Yesterday was a big day for the Blue Jays. George Springer is one of baseball’s best players. He was likely the most valuable free agent on this winter’s market. He now joins an already-thriving core of young bats, landing somewhere amidst Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as they more likely than not continue their respective ascents.
But can they beat the Yankees?
There’s a temptation to say this changes things, and to be fair, it does change some things. The Blue Jays are now clearly better than the Red Sox and Rays, something that wasn’t so unmistakably true before. The Yankees now have to face George Springer in 19 regular season games, another thing that was not the case before yesterday. But the Yankees are still better. And with DJ LeMahieu back on board, the Yankees are a lot better.
It’s easy to let the Yankees’ “rough” 2020 cloud things. They did, after all, finish the regular season with a worse record than the Cubs (and if you’re not tuned in to the NL Central, the Cubs’ offseason hasn’t exactly been a victory lap). But they also gave the Rays a vigorous run for their money in the Division Series, and mid-season swoon aside, they finished comfortably in the playoffs, which was all they needed to do to have a chance. The season was only sixty games, the Yankees again dealt with some injuries, and both BaseRuns and David Smyth’s Pythagorean expectation say they should have won one more game than they did, which is substantial in a sample that small.
And it’s hard to argue with the rosters on paper. Here’s how the AL East currently shapes up in terms of projected WAR, from FanGraphs’s depth charts (values don’t always sum to totals due to rounding):
| Position\Team | Yankees | Blue Jays | Red Sox | Rays | Orioles |
| C | 2.3 | 3.1 | 3.1 | 1.5 | 1.2 |
| 1B | 2.8 | 2.4 | 0.5 | 1.8 | 0.7 |
| 2B | 3.6 | 2.7 | 1.1 | 2.9 | 1.3 |
| SS | 4.4 | 4.4 | 4.3 | 2.6 | 0.4 |
| 3B | 2.9 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 2.1 | 1.7 |
| LF | 1.5 | 2.0 | 1.4 | 2.3 | 1.4 |
| CF | 3.3 | 4.1 | 3.1 | 2.6 | 2.0 |
| RF | 4.6 | 1.6 | 1.4 | 2.3 | 2.0 |
| DH | 3.0 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.5 | 1.2 |
| SP | 17.5 | 13.0 | 11.8 | 11.2 | 7.0 |
| RP | 4.7 | 2.9 | 2.1 | 3.5 | 1.8 |
| Total | 50.5 | 41.5 | 34.4 | 34.1 | 20.5 |
Gerrit Cole makes a difference. Aroldis Chapman and Zach Britton make a difference. And for as deep as the Blue Jays are (the Rays are the only other team in the division with ten hitters projected to accumulate at least 1.0 WAR), the Yankees have more effective platoons on the aggregate, with their second-worst position group—their catchers—checking in at 2.3 WAR while the Rays have three positions at 2.0 or below.
The Blue Jays are good. They’re the third-best team in the AL by this measurement, with the caveat that the offseason is still very much in progress (seven of the ten free agents FanGraphs projects to be the most valuable in 2021 are still unsigned). But the Yankees are really good, and one of these years, they’re going to break through.
