Toronto Blue Jays sign free agent Marcus Semien, Oakland A’s fragrance on obvious occasion

The Oakland A’s longtime shortstop and hometown star is officially gone.

Free agent Marcus Semien closed with the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday. reports insider Jon Heyman. This is a $ 18 million one-year contract, by Jeff Passan of ESPN.

Semien is expected to play mainly the second base for the Jays, adds Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.

Although the departure of Semien this winter has always been inevitable, the poor off-season market and a surprising lack of demand for its services have made the return to Oakland seem terribly possible. Indeed, he eventually settled a one-year deal, but not at home in the Bay.

In Toronto, the 30-year-old Semien joins a potential heavyweight team. The rest of the interior is full of young studs like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Cavan Biggio, and they recently added a first-class fielder in George Springer to join him along with a few other young stars flanking him on the corners. The site staff has a Cy-caliber bait in Hyun-jin Ryu, and in the bully Kirby Yates is looking for a setback in the closer role.

With three more weeks before the spring practice, it is not yet clear who will play the midfield in Oakland s Semien, either at SS or at 2B. Chad Pinder, Vimael Machin, Tony Kemp and Sheldon Neuse are some of the best internal options when no new faces are added. Rubbing salt in the wound for A’s fans, Tommy La Stella, last year’s popular second baseman, signed with the San Francisco Giants.

Take warm

This is downright embarrassing.

Despite all their cheapness over the decades, one thing the A’s have always been down to during the Beane Era is a short contract to hire a star. They will offer even higher average salaries just to shorten the duration, this is specifically how they got Yoenis Cespedes.

It’s actually quite common for Oakland to sign a well-known name or acquire it with an expensive one-year deal, often in a kind of bounce capacity. It’s a great way to gamble upside down, and when it does, you’re no longer hooked on anything beyond that summer. Therefore, there is no such thing as a bad one-year contract.

And now an unheard of opportunity just fell into their shots. Their All-Star caliber starts short, a local product that never misses a game, plays well on both sides of the ball, is loved in the community and popular among his teammates, who was third for MVP in 2019 and still is are they best at age 30? He would be praised far beyond their means. Instead, he was a total deal for one year due to a perfect storm of factors, including his own little monster last year.

That must have been a problem. Of course, you bring him back for another year, at the height of the team’s battle window, to an excellent position in the middle position where the organization has no other serious viable answers for 2021. It’s even a few dollars cheaper than its qualifying offer would cost in November. How do you blow it? It was an absolute gift from the universe.

But no, says John Fisher’s A’s, whose payroll is currently slightly lower than last year’s opening day more than for which Semien had just signed. Instead, at their most important moment in terms of competitiveness on the field, they will pinch cents after one difficult financial year – that is, a difficult financial year for the team, not for Fisher, whose net worth has grown significantly since April . to Forbes.

We’re used to stars leaving Oakland for large sums of money in the long run elsewhere, and that’s good and even justifiable, but this situation is completely different. Marcus Semien signs a one-year agreement, and it was not with the supposed 2021 As. Shameful.