Blue Jays, Blocked Players and Trade Opportunities

The Cubs announced today that they were optioning Ian Happ to their AAA team.  Could Happ – and similar “blocked” players – be an opportunity for the Jays?

Over the past few years, the Blue Jays have traded for a number of players with significant upside.  Players who might ordinarily be unavailable, but whose teams agreed to trade them in part because they were blocked at the MLB level.  Billy McKinney is an intriguing prospect, but with Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks, and Brett Gardner ahead of him and Clint Frazier chomping at the bit, it was hard to imagine a scenario where McKinney could get significant playing time with the Yanks.  Similarly, players like Teoscar Hernandez, Trent Thornton, Brandon Drury and Randall Grichuk were all blocked to some degree.

Kudos to the Jays for recognizing that these players had (potentially) more value to Toronto than to their previous teams, and for targeting them in trade talks.  But are there other opportunities of this kind that the Jays might want to pursue?

Let’s start with the wish list.  The Blue Jays are reasonably strong in the infield (unless another Josh Donaldson – level opportunity emerges!).  The area of greatest need (hitters) would likely be the outfield.  But the Jays already have plenty of “lottery tickets” – players like Teoscar Hernandez, McKinney and Dalton Pompey who have upside, but come with questions.  It would also be easy to sign an end-of-career veteran to a short-term deal, but that would be inconsistent with the rebuilding strategy.

Toronto Blue Jays

No, the dream OF candidate would be a young player with 1-2 years of MLB experience, but who still had plenty of team control.  He should bat left or switch hit, be at least an average fielder, and ideally have some position flexibility.  And finally, it would help if he could bat leadoff.  The player would have to have some issues (or his team would not be trading him) but he should be worth the gamble.  It would be a bonus if he were out of favour with his current organization – much like Donaldson after his “Billy Boy” comments.

So let’s talk about Ian Happ of the Cubs

The Cubs optioned Happ to their AAA affiliate on Saturday. In part, this was due to the logjam that the Cubs have in the outfield (with a number of younger players arguably ahead of Happ in line).  In part, this was a result of Happ’s poor spring (and Albert Almora’s outstanding one).  Apparently (per Maddon) Happ was “not pleased” with the demotion, though the skipper declined to elaborate.

Happ’s two big “warts” are his strikeout rate (a career 34%) and his inability to hit left-handed pitching (a career 69 wRC+).  But even so, he has put up 3.3 WAR in 875 plate appearances over two seasons.  And at 24 years old, he still has room to grow and improve (Happ is one month younger than Anthony Alford, and two years younger than Teo Hernandez).

Happ ticks a lot of other boxes – he is a switch hitter who can play all three OF positions (though not a great CF) as well as second (and he has a few innings at first and third).  He has a career .341 on-base percentage and has 60 games experience batting leadoff.  Fangraphs projects his hit tool to continue to improve, and sees him as a future 55 grade player overall (by comparison, they see Teo as a 45 and Billy as a 40). And “Happer” is not arbitration-eligible until 2021, and does not become a free agent until 2024.

Clearly, the Cubs will not give Happ away for nothing.  But that brings us back to the premise of this article – how much of a “blocked player” discount would they be prepared to offer? As an added note of interest, the Cubs could potentially be interested in Kevin Pillar as well according to MLB trade rumors, as it sounds like they’re interested in finding another centre fielder to add to their win-now club.

The bottom line

To me, Happ is exactly the kind of player the Jays should target.  High upside, with 4th OF downside.   In a rebuilding year, they could give him the time to overcome his issues – a luxury the contending Cubs could not afford, at least not at the mlb level.  Start him out as the fourth OF, backup 2B and primary pinch-hitter against righties, sending Billy to AAA to work on his glove.  If Pillar is moved midseason (or even earlier), an outfield of Happ – Grichuk – Hernandez has serious potential.