Blue Jays’ Cavan Biggio designated for assignment, Spencer Horwitz recalled

The Toronto Blue Jays made some roster moves to switch up their offence heading into the weekend series against the Oakland Athletics.

When it comes to outside-the-box baseball strategies, the impetus for their creation is more likely to be pure desperation than a lightning bolt of inspiration.

The Tampa Bay Rays wouldn’t have gotten into the opener business if they’d had five traditional starters who were rolling. Teams around the majors wouldn’t have intentionally walked Barry Bonds at an unprecedented rate in the early 2000s if pitching to him wasn’t a nightmare the likes of which they’d never seen before. The Toronto Blue Jays wouldn’t have given Vladimir Guerrero Jr. his first start at third base in five years last Sunday if they could consistently score.

Returning Guerrero to his original position isn’t ludicrous at a conceptual level, but the 25-year-old won a Gold Glove at first as recently as 2022 — and he struggled at the hot corner as a rookie. While Vladdy isn’t headed to third full-time, he’s now spent two of his last five games there and hasn’t done anything to jeopardize the idea yet.

He even made a nice play shifted towards short on Sunday.

The original premise of having Guerrero playing third from time to time was to get Justin Turner and Daniel Vogelbach into the lineup at the same time (and by extension phase out some at-bats for struggling infielders like Ernie Clement and Cavan Biggio). The veterans that Toronto is looking to lean on have wRC+ marks on the season of 97 and 78 respectively, so this whole idea may die on the vine in the relatively near future. 

There’s no sense sacrificing defence for offence if the bat-first players you are giving additional run to don’t produce. There’s also a real possibility that the best use of the Blue Jays’ DH spot is a Vogelbach/Turner platoon as Guerrero plays first. The team probably wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of turning a $13-million investment like the 39-year-old Turner into a part-time player, but he has a 722 OPS vs. righties and .909 mark against southpaws since the beginning of last year.

Add in the possibility of triple-A callups altering the position-player mix, and we may be in the middle of an abnormal moment in time that isn’t destined to continue.

While we’re here, we might as well figure out how the Blue Jays can make the Guerrero-at-third premise make sense, though. 

In most cases, the first thing to look at in this case would be Toronto’s starting pitchers. Although Guerrero doesn’t project to mishandle the majority of the balls coming his way, it still wouldn’t make sense to have a somewhat rusty fielder with suboptimal lateral quickness play behind an elite groundball pitcher like Logan Webb or Framber Valdez.

Luckily, or unluckily, the Blue Jays don’t have anyone who fits that mould on staff. None of their four regular starters generate abnormally high groundball rates — or especially low ones.

When you look at the numbers below, keep in mind that the MLB average this season is 42.6 per cent:

That means that throwing Guerrero out at third will have more to do with Toronto’s opponent. 

If the Blue Jays are playing a southpaw, it seems unlikely that they’ll put him at the hot corner because there’ll be no need to force Vogelbach into the order. The 31-year-old has only taken 16.7 per cent of his career plate appearances against lefties and he’s hit a brutal .128/.246/.214 in those opportunities.

Playing both of the Blue Jays’ catchers and keeping Turner in there would open up a lane, but Alejandro Kirk’s rough start to the season has made the dual-catcher look less appealing. While there’s an argument for making sure Jansen is in the lineup even when he’s not catching, he has earned his full days off, and the Blue Jays might not have an appetite for pushing one of their most valuable hitters when he’s had durability issues in the past.

That makes the focus of this experiment right-handed starters that call out for the presence of Vogelbach — and his career 124 wRC+ vs righties — in the DH spot, leaving first base to Turner, or possibly Spencer Horwitz if he reaches the majors soon. 

Considering the state of the Blue Jays offence, a player who tends to hit that well ag