Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Kendrys Morales

While we are waiting for the Blue Jays to announce their 25-man roster, which apparently will include Gift Ngoepe, and not Danny Espinosa, let’s continue along our look at our 40-man.

We all know the story, when the Jays couldn’t come to a quick deal with Edwin Encarnacion, they quickly (too quickly) switched targets and signed Kendrys Morales, to a 3-year, $33 million contract. I have generally referred to it as ‘mistakes were made’.

The Jays couldn’t see into the future and see that the market for aging sluggers was going to evaporate. Such is life.

We actually kind of liked the signing at the time.

Can’t get them all right.

Honestly, at the time it didn’t seem so bad, we didn’t guess that the market for power hitters would almost disappear.

Anyway, the Jays and the rest of us, hoped that, moving from the Royals rather large park to the comparatively smaller Rogers Centre, his power numbers would jump.

It didn’t happen:

2016 Royals: .263/.327/.468 with 30 home runs.

2017 Jays: .250/.308/.445 with 28 home runs.

Let’s look at the future.

PECOTA predicts him to hit .256/.319/.426 with 21 home runs. ZiPS .262/.318/.463 with 25 home runs.

Those numbers seem fair.

There are some hopeful signs. Kendrys came into camp down a few pounds, and he’s wearing glasses. And he’s talking about how he needs to get balls in the air, not on the ground. It’s possible that we none of those things will help, but it does show that he sees what the problem was and is looking to improve.

Looking to improve and actually improving are two different things.

Kendrys didn’t have a good spring, he hit .241/.290/.362. That likely doesn’t mean anything.

I’m sure the Jays would love to take his contract, but that’s really unlikely to happen (I’m playing OOTP and no one will take him off my hands in the game) It is possible that, if he were to have a terrible season, he could be released. That won’t happen soon, and he’d need to be really bad for it to happen. Him being really bad wouldn’t be good for the team.

In the past, the Jays would give the DH spot to a rookie, letting him ease into the majors. They did this with Carlos Delgado, John Olerud and several others. That would be a nice way to start Vlad’s career, but if Kendrys is still here next year, that isn’t going to happen.

And a second poll.