The Jays haven’t been firing all cylinders just yet in 2021, but they just won a series at the dreaded Trop, so it certainly isn’t all bad. Let’s talk about it!
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It wasn’t easy, but the Jays managed to get the job done in Tampa on Saturday and Sunday, splitting the final two games of their series with the Rays to earn a series win. Let’s rewind a little bit and take a look at those efforts with a couple games of three up, three down…
Saturday: Jays 3-5 Rays
▲ Cavan Biggio’s bat
We'll start here, because just as I was being as hard on Biggio as I've ever been he went out and had himself a day at the plate. Only one of his three hits really sizzled off the bat — his first inning single had an exit velocity of 97.1 mph, his next two registered at 47.6 and 85 — but still, that's exactly what you want to see him doing. It doesn't alleviate my concerns, but I'd be awfully happy for those to be proven wrong and this game was a step in the right direction. At least on the offensive side of the ball.
▲ Robbie Ray
The one-out, two-run home run that Ray gave up to Mike Brosseau in the sixth was a real killer, but the rest of his effort was so good that I can't take away his up arrow here. Nine strikeouts and zero walks? From Robbie Ray?!?! Yeah, more of that, please.
▲ Another big first inning
It didn't power the Jays to a victory the way their outburst against Tyler Glasnow did in Friday's series opener, but it was still great to see the Blue Jays put some runs on the board early. (Honourable mention: Randal Grichuk staying hot and Bo Bichette’s throw to nab Brosseau on “the Biggio play” in the eighth.)
▼ Jordan Romano
It was nice to see a key power reliever return from the injured list and retake his place at the back of the Jays' bullpen, and the fact that the Rays broke the game's 3-3 deadlock during his time on the mound wasn't entirely his fault, but that's certainly not to say Romano was good in this one. He wasn't. Romano faced three batters total, walking two, then giving up a rocket off the bat of Manuel Margot to plate what would ultimately hold up as the winning run.
Thing is, what happened was less of a concern than the way it happened. Romano struggled to find the strike zone and, worse than even that, maxed out at just 94.9 on his fastball and 86.4 on his slider. That's 2.0 and 3.3 mph slower than his season averages on those two pitches. Was he really ready to return from the IL? It didn't look like it.
▼ Through the wickets!
Like I said above, this ball was scalded. It came off of Manuel Margot’s bat at 109.1 mph and according to Statcast had an expected batting average (xBA) of .490. It would have been a difficult play for a third baseman no matter what. Making it more difficult was the fact that, with runners on first and second with nobody out, the Jays had Cavan Biggio playing in a bit at third in anticipation of a bunt, as you can see in the clip below. (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was in even closer on the first base side.)
They did this despite the fact that Margot didn’t show bunt on either of the first two pitches of the at-bat, and that, as Buck Martinez noted on the broadcast, Margot had never been asked to lay down a sac bunt as a member of the Rays.
I’d wager Jays manager Charlie Montoyo knows what the Rays might do in a situation like that better than just about anybody outside of the Rays organization, so you’ve got to defer to him on the positioning stuff I guess. But a little extra depth would have given Biggio a better to even just keep the ball in front of him, which would have saved a run. Still, as compromised as his reaction time may have been, I don’t think it’s being too harsh to say he should have had that one. (The official scorer in Tampa thought so, charging him with an error on the play.)
▼ Ryan #@*#($% Yarbrough
The Jays may have got to Rays "opener" Brent Honeywell Jr., but it was a different story when it came to Tampa's bulk guy in this one, the soft-tossing weak-contact-inducing lefty Ryan Yarbrough. Throwing his 82 mph cutter more the 50% of the time, and only nine pitches (all sinkers) that broke 85 mph, Yarbrough kepth the Jays at bay over 5 2/3 outstanding innings. And it wasn't the first time he'd done this to the Jays, either. A pitcher with a 3.97 ERA for his career, his career ERA against the Blue Jays is a sparkling 2.21.
Sunday: Jays 1 - 0 Rays
▲ The bullpen
You couldn't help but feel like the Jays were probably sunk when their ace, Hyun Jin Ryu, essentially took himself out of the game in the fourth inning of this one. But a string of relievers gave the Jays ace-like results as they cruised the rest of the way, allowing just two hits, one walk, and a hit batter over the game's final 5 1/3 frames. I'm not sure I'm quite where our old friend Griff is at on this...
...but huge credit where it's due, both to Charlie Montoyo and his coaches, and the players. The pitching staff, decimated as it has been by injuries, could easily have been the weak link for the Jays in the early going of this season. Instead they’ve thrived, been an absolute strength, and are a huge reason why the team has managed to hang around .500 and now seem well positioned to take flight with the imminent return of George Springer and Teoscar Hernández.
▲ A lack of errors
Blue Jays fielders committed six errors in their first two games against the Rays. They'd made at least one error in four straight games heading into Sunday's tilt, and committed 11 in the first eight contests of the nine-game road trip that took them to Kansas City and Boston before ending in Tampa. The fact that the Jays committed zero in Sunday's finale isn't exactly an accomplishment, but it sure was nice! And probably necessary, given how incredibly tight the game was.
Did the fact that Santiago Espinal was at third base and Marcus Semien was at shortstop contribute to this? Who’s to say? *COUGH*
▲ A series win at the Trop!
The Jays lost six of nine games against the Rays in Tampa in 2020, including their two playoff losses. Overall, they were 7-21 at the Trop since the start of 2018 heading into this series. We may not be able to quote specifics like that, but we all know that it has been a house of horrors for the Jays for a very long time, so I won’t belabour the point. Any series victory there is a beautiful thing.
▼ The Ryu moment
It appears as though everything is fine, Hyun Jin Ryu won’t need a trip to the injured list for his mildly strained glue, and we can all happily stop talking stressing like we were on Sunday afternoon about… uh… it.
(Shockingly, this tweet was not a reference to Robbie Ray’s pants.)
Still, it was a heart-in-throat moment when the team’s ace had to pull himself from the game in the middle of another excellent performance. Ryu had struck out five and walked just one while allowing three hits over 3 2/3 innings when he left, and the Jays certainly did not need to add him to their already long list of injured and unavailable players. (The sixth longest list in baseball at the time of Ryu’s exit, according to Covers.com, in case you’re counting or weirdly looking to point fingers at the training staff as though rashes of injuries like this aren’t fairly normal throughout the game.)
“I can’t say what I was thinking,” manager Charlie Montoyo said after the game, speaking for every single Blue Jays fan there is.
▼ Danny Jansen’s luck
Don't read that heading and get the wrong impression here. Luck is far from Danny Jansen's only problem right now. But it's one of them.
According to Statcast, based on the quality of his contact, Jansen should have a .168 batting average, a .250 slugging percentage, and a weighted on-base (wOBA) of .223. None of those numbers are good, but his actual numbers — a .049 average, a .073 slugging percentage, and a .109 wOBA — are catastrophic. Out of 299 batters with at least 15 balls in play so far this season, the -0.114 difference between Jansen's actual and expected wOBA ranks 291st.
Now, if you told me that the rules of expected stats didn’t apply in the same way to guys who are producing such poor contact to begin with, I’d be willing to listen. Jansen’s xBA ranks 287th among those same 299 hitters, and his xSLG ranks 289th — both of which are the second-worst marks among Blue Jays hitters, ahead of only Cavan Biggio (297th and 293rd respectively) — so better luck would only do so much for him. But Sunday’s game did feel like a prime example of Jansen underperforming his quality of contact. All four of the balls he put into play were well struck, with the lowest coming off the bat at 93.8 mph and the highest at 105.2 mph. One of them generated an xBA of .690 and another's was .480.
Jansen went 0-for-4 on the day. Again.
▼ Seeing Luis Patiño debut
Other than the utterly baffling choice to throw Biggio a 3-2 changeup instead of more heat, which gifted the Jays a lead-off walk, the Rays’ best pitching prospect was properly terrifying in his big league debut. In the most recent edition of Baseball America’s top 100 prospects list, Patiño ranked 20th — just four spots behind the Jays’ pair of Austin Martin (16) and Nate Pearson (17) — and, unfortunately, he’ll be around to torment us a for a while yet it seems.
Quickly…
• A pair of great pieces from Nick Ashbourne, who last week at Yahoo Sports looked at the role the Jays’ off-season acquisitions have played in their slow start, and here on Monday for Sportsnet dove into some historic defensive numbers to see whether playoff-bound teams can withstand the kind of poor defending the Jays have suffered from so far this year.
• Elsewhere at Sportsnet, Jeff Blair argues that the Jays should be patient when it comes to what they do with Bo Bichette.
• Over at Bluebird Banter, Tom Dakers pivots off of the Richard Griffin tweet I included earlier to offer some thoughts on bullpen management.
• I don’t think bringing in a veteran catcher to supplant Danny Jansen, or send one of he or Alejandro Kirk back to the minors/alt-site is the move the Jays should be making just yet, but maybe we’re getting to that point. Robert Murray of FanSided suggests that Jonathan Lucroy could be someone they’d consider. I don’t think that means anything, and I’m personally inclined to believe that Lucroy is probably washed, but I guess this is where we’re at.
• Pitcher List takes a look at Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s breakout few weeks, and comes away feeling good about the potential for him to become the guy we’ve always hoped he could be.
• Interesting stuff from Zachary Worden of Jays Journal, as he takes a look at some of the best offerings from various Blue Jays pitchers.
• Intriguing stuff from MLB.com, where they’ve posted their first mock draft of the season. In it the Blue Jays, who pick 19th, land a potential two-way player in Bubba Chandler from North Oconee High School in Georgia. "Chandler's become one of the most fascinating players in this draft," they write. "Most feel he belongs on the mound, but maybe there's a team willing to let him hit to feel things out."
I’m of the belief that fun is good, and that sounds like a whole lot of it. We’re still way too far out from the draft to know if there’s anywhere even close to a realistic chance of the Jays taking a player like that, but I’m going to step up and say right now that they absolutely should.
• Elsewhere at MLB.com, Keegan Matheson has his latest Blue Jays Inbox piece up, which reminds me! I’m getting awfully close to opening up the ol’ Blue Jays mail bag again soon myself, but there’s still time to send me a question! Click this link and leave one for me in the comments (usual caveats apply).
The week ahead
• Monday - Off
• Tues. vs. WAS: Max Scherzer (RHP) vs. Trent Thornton (RHP)
• Weds. vs. WAS: Erick Fedde (RHP) vs. Steven Matz (LHP)
• Thursday - Off
Only two games on the schedule this week, which the Blue Jays’ ailing pitching staff is no doubt pleased about. It will, however, be their ailing position players who get the most focus over the next few days, with George Springer likely to finally make his Blue Jays debut on Tuesday, and Teoscar Hernández not far behind him on the road to recovery.
Welcome back, George. Here’s Max Scherzer!
Speaking of Springer’s return, Paul Berthelot of Blue Jays Nation took a look at what the Jays’ lineup may look like once their best player manages to get his season underway.
The Blue Jays a behemoth?
One piece I didn’t link to in the link section up above, but certainly could have, comes from Jayson Stark of the Athletic. Why didn’t I like it there? Well, for one thing, I don’t exactly enjoy sending traffic to the company that decided to no longer employ me. But, more pertinently, it’s because Stark joined Jeff Blair and Stephen Brunt late last week on Sportsnet’s Writers Bloc to talk about the piece he titled “Can the Blue Jays be baseball’s next behemoth?”
Short answer? Yes!
Long answer? Well, for that, here’s a transcription of his segment, with a few of my pithy comments interjected for good measure.
BLAIR: One of the things that I think has really happened here in the past couple of years is, I mean, you used to talk to an agent about the Jays and they'd roll their eyes and they'd kind of you know, they'd go, "Well, big market, they're never really going to spend" and yadda yadda. Casey Close seems impressed by what they're going to do, and he's never a bad guy to impress. Scott Boras is also — we talked about this a little bit in relation to another article that was written — but Scott Boras has also basically said the same thing, that this market not only could be good, but that he thinks that Mark Shapiro is the right guy to sort of mind this whole thing. So I'll just ask you, do you and people in baseball in general view this market as a behemoth?
STARK: Well, I just spent 3,000 words on that very topic in the Athletic. I'm fascinated by the word, in some ways even more than I am the franchise. When Mark Shapiro used that word, Jeff, at the George Springer press conference, I wrote it down. Because it's not a word that you hear people use in baseball a whole lot. Right? I don't dispute the idea that the Blue Jays could be a behemoth, I just was curious whether other people in baseball thought that. And I think the answer is yes. This is a totally unique situation. It's an incredible opportunity for the Blue Jays to carve out a niche that no other market in North American sports is capable of.
BRUNT: Do you think, Jayson, if 2015 and 2016 hadn't happened, do you think that would still be the impression? People seeing park full for the first time since the early 90s, and sensing maybe the national intention that the Jays had. But those two years stand out in kind of a 20 year walk through the desert.
STARK: Yeah Stephen, that's a great question because they gave us all a glimpse of what was possible. Just how the country could get so transfixed by a baseball team. Seven million people were watching playoff games in Canada. Like, seven million people in New York are not watching the Yankees in the playoffs. Seven million is unheard of. There is literally no other team that has a fan base capable of that. It's very possible that Mark and Ross would have done exactly what they've done without that. It's very possible that Rogers would have been willing to go along and do it. But that was a glimpse of the future. You don't get that many chances to see the future. And that's clearly what they're working towards, only more than just two years worth.
Oh, you mean the thing that Jays fans have been screaming at this franchise since the Ricciardi years? That little thing? Yeah.
BLAIR: Yeah, it's interesting hearing you say that, because I do remember Mark also saying, when we had him on at one point, that one of the things that did is it moved it from the theoretical to the practical. Right? In other words, I don't have to tell these guys that 'if we make the playoffs and we do this, these are the numbers.' Here's the evidence. And when you're running a team owned by a company that's publicly traded, it doesn't hurt now and then to be able to make a business case. You know? It really doesn't, right? Like, here are the numbers. I'm not going to tell you guys — these are the numbers, you guys look at it and you figure out if I'm spinning a line here or not.
STARK: Hey, Rogers has owned the team for 20 years, it's pretty clear that they're interested in making money, and that if what the people who are running the Blue Jays are selling is not something they're buying, then George Springer isn't here. Hyun Jin Ryu isn't here. This whole plan is not in place. That's the part that I think people in baseball have been skeptical of. But it really feels like Rogers now is buying into this vision and is willing to go along. Now, I don't know if they'll be willing to spend exactly what it takes, everything it takes, but there is room here for more acquisitions along the lines of George Springer. I think that's clear. There's probably going to have to be some. But if the Blue Jays can get to the point where a marquee free agent, kind of like Springer, is sitting there thinking about, 'Do I want to be a Dodger or do I want to be a Blue Jay? I think I'll be a Blue Jay.' Then you know you've made it.
Well, sure.
Thing is, I don’t think we should let that last little thought take away from the thrust of what Stark is saying here, which is that more and more people in the industry seem to be coming around to the idea that Rogers — and, I suspect, Edward Rogers in particular — have bought into Shapiro’s vision. There’s no real explanation of what happened over the winter otherwise. And, friends, that’s incredibly good.
BRUNT: Jayson, how is Mark Shapiro viewed in baseball? Again, I'd say outside of Toronto. Here it's a very specific situation that has to do with the circumstances of his arrival and all kinds of stuff. But the Mark Shapiro who built his reputation in Cleveland working with a very limited budget, but building a consistent contender there, and then the Mark Shapiro in Toronto who may have a few more toys to play with. What's the take on him in baseball right now?
STARK: One of the best liked, most respected figures across the sport. I don't think there's any question about that. I've never heard anyone in baseball say a bad word about Mark Shapiro. I mean that. You could talk about just about any different occupation within the sport, any front office, any agent, Mark is as professional and understanding and humane as anyone in the game in the way he treats people. As you guys know in life, if you treat people that way you get that respect back, and I think this is the point where what Mark has spent a lifetime in baseball building, he and the Blue Jays now will be rewarded for. Because this is a pivotal point in the franchise where they can take that next step. I'm honestly not sure that they could take it without him and the credibility that he brings in the industry.
Suck it, haters!
BLAIR: This is a hugely theoretical question, but do you see anything coming down the pipe in terms of the CBA that could throw a wrench into things here in Toronto? Like, nothing Toronto specific, but I mean something to do with service time or anything like that. Is there anything you see that in the next CBA could have a drag on things here?
STARK: Jeff, there are so many land mines in this labour agreement, potentially, that it's hard to really sum them all up. I mean, suppose we go through all of this year, or most of this year, and they never play in Toronto, and then next year because of labour there's a lengthy work stoppage that eats up two or three months of the season, or whatever. How much damage does that do? I don't foresee a major change in the economic system, but the union is certainly going to push for one. I can't really tell you where that leads. And there's another area. I didn't get into this in my story, because I didn't want it to be 10,000 words, but revenue sharing. The Blue Jays are in kind of a unique situation because their revenues from Rogers are not clear. They don't get a standard rights fee. So they're not a revenue sharing payer or taker, they're right there in the middle. If baseball decides to compute the revenue sharing formula in a different way — which could happen if the Blue Jays become a major force in free agency and other owners are saying, 'Where's that money coming from?' That could certainly change the equation too. These labour talks are something that everybody needs to watch closely. That goes for you and me and people all over the United States, but especially in Toronto.
I think Stark is right about the fact that significant changes to the current economic system could have a pretty big impact on a Jays team that seems to be going hard in on using the current system to their advantage. And that, I believe, was basically compelled to spend in the first place by changes to the revenue sharing formula that phased the team out of the ability to receive payouts.
I don’t know why anybody except the Yankees and Red Sox would want to stop the Jays from becoming another financial boon to the sport, but Rogers’ willingness to put money ahead of on field results is certainly making other teams look worse by comparison.
(Interestingly, the Padres are another team quite visibly doing that, and they have an unusual market of their own — squeezed between L.A. and the Mexican border, yes, but also the only game in town now that the N.F.L.’s Chargers are gone.)
BRUNT: That's an interesting question. Jeff and I have talked about that off-air, this idea about, as you say, it's not transparent. It's in-house. I assume it's transparent to a degree within the business of baseball, but —
STARK: I don't know. Is it?
BRUNT: Don't they have to disclose, at some level, Jayson, to their partners?
STARK: Well, they're disclosing. I'm not obviously privy to what they're disclosing. I can't say exactly what every team is seeing or thinking. But when they signed George Springer, there was definitely some grumbling out there from teams that said, 'Where is that money coming from?' This was a year where theoretically big market teams were losing, what, $100 million? $150 million? Whatever they were claiming they were losing, and then all of the sudden the Blue Jays were going out and signing a guy who is going to make twice as much as any free agent in the history of the franchise. That's the kind of thing that raises eyebrows from people who pay attention to stuff like that. I have no idea where it's leading, but again, it's something to watch.
BLAIR: Yeah, and it was funny, because I know that Bill Madden had a story in the New York Daily News quoting an unnamed official —
BRUNT: Yankees! Yankees!
BLAIR: Yankees. (All laughing) Sort of discussing that and yeah, the conspiracy theorists will point out there was really no response to that article from the Jays, but they also didn't sign anybody after the article came out. And I had people point that out to me! And I'm going, 'OK, come on, now we're looking for the grassy knoll,' right? I'm not going to verge on the grassy knoll, but it was interesting.
STARK: I'm pretty sure their off-season player acquisition strategy was not based on any Bill Madden column.
BRUNT: I hope not.
BLAIR: I hope not. Now, back in the day there are front offices that would have done that!
STARK: Mets come to mind? (All laughing)
Could I have edited this whole part out? Sure. I don’t think we would have missed a ton of substance if I had. But calling out the Yankees — who absolutely were the likely culprits crying to Bill Madden about the big-spending Jays — while also roasting the Mets? Oh no, that absolutely gets left in.
BRUNT: Jayson, barring some terrible accounting revelation in the next little while, and again, I don't want to talk about collective bargaining, what we're headed into, but this coming off-season for the Toronto Blue Jays, given all the stuff we've been kicking around here, what do you think that's going to look like?
STARK: Well they're going to be major players, I think. They're setup to be major players. A lot depends on what happens now, over the next five or six months, on the field, and how well positioned they are to compete for the biggest free agents, look like that team that's about to become a perennial contender. All that matters, but they're a team with big ambitions, they're a team with plenty of room under the tax threshold. I don't know what's going to happen with Marcus Semien, but there's certainly going to be opportunities to go into the market and sign a big time shortstop, or big time middle infield bat. There's going to be opportunities to sign ace-type starters. This is made to order for what the Blue Jays are trying to build.
It is incredibly, incredibly easy to understand why Jays fans will still, even after Ryu and Springer, be very skeptical of this kind of talk. It’s fair to not believe it until you actually see it. The risk of some big misses is still high. Hell, getting Springer and Ryu signed was far from easy, and convincing players that this team is going to be a perennial contender is going to take years still, I think.
The Yankees and Red Sox don’t have that problem. Free agents know that those teams are always going to do what it takes to win (save for the odd reset like the Red Sox’ current situation), because their markets demand it. That’s just not the case for the Blue Jays yet.
But the more they spend. The more they show not only that they can recite the vision, but that their owner is willing to back up the vision with dollars, the easier that’s going to be. Pushing through the state of inertia that — save for 2015 and 2016 (or, more accurately, 2013 and 2015) — this franchise has lived in for the entirety of Rogers’ ownership may well be the most important part of all this. And — holy piss! — the Jays may already be well on their way to having done just that.
You love to hear it.
Top image: "Canada's Wonderland 077" by Roller Coaster Philosophy is licensed under CC BY 2.0
You had me at Bubba Chandler. That is a 70 grade name.