Stray Thoughts... - Chappin' my @$$

On Matt Chapman's massive hitting struggles, firing the hitting coach, Davis Schneider, Orelvis Martinez, Addison Barger, laundry, Vlad, Tanner Bibee, playoff odds, Hyun Jin Ryu, and more!

It will be extremely funny how mad people get when, at the end of the year, Mark Shapiro is like: “We put together a team with a top 10 offence that just happened to not score as much as it should when it mattered, an elite pitching staff, mostly great defence. There’s not a lot more you can do.”

The seas are angry today, my friends. Losing to finish up 3-10 in a season series with a team you’re better than (as of a couple days ago, I’m not looking again) by wRC+, starters’ ERA, bullpen ERA, DRS and OAA will do that. Also the team has the best record in the American League. Also you’re currently on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. Also shut up stat boy! I know what I saw!

If you ask me, I wouldn’t recommend tying up too much of your emotional wellbeing into a sport like baseball if you’re not prepared or equipped to process all the dumb, random, unexplainable stuff that’s going to be happening all around you constantly. But what do I know?

Nothing matters! Eat Arby’s! Here are some stray thoughts…

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I’ll be honest here, friends. This site keeps the lights on for me, but it isn’t a cash cow. And I could live a lot more comfortably than I do right now if I was willing to put some of my work behind a paywall and push a bunch readers who are on the fence into becoming paid subscribers. But, the thing is, I know that times are tough for a lot of people and I really don’t want to become inaccessible to anyone. So, if you can afford it, and you value what I do and aren’t already a paid subscriber, I’d ask that you consider upgrading your free membership to a paid one. Thanks. — Stoeten

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Chapstick

If you’ve just awoken from a coma you’ve been in since April, first of all, glad you pulled through. Second of all, congratulations on not having had to suffer through this bizarre season. And third of all, it may come as quite a surprise to you that Matt Chapman is in the middle of an abysmal year at the plate.

Plenty of Jays fans are at the end of their rope with the club’s pending free agent third baseman. Now, based on some quick Twitter searching I can report that those may include rather rash types who for some reason think where a player hits in the batting order really matters, or that middling prospects in a middling system having nice enough seasons in heavily offence-tilted environment in the International League could be pushed straight from Buffalo to the big leagues and start showing up veteran hitters. But on the Chapman front I can’t say they’re wrong.

I mean, this is bleak…

There are, I should note, just 139 qualified hitters in the league so far this year (the leverage/RISP numbers quoted are clearly using different cutoffs), which somehow makes this all look worse.

Chapman's unbelievable April and otherworldly defence are good enough to have powered him to a 115 wRC+ and 3.2 fWAR overall, but... uh... the batting order people I was dumping on above probably have a point here. It shouldn't have taken until this past Sunday in Cincinnati for Chapman to finally be dropped as far as seventh in the lineup. Especially since it's not like the bottom third is some kind of a no-go zone for him. He'd hit there twice before this season: the fourth game of the year and on opening day.

It's worth noting here, in Chapman's defence, that over the course of his career he's been a 120 wRC+ hitter with runners in scoring position, which is better than his overall career mark of 110. (His high leverage mark dips to 103, but so does the league's. This year batters in high leverage situations have a 96 wRC+.) He had a 121 wRC+ with RISP last season. Because—perhaps you've heard—this stuff just isn't sticky.

But year-to-year sticky or not, clearly he's going through it this season. A few less plate appearances behind hitters likely to reach base consecutively certainly couldn't hurt this unbelievably scuffle-prone Blue Jays lineup. And the fact that such a move has only just recently happened isn't dissuading anyone out there from thinking that the club’s decision-makers wasted far too much of this season trying nothing because they were out of ideas.

But there’s something else about Chapman’s 2022 that I think demands notice here. Here’s what I tweeted on Thursday night when quoting the tweet above:

Last year Chapman seemed to turn his season around after a miserable April and May by dramatically increasing his pull rate: 43% in the first half (107 wRC+), 54% in the second (129 wRC+).

So of course this year he’s pulling it less (39%) than in any year since his rookie season.

I could have dug a little deeper before firing off the tweet and made the difference even more stark. At the end of last May, Chapman had an 85 wRC+ and a 38.5% pull rate. From June 1 on onward he had a 131 wRC+ and a 52% pull rate.

Pull the ball, Matt! Stop chasing April’s ghosts! It's not too late to go back!

Coaches challenged?

Before we leave this subject there was something else I said last night, in a follow-up tweet to the one I’ve quoted, that I think is worth revisiting.

If I didn’t think players actually have agency over their choices and success or failure I might grumble something here about the hitting coach.

I’ve been hard on the “fire the hitting coach!” types throughout this miserable season, and may yet end up looking foolish for it. The Jays could absolutely end up making some changes to their staff after the year is through. But that won’t mean I’m wrong, and I think Chapman’s situation presents a natural way to make that clear.

It’s been something of a running joke all year that the Jays aren't pulling the ball as much this season—Guillermo!—as they were in more successful days, though that isn't exactly true. As a team they’ve gone from a 40.1% rate in 2022 to a 39.4% rate.

It is perhaps true that they're not pulling it with authority, in the air, as much as they were last year though. And it's certainly true that both Chapman and George Springer have seen pretty significant changes in this regard. Both have gone from a pull rate of 48% in 2022 to a rate of 39% this year.

But… like… is this them blindly following some misguided directive from above? When everybody else’s pull rates have been about the same?

Have Chapman and Springer handed over their careers—in Chapman's case in an all-important year preceding his first taste of free agency—to coaches? The craft that, over a literal lifetime, they've acquired such expertise in as to be earning eight-figure paycheques every year?

I would humbly suggest that no. No, they have not. The Jays aren't paying millions upon millions of dollars to players who've earned that money to be passive instruments of a backroom staff making peanuts by comparison. If hitting coaches were as instrumental as fans seem to think, wouldn’t the best ones be as coveted as the most expensive free agents?

Frequently we hear members of the organization talk about being there to support and give players the resources they need to succeed. Constantly we see players in the dugout talking amongst themselves about their craft. Bo Bichette said in 2016 that he agreed to sign with the Jays because they were going to let him be himself. Bo Bichette in 2023 spent his time in the dugout while on the injured list going around to teammates reviewing video and talking about hitting, about the pitches they’re seeing, about opposing pitchers.

These guys are the experts. They're the ones with all the skin in the game. And I am certain that the Blue Jays' hitters would be the first to tell you, "we suck, not the coaches."

Even in the story of José Bautista—which I saw some people using to emphasize the importance of great coaching because of the gratitude he showed Cito Gaston and Dwayne Murphy during his Level of Excellence ceremony—was clearly one of a collaborative process and his talent. Or take the story of Yusei Kikuchi, a guy the Blue Jays seemed to always have ideas they felt could really help him, but who took until the middle of year two to really find success with them because he either wasn’t fully bought in, wasn’t executing, or some combination of both. In either case, he’s obviously the one driving the bus.

Now, yes, certain coaches can have better ideas than others. Certain organizations do things better than others. Not all coaches are created equal. But all coaches are equally impossible to evaluate through your fucking TV. You just can’t isolate what their impact is. Enough already.

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10/10, no notes.

Hold on, what was that Ben said?

The Blue Jays are not exactly an organization that likes to speak in absolutes, so I'm not surprised that John Schnedier wouldn't close the door on the possibility of Orelvis Martinez or Addison Barger seeing some time in the majors once the calendar flips to September. Maybe it will happen! But I'm with Ben that it doesn't seem especially likely. (On the pitching side, I assume Ben simply forgot that Chad Green is coming. Unless he thinks Green will be up and Bowden Francis back down before then. Either way, let’s put that aside.)

Regarding prospect-hugging, I do get the impulse there. At the risk of making myself sound unbelievably elderly, when I was a (super cool) teen I wrote a patch for NBA Live 95 for PC—which a lot of people actually downloaded—that updated the rosters to include players drafted after the '95 season, basing their attributes on what I was able to glean from watching college basketball constantly on TV and whatever else I could find out about them. I guarantee you, nobody was ever higher on the NBA potential of guys like Loren Meyer or Cuonzo Martin than I was. Lol.

But... yeah. Barger has been good since the All-Star break (.904 OPS), and even better if you look at just August (.927). And Orelvis has been alright since moving up to Triple-A (.863 OPS). But, again, those numbers need to be viewed in the context of the .801 average OPS in the International League this season. And with the stakes as high as they are right now, the Jays can't really afford to run guys out there and let them sink or swim. The whole Paul DeJong debacle made that abundantly clear!

Or look at Davis Schneider, who went 2-for-17 following his unbelievable start and is now having trouble getting back into the lineup.

As Nick and I discussed on this week's Blue Jays Happy Hour, I don't necessarily agree with the way Schneider has been handled. He's added in four walks over this post-Boston stretch and seems to take good at-bats when he’s in there (though I'm not half as confident that I can evaluate that as most Jays fans seem to be when they see an at-bat with an outcome they don't like). I'd like to see some more opportunities for him mixed in. But from where?

Whit Merrifield is in enough of an ebb that I could see Schneider steal the occasional game from him, but I understand why the Jays—and most fans—would be reluctant to do that. Matt Chapman is probably too important defensively to start having his time cut into at this crucial stage, awful as he's been at the plate. Cavan Biggio has a 122 wRC+ since the All-Star break, and you're certainly not giving at-bats against right-handed pitchers to Schneider over him. Springer? No. Varsho? No. Belt or Vladdy? No. Espinal? He's not really playing either.

TSN's Scott Mitchell released his mid-season top prospect update in late July, which means it accounted for most of Schneider's impressive season, but isn't clouded by the incredibly loud debut. In it he grouped him with other bat-first guys and suggested he'd probably get a cup of coffee in the major leagues soon. But he also wrote that he could be a trade chip, given he doesn't fit the club's newfound emphasis on defence. And he added that he and Spencer Horwitz are “likely capped out as bench bats on a team with World Series aspirations like the Jays.”

Scoff at the World Series thing if you like—it's very easy at this point!—but that evaluation really shouldn't have changed much in two months.

And if Schneider is justifiably having trouble forcing his way into the lineup, what's to make anybody think Barger or Martinez—less big-league-ready and having less impressive seasons—are players to pin our hopes on?

Did somebody say rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Quickly…

• "Can a struggling hitter turn it around in the last month?" is the question asked by Eno Sarris in his latest for the Athletic. Rather incredibly, here's what he says the numbers tell us: “A struggling hitter this far into the season has a 52 percent chance of continuing to come up short against his preseason projections, a 20 percent chance of playing more or less to his projections for the final month, and a 28 percent chance of getting hot.”

• Still with Eno, he singles out Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as one of the hitters "primed for good months despite not playing to projections so far this year." I understand your skepticism, but let's also not forget that there are, like, six other Blue Jays who are underperforming their projections as well. Don't say I didn't warn you if it happens.

• The Jays host Cleveland for a three-game weekend set that begins tonight. The Guardians will send impressive rookie starter Tanner Bibee to the hill for the first game, and though he seems to be getting and better as the season goes on, he hasn’t been completely untouchable of late. In fact, in his last five starts only one team has failed to sc—

Ahh… yes, I see.

(Btw, seriously, that props.cash promo is a good deal. Monthly subscriptions. Not just one month. Monthly! Give it a try. STOETEN25)

• Based on the conversation around the team lately I bet that the Blue Jays’ playoff odds have really taken a massive hi—

Ahh… yes, I see.

• Please no one tell this to Hyun Jin Ryu, the man has already been through so much.

• Lastly, the Astros, Mariners, and Rangers are all going to beat up on each other the rest of the way, providing a nice and easy path for the Jays. Relax. And enjoy the ballgame tonight! I’m sure it won’t be unbelievably frustrating in any way at all!

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