Nathan Lukes is a left-handed-hitting, 31-year-old outfielder. He was a 16th round draft pick by Cleveland in 2015. The Jays added him to their 40-man roster in November 2022.<\/p>\n
He had his first full season in the majors last year, playing in 135 games, hitting .255\/.323\/.407 with 12 home runs, and a 2.0 bWAR. He has an option year left, which, a week ago, I would have thought was a non-issue, but then the team traded for Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez. Now? Well, the team has S\u00e1nchez, Addison Barger and Daulton Varsho as left-handed hitting outfielders, who will likely get the bulk of the playing time against right-handed pitchers. Not to mention George Springer, who will get some outfield time. And then there is Myles Straw (a very good defensive replacement) and Davis Schneider, who will likely get time in the outfield against RHP. The Jays also have Eloy Jim\u00e9nez and RJ Schreck who will get long looks this spring.<\/p>\n
Normally, someone who had the season Luke\u2019s had last year wouldn\u2019t have to worry about how he performed in spring training; it wouldn\u2019t hurt for him to have a great spring.<\/p>\n
I guess there is a question in there of whether you\u2019d rather have Lukes or S\u00e1nchez in the outfield, but the team doesn\u2019t have that question. They didn\u2019t trade for S\u00e1nchez to have him sit, but in roughly as many games as Lukes, S\u00e1nchez posted a 1.2 bWAR last year and has never had a 2.0 bWAR or better.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Lukes can play all three outfield spot, though I\u2019d rather he not get a lot of time in center. He had a +1 in outs above average across the three spots last year. I\u2019ve long thought he was the perfect fourth outfielder type.<\/p>\n
Why S\u00e1nchez over Lukes? Well, Sanchez has power. He hits the ball hard. S\u00e1nchez is in the 79th percentile for average exit speed, Lukes 19th percentile. Power is important, but Lukes is the better player in many other ways. Oh well, I guess I\u2019m feeling sorry for Lukes, he\u2019s worked so hard for so long to get his shot and it might be slipping away some.<\/p>\n
Because of the way they work things, even though Luke\u2019s is 31, he\u2019s still not going to be making great money this year, likely not much more than MLB minimum. He won\u2019t be eligible for arbitration until 2028 and won\u2019t be a free agent until 2031 (assuming he continues to get major league time). I\u2019ve often thought that there should be a different way of figuring out when players get to the arbitration and free agency, when players don\u2019t make it to the majors until age 30.<\/p>\n
Lukes is easy to like. He\u2019s always been the underdog, never been the flashy prospect. He just played well enough at each level, forcing the team to keep moving him up (if slowly). If he had the one tool that teams could point to, big power, big speed, then he would have been in the majors years ago. I think we all like the underdog. Someone who gets there through consistency and hard work.<\/p>\n
Steamer figures Lukes to play 60 games, hit .273\/.336\/.406 with 5 home runs and a 0.8 fWAR. I think that was before the trade for S\u00e1nchez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathan Lukes is a left-handed-hitting, 31-year-old outfielder. He was a 16th round draft pick by Cleveland in 2015.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,4,282,70,38962,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-574287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","14":"tag-toronto-blue-jays-opinions","15":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116076105508993524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}