Justin Smoak Was Non-Tendered By Toronto (And Re-signed)

[section18]

We've talked about Justin Smoak for several years and now he has become a free agent. DD should sign him immediately. He can platoon him at 1B or DH him.

[AlbionHero]

Thats kinda weird they'd do that after trading Lind... I figured he'd get quite a bit of playing time for them.

But yeah, I'd consider bringing him in if its cheap.

[ArtVanDelay]

Maybe on a minor league deal but I doubt that would happen. He stinks.

[byrdz]

No thanks.

[25 Nuggets]

Gobble him up on the cheap. I always thought Safeco Field killed him.

[O's84]

Somewhere JTrea is struggling to contain himself.

[maybenxtyr]

The problem with Justin Smoak is he does not play baseball very well. He probably could work as a platoon, but the Orioles only have 25 roster spots.

[weams]

The problem is 25 man roster flexibility. If they O's are going to get someone like Morse, you can't afford another player who can only play 1B/DH on the bench.

And Smoak is not good.

[weams]

There’s something that I think is easy to forget — when a player struggles to make adjustments, it isn’t only frustrating for the team and for the fans. It’s also frustrating for the player, and quite possibly the most frustrating for the player, because it’s that player’s career, and he can tell when he’s not doing enough. I’m not sure how Smoak evaluates himself. Maybe he’s all about batting average and RBI. That would be silly, but since he’s at .224 and 234 for his career, it’s not like he’d be missing the point. Justin Smoak understands that he hasn’t been a good-enough baseball player to this point. Earlier in his career, he might’ve embraced the challenge, even been kind of thankful for it. Now it’s not just a front office that might be thinking about wasted potential.

For Smoak, this is probably getting scary. He knows how much work he’s put in to get better, and he knows it hasn’t paid off. He knows he’s running out of time, and he knows he might never have a better opportunity than the one that just officially ended. As long as he was still with the Mariners, at least there were the elements of a familiar routine, but now he’s moving, to a different team in a different city in a different country, and that has to be cold and startling. Smoak has a family, with a very young child, and now the family life is changing, and eventually it might cross Smoak’s mind that this wouldn’t have happened if he’d performed better. Maybe that’s already been on his mind; maybe that’s the only thing on his mind. What do you do when you don’t understand why you’re not good enough? Smoak just spent more than four years with an organization that couldn’t get him going in the right direction. And they gave everything they had.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2014/10/28/justin-smoak-bad-good-baseball-player/

[Sanfran327]

Maybe on a minor league deal but I doubt that would happen. He stinks.

I think OPACY fixes a lot of hitters.

[MurphDogg]

And yet Matusz was tendered. Advantage, Orioles!

[Orioles0615]

We've talked about Justin Smoak for several years and now he has become a free agent. DD should sign him immediately. He can platoon him at 1B or DH him.

And within those several years he never got any good.

[Orioles Jim]

JTrea in 2008 is jumping for joy in anticipation.

[Orioles Jim]

We've talked about Justin Smoak for several years and now he has become a free agent. DD should sign him immediately. He can platoon him at 1B or DH him.

There was really only one of us that talked about him that much.

[Malike]

I had no idea Toronto even had Smoak.