Blue Jays: Will there be any surprise non-tenders?

With the deadline approaching for clubs to extend contracts to their arbitration eligible players, we could see some more movement on the Blue Jays’ 40 man roster this week.

The Toronto Blue Jays have some more roster decisions to make by 8:00pm EST on Friday, November 30th.

Those decisions are if the team will tender contracts to their ten players who are eligible for arbitration. It’s likely that over half of the ten are locks to be tendered a contract but there are some who aren’t locks.

The following ten players are arb-eligible:

The locks here, at least to me, are pretty certain. Grichuk, Drury, Tepera, Giles, Sanchez, Stroman, and even the much discussed Devon Travis are the locks. There will be no surprise non-tender in this group. Not even Travis. The Blue Jays are going to open 2019 with Brandon Drury at 3rd base and Travis at 2nd. That’s all assuming healthy out of the spring.

Now, Travis’ future with the Blue Jays could become cloudy if he starts slow and once Vladimir Guerrero Jr. arrives, as Drury is also able to play 2nd. Regardless, the Blue Jays need Travis at least for the first month of the season.

That leaves three players. It’s almost a certainty that Yangervis Solarte will be non-tendered. The Blue Jays bought out Solarte’s option for next year earlier in November at $750,000, and he is heading for free agency. Even though he was a feel good story for the first month to month and a half of 2018, he fell off a cliff after the middle of May and ended up with a -1.3 fWAR. That was the third worst total in baseball behind Chris Davis‘ -3.1 and Victor Martinez‘s -1.7.

Joe Biagini and Kevin Pillar remain. Biagini was a complete trainwreck in 2018 and served up a ton of home runs. If you were to normalize Biagini’s home run rate to 10.5% of flyballs induced, you got an xFIP of 4.71. For a swingman reliever who needs to eat some innings, that isn’t terrible. Given the current state of the Blue Jays bullpen, and Biagini’s terrible 2018, he will likely be around and tendered a contract for 2019. It won’t be expensive either.

The final name remaining is Kevin Pillar. To your casual Blue Jays fan, Pillar is ‘Superman’. He is loved amongst a large portion of the Blue Jay fanbase and one of the more popular jerseys around the Rogers Center. To those who actually look into numbers, Pillar isn’t so favoured.

Pillar actually had his best offensive season back in the 2015 season when he was almost a league average hitter at a 94 wRC+. He was almost worth 4.0 wins that year (3.7 to be exact) and his fWAR wasn’t all his defense. Since, it’s been almost all Pillar’s defense that keeps him steady as a 2.0 win player.

The cold hard truth is, Pillar’s DRS dropped to -2 in 2018 from 15 in 2017. Defensive metrics aren’t the greatest in baseball to begin with, but Pillar wasn’t very good with the glove in 2018, despite the highlight plays continuing. He also didn’t crack at least an OBP of .300, coming in at .282. He also struck out his highest rate since he became a regular in 2015.

What I’m trying to say is that Kevin Pillar should be non-tendered, and I argued this a month ago. Pillar, though heading into his first arb year, will get a hefty raise at some point. It could be this year, it may not. The Blue Jays need to determine if he’s worth it or not. With Randal Grichuk ready to take over in center field, Billy McKinney in left, followed by needing to see what you have in guys like Anthony Alford, Dwight Smith Jr., and a second season of Teoscar Hernandez with a new outfield coach.

An objective look at Devon Travis' current value. dark. Next

Despite all of this, I don’t think we’re in for what would be considered a surprise non-tender for Kevin Pillar. The only player that won’t be tendered a contract will be Yangervis Solarte. I would be happily surprised if Pillar isn’t kept around, though! We shall see what the Blue Jays decide to do come Friday at 8:00pm.

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