Stars, Scrubs, and Jon Jay

Dbacks acquire outfielder Jon Jay via trade from Royals in exchange for RHP Elvis Luciano and LHP Gabe Speier.

The 2018 Diamondbacks’ offense has essentially been stars-and-scrubs. Lineups often feature Nick Ahmed, Jeff Mathis, and Jarrod Dyson hitting in front of the pitcher. While all of these players have a clear purpose on the team, it places a massive pressure on the top of the lineup to produce runs consistently and often. It worked well enough in April; the offense was middle of the pack in terms of run production, which is fine when the pitching staff is one of the best in the league. But when May reared its ugly head, the flaws of the strategy became clear: it only works when the stars are healthy and performing. A combination of injury and ineffectiveness plagued the Diamondbacks’ four offensive stars, and the bats were the worst in the league. Clearly, they weren’t going to stay that bad, but something had to change. Cue Jon Jay.

In an offense of two extremes, Jay profiles as neither. With the exception of 2015, Jay has never posted a fWar value below 1.0, but he has also never exceeded 3.0. He consistently puts up wRC+ and  TAv values that are just above-average. He won’t be rostered for any Mid-Summer Classic, but he is a player that every team in baseball could use. His style of hitting is unique for this era, however. Jay doesn’t hit for power, basically at all, but he puts up high on-base numbers and hits for a solid average. He walks about 8% of the time, and his strikeout numbers hover around 15%, the latter being much lower than the team average. He sprays the ball around, hitting it to each field equally, and instead of attempting to embrace the fly-ball revolution despite his lack of power, he is content to pound the ball into the ground at 59.8% rate, second most among qualifiers. If you took the stereotypical pre-sabermetric hitter and put him in modern baseball, you would get Jon Jay.

This isn’t a trade that is going to turn heads. He’s not J.D. Martinez or Manny Machado or anywhere close to them. But he allows the team to replace an offensive scrub with an average offensive player, and that’s how great teams are often built. Rather than significantly raising the ceiling of the offense, it raises the floor. It’s one more quality hitter that can help the true stars put up the team offensive numbers that they should. It won’t make them a top-5 or even 10 offense in the league, but it secures their position as a middle-10 offense, and that is enough to pull the team into the playoffs.

The only strange part of this move is that it could cause a logjam in the future. Currently, the outfield is down A.J. Pollock and Steven Souza Jr., but when they come back, the outfield will be five deep with quality players. This will give Lovullo options off the bench, which will become greater than any other bench in recent history for the Dbacks. However, somebody is going to lose their spot, and it will likely be either Deven Marrero or Chris Owings. Owings is hitting slightly better, but his OBP is reminiscent of Yasmany Tomas’s old batting averages, and Marrero is slugging below .200 with better defense. The offense will do a whole lot better with Jay than with either of those two starting every day.

As always, every trade has two sides, but the return for Jay seems very fair. Gabe Speier is the baseball’s best throw-in. He was involved in the Cespedes-Porcello and the Maybin (DET) trade, and of course, he arrived in the desert through the infamous Shelby Miller trade. Throughout all this action, he has never really been much of a prospect. However,  he has provided more value to the Dbacks than Shelby Miller has thus far, even though he has never appeared in the majors. On a bad team like the Royals, he could be called up for a long-relief role, where he could be a worse version of T.J. McFarland. That’s not much of a compliment, but at least he has a shot to make it to the bigs.

The main piece of the return is Elvis Luciano, an eighteen-year-old kid who made an impressive stateside debut last season. The teenager has three pitches that could develop into average or better offerings, and scouts like his mental traits. It’s possible that this could come back to haunt the Dbacks, but Luciano will not even debut until at least four or five years in the future. There is also the chance that Luciano never puts it together, and he will be solely remembered for being a part of this trade. It’s a mild risk to give him away, but the risk is fitting for the return.