Buy or Sell: Ben Revere’s 2016

Apologies on this being late as my day job has been swamped in recent weeks, but I promised a breakdown of Ben Revere’s 2016 season to come, so here we are, making up for lost time. I liked Revere as a fit in Toronto for a number of reasons during the 2015 season, but some of those reasons have become muddled as we get ready to flip the calendar over.

From a natural fit standpoint, it’s hard to imagine a better place for Revere to play his home games than on Astroturf, at Rogers Centre where his game of speed, ground balls and contact plays up about as well as one could imagine. For his career, and granted it’s a terribly small sample size, the numbers bear it out:

Turf (167 PA): .331/.348/.376
Grass (2,493 PA): .292/.327/.347

Additionally, I like him as a fit hitting at the top or bottom of a lineup filled with mashers, and it promises ample opportunity to score runs, and especially if he hits eighth or ninth, likely steal bases. I’ve spoken with some Blue Jays bloggers who feel he’s better suited to hit near the bottom — especially due to the stolen base threat he poses — but without an ideal leadoff hitter in the fold, he could fill that position as a de facto option.

So what’s not to like here? A guy who should likely hit .300, steal a bunch of bases and score a bunch of runs has plenty of fantasy value, right?

Well not so fast. The same bloggers whose ears I bent to ask about Revere also said they don’t see him as ultra likely to be a full-time starter next year. One said “pretty good” shot at starting but another said 30 percent, which strikes me as pretty muddy overall. A part time base thief like Jarrod Dyson — who might actually be full time if the Royals don’t fill one or both of their outfield corners — carries less value simply because you can’t be sure when or if he’ll play. That’s not to say a player like that is without value, it’s just significantly less than it ought to be.

Now granted, Dyson has limitations that I think would be more apt to be magnified in full-time duty than Revere — and that’s really saying something — but what’s in the way of Ben starting every day? Quite frankly, the Jays outfield is just crowded. The MLB.com depth chart lists Revere as the starter in left right now, but he’s ahead of Michael Saunders, a player who would seem to have a higher ceiling as an everyday player assuming he’s healthy. There’s also Kevin Pillar, Dalton Pompey, Jose Bautista and regression monster Chris Colabello all in the mix for playing time in the corners.

Revere’s versatility helps him in the sense that he can be a super sub, but basically are you going to be stuck paying starter price for a well-compensated fourth outfielder? It’s possible. For what it’s worth, Fangraphs alum Matt Swartz projected Revere for a salary of $6.7 million this year, and Saunders at just $2.9 thanks in large part to a lost 2015. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that Revere will get lost in the shuffle unless he has a scorching hot start in playing time he’s afforded if for instance Saunders isn’t ready or Colabello regresses quickly.

The counter argument is whether or not the Jays would tender Revere if the plan wasn’t for him to play very much, and it’s a reasonable argument. My conclusion is this: Revere’s been my go-to guy for steals as a less-sexy Billy Hamilton (price wise) in recent seasons, but I think I’ll let someone else take the early plunge and maybe look to scrape him up off waivers if an owner gets frustrated early in the season.