Weekend Up!: Like Christmas in July in April
On positives from Manoah's mess, King Kikuchi, Romano's rib, Silly Bassgate, revisiting some premature conclusions, the Astros series, a minor move, Vlad, Varsho, Pop, Mayza, James Click, and more!
It was a gorgeous weekend for baseball — or just about anything outdoors — in Southern Ontario, and the Blue Jays did just about all they could to help make it that way by handing the previously undefeated Tampa Bay Rays their first loss of the season on Friday, and their first series loss of the year as well.
Sure, the weekend ended with an Alek Manoah-sized thud, and the Jays missed a chance to — remarkably — pull to within two games of the formerly red hot Rays. But the sun was out, the roof was open, the new ballpark looked great, the crowds were big and boisterous, and there were positives to be taken on the field.
I already addressed several things that happened in Friday’s game in my premature conclusions piece from a couple days ago — which we’ll revisit somewhat below — so we’ll focus at first on Saturday and Sunday.
Here’s Weekend Up!…
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Up: Manoah’s middle innings
Am I putting lipstick on a pig here by tagging anything to do with Manoah’s afternoon on Sunday with an “Up”? Yes, obviously. His final line was seven runs on nine hits, four walks, and a hit batter over just 4 2/3 innings. But it really was close to being a very different, relatively positive outing for him.
Obviously, he started terribly. In his 35-pitch first inning he threw 23 fastballs (either four-seamers or sinkers) and struggled badly to locate them — especially at first, missing constantly to his arm side.
And yet, he ultimately righted the ship enough to almost get out of the bases-loaded, no-out jam he'd gotten himself into with only one run on the board. In fact, one pitch before Josh Lowe poked a little looper into no man's land to score the Rays' second and third runs of the inning, Manoah thought he had.
Perhaps Alek was playing up his reaction with the hope of influencing the umpires, because it certainly seems to me like Lowe successfully checked his swing there, but the margins were that thin, and it could have been a very different ballgame if Lowe hadn't quite been able to pull the bat back so well.
(It could also have been a different game had the Blue Jays managed to take better advantage of their first three batters getting on base in the bottom of the frame — or if they’d scored more than one run all day! — but I digress.)
Manoah didn’t exactly cruise from there, but for a while he was much better. His fastball location improved dramatically and the few Rays that did manage to get on base weren’t able to score.
This continued until there were two outs in the fifth — both of which had come by way of strikeouts. Then Taylor Walls "worked" a five-pitch walk without taking the bat off of his shoulder and Manoah, by this point at pitch number 87 on a hot April afternoon, started to labour a bit.
On Sportsnet's broadcast, Buck Martinez wondered if a pitcher as big as Manoah is perhaps being affected by the new pitch clock more than others because he had previously been taking his time between throws to give himself a little bit of a breather. I suspect there's something to that. In 2022, Statcast measured "pitch tempo" — the average time between pitch releases — for 391 pitchers, and Manoah ranked number 322 with the bases empty, and 309th with runners on. In terms of his percentage of "slow" pitches — ones he took more than 30 seconds to throw — he ranked 363rd with the bases empty at 8.2%, and 347th with runners on at 20.5%.
This year, he's obviously not allowed to take as much time between throws.
And yet he once again very nearly got out of this one undamaged, as it took replay to overturn what would have been an inning-ending caught stealing on an attempt by Walls. In fact, the delay for the replay review, and the need to refocus when the inning continued, may well have contributed to the four run outburst that came next.
So, yeah, it was a bad outing, and there are problems that need to be addressed here. There’s nothing he can do about the pitch clock, but he seems to be coming out of his delivery a bit. His landing has often seemed troublesome for him, as his frequent focus on the dirt on the front side of the mound likely attests. And he’s had problems with his slider, both in terms of location…
…and horizontal break/sweep.
But, for me, the mechanical stuff is fixable, the increased velocity is a great sign that nothing physical has been behind his issues so far this year, and the problems he had at the start and the end of his outing are far more likely to be anomalies than the nice run he had in the middle innings is. He’ll be fine.
Up: Yu-Cy Kikuchi
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Yusei Kikuchi looked really good in his latest start — maybe he’s turned a corner!
WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP ME??? Because you've definitely heard that before.
It's easy to forget, because the indelible memory of Kikuchi's 2022 was the interminable slog from June through August when the Blue Jays had no answers — either for his struggles, or to the question of who would have been a better option for his rotation spot — but after a rough start to last season he actually had a sparkling May. Over 26 2/3 innings across five starts that month he pitched to a 2.36 ERA, struck out 31 while walking just 11, and held opposing batters to a .177/.269/.260 line. He even, as Ian Hunter pointed out on Twitter the other day, had an outing that, by Game Score, was better than the one he put together for the Jays on Saturday afternoon against the Rays.
You can absolutely be forgiven for thinking that Saturday was his best start as a member of the Blue Jays, though. It’s been so long since he’s been that good that it almost seemed unthinkable.
Yet there it was. And you can see it in his fastball command (in this case to right-handers only, as Kikuchi didn’t face a left-hander in this one).
In 2022 he was frequently well off the plate to both sides against right-handers, but mostly was grooving them to the middle of the zone. This season he’s been better in terms of keeping it closer to the edges, but on Saturday you can see that he was peppering that borderline high strike on the outer half of the zone.
The results prior to this one hadn't looked much different than in 2022 but, as I noted in last week’s Weekend Up piece, he pitched better in his previous start than his final line made it look.
In this one it was sliders down and in, and working the high fastball. Only 6 whiffs on the slider is a little on the light side or him, and there were a lot of foul balls on the heater, but he got the job done.
“I’m able to play the mind games again this year with the batters,” Kikuchi told reporters, including Keegan Matheson of MLB.com, through club interpreter Yusuke Oshima. “Last year, I started to think a little bit too much on the mound. This year, I’m enjoying the mind games that I have with the batters at the plate.”
And he didn't even have the changeup working! He was erratic with command and only generated whiffs on two of the 16 hacks Rays batters took at it. I understand that I'm getting way ahead of myself here, but if the command holds and he can get the change working the way it normally does — each of the last two years he had a 40% whiff rate on it against RHB; this year so far he's at just 11% — that's actually a pretty exciting pitcher.
We're a long way from there yet, and we've heard all this stuff before, so don’t go calling me optimistic because I’m not. But the ingredients are all still there.
Up: Jordan Romano’s health
Here’s an easy one, because maybe the most important thing to happen to the Jays over the weekend was the fact that Jordan Romano wasn’t more injured after taking a comebacker off the chest.
Romano required X-rays, which came back negative, and the club announced that he’d suffered a contusion to his right rib cage. Fortunately, he told the Sun’s Rob Longley on Sunday that he was “good to go” if called upon in that game, meaning he should continue to be available as the Jays head into a tough road trip that takes them to Houston and then the Bronx.
Hopefully the next time he’s asked to close out a game it won’t get as close to going sideways as it did during the three-single bottom of the ninth on Saturday, which saw the Rays load the bases with just one out, but at least he’ll be able to take the ball. A prolonged absence from Romano is the last thing the team needs — or close to it, as I only ranked him fifth in my pre-season list of the Blue Jays the club can least afford to miss significant time this year.
Looking back…
As mentioned above, my previous piece here was a look at some premature conclusions to be drawn from the Jays’ early season trends. Well, over the weekend some of those conclusions of mine were put to the test. Here are some updates…
• One of my conclusions was that, as far as the Jays’ new speed and defence thing goes, they’re doing it more with instincts and speed. I don’t think there could have been a better demonstration of that than the two huge defensive plays made by one of the slowest players on the team, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., in the bottom of the eighth of Saturday’s win. He truly has become an incredible defender at first base.
• Another of my conclusions was that Daulton Varsho is handling lefties just fine, and while I'm hardly about to go back on that one after a couple of plate appearances, when we're talking about micro samples a lot can change quickly. Varsho faced Josh Fleming twice on Saturday (he didn't play Sunday against Shane McClanahan), and grounded out twice. Because of those two plate appearances his wRC+ in the split has dipped from 128 to 104. Keeping his head above water at least!
• Two of my conclusions involving relievers went slightly sideways. Zach Pop was a bit shaky when he relieved Alek Manoah in the fifth inning on Sunday, issuing a pair of walks before getting the out he needed — via strikeout, which remains a good sign. And Tim Mayza moved away from the whole one-pitch pitcher thing he'd been doing so far this year, delivering ten pitches in total: six sliders and just four sinkers. (Not unsual for Mayza was that the only right-handed batter he faced, Taylor Walls, struck a ball quite well. Walls’ 96 mph liner produced an xBA of .850, but fortunately for the Jays it was directed straight at right fielder Jordan Luplow).
• Another conclusion was that the Blue Jays’ renovations appear to be winners, and… uh… I think we can probably take the “premature” tag off of that one.
• And then there was “Anthony Bass is a bit worrying.” Flight attendants take note!
I assure you I have no comment on any of that business — because, to paraphrase Michael Jordan, people with the wrong opinion become paid subscribers to Substacks too — but I am a little bothered by the fact that a site like BlogTO can imply in their headline that Bass was actually on the flight in question when he’s been in Toronto all week and travels via team charter. That’s just either lazy or intentionally misleading.
As for the on-field stuff, I pointed out that Bass's sinker simply hasn't been working for him this year — a problem, seeing as it was a great pitch for him last season — and, lo and behold, he only threw one of them on Sunday. Granted, he only threw eight pitches total, so it's hard to make any sort of clear judgment there. But 50% of the pitches he threw were four-seamers, making it just the third time since the start of 2022 that he cracked the 50% mark with that particular pitch. He's used the four-seamer just 10% of the time overall in each of the last two seasons, and used it even less in the two years before that. Interesting, no?
Looking ahead…
• They’re all big series when the expectations are that you make the playoffs, but a trip to Houston is never easy — even when the Astros are somehow just 7-9 — and that’s where the Jays find themselves starting here on Monday. (A weekend set against the Yankees in the Bronx will follow.)
• Kevin Gausman is first up for the Jays, and it turns out that he’s very good — his splitter, in particular.
• Houston will send RHP Cristian Javier to the hill to face Gausman. Javier sparkled last season, putting up a 2.54 ERA over 30 outings/25 starts, and accumulating 3.4 fWAR. So far this season, however, his velocity is down a little more than 1 mph on average (with most of that loss coming from his last two starts), and with it are his strikeouts. He's helped compensate for that by avoiding walks better than ever before, but he's still on a 4.24 ERA and a 3.74 FIP. The velocity is probably the thing to look for early: if you're seeing 94s he's likely in a good spot.
• Of course, Javier will still have the Astros’ defence behind him, and it was the gloves that were the problem on Sunday as the Rangers beat them 9-1 to take two of three at Minute Maid.
• Probables for games two and three: Chris Bassitt vs. José Urquidy (RHP, 2.35 ERA), and José Berríos vs. Luis Garcia (RHP, 7.71 ERA)
• Small roster move for the Jays ahead of this one, as Jordan Luplow has been optioned to Buffalo to make way for Nathan Lukes. As was the case with his initial stint with the team, we likely won’t see Lukes a lot. However, Framber Valdez, who started Sunday’s game, is the only left-handed pitcher on the Astros’ active roster currently, so having the left-handed-hitting Lukes up for this series makes sense.
• Lastly, looking way ahead, we have some interesting words, via Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, from former Astros GM James Click. Now a member of the Jays’ front office, Click tells Benny Fresh that he could see himself staying with the Jays “quite a long time.”
He also spoke about his role here, which is different than the job he did when he broke in with the Rays, “building out their proprietary database, using his coding skills to pull in as much information as possible.” The math, Click says, “has moved beyond me.” Now he’s in a broad role, with “the ability to work with various departments,” and less involved in day-to-day operations.
Interesting read! I won’t give the rest of it away!
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