37 Jays - Josh Johnson: Which J.J. Will the Jays Get?

Who: Josh Johnson. Right-handed starting pitcher. Bats left. Six-foot-seven, 250 pounds. Twenty-nine years old.

Provenance: Born in Minneapolis. Went to high school in and around Tulsa Oklahoma.

(Pause while I go listen to Don Williams' "Tulsa Time", which is a great song. Sorry. Onward.)

Selected in the fourth round of the 2002 amateur draft by the Florida Marlins. Made his major league debut at the age of 21 on September 10, 2005.

Contract Status: Entering the final season of a four-year, $39 million contract. Will earn $13.75 million in base salary this season. Bonus clauses include $1 million payout if he is named World Series MVP and $500,000 for winning the Cy Young.

Back of the Baseball Card: 3.15 ERA in 916.2 innings pitched in eight seasons, all with the Marlins. Struck out 21.9% of batters (8.17 per nine)  and walked 8.1 % (3.02) in 154 games pitched, including 144 starts. Two-time All-Star, finished fifth in Cy Young voting in 2010.

2012 Stats: Started 31 games for the Marlins, posting a 3.81 ERA in 191.1 innings. Struck out 20.7% of batters (7.76 per nine) and walked 8.2% (3.06). Worth 3.8 wins above replacement according to Fangraphs, 3.1 per Baseball Reference and 3.0 per Baseball Prospectus.   

2012 Repertoire, as per Brooks Baseball: Four seam fastball (51%, 93.5 MPH average); Slider (24%, 87.5 MPH), Curve (16%, 79.1 MPH). Changeup (5%, 87.8 MPH); Sinker (4%, 93.0 MPH).

Recent Injury History: Started only nine games at the start of 2011, before being sidelined with shoulder inflammation. Had previously missed the final month of 2010 with the same ailment. Had Tommy John Surgery in August, 2007.

Looking Back: Josh Johnson's 2012 season was one of the more scrutinized returns from injury in recent years.

After a remarkable 2010 season in which he won the NL ERA title (2.30), Johnson was set up to be one of the premier power pitchers in the game. He was building on that success admirably in early  2011 when his shoulder went awry, though the extent of the injury took a painfully long time to sort out. Though his last start was in May, he wasn't officially shut down until almost two months later.

That frustrating delay had fans watching throughout 2012 with a high level of trepidation. His fastball velocity, which dropped by more than two miles per hour from its 2010 levels (95.6 MPH), remained under constant scrutiny. A predictable mid-season dip in his fastball velocity raised alarms, but by the final starts of the season in September, he had begun to regain a couple of clicks on the pitch.

Also notable in Johnson's 2012 season is the increased use of a curveball. According to the Brooks Baseball database, he didn't throw a single curve in 2010, relying almost entirely on a four-seam/slider arsenal in that season.

For the most part, Johnson's peripheral numbers came back to their historical levels last season, though his inflated ERA is likely due to an uptick in his homer-to-flyball ratio. At 8.4%, last year's mark was double that of his 2010 season (4.2%, if you needed the math guidance), and marginally higher than his career mark (7.2%). 

Looking Ahead: Johnson certainly benefited from playing in home parks that were sympathetic to pitchers through his first eight seasons.

He's held the opposition to a .623 OPS against between ProPlayer/Sun Life Stadium and the new Marlins Park, while putting up a still decent .692 OPS on the road. Still, he's never pitched in his career at Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park, so it will be interesting to see how the fun house atmosphere of those bizarro parks.

On the other hand, a pitcher who can miss a lot of bats can help to neutralize the effects of hitters parks.And thus far in the completely meaningless fake games of spring, Johnson has done a pretty snazzy job of sending batters back to the bench with their lumber in their hands, unscathed by leather. In his first four games, Johnson fanned 11 in 10.2 innings without walking a batter.

It might not be enough to proclaim that the fearsome hurler is back to his best form, but it's a nice sign in a spring that has elicited more than its share of caveats for poor performance by potential starting pitchers.

And since we're indulging in hoary old saws, it certainly bears mentioning that this is a contract year for Josh Johnson. It seems as though it is a long shot that the Jays will keep him in the longer term, but the question remains as to whether a great performance by JJ in the first four months will make him indispensable for the stretch run, or a key trade chip by the end of July.

 Pessimistically: The deeper lineups of the American League make life more challenging for Johnson, bumping his ERA up and leaving him to minimize the damage from the fly balls that become dingers in some AL East parks. Shoulder/back/bunion pain (or what have you) undermines his season.

Optimistically: Regains his strength, while adding the wisdom and guile of age to his game. Asserts himself as a legitimate ace. Dominates in big games. 

Splish Splash - This Is What You've Wanted All Along

Hey look, it's Emilio Bonifacio!

You wanted a splash, and you got it. In fact, it's hard to conceive of a move more splashy than this. Twelve players - Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck in one direction, and Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Adeiny Hechavarria, Jeff Mathis, Jake Marisnick, Justin Nicolino, and Anthony Desclafani in the other - along with tens of millions of dollars in salary shifting north. Not to mention the deep impact on the psyches of the two fan bases.

Big names. A much bigger payroll. It's precisely that for which so many of you - fans and media alike - have clamoured over the past few years. It's a demonstration of might. A show of strength. And as such, I hesitate to dampen the expectations or somehow speak ill of this pending mega-deal.

And yet, here I stand with a bucket of cold water weighing heavily in my hands, the weight of which is dominating my thoughts at the moment.

Okay, let's take a step back. Let me splash a bit of that bucket's contents on my own face to snap myself out of this odd funk, and to accentuate the positives of this proposed deal.

The Blue Jays come out of this deal with a pitcher who can pitch like a legitimate staff ace, and another starter who has traditionally been reliable for more than 30 starts and 200 innings per season. plus an All-Star offensive talent at a premium position who has put up WARs around 6.0 in multiple seasons. Plus, they get a versatile switch-hitting utility player and a veteran catcher who returns to the fold, and who remains a pretty good catch and throw guy.

If that's where the Blue Jays netted out at the end of the offseason, you would have probably been pretty satisfied that they were living up to their promises of adding big league players to the 2013 roster. And maybe more importantly, you would have been happy to see the payroll's "parameters" - collect yourselves, it's gonna be okay - broadened somewhere closer to the $120 million mark.

If seeing "proven veterans" added to the 25-man roster and a substantial amount to the payroll is your thing, you're understandably over the moon today. I can't blame you, either. The notion that the club has more resources going forward expands my notion of what will be possible in the coming years, and that maybe the Blue Jays will settle into life as a top-10 payroll. This is all good, and the sort of thing you can dream on.

Now, here come the bucket.

Let's not mistake this trade for a long term solution to the Jays' woes. Because the Jays are trading for a single season of Josh Johnson (or his pursuant value) this trade is completely oriented towards success in 2013. The Blue Jays needed two starters to plug into their rotation while they wait on the development of the next generation and the convalescing masses, and in order to get that, they needed to take two bad contracts - Buehrle and Buck - and one very expensive-if-defensible contract in Reyes.

The Jays also moved five players under the age of 24 to Miami, and while upsides of Alvarez and Hechavarria seem to be as something less than All-Stars, they are still in their ascendance. The Jays' system doesn't seem to have been overly culled in sending Nicolino (perhaps the most movable of the Lansing Three) and Marisnick (who struggled in a year in which he was pushed through two levels), but there's plenty that is going in the other direction.

And all of that is wagered on Josh Johnson being healthy and having a good season next year. That's the bottom line.

Certainly, the notion of José Reyes as a fixture in Toronto is an attractive one, even at that price point, but by this time next year, people will be judging this trade on two levels: Did the Blue Jays make the playoffs? Or did they retain Johnson beyond 2013? Otherwise, you're staring down the $39 million left on Buehrle's deal and hoping that it is offset by Reyes' performance, minus the $82 million he'll be owed from 2013 through 2017.

And don't forget that the mere presence of these players by no means guarantees a good outcome. As much as the Marlins were pushed to the forefront at the beginning of last season, let's take a moment and recognize that the same players we're gleefully taking in are the ones who were heralded as missing pieces which would put them over the top in the NL East last year.

Our splash? It's last year's splash in Miami.  

There's plenty of downside to this deal, but if I'm going to be optimistic about it, I'll recognize that a bigger payroll permits the Jays to make some mistakes and sit on them if they need to. If Buehrle's contract turns into Barry Zito's in two years' time, it's possible that this newly flush front office can swallow it and go about their business. 

Again, let me be clear: It's really fun to envision all of these players wearing blue next year. Also, this move is probably a much better one than overpaying for one or two starting pitchers. Would I trade this package for Zach Greinke and Anibal Sanchez or Edwin Jackson? Probably not, especially when you consider the years and annual salary they'd have commanded if they even deigned to come to Toronto.

Ultimately, the team is better today than they were at lunchtime yesterday. If I feel somehow as though I have to begrudge the mechanism that got them to that place, then let me at least acknowledge that there's a reason to be excited about the team on the field. And that should be all that matters.

But if this goes completely pear-shaped, keep in mind that this is the game that many of you implored the Jays to play. You want this? You got it.