Jon Heyman grades the Jays offseason

Jon Heyman, over at Fanrag, grades the offseason of all the MLB teams. He gives the Jays a D, the lowest mark in the league. Jim Bowden, back a couple of weeks ago, gave the Jays a B.

After Bowden’s post, we did a poll and this is what we thought:

About the Jays, Heyman says:

This would have gone a lot better had Edwin Encarnacion just accepted their early $80-million, four-year bid, though it’s hard to blame him for waiting and looking around, with the new CBA not yet done and rumors swirling that the Red Sox, Yankees, Astros and Rangers were poised to go big for EE.

Yeah, that’s true, life would be so much different if Edwin accepted the orginal deal, but then I don’t blame Edwin for wanting to check out the market. And I really don’t blame the Jays for quickly looking to going to plan B.

As it turned out, both the Jays and Edwin totally misread the free agent market.

Jose Bautista, the star they seemed to have soured on but suddenly had to have. While they got Bautista for $18 million (about 10 percent what he originally sought) it seemed almost like a desperation move partly done in response to disappointed fans (though they clearly needed outfield help).

I didn’t think it was a desperation move. I thought that Bautista’s price dropped to the point that the Jays figured they would get value for him. We needed an outfielder (as much as I think Jose would be better off to be a first basement) and Jose seemed like the best left on the market.

J.P. Howell and Joe Smith are pluses, but Brett Cecil is a big loss, too.

Cecil got a much much better contract than I expected. I’d rather have Howell for $3 million than Cecil for $30 (and I’m a big Brett Cecil fan).

I disagree with Heyman. I don’t think we had the worst offseason in baseball. It might not have been an A+, but I don’t think it was the worst in baseball. I guess we shall see.

It’s funny, Bowden gave the Tigers an F, putting them at the bottom of his list, while Heyman give them a B.

Baseball America has their annual rank of minor league talent up. The Jays rank 20th, an improvement from their rank of 24th last year. I was expecting a bigger jump, into the high teens, but at least we are moving in the right direction.