The 2011 season is almost over for baseball, and as has so often been the case, the Jays will likely finish just a touch over .500. This is ok, but not good enough to compete in the AL East. Optimism is high in Jays land however, as GM Alex Anthopolous has made some clever moves, by exploiting some inefficiencies in baseball. This thread at Bluebird Banter does a good job of discussing those inefficiencies. Many of his moves seem to centre around some of the following ideas:

• trading for young, high ceiling talents who have worn out their welcome with their current team, usually having something to do with “attitude” or personality conflicts,
• collecting draft pics, by letting free agents walk, or in the case of Miguel Olivo, deliberately acquiring (buying really) someone, with the sole purpose of getting their draft pic when they sign elsewhere,
• signing international free agents (usually very young kids from the Dominican, Venezuela or Mexico, who aren’t currently included in the regular draft),
• signing reliever free agents during the off-season, which all tend to be one year contracts and very cheap (probably undervalued), followed by trading them mid-season to contenders who desperately need bullpen help, in exchange for “more expensive” talent.

This has left the team with almost nobody left on the team who was with them at the start of 2010. From the opening day of 2011, only 4 of their starting 9 position players are still starting with the team. That’s huge turnover within the season. The team is now much younger, and there is a much richer minor league system than perhaps at anytime previous in the history of the organization. Of the Jays 7 minor league affiliate teams, 5 made it to their playoffs this year, and 2 won their leagues (including AA ball).

As of September 19, the Blue Jays sit fifth in the AL in runs scored. That’s pretty good, but it isn’t as good as Boston or the Yanks in their division. But the Jays spent most of the year with the likes of Juan Rivera, Corey Patterson, Rajai Davis and Aaron Hill and Jayson Nix getting everyday playing time. Now they’ve got Colby Rasmus, Eric Thames, Brett Lawrie and Kelly Johnson playing. Even though Rasmus and Johnson are having down years (why they got them both cheaply), they have very good career stats, and Rasmus has huge upside at 25.

In an attempt to project the current starting 9 position players across a season, I calculated the average OPS of the current everyday starters. The average Blue Jays OPS for the starting 9 players this season is 796. For comparisons sake, the same average OPS for the Yankees this season is 800. If we use career OPS instead of this year, the current Jays starting position players give an average OPS of 798, compared to 836 for the Yankees (all stats from baseball-reference). Here is what the stats look like per player for both teams:

There are some problems with this data. In particular, Brett Lawrie only has 6 weeks of playing time, and Thames has only played half a season, significantly impacting the data. But even if Lawrie’s OPS ends up being 100 points lower, that only changes the total average by about 11 points or so. And I suspect Thames’ OPS is essentially minimal given the Jays outfield depth. And the team being so young, leaves more room for the offence to improve, rather than the opposite. Indeed, the average age for the Yankee’s starters is 31.7 versus 26.4 for the Jays. There is a definite downward trend to the Yankee’s OPS with this age, and there is not for the Jays. Posada probably won’t play much longer, and has been receiving less playing time, but it is still difficult to reverse trends with ageing and longterm contracts.

I think the Jays offence is “close” to competing, but there is of course still room for improvement.