Finding quality in quantity

DAVID Price left Toronto for a seven-year, $217 million contract with the Red Sox last winter and tallied three Wins Above Replacement, as per Baseball-Reference.com’s calculations. The Blue Jays countered by re-signing

Marco Estrada to a twoyear, $26 million agreement and reacquiring lefty

J.A. Happ for three years and $36 million. Estrada recorded 3.4 WAR and Happ 4.4.

The math worked out pretty well for the Blue Jays there. Now they’ll try to duplicate that on the hitting side. When Edwin Encarnacion rejected their four-year, $80 mil- lion offer, they went out and signed Kendrys Morales for three years and $33 million and Steve Pearce for two years and $12.5 million. Then they re-signed franchise icon Jose Bautista for one year and $18.5 million.

Encarnacion’s departure for the Indians and a surprisingly low, three-year, $60 million contract, as well as his long tenure with the Jays (as opposed to Price’s three-month shift), makes this a hairier calculation in Toronto. En- carnacion’s track record far exceeds that of Morales, and they both will be playing their age-34 season in 2017.

Maybe Bautista, 36, whose dreams of a ninefigure deal fell apart with a 2016 downturn, can make up any disparity there. The Blue Jays smartly brought Bautista back at a price higher than the $17.2 million qualifying offer he turned down, and thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, he can’t get the qualifying offer again, meaning he will be an unfettered free agent next year. The proud Bautista figures to be a very motivated player in 2017.