Better Know Your Blue Jays 40-man: Josh Donaldson

I think we all know Josh Donaldson pretty well by now, there is not much I’m going to say to help you ‘better know’ him.

Three seasons with the Blue Jays:

2015: .297/.371/.568

2016: .284/.404/.549

2017: .270/.385/.559

If that’s all the info I gave you and you didn’t know anything more, you wouldn’t be able to guess which season was his MVP year.

How much would this winter’s slow free agent market worry you if you were Josh?

Well yeah.

Even last winter power hitting free agents on the wrong side of 30 weren’t getting the money we expected they would. This winter no one is getting the money we expected.

I mean, I mean, he’s likely to be rich, but, unless something changes from this year. I can’t imagine he’d be getting 6 years and a $180 million.

I like safety, so if I’m him and the Jays have a 4 year offer on the table, I’d be strongly considering it.

If we sign Josh to a long term deal, what of Vlad Jr?

I think, if we sign Josh to a 4-year deal, we’d want to move him over to first, at some point. I think having Vlad at one side of the infield and Josh at the other, would make us very happy. Having too many good players is never a bad thing.

Vlad could go into the outfield for a season or two if they don’t want to move Josh.

Where does Josh sit on our all-time leader boards?

bWAR among position players: Tied for 11th with George Bell at 21.1. A 5 WAR season would move him up to 6th. He’s 3 good seasons away from passing Tony Fernandez for the number 1 spot.

Home runs: 17th with 111. 21 home runs would move him up to 10th.

RBI: 27th with 300. A 100 RBI season would move him up to 17th, passing Alex Rios.

Walks: 22nd with 258. 80 would move him up to 13th.

How much does this mean to you:

Still, no Toronto player had made more clear his eagerness to remain a Jay into the multiple-year future. Donaldson said so forthrightly last September and hasn’t dog-whistled a different tune since. He certainly sounded entirely sincere, although one might wonder how thrilled he would be about spending his early and mid-30s with a club in rebuild mode, as the Jays may become if their purported intent of genuinely contending in 2018 goes sideways.

That’s from a story in The Star by Rosie Dimanno.

For one, I don’t buy that ‘no Toronto player has ever....’ Every player says much the same.

Players always say something like this, some form of ‘I really want to stay’. I kind of discount it. What is the player going to do? Say ‘I can’t wait to get out of this crappy city and away from these lousy fans’? Players tend to be too smart to say things like that, unless, of course, they play with the Marlins.

I mean I like hearing it, but I’m a cynic, I tend to discount this stuff.