Poll time: What do you think of the Grichuk trade?

Thanks for all the birthday wishes yesterday, it was a good day.

There isn’t much for Jays news today. The Curtis Granderson deal has been officially announced. He tweeted about how happy he was to be coming to Toronto, how much he likes the city and how much he enjoys playing at Rogers Centre. Stuff that’s always nice to hear.

We’ve had a couple of days to digest the Randal Grichuk trade, so I figured it was time to ask what we think about it. I’ll admit it surprised me. I thought that, after the Granderson signing, we were finished in the outfield and would be looking to improve in other areas.

The trade makes me think the team really wanted to improve the outfield defense. The corner outfield spots were a bit of a disaster, defensively, last year. Grichuk has good defensive numbers.

He’s coming up to his ‘prime’ years, so we can hope for a bit of a jump in his offensive numbers. His career OPS+ is 107, but he’s been trending the wrong way. Over the last 3 seasons, he has had OPS+ numbers of 134, 102 and 95, if that trend continues, we won’t be thrilled. But Rogers Centre should be a better park for him.

It would be nice if he could bump up his OBA a bit.

He’s not a free agent until 2021, so he won’t be costing much.

What we gave up?

We picked up Dominic Leone off waivers last winter. He’s had an up and down career, we grab him and he has a terrific season. Selling high seems like a good idea.

On the other hand, we aren’t selling high on Conner Greene. He had a terrible season last year. He had a 5.29 ERA and walked 83 in 132.2 innings. He throws hard, but has had trouble with control. He turns 23 in April, so he’s young enough to figure out the strikezone, but he’ll have to start loon.

In our 2016 top prospects list, he was #2. Last year he was #7. This year, he would have dropped out of the top 10 I’m sure. He might end up moving to the bullpen, but then he might turn out to be good there.

The trade leaves us a bit short in the pen, and it wouldn’t hurt to find another starter, but we have a surplus of outfielders. I’ll admit, I’d be shopping Kevin Pillar, but we have a mess of corner outfields, one could go for a reliever. Or, if one of the other GMs in the MLB were to have a lobotomy, maybe we could dump Kendrys Morales. Yeah, not likely to happen.

Anyway, let’s have the poll: