A lucky(?) win, Pearson demoted, Vlad rebounds, Chatwood's secret, injury updates, and more!
The Jays won a game in Atlanta that they probably didn’t deserve to on the day that their top pitching prospect got demoted. Plenty to talk about, so before it all gets too stale and the next game gets going, let’s talk!
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The Jays got some great performances on Tuesday night, and some lucky breaks. Let’s start off with a little three up, three down…
▲ Tyler Chatwood
I’m not sure exactly how much worse off the Jays would be without Tyler Chatwood in the bullpen, but they’d definitely be worse. Chatwood has been a revelation now that he’s a reliever full time. He’s been able to eliminate most of what was once a five-pitch arsenal, primarily throwing cutters and sinkers, with only the occasional four-seamer, curveball, or changeup.
Surprisingly, a quick look through some numbers doesn't show a whole lot different from what he was doing before, surprisingly. His velocities and spin rates don't seem different. His rate of pitches in the strike zone doesn’t even seem different, even though his walk rate is well down from his career norms.
So, what gives? Chatwood, it turns out, has an explanation.
I've moved over to the first base side of the rubber this year. It's the first time I've ever been over there, and I feel like it's a more direct line to get over (to the glove side). I don't have to force it. Kind of a little cross bar from that third base is tough over there. Also I feel like it gets me more margin for error. I'm using the whole plate with my two-seam, just letting it, if I do miss, let it run across and it's still in the zone the whole time. So I think that's helping me out big time too.
That’s an interesting development to be sure, but the bigger difference for him this season may simply be health. Chatwood had two great starts for the Cubs early last season, in which it looked like he might have really been figuring things out. His next start was awful and was followed by a trip to the injured list with a back problem. After a layoff of nearly three weeks he returned, only to exit that start with elbow discomfort. When things were looking good, though, they were looking like they do for him right now.
“When we think of sinker velocities, we usually think about pitches that are barely above 90 miles-per-hour or somewhere around there,” wrote Matt Wallach of PitcherList before the injuries ruined Chatwood’s 2020. “While Chatwood’s sinker isn’t the type that manages to touch the upper-90s like some other pitchers, it does sit at around 95 mph. Now, keep in mind that Chatwood’s cutter averages around 90 miles-per-hour of velocity. When paired with his sinker, it’s almost like it functions almost as a changeup. It works out for Chatwood because he does a good job of tunneling the two pitches, but they both end up moving in opposite directions.”
To demonstrate this, Wallach used the following GIF, which was taken from a Pitching Ninja tweet.
“That is pretty much the gist of it,” Wallach continues, “as this essentially shows what Chatwood’s sinker-cutter combo is designed to do. The pitches look similar to each other immediately out of his hand but features late movement with the cutter darting away from righties and the sinker running back in towards righties.”
As a reliever this season he’s managed to stay healthier, and he’s been able to use this combo almost exclusively — and to great effect.
Anyway, he was excellent once again in Tuesday’s opener in Atlanta.
▲ Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Not just one post (by Drew Fairservice over at Vlad Religion) but two (the other being by Paul Berthelot of Blue Jays Nation) dropped on Tuesday afternoon trying to dissect the mini-slump that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had been in over the preceding week or so.
Ho hum, Vladdy went 3-for-5 with an opposite field blast, an RBI single, and an infield single that Jonathan Davis tried (and failed) to pull a Donaldson Dash on.
A vindicated GROF has returned quickly with some words on Vlad’s showing last night.
Those three pieces are very much worth a read, of course. And for some additional non-slumpy Vlad content, try Sacha Pisani of the Analyst, who takes a big picture look at Vlad and his father, as well as my former colleague Kaitlyn McGrath of the Athletic, who talks to athletes in other sports about Vlad’s new penchant for doing the splits.
▲ Robbie Ray
The man with the tight pants was bitten a little bit by the home run ball, but that's a much less significant problem for the version of Robbie Ray who doesn't walk anybody than it was the old one. Ray continued his impressive turn as a command guy who still strikes a ton of guys out, issuing just one free pass while striking out ten over six innings. More please!
▼ Almost not winning!
That was a close one, and it felt last night that the Jays got away with something. We’ll take it though, obviously. With much thanks to Freddie Freeman, A.J. Minter, and Jacob Webb!
▼ Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr.'s night only lasted three plate appearances, as he was a casualty of National League baseball when all the Jays position-switching started in the seventh inning. And you certainly can't blame Charlie Montoyo for that. Gurriel's rough couple of weeks to start the season have turned now into a rough six weeks. He's slashing .200/.223/.287, which gives him a wRC+ of just 39. Only four qualified hitters in baseball have been worse so far, and with Randal Grichuk still going strong, and George Springer slated to begin running again on Thursday, Gurriel is running out of time to make a case to play more when everybody is at full health.
If Springer were somehow healthy today, I wouldn’t even be totally surprised to see Gurriel get sent down for a bit. Definitely not something I expected this season.
▼ The “Tomahawk Chop”
Really? You people are still doing this? What the hell year is it?
Scuttlebutt
Charlie Montoyo provided a number of updates on injured players in his pre-game Zoom session here on Wednesday. To wit:
• Thomas Hatch will throw a sim game on Thursday (scheduled for 2-3 innings.
• Springer, as mentioned above, will begin running on Thursday. He's already been taking batting practice.
• Rafael Dolis will throw a bullpen on Friday. Montoyo didn't say this, but one would think that if that goes well he should be fairly close to returning.
• Patrick Murphy threw a bullpen this week that lasted 18 pitches. Because this was a shoulder issue, and because I'd assume he's going to be either a starter or a bulk-inning reliever, he's probably still got some time before he's ready to go. And, of course, he's on the 60-day IL, so won't be eligible to pitch in the majors until the start of June anyway.
• David Phelps has gone for an MRI on his lat strain and the Blue Jays are awaiting the results.
• Anthony Castro is maybe not as close to ready as advertised, as he's still experiencing some tightness in his forearm. Still, he's scheduled to throw a bullpen on the weekend.
• Joe Panik has been taking ground balls and will begin hitting in the cage here on Wednesday, but as his injury is to his calf, I'd assume running will be the big obstacle there. Your frothing desire to see Panik return will just have to wait.
• Julian Merryweather has begun what the Jays now seem to call a "throwing progression," which is to say that he's doing some long toss. Because there's likely no longer going to be any pretending that he's a starter it might not take an exorbitantly long time to get him up to speed, but clearly he's still quite a distance off.
• Alejandro Kirk is throwing and hitting off a tee. Seems soon for a guy who just went on the 60-day IL, but I suppose I've already complained about that business enough.
Links
• Per the team, we’ve got some new details about getting tickets to the Jays’ soon-to-be home, Buffalo’s Sahlen Field. Great news for Western New Yorkers, I guess!
• Some delicious shrimp in New Hampshire last night, and another outstanding night for catcher Gabriel Moreno. Martin and Groshans? Not exactly lighting it up in the early days of their Double-A careers, but so what? (In other minor league news, Alek Manoah is on the bump for Buffalo/Trenton here on Wednesday night).
• Of course, there was an even bigger story in the Fisher Cats game last night, and that was the performance of prospect Simeon Woods Richardson. The teenager allowed just one hit, a solo home run, while striking out eight batters over five innings, with just two walks. There were some “momentary lapses of control” for him, reports Future Blue Jays, but more performances like this and the hype train is going to start getting loud. Of course, given his age, I doubt he’s in Buffalo anytime soon, but Toronto sometime next year doesn’t seem wholly unrealistic given that he’s already at Double-A. (Hey, he’d be older than Elvis Luciano was in 2019!)
• Site-related content alert: José Bautista spoke to Britt Ghiroli of the Athletic about flippin’ them bats. Here’s the money quote so that you don’t have to go and read the part about Bautista agreeing with Trevor effing Bauer (though, to be fair, this is basically the only topic Bauer isn’t a complete knob about): “I hate to talk about bat flips like some important thing you spend time working on. Sometimes the moment just takes you there, that’s how it happened for me. It was raw emotion and that’s how it played out. With these young players, I enjoy watching them play, more than anything (they do after that). But would I rather they celebrate than golf clap? Yeah.”
• Also notable from Ghiroli’s piece: the Houston Astros are providing furnished apartments to all of their minor league players this season. This is notable, of course, because MLB has generally built exploitation of minor leaguers’ labor into their business model, and worked extremely hard to maintain the ability to do that. It is also notable because it’s 2021 and teams… aren’t… doing this already?
• Gregor Chisholm of the Toronto Star has a fresh mail bag out, and feast your eyes on where he’s at regarding Alek Manoah: “If I were to guess, I’d say early June for Manoah, but if this weird season has taught us anything it’s not to make projections too far into the future. Another injury could press Manoah into action at any time and another dominating performance or two for Buffalo could do the same.” (Agreed!)
• Let Ryu swing, you cowards! (Also please implement the universal DH as soon as humanly possible.)
The Pearson problem
Nate Pearson was not the same guy Jays fans saw in his disastrous in Houston on Sunday when he made his season debut for Buffalo. That’s a fact that I think he been lost a little bit in some of the conversations I’ve seen online about the Jays’ handling of their top pitching prospect. True, Pearson was unable to make it through the fourth inning back on May 4th, but of the 78 pitches that he threw, 53 of them went for strikes. He struck out eight batters. For the Jays on Sunday that number was zero. And of his 64 pitches thrown just 28 found the zone.
We can see the location of those Triple-A pitches, via MiLB.com, in the graphic below. Or, as some may insist, we can see the approximate location of his pitches. The data getting fed into MiLB Gameday is not exactly renown for its accuracy, and the camera angle in Trenton didn’t exactly make this stuff easy to corroborate, but having re-watched Pearson’s performance and listened to the call, if not fully precise, this is at least some pretty plausible guesswork. He was in and around the zone all day.
Clearly that does not look like the strike zone plot of the guy who against the Astros didn’t have the faintest idea of where the ball was going.
But don’t take my word for it, just have a look at this mess.
I think seeing all this, and particularly the way he looked in Buffalo, is essential for anyone who wants to opine about whether the Jays have handled him correctly. And, hoo boy, there sure have been a lot of experts on that crawling out of the woodwork lately, haven’t there?
Thing is, everybody wants to see Pearson succeed, and to he him being put in positions where he can succeed. The Jays have invited scrutiny by the way they insisted he’d need to earn his way back into the big leagues, had him speaking openly about making mechanical tweaks, then called him up at the first possible opportunity only to send him back down almost immediately. That all this has led to some hot takes is not in the least bit surprising.
But the way I see it is that the Jays have reacted to the circumstances in front of them the best way they’ve known how, and I’m not sure what more fans can really ask of them here. There was a case to call Pearson up, just as there was a case to keep him in the minors a little longer. There was a case to keep him in the majors as he sorts himself out, just as there was a case to send him back down.
Call him up?
• Pitched well in season debut
• Presumably pitched well at the alt-site
• Already has major league experience (and some success)
• A clear need in the rotation
Keep him down?
• Only lasted 3 2/3 innings in debut
• Still working his way back from injury
• Has struggled often in MLB
• Recent mechanical tweaks
Keep him up?
• Too easy for him to dominate minor leaguers
• Command problems seemingly only an issue in MLB
• Access to the best coaches and resources
• Don’t want to shake his confidence further
Send him down?
• Less pressure in the minor leagues
• Can repeat his mechanics and regain confidence
• Less likely to face an early hook, allowing him to stay stretched out
• MLB is not a development league
I guess I understand why the idea that Pearson may be unduly delicate has taken hold for some people, because too often we’ve seen him lose himself in the majors, but the idea that what he’s doing can’t work, or won’t work, or that he needs to be rebuilt in the lab is absurd. There have been some outlandish suggestions out there to the meaning of what seems to me like it was a relatively simple course of events: Pearson pitched well in his Triple-A debut. He could have been given more time there but the Jays had a need so they called him up. It didn’t go well because he struggled at repeating his best delivery. It’s likely that had to do with the fresh mechanical tweaks he’s made over recent weeks to make himself less susceptible to injury. It’s also likely that this was compounded by the speed of the game at the big league level, the pressure inherent to pitching in the majors, and the quality of the competition he was facing.
More comfort with his mechanics will help avoid these scenarios. More game experience will help his ability to correct things on the fly. It’s not fair to his teammates, or to any of the club’s other potential starters — including Alek Manoah, who may well eventually take his place — to have him trying to find his way at the big league level.
Development in the majors can be a thing. In particular, it can be a thing for guys like Manoah and Pearson, because they have the pure stuff to get big league hitters out and succeed despite limitations with some of their secondary offerings. But Pearson will only be able to do that if he’s able to throw strikes. As a guy with just 33 walks in 127 minor league innings, there should be no doubt that he can do that reasonably well as long as he’s not flying open, or jerking his head at the point of release, or whatever he was doing Sunday that caused him to get out of whack. Taking some time to make sure he’s really right over a few more starts in Triple-A is a fine solution to all this. Then, eventually, you give him a shot in the big leagues again and go from there. No need to overthink it.
Top image via the Toronto Blue Jays/@BlueJays
Thank you very much for the graphs about Person's location. So he _can_ throw strikes, he just _didn't_. Like a lot of us, I was wondering ....
Appreciate the deep dive on Chatwood. Not thinking about buying his jersey yet but damn he's been gold so far.