Stray Thoughts... - Francis starts, Rogers owns
Further thoughts on the remarkable rise of Bowden Francis, plus Rogers buys MLSE, Tyler Heineman is back, Bo, Soto, minor moves, HBPs, a new episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour, and more!
The Blue Jays’ season is winding down, and though it's obviously been a tough one, it's hard not to have weirdly enjoyed the opportunity for a deep breath. A reset. A chance to just enjoy baseball for baseball's sake, without the stakes or the screaming.
Or, at least, I've found it hard to not weirdly enjoy it.
A big part of this, of course, has been the way the second half has been playing out—which is to say: not completely hopelessly.
The Jays are 27-27 since the All-Star Break, and 21-20 since the start of August. You can squint and see the makings of a team that, even with just an average bullpen—at -3.0 fWAR, the Jays now sit tied with 2016 Reds for the worst bullpen by that metric since 2013, and are currently among the bottom 10 since 1978—should at least be able to keep up with the dreck competing for the second and third AL Wild Card spots next season. Especially if the White Sox can stop rolling over for their fellow AL Central clubs so much and manage bring their loss total down to something in the region of 100.
Jays starters have the sixth-best ERA in baseball since the break at 3.65, their lineup is scoring a half a run more per game compared to the first half, their OPS as a team is up from .687 to .752, Vlad looks like a superstar again, their lineup is full of fun, interesting youngsters.
And then, of course, there's Bowden Francis—who, since he's had a couple more starts since I last wrote about him, and who again takes the ball here on Wednesday when the Jays face the Rangers, deserves a bit of an update.
Francis, in case you haven't been paying attention (and who could blame you?), began his recent remarkable run in the Blue Jays' rotation with a perfectly cromulent start in Baltimore on July 29th. In the game he allowed three runs on six hits and a walk over 5 2/3 innings, though he only struck out two batters. But as fine an effort as it was, his outing that day didn't really hint at the transformation that was to come.
Frankly, he looked a lot like Bowden Francis that day. Against lefties he threw 50% fastballs, 31% splitters, and 18% curveballs—numbers that are almost exactly in line with how he's approached lefties this season as a whole (53/29/17). And why wouldn't they be? He'd handled lefties decently enough until that point in the year, limiting them to .241/.323/.398 (.721 OPS), which a little bit better than league average for right-handed pitchers against them (.735).
Against right-handers he used a heavier dose of sliders that day than in most of his other appearances (20%), but otherwise was his then-typical fastball (48%)/curve (32%) self. He got away with it in this start, but this was a problem. Francis faced just nine Orioles batting from the right side that day, and they went 3-for-8, including a double and a homer, with a walk. This brought his slash line against right-handed batters up to .309/.353/.596 for the season. That line translates to a .400 wOBA. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s current wOBA for the season? .398.
Francis needed a way to stop turning every right-handed batter he faced into Vladdy. And as we all know by now, he seems to have found it.
But “it” isn't just one thing. The addition of the splitter he'd already been using against left-handers to his repertoire against right-handers has garnered the most ink, and understandably so. Prior to this season Francis had only thrown fastballs, curves, and sliders in the big leagues. But we can see in the chart below that it's hardly been just that.
Save for a June 9th appearance in Oakland when he mixed four different pitches to right-handers, he had only used three at most to RHB all the way until August 12th in Anaheim—the first of what has now become four one-hitters in six appearances. In his most recent start, against the Mets back on Wednesday, he flashed five. From him right-handers saw 39 fastballs, 18 sliders, seven sinkers, six curves, and five splitters.
Now, the expansion of his arsenal is, to an extent, likely a byproduct of pitching deeper into games, and facing more batters multiple times. There could be a little chicken-and-egg to what the numbers are showing here. But when I last wrote about Francis, I suggested that what we are seeing is “Bassitt-ification, with a hint of Gausmania,” and that seems to have become even more true in the games since—particularly the former bit.
That maybe sounds less exciting than him finding a single new unhittable weapon that’s suddenly made him invincible, but it does get us closer to feeling confident in the explanation. He’s simply doing a great job of keeping right-handed batters completely off-balance by commanding the ball and being willing to throw any pitch in any count. Even when he’s not managing to get strikeouts with this approach, he seemingly can be effective. That was the case against the Mets, who he dominated despite striking out just one batter, by inducing all kinds of foul balls and shallow pop-ups.
Even if you include that single-strikeout start, since the August 7th outing when his splitter to right-handers first started taking hold Francis ranks second among 103 pitchers (min. 15 innings) by K-BB% against RHB. He trails only Garrett Crochet by that metric, and ranks fifth by strikeout rate in the split, behind only Crochet, Cole Ragans, Sonny Gray, and Blake Snell. He’d be smart to get back to striking guys out—the .093 BABIP he’s produced over his last seven starts will surely not last, even if he seems to have a solid recipe for inducing bad contact—but that’s astounding stuff. And with just a couple weeks left in the season, it feels like he’s already pitched his way into next season’s rotation plans, and seems to have solved a real problem for a front office that will have innumerable other fires to put out this winter.
That is, as long as Francis doesn’t completely fall apart now that the Blue Jays have parted ways with his personal catcher. (Or if he fails to survive the Thunderdome that is cycling in Toronto.)
We’ll see if he can do it again on Wednesday night.
Now here are some stray thoughts…
Serven Cu*t
Somebody’s Heine is crowding Brian Serven’s icebox, and that somebody is Ross Atkins. For the third time in three seasons, the Jays GM has acquired catcher Tyler Heineman—this time via waivers from Boston—and he’s getting a roster spot at Serven’s expense.
That’s right, the Jays are breaking up the wöndertandem of Serven and Bowden Francis at the zenith of their powers. It’s almost as though they believe the pair’s recent success has a whole lot more to do with the guy throwing the ball than the one catching it. “Odd!,” he said sarcastically.
But, actually, this is a mildly interesting transaction, for whatever unbelievably little a mildly interesting backup catcher transaction for a lost team in mid-September is worth.
I mean, I’d much rather be writing about Vlad, Bo, George Springer, Spencer Horwitz, and Juan Soto destroying everything in their path on the way to another division title, but I’m not a Yankees blogger in 2029. Yet. HEYO!
Uhm, anyway, Serven has been a part of the second-best story of this season for the Jays. Heineman is so non-essential that the Jays were already his eighth organization when he was first acquired in 2022, and he’s been through three others since. And Nick Raposo somehow also exists as a catcher on the Jays’ 40-man for some reason.
Why DFA Serven, not Raposo? Why break up a good combo just to add Heineman?
Let me be blunt. Is there a labour crisis in America today? Heineman is simply the better player. He projects to an 87 wRC+ the rest of the way according to ZiPs, and while that's obviously not good, it's far better than the 53 they hang on Serven, and actually fairly close to the 91 mark being produced by catchers (in games when they're catching) this season. Heineman also takes a walk and is a much tougher guy to strike out. Plus, while his power numbers are virtually nonexistent, the same could likely be said for Serven had he not spent a lot of time in Colorado and Albuquerque—two extreme hitters' parks.
Clearly the Jays like Heineman as a guy, and as a receiver and defender. And, honestly, I think there’s a chance he sticks around. Outside of former Blue Jay Danny Jansen, none of the free agent catchers set to hit this market this winter has much appeal. If the Jays don’t find someone better to pair with Alejandro Kirk, or if they don’t prioritize that position, Heineman could realistically be next season’s backup.
I mean, he could also be non-tendered, or lost on waivers when they try to sneak him through (he’ll be out of minor league options next season, though he won’t yet be eligible for salary arbitration). I’m not saying he’s definitely the guy. But he’s a legit second/third catching option the club now has in its back pocket, and I think Serven has showed in this recent cameo that he’s farther down that spectrum. He wasn’t going to Josh Thole his way onto the roster as some kind of Bowden Whisperer.
As for Raposo, I just don’t think there’s a whole lot there. Maybe there’s something the Jays see in him that they like, but it looks more to me that in the wake of Danny Jansen being dealt to Boston and Serven being called up, they really just needed some Triple-A catching depth. That’s all he was for his previous team, the Cardinals, too. He just happened to land a roster spot when their top two guys got hurt earlier this summer, and was quickly ditched when one returned. His claim to a 40-man spot is not long for this world.
* designated for assignment, technically
That one big transaction…
So, MLSE, huh?
It’s a big day over at Rogers, or at least in the boardroom, as Canada awoke to the news on Wednesday morning that the company has seized on recent financial turmoil over at Bell—who late last month had their credit rating downgraded by Moody’s to the last level above junk-bond status—and purchased their rivals’ 37.5% stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the parent company of the Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, and more. With 75% of MLSE and the Jays already in tow, Rogers now owns pro sports in Canada’s biggest market, and suddenly are maybe the biggest sports owner in the world.
We’ve come a long way from Uncle Ted having to have a strikeout explained to him or whatever, haven’t we?
The deal, which is worth $4.7 billion and will see Bell allowed to keep access to TV rights for MLSE clubs for 20 years, has fast-tracked a process that was expected to play out over the next few years and fundamentally changes the sports landscape in this country. The way Sportsnet's Michael Grange tells it, minority shareholder Larry Tanenbaum was strongly allied with Bell—to the point where he “could count on its support at the board level, giving the widely respected entrepreneur and philanthropist nearly complete control of the business, even while owning just 25 per cent of it.”
Now Edward Rogers assumes control in much the same way. Fans of MLSE-owned clubs are understandably worried, especially if they haven't paid attention to how well the Blue Jays have been treated by ownership in the Mark Shapiro years.
But what does this all mean for the Jays? Will they become part of MLSE? Will Rogers lose interest, given all his new toys to play with? Or get distracted by what Grange suggests could be a renewed push for a Toronto NFL franchise?
Well, at this point we can obviously only guess, but it doesn’t immediately feel like a bad thing to me. Rogers is all-in on sports, and with this move, the renovations at Rogers Centre, their newfound willingness to go over MLB’s luxury tax, and their dalliance with Shohei Ohtani last winter, they’ve shown that they’re willing to pay to do it right.
That feels like a bit of a weird and gross thing to say, because for a very long time this was a bad owner, or at least a much more typical one in MLB. And I’m not even consider here whatever fan-unfriendly ways they’ll dream up to turn your money into theirs—and I’m sure there’s a conversation to be had about that, though it’s not as though these teams haven’t already been charging the maximum they think the market will bear. But the evidence continues to mount that they’re not simply treating the Jays as a “cash-generating asset”—words used in Grange's piece to describe what “insiders” told him about Bell's previous unwillingness to sell. Though the results on the field haven't been ideal, and some fans will certainly quibble with how loyal Rogers has been to Shapiro (and Shapiro to Ross Atkins) the days of being happy merely to produce cheap TV content and pocket their cut of MLB's lavish US-national TV deals genuinely feel over.
For me, I think that break is maybe most clearly illustrated by something other than the expenditures mentioned above: the pandemic.
The Jays had MLB's biggest year-over-year attendance drops in both 2018 and 2019. Then, like everyone else, they were forced to play behind closed doors in 2020. And then they spent most of 2021 playing home games in minor league ballparks, which resulted in their total tickets sold going down by nearly one million compared to 2019's low ebb—the club's worse year for attendance since the post-Halladay-trade 2010 season, and second-worst since 2002.
Attendance isn't everything, obviously. But it’s a major piece of a team’s financial puzzle. And while MLB payrolls overall dropped in 2021 to their lowest level since 2015, the Blue Jays—who had more of an excuse than anyone to make cuts, especially because they’d been forced to fairly expensively spruce up Buffalo’s Sahlen Field to accommodate the needs of a big league club—saw theirs go up basically as though nothing had ever happened.
The 2019 Jays finished with a $120 million payroll for players on their 40-man roster. In 2021, that number had jumped to $152 million—the 12th-highest mark in MLB. In 2022 it jumped again to $181 million, and last year they ranked eighth at $218 million (and fifth for Competitive Balance Tax purposes at $258 million).
Now, I don’t want to make this some kind of dewy-eyed, full-throated defence of—ugh—Edward Rogers or the company that bears his name. Whatever he has against Masai Ujiri and the WNBA is odd, and obviously his initial attempts to replace Paul Beeston were hilariously bungled (though they happened in late 2014, not after the 2015 Jays got good, Bruce). But I think there’s every chance he can be a reasonable enough steward—grading on a billionaire failson curve here!—of the new franchises he finds himself in charge of. And I don’t think much should change with the Blue Jays. Particularly because it isn’t purely his largesse that has made the Blue Jays act so differently than in the past. Changes in MLB’s 2011-16 CBA impelled the Jays to (eventually) change their business model, as I (eventually) explained in a section titled “Shapiro and Atkins are what we thought they were” from my 2021 piece on the signing of George Springer:
OK, maybe “we” isn’t the right word here, because since literally day one of the Mark Shapiro era there have seemed to be two camps of Jays fans. On one side were those who were willing to give Shapiro and his handpicked GM, Ross Atkins, the benefit of the doubt. On the other were fans who, to put it politely, were significantly more reluctant to do so. I’m going to try not to turn this post into an airing of grievances dating back half a decade, because everyone reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about, but I’ve still got to touch on it at least a little.
There was always some way these guys were supposedly cheating the fan base, disrespecting the franchise, or dooming it to failure through austerity or ineptitude. Absolutely there have been legitimate reasons to be frustrated along the way to this moment, but the truly outlandish and venomous stuff got a lot of traction. And the way that some of it was able to seep into mainstream channels is especially embarrassing.
To anyone willing to be reasonable about it, however, it has always seemed like the point of hiring Shapiro was to make the Blue Jays act more like a big market club, not less like one. To have him import the concepts that made his Cleveland organization a modern, efficient, and successful one, then actually give him a budget. And, well, here we are.
That all wasn’t just idle speculation, either.
When MLB's collective bargaining agreement with the players union expired in December 2011 the league and players decided to change the revenue sharing process between clubs. Where teams had previously been categorized as high-revenue and low-revenue teams, the 2012 CBA began to gradually disqualify teams in the largest markets from being eligible for revenue sharing regardless of their local revenue. By 2016, the Jays were no longer eligible for payouts, and under the current CBA — which uses a tweaked formula that, according to Cot's, is "based on a market score measuring each market to the average MLB marked based on population, income and cable television households" — they remain excluded.
"(In the 80s and 90s) I never worried about the revenue sharing,” then-president Paul Beeston told ESPN in 2015. “And then when I came back we were one of the largest recipients.”
The business model, which for a time also involved accepting currency equalization payments, had to change. The CBA basically forced the Jays to act like a big market team by removing the main incentive to do otherwise. (I’d speculate that Edward Rogers’ influence has probably had an impact in this regard as well.)
And so, again, here we are.
It’s easy once the revenue sharing payments dry up to suddenly start talking about how “they see winning as good business. They saw that with the Raptors in 2019,” as one of Grange’s sources puts it. But… I don’t know. It’s probably fine!
Quickly…
• OK, let’s maybe not go nuts, Bob.
• The waiver carousel is in full spin, and from their comfortable place outside of the playoff picture, the Jays are making use of it. On Tuesday, that meant picking up RHP Nick Robertson from the Angels. A middle reliever who was originally drafted by the Dodgers, Robertson’s got a minor league option left and has produced decent strikeout rates despite some ugly overall results over 34 2/3 innings. He’s struggled to limit walks this season in the minors, and has had trouble with BABIP, but neither have been an issue for him in the past. The velocity is just mid-90s, which probably limits his future prospects, but an optionable guy with big league experience is something. Even one just DFA’d by the Angels. Maybe he’ll last the winter on the 40-man and become an up/down guy next season, or maybe at some point they try to sneak him through waivers and stash him in Buffalo. Exciting stuff!
• Speaking of the 40-man, Robertson’s spot on the Jays’ one has come at the expense of Will Wagner, who was somewhat surprisingly placed on the 60-day IL prior to Tuesday’s game due knee inflammation that, according to Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith, has been “bothering him in recent months.” He’s headed to Cleveland to see a specialist and his season is over, finishing with a .305/.337/.451 line (125 wRC+) from a .359 BABIP. Impressive stuff, all things considered. But the sample has been small, the walk rate (4.7%) in the big leagues is a bit concerning, and it certainly doesn’t feel like he’s got a spot for next season sewn up at this point just yet.
• The more surprising move on Tuesday was, of course, the Jays’ announcement that Daulton Varsho is also headed to the IL. It’s the 15-day one in his case, but the situation is a bit more alarming, as Varsho—who was hoping for a return to the lineup in Texas this week as recently as two days ago—saw specialist Dr. Keith Meister (aka the Keith Meister) and chose to have a procedure to repair his right rotator cuff and likely won’t be fully recovered when spring training opens in Dunedin next February. Not great! Though with Joey Loperfido and Jonatan Clase around, and Nathan Lukes healthy, there’s at least a little bit of cover there in case there are any setbacks.
• Bo Bichette was also finally back in the lineup on Tuesday, contributing a couple of hits in the 13-8 loss to the Rangers in his first action since mid-July. It’s obviously been a really tough season for Bo, who lifted his wRC+ for the season to a paltry 70 with the pair of singles. But it's nice to see him back, being productive, and hopefully establishing a platform to return stronger next season. And speaking of next year, while this is obviously completely speculative, it feels more like he really will still be here on Opening Day than it has in a while, I think. Surely that's reading too much into his recent comments about wanting to win in Toronto and with Vlad, or maybe it's just because we've had this break from the incessant chatter about his results, but I don’t know… doesn’t it? I mean, I still think he’s going to be tremendously difficult to value in terms of a long-term expensive, so that’s probably not going to happen. And I just have a hard time believing that other teams are going to value one expensive year of him enough to justify the cost the Jays will require to give him up—especially coming off of a season like the one he’s had. (I’m not ready to get maudlin about the potential end of the Bo era just yet, is what I’m saying.)
• I mean, it’s not all bad that they might not get some kind of a huge haul for Bo, or that he might even walk for nothing, right? I think I know at least one guy that would make happy. (via @BlueJays)
• Heading back to Sportsnet, my Blue Jays Happy Hour cohost Nick Ashbourne has had a couple of great ones lately, this week throwing a very tasty Marco Estrada comp on Bowden Francis, and last week giving us a deep dive on Spencer Horwitz’s remarkable rookie season.
• Some really fun stuff from Michael Baumann of FanGraphs, who looks at how Leo Jiménez is getting hit by pitches at a record-breaking pace—basically daring umpires to call him on not attempting to get out of the way, which they aren’t. (And of course Jiménez was hit by another one on Tuesday night in Texas).
• Always a good read: Future Blue Jays has a fresh conversation with Jays director of player development, Joe Sclafani, up for our enjoyment.
• Ryley Delaney of Blue Jays Nation has all the details on former number four overall pick Dillon Tate, who has been called up here on Wednesday to join the Jays’ bullpen.
• And lastly, as I hope you’re aware by now, Blue Jays Happy Hour is now available to watch on YouTube. Here is this week’s episode…
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