TORONTO – Marcus Semien waded into this hesitant free-agent market uncertain of what to expect.
As an established, MVP-calibre shortstop admired for his strength of character and influence on others as well as his on-field performance, interest would presumably be robust. A down year amid the small-sample randomness of a 60-game season, with the extenuating circumstances of a rib injury and a late rebound, could be interpreted differently.
How clubs would react to the pandemic’s economic fallout was unclear, as was whether his hometown Oakland Athletics, for whom he’d become a fixture, would even extend a qualifying offer.
“We didn’t really know exactly what to ask for, even,” said Semien. “We were just trying to figure it out as it went along.”
The process of discovery led him to an $18-million, one-year deal with the Toronto Blue Jays, who “kept calling and calling” and convinced the 30-year-old to switch over to second base from shortstop. A late January Zoom call with GM Ross Atkins and manager Charlie Montoyo prompted Semien to “start thinking this could be something really special, and we worked it out fairly quick.”
“I’m really happy with the decision,” Semien added during his Blue Jays introduction Tuesday. “I like the fact that they’re still working on some things, trying to add some pieces and it just seems like some teams right now in the league are not doing that. I know COVID has a lot to do with that, but it’s nice to be on a team that’s still adding and going for it right now.”
That’s a credit to the Blue Jays for seizing opportunity in an afflicted marketplace, but also a damning comment on the forces currently at play in the industry. Despite a relatively strong free-agent class, only seven players have signed multi-year deals with an average annual value above $10 million, and there have been only nine contracts of more than two years.
Masahiro Tanaka didn’t like what was on offer so he returned to Japan. Tomoyuki Sugano was so unimpressed he decided to stay there. Well over 100 free agents remain in play, many in a middle class that keeps getting squeezed harder each winter, as teams increasingly opt for the financial efficiency of younger players who can deliver somewhat similar production.
None of that should have impacted Semien, someone described by teammates as captain of a club that’s gone to the post-season three straight years. Yet the perennially frugal Athletics didn’t even make him an $18.9 million qualifying offer, ensuring they’d receive draft pick compensation if he left, out of fear he’d accept.
When asked about Oakland’s efforts to re-sign him, Semien sighed and said, “Well, we called them. I’ll leave it at that.”
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic recently reported that the best the Athletics could do was offer him $12.5 million for one year with $10 million deferred in equal instalments over 10 years.
Little wonder then that “our idea of what kind of contract we may be able to get shifted a little bit and I started to think, maybe a one-year deal is better because we can try and get a full season under my belt and put up a better season,” Semien explained. “Sixty games is kind of hard to evaluate. And I thought, let’s just try this again. So that’s where we were starting to look at shortstop positions where maybe I could play one year. Oakland was, of course, one of those teams. We reached out, and the negotiations just didn’t go the way we thought and that’s fine.”
That’s when things picked up with the Blue Jays, who by that point had already landed George Springer with a club-record $150-million, six-year contract but were still on the hunt for an infielder after D.J. LeMahieu returned to the New York Yankees.
“During our Zoom call with Toronto, they asked me, what position do you like if it’s not shortstop? I said, ‘I like shortstop,’” Semien recalled with a grin. “And then I said, ‘But if I had to pick, I think second, just staying in the middle, but I’m open to anything.’ That’s kind of how second base came about. Working on that double play turn is something I’ve done in the past, but just focusing on that every day is going to be something that helps us win ballgames.”
There should be little doubt about his ability to make the transition given the relentless work he’s put in over the years at shortstop. Semien boiled down a progression that’s occurred over hundreds of games and thousands of repetitions to the need to replicate the mechanical feeling of a practice rep in game-time conditions, calling it a “process I really love.”
For the moment, that process is expected to begin on schedule with spring training camps set to open roughly two weeks from now. Major League Baseball and the players association engaged in another round of media-release public-favour currying Monday night, as the league said it had instructed clubs to be ready for an on-time start after the union rejected “a good deal that reflected the best interests of everyone involved in the sport.”
That called for a one-month delay to camp and a 154-game season at full pay for 162 games – along with a return of the universal DH and an expanded, 14-team playoff – to allow COVID-19 infection rates to drop while vaccinations increased.
Semien, a union-player representative heavily involved in the deliberations, noted that, “we have a CBA in place that has one more year and we’re just looking to fulfil that.”
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“We want to play a full season and I know that we learned a lot about this virus and how to navigate it,” he said. “And I think we’ve gotten better at it. When we first started in July, there were still a lot of things we didn’t know. We’ve had an entire off season to learn about it. Testing’s gotten better. Vaccines are rolling out. We like our chances of just getting this thing rolling because we’re an outdoor sport and we’re watching indoor sports be played with fans, even. That had a lot to do with it.”
Whether that’s possible is another matter, but the union would be right to view the owners’ proposal with skepticism and suspicion. Compressing 154 games into 166 days with several doubleheaders made it “a little dangerous for players” from an injury standpoint, said Semien.
The lack of team-to-team transmission of COVID-19 last season “shows that our game is one of the safer ones to play,” he added, and it would be on players to ensure they don’t enter high-risk situations and import the virus into the clubhouse.
In the backdrop is the growing expectation that the Blue Jays will begin the regular season in Dunedin, Fla., as increasing government restrictions on incoming travellers make an April home opener in Toronto difficult to fathom.
Semien, a father of three young boys including a five-week-old, plans to bring his family to spring training and is hoping they’ll be able to spend the summer together, too, ideally up north at some point.
“We’ll just have to stay on our toes and wait,” he said, a mantra befitting the free-agent process, the ongoing discontent between and owners and players and the precarious nature of trying to stage a full season amid an ongoing pandemic.
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