KANSAS CITY – The unavailability of Ken Giles for a second straight game further muddles the Toronto Blue Jays’ trade discussions about the closer, who is dealing with what manager Charlie Montoyo described as "some elbow inflammation."
Interested clubs have been leery of the right-hander’s health since he landed on the injured list from June 9-19 with elbow inflammation. He’s appeared in 10 games since then, including three in a row against the Boston Red Sox July 2-4, and was initially unavailable out of the all-star break with irritation in the elbow he said was caused by a massage he received privately.
He’s appeared in games on July 17, 20, 23 and 27, including Saturday’s 10-9 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, but wasn’t available to close out Sunday’s 10-9 loss to the Rays, nor Monday’s 7-3 win over the Kansas City Royals (Daniel Hudson was warming for the ninth until the Blue Jays scored three add on runs in the top of the inning).
Asked if the elbow was becoming a concern, Montoyo replied: "I don’t think it is, to tell you the truth. But if he’s not 100 per cent, we’re not going to pitch him. He’s working through it."
Earlier in the day, GM Ross Atkins said, "it’s really not something that we’re concerned about… Charlie Montoyo is a great manager and he understands the long term, he understands what’s best for Ken and best for his career."
Still, as Wednesday’s deadline nears, the uncertainty over Giles’ status severely complicates trade talks, since the questions about his health must be factored into the acquisition cost.
Now, it’s possible an acquiring club looks at his medicals and decides an extended period of rest is all he needs and bets on him being ready for October. But it’s also possible the Blue Jays look at a creative deal structure with two different groups of players to be named later dependent on how much Giles is able to pitch.
A third possibility is that Giles finishes the season in Toronto and trade talks are revisited in the off-season.
BO KNOWS
Bo Bichette spent plenty of time imagining what his major-league debut would be like in recent months, and an experience he drew from in that regard was his appearance in an exhibition game March 26 against the Milwaukee Brewers at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.
During the seventh inning of that game, a crowd of 22,502 chanted "Bo Bichette, Bo Bichette" during his at-bat, a moment that caught him off-guard and was unlike anything he’d felt previously on the field.
"I didn’t know what to do, it was kind of like an out of body experience," he said after his debut. "I think I was expecting that today in my first at-bat, so I was trying to prepare for it. And it didn’t happen. So I think that I prepared for it so much, thinking that was going to happen, how am I going to deal with it, that I guess I was preparing for it for months now. That Montreal experience helped me a lot."
Bichette said he didn’t feel anxiety or anxiousness during the game, but had plenty before he aligned in the infield with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., to his right and Cavan Biggio to his left, a look he and his two buddies had long dreamed of giving the Blue Jays.
"I think having Cavan and Vladdy near me definitely made it easier," he said, "made it feel normal, in a way."
VALUE, VALUE, VALUE
A word you’ve been hearing often lately as it relates to the trade deadline is value and to understand why, this piece I wrote recently about how trades work these days will offer some insight.
Essentially, trades can be boiled down to mathematical equations in which teams try to match numbers. Of course, it’s all based on which players they like, but the hunt for surplus is one reason the Blue Jays preferred prospects Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson to extending Marcus Stroman.
Here’s how GM Ross Atkins explained the balance: "Every team has different valuations on prospects and how you project what that means and value for your future. Teams are doing a better and better job of understanding younger players and you see the value of teams trying to keep prospects. The trades for established major-leaguers for younger players, the younger players really seem to be increasing in value. We have a process for that and project out what the surplus would be. A player under control for six years at certain levels of cost and what their projected production and performance would be and what the projected performance and durability and health of someone for an extension would be, it’s that versus one another."
Essentially, the Blue Jays feel the future value Kay and Wood Richardson will provide on the field in concert with what they’ll be paid, will be worth more than what Stroman will provide on the field in concert with what he’ll be paid.
There’s lots of other background noise with Stroman but that’s one of the driving factors. If the Blue Jays felt the value equation was different, a lot of that would quiet down.
HOW MUCH FOR STRO?
During his conference call Monday, Ross Atkins revealed the Blue Jays entered into the "discovery process or just due diligence" exploratory portion of extension talks with Marcus Stroman, but felt "as though there wasn’t a reason to continue because of the gap."
Colleague Ben Nicholson-Smith covered that and more here.
That got us thinking, what would an extension for the all-star look like?
To start, let’s note that these numbers are all speculative, but from what we know of Marcus Stroman, I’m sure he’d be thinking of surpassing the $140-million, six-year contract signed by Patrick Corbin over the winter.
Still, it’s a somewhat suitable comparable to start with, as Corbin hit the market at 29 having accumulated 11.1 WAR as calculated by Baseball Reference over 172 games, 154 starts, with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Stroman can also potentially hit the market at 29, but in 135 games thus far, 129 starts, he’s already accumulated 13.4 WAR. Considering he still has the rest of this season plus the next to further build up that total, you can see why he’d expect to surpass Corbin’s contract.
The Blue Jays, from what we know of them, would be thinking far more conservatively than that, and my guess is that they would come in somewhere north of the $68-million, four-year deals recently signed by Nate Eovaldi and Miles Mikolas, but shy of nine figures. While they haven’t performed nearly as well or as consistently as Stroman has, they line up age-wise and with a slight premium for Stroman’s better numbers, they’d probably feel like that would strike the right balance between risk and reward.
Again, those are just guesses, but when Atkins says the Blue Jays felt they had no reason to continue down the road, thinking along those lines might help explain why.
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