Oklahoma State into the 2016 College World Series, and was valued enough by the Cubs heading into the 2018 season that,  Baseball America, the team gave him “a locker in between Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks at big-league camp and purposely held him out of Cactus League games, wanting him to soak up as much as possible before sending him to minor-league camp.” He was coming off a strong pro debut season that year but has never really gotten back on that track. He has the stuff to generate more strikeouts than he does, but while he’s kept walks down he still struggles with command — particularly throwing his fastball consistently for strikes. The Blue Jays might try to continue to work with him as a starter, but reports on him suggest that his future is in relief and he might be good enough to pitch there in the big leagues in the near future — especially if his fastball ticks up in short bursts. He currently sits in the low 90s as a starter. Whatever the outcome, the Jays basically pulled Phelps off the scrap heap with a cheap free-agent contract and turned him into a player who could actually help the bullpen down the road. It’s the kind of marginal value add they’re generally pretty good at. Now if only they could get the big moves right!

Kyle Johnston — RHP, Potomac (High A)

Like Hatch, Johnston (acquired from the Washington Nationals for Daniel Hudson) appears to have the bullpen in his future. Currently a starter, he finally seems to have reined in the control problems that have plagued him since college, walking just 37 over 105 innings at High A this year, making this the first season as a pro in which he’s had his BB/9 rate below 4.6. He can reportedly touch 97 mph but sits lower than that as a starter, and has an improving slider to go with it. The lack of a quality third pitch, along with the command and control problems, seems to be what’s moving him toward the ‘pen, and in return for a rental player, that’s probably OK. Hudson is just not quite enough of an impact player to bring back more, and once Johnston starts tapping into his velocity in a relief role, the Jays might end up with something reasonably decent out of this.

Brock Stewart — RHP, Oklahoma City (Triple A)

In their smallest move of the day on Wednesday, the Blue Jays claimed the right-hander on waivers from the Dodgers and immediately optioned him to Buffalo. Though he is obviously back-fill for a rotation that’s going to see a number of pitchers moving up to the big leagues in the coming days (the Blue Jays just dealt away two starters and two relievers, and might yet have to put Ken Giles on the IL), Stewart is not without at least a little bit of intrigue. He’s got 36 big-league appearances under his belt, all with the Dodgers, including 11 starts, dating back to 2016. According to Baseball America, he was the No. 8 prospect in the second-ranked Dodgers system heading into 2017, with his high-spin fastball cited as his best pitch. He had pitched to a 2.49 ERA the previous year in Oklahoma, striking out 54 in 50 2/3 innings while walking just six. It’s been pretty much downhill since, as his strikeout rate continues to drop and his walk rate balloons. Still, before a rough handful of innings in relief this season, he’s managed a 3.41 ERA over 34.1 innings in the big leagues as a reliever, and so maybe there’s some kind of a future for him there in Toronto. The likelihood is low.