The Blue Jays’ addition of Marcus Semien makes a potent lineup even deeper

After missing out on Michael Brantley the Blue Jays were clearly looking to add another bat to the line-up and found one in Marcus Semien. The deal is a one year deal worth $18M. Reports indicated that the Blue Jays had to overpay to get Semien as they are asking him to move off of shortstop to play second base.  

Craig Edwards at Fangraphs predicted Semien would sign a 4 year deal at $16M per, the Crowd had it three years and $17M per, and MLB Trade Rumors predicted a one year deal for $14M. The Blue Jays may have overpaid by a couple million to bring in Semien.
Given what other teams have paid players in free agency this off-season it won’t be hard for Semien to be worth his contract. Using Roster Resource at Fangraphs, I was able to sort through players who signed a major league contract for one year (including those who accepted the qualifying offer) and compared that to those players projected WAR. I found that teams have been spending $5.7M for a win in free agency. If we round that up to $6M, Semien just needs to be worth 3 WAR next season to be …

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Author: Paul Berthelot / Blue Jays Nation

False Alarm! It turns out Michael Brantley has signed in Houston

The Michael Brantley era in Toronto is over before it began.

Despite a report earlier today from Hazel Mae that said the Blue Jays and Brantley had agreed to a three-year contract, the veteran outfielder is sticking around with the Houston Astros.

MLB source: #Astros reach an agreement with Michael Brantley on a two-year deal worth $32 million.
— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) January 20, 2021

This is certainly unfortunate, but it isn’t the end of the world.
When it came to the George Springer and Michael Brantley package, the former was obviously the one to get hyped about. There’s no doubt that adding Brantley’s bat to the lineup would have been huge, but we still have Springer.

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Author: Cam Lewis / Blue Jays Nation