Toronto Blue Jays: A Ross Atkins Trade History Evaluation

On December 3, the Toronto Blue Jays named Ross Atkins as the team’s Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations. During his tenure, the Atkins Regime has executed many trades. Let’s examine that trading record.

Off the hop, I should explain my approach to trade analysis. Teams make trades with the information available at the time of the transaction, but that information is incomplete and lacking in certainty. For example, will the players involved in the transaction perform as projected? Will injuries significantly impact future performance? In other words, trades are inherently risky because much is unknown when the team executes the transaction.

Accordingly, my trade-analysis approach depends on when the examination occurs. When the transaction happens, the factors I look at include the following:

• Did the team receive reasonable value for the players traded?
• Given where the team finds itself (teardown, rebuild, playoff contender, surplus at one position but weakness at another, etc.), does the trade make sense? For example, all things being equal, a team in the teardown mode should focus on adding younger players in exchange for older ones.

Therefore, if the trade cost is reasonable and the exchange makes sense, I would conclude the transaction was good. However, if the price paid was unreasonably high or the logic behind the trade was baffling, I would judge the trade as poor.

After the trade date, I prefer to examine a transaction as either working out or not, as opposed to whether the transaction was good, bad or indifferent. To illustrate this point, consider the following scenario.  (Hat tip to Jim Scott, a Blue Jays Nation colleague, for this example). I offer you the chance to bet on a coin flip. It is a fair coin, a fair flip, with no tricks.  Hence, on a single flip of the coin, the probability of heads is 50%, the same as for tails. The bet is as follows: If it comes up heads, you give me $1.  If tails, I give you $5.  Therefore, your expected value is $2 (0.50 x $5 – 0.50 x $1).

You agree to the bet. I flipped the coin, and the result was heads, and you owed me $1.  Was it a bad decision on your part? I argue that it was a good decision, given the $2 expected value. Unfortunately for you, the decision did not work out. This approach should be used to analyze player transactions well after the trade date. I will use this method for the analysis to follow.

Trade Evaluation Details

I determined whether a trade worked out or not by using the following approach:

• From the start of the Atkins Regime to the end of the 2023 season, I downloaded all Blue Jays trades from Spotrac.
• For any player included in a trade, the period measured is their MLB time from the trade date until they were eligible for free agency. In other words, the length of time an acquired player was under team control.
• For the time noted above, I determined the player’s fWAR.
• I should note that I included reliever WPA numbers in the tables because fWAR underplays the value of a bullpen arm.
• If Toronto acquires a player via trade and trades the player later, the fWAR and WPA numbers attributed to Toronto cover the player’s Blue Jays’ tenure.
• I ignored cash considerations and international bonus money included in the transaction.
• I did not account for the reasoning behind the transaction, such as trading an MLB roster player to a playoff contender for a prospect.

Readers should acknowledge that the fWAR and WPA numbers are as at the end of the 2023 season. These numbers will change after future seasons are added to the tally.

The Baltimore Comparable

When the Atkins Regime commenced, the Blue Jays had recently completed the 2015 campaign, including a playoff run for the first time since the 1993 World Series Championship. Toronto was an older team compared to other American League ball clubs. The average age of Toronto’s batters was 29.5 (second-oldest), and their pitchers’ average was 29.2 (third-oldest).

The Blue Jays made the 2016 postseason, playing the Orioles in the Wild Card Game. The average age of Toronto’s batters was 30.0 (third-oldest), and their pitchers were 29.8 (second-oldest).

Table 1 shows Toronto’s and Baltimore’s winning percentages and average ages for the 2015-2020 seasons. Both teams struggled after the 2016 Wild Card Game.

Also, the Blue Jays and Orioles had similar rankings on Baseball America’s organization prospects lists. On the February 2016 list, Baseball America ranked Toronto #24 and Baltimore #27. One year later, the Blue Jays were #20, and the Orioles were again #27.

For these reasons (sub-0.500 records in 2017-2019, in teardown/rebuild mode, and farm systems ranked in the bottom third), Baltimore’s trade history is a reasonable benchmark for me to use to measure the Atkins Regime’s trade history.