The long road to a Sandin contract seems necessary for both the player and the Leafs

There is one significant piece of business that seemingly needs to be taken care of before training camp and that’s the signing of Rasmus Sandin. Potentially there will be fallout requiring some salary to be moved as well, but expecting the Leafs to move salary prior to having a contract in place is unlikely. For all the trade Kerfoot and Holl takes we’ve produced over the summer, we are clearly at the point where they are staying put until Sandin is under contract. We’ll start with that.
If we look at when the Sandin saga truly began, it started back on June 27th with the signing of Timothy Liljegren to a 2 year deal at $1.4M AAV. A very fair deal considering how Liljegren performed, but one specifically inline with how he performed and with the bridge deal there was an assumption that the Leafs aren’t paying for potential, the true payday has that two years from now timestamp on it. Given that Sandin’s numbers are very much in the same ballpark as Liljegren’s it was assumed that the plan was similar for both players. Sandin doing what he did at a slightly younger age and having a perceived higher upside than Liljegren …

Read More

Author: Jon Steitzer / The Leafs Nation

The Randal Grichuk trade has looked good so far

It’s my belief the Jays did a good bit of business here, and that the trade that brought Raimel Tapia to the Jays is already a win.

In fact, I’d argue that the 28-year-old Tapia is far too over-hated and has had a better season than Randal Grichuk. This is because once you dig into why Tapia struggled at the start of the season, you can see that he’s a darn good fourth outfielder.
Not just that, but the Jays have a chance to cut payroll next season while getting a pretty darn good prospect in return. Let’s look at each one of these things, starting with the MLB player they got in return.
Ramiel Tapia:
At face value, Tapia’s.264/.290/.374 slash line with 4 homeruns isn’t great. Especially when you factor in his Fangraphs WAR of -0.4, but let’s dig deeper into the numbers.
Batting Statistics:
Let’s take you back to April 13th when Teoscar Hernandez injured his oblique. This injury devastated the Jays for multiple reasons. For starters, Teoscar has been one of the better hitters (I’d argue the best) over the past two seasons.
The second reason is due to the lack of depth in the outfield, and due to the injury, Tapia played a little more than the team probably wanted.
Between the start of the season and Hernandez’s return (May 7th), Tapia posted pretty awful numbers. He slashed .222/.237/.289 in 95 p …

Read More

Author: Brennan Delaney / Blue Jays Nation