An ejection, a grand slam, and a meltdown averted: The Jays salvage one in Chicago
On Ross Stripling, Matt Chapman, Alejandro Kirk, Bo Bichette, Lucas Giolito, Guillermo Martinez, Doug Eddings, Santiago Espinal, bullpen issues, George Springer, Yimi Garcia, and more!
The Blue Jays finally pulled out a win in the Windy City, avoiding a sweep at the hands of the White Sox in a game that had something for everyone — even, eventually, pessimists. A 7-0 lead became a 9-2 lead that suddenly became a 9-5 one in the bottom of the eighth, with the White Sox threatening and the the tying run at the plate. A laugher turned into a stark reminder of how urgently the team needs to address its biggest shortcoming — or, at least, the aspect of the team that feels like its biggest shortcoming this week.
So let’s talk about it! Here’s Three Up…
Up: Ross Stripling and Matt Chapman
He doesn't do it with swing-and-miss, he doesn't do it with velocity, but Ross Stripling keeps on doing it. Among 128 pitchers with at least 40 innings this year, Stripling's 2.81 ERA as a starter now ranks 25th. That puts him just behind Jordan Mongomery (2.72), Max Fried (2.77), Zack Wheeler (2.77), and Framber Valdez (2.78), albeit in about half the number of innings. This was just Stripling’s ninth start of the year, but you can't ask anything more than that from a guy who came into the season as the team's sixth, or maybe even seventh starter.
The Jays needed length today — obviously, given the bullpen adventure at the end of the game — and Stripling gave them length. That certainly wasn't a given, especially given the chart from Props.cash — player prop research made easy! — that I used in my post on Tuesday's epic loss, showing how infrequently he'd reached even the five inning (15 out) mark this season.
In this one Stripling went six. And having finished at just 87 pitches could have theoretically given the Jays even more — and maybe should have!
How did he do it? By mixing it up the way he’s been doing all season.
Against right-handed hitters, who comprised the majority of the White Sox' lineup, Stripling generally worked the fastball up and the slider away. He's unafraid to use his changeup to righties, which gives him a pitch that comes in on their hands. He threw just four curves and four sinkers to them, but used the element of surprise, getting called strikes on three of each. He's deceptive, he tunnels his pitches well, and he'll throw any pitch in any count.
Especially fun, I think, is what his pitches with two strikes looked like. There's not a pitch, or even a zone, an opponent can key on. There’s not a pitch or a part of the zone they can avoid thinking about either.
Because Stripling’s stuff isn’t overpowering he wasn’t generally throwing these pitches past guys — though he did strike out five in six innings of work, partly owing to the fact that his chase rate is actually in the 93rd percentile, per Statcast, since he works so well at the edges of the zone. Instead, because he keeps batters on their toes and generally does a good job avoiding spots where the ball can be barrelled, he’s able to limit hard contact. Or, at least, he has been so far this season.
In that same group of 128 pitchers with at least 40 IP, when Stripling has pitched as a starter his hard hit rate of 24.8% ranks 14th. (For context, Alek Manoah (19.2%) ranks first, while Yusei Kikuchi (40.4%) ranks 128th).
Of course, Stripling also had some help in this one, too. Like when in the first inning Matt Chapman started an impossible-seeming double play.
Here we see Chapman charge a the ball as it bounds down the third base line then make an outstanding throw across his body to second base. And not just a good throw, but an incredibly heads-up throw. Chapman was surely aware that Danny Mendick is one of the slower middle infielders in the game — his 26.1 ft/s sprint speed is equal to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s mark — and that Andrew Vaughn (26.0 ft/s) is somehow even slower. Santiago Espinal’s lightning fast turn-and-throw to Vladdy finished off a play that was as pretty as it was ballsy. They could have easily missed both outs, and needed to be perfect. Fortunately, as a defender, Chapman very often is.
Chapman also started a double play in the bottom of the second, and while it was a little more routine, both plays surely helped Stripling settle in for yet another fine day of work. They are both extremely important guys for the Jays right now.
Up: Those beautiful bats
Another reason Stripling would have been able to settle in was that he was getting run support. The Jays were up before Stripling had even thrown a pitch, thanks to temporary leadoff hitter Santiago Espinal working a walk, Bo Bichette smacking a single, and two batters later Alejandro Kirk knocking Espinal home to put the Jays up 1-0.
It would be Kirk again in the third, smashing a middle-middle fastball in a 3-0 count over the wall in left-centre for his eighth home run of the season to make the score 2-0.
Kirk is now up to 151 wRC+ on the season, which at the time of this writing ranks him 14th among 157 qualified position players, and puts him first among catchers. His 2.4 fWAR puts him even with the Cubs' Wilson Contreras for the highest mark among catchers in all of baseball, and in the top 20 of all position players, too. He has arrived!
It was not Kirk who would be the offensive hero in this one, though. White Sox starter Lucas Giolito wobbled badly in the fourth, giving up a leadoff double to Chapman, before striking out Raimel Tapia, then allowing three straight singles — to Gurriel (RBI), Moreno (2-for-4 on the day and slashing .393/.414/.429 for his young MLB career), and Espinal (snapping an Eddings-aided 0-for-26) — to bring up Bo Bichette.
Bo has maybe not put up numbers worthy of his All-Star vote totals this season, but he's looked just about exactly like himself since getting over his oddly rough April. From May 1 onward, he has slashed .280/.337/.476 (130 wRC+), which is very similar to what he did last year: .298/.343/.484 (122 wRC+). With the bases loaded and Giolito hanging on by a thread, I suspect you already know exactly what comes next...
After Giolito reinvented himself following the 2018 season the changeup became a huge weapon for him, helping to propel him toward the lower end of the elite tier of MLB starters. Back in April, Tony Blengino of Forbes graded it the best changeup in the majors. This season, however, he's used it less. Likely because, like everything else he's been trying, success with it has proven elusive.
If he’s throwing belt-high ones right down the middle, like this, I can see why. I suspect he’d like this one back. Bo’s second career grand slam would make it 7-0 Jays, which would be all the runs they would need in this one. Um… barely.
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Up: Guillermo Martinez’s pre-game ejection
We’ll get to the end of the game in a moment, but one of the major talking points in this one was the situation you see above: the lineup card exchange. Lol.
Not sure I can remember if I’ve ever seen such an eventful lineup card exchange, but — as I said after last night’s abomination of an ump show — I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a worse strike zone in my life, either.
I’ll let the words of Sportsnet’s Dan Shulman describe the scene.
The lineup card exchange just happened. This is just moments ago. That's Guillermo Martinez, hitting coach for the Blue Jays. Rarely, as far as I'm aware, Tabby, brings out the lineup card. He shakes Doug Eddings' hand. Eddings is at third today, he had the plate last night, and the strike zone — as everybody who watched the game knows — just was all over the place. And somebody, although that wasn't Eddings — I think that was the first base ump, Lance Barrett, who made the signal — and then Guillermo Martinez gets into it with Eddings. And unless that whole thing was fun and games, and we don't think it was, Guillermo Martinez is gone. He's sticking up for his hitters because of the strike zone last night — and you can find it online if you're one to follow the umpire sites on Twitter. You can find it. And what it looked like online is what it looked like to the eye test last night as well.
So, you’re saying the strike zone isn’t supposed to look like a ghost peeking out from behind a door?? What’s next? Telling me 64% called strike accuracy isn’t very good???
I love that Martinez was still cheesed about this a day later — based on my Twitter feed he was hardly the only one. I love that we know so little about “G” that this is now the thing he’s most famous for by far. I love that he doesn’t normally take the lineup card out, meaning he either asked to do it or the Jays staff had to figure out which of them was going to lay into Eddings.
I love pretty much everything about this. Hell, I don’t even mind that the ejection fetishists out there, who constantly drag Charlie for not getting tossed like he’s some minor hockey coach, are getting exactly what they want out of this season!
And, honestly, maybe it helped.
Not only was Edwin Moscoso’s zone in this game infinitely better than Eddings’ on Tuesday, only one of the game’s 12 strikeouts came on a called strike. More interestingly, Santiago Espinal — who was burned more than any hitter by Eddings’ incompetence — worked a leadoff walk that included two balls that absolutely wouldn’t have been called that way the night before. One was even generous!
“I know some guys were a little bit fired up,” Bo Bichette said to reporters when asked about the incident after the game. Yeah, seems like!
Other notes
• Hey, Blue Jays bullpen. Be better.
• Hey, Blue Jays management. Trade for some relief help already! Yes, you may need to pay a premium, but there are teams that should be willing to sell by now, and while it’s maybe not the ideal bargaining position to be in, this is where you’re at. Sorry! But you’re a win-now team. You know you can’t just keep treading water, you know the swing-and-miss problem at the back of your bullpen isn’t a blip, and you know there isn’t an internal solution riding in to save you.
Oh, and you also know the situation may have just gotten worse.
Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling tweeted on Wednesday evening that the Jays “are still waiting on results from an MRI on George Springer’s elbow,” with an update expected on Friday. Then he added that “Yimi Garcia also wasn’t available today due to left side discomfort. He’ll be reevaluated ahead of the weekend.” Ugh!!!
• That Springer news in Arden’s tweet isn’t exactly great either, obviously. Arden reported earlier on Wednesday that catcher Zack Collins and right-hander Shaun Anderson had joined the club’s taxi squad, presumably with an eye to being thoroughly uninspiring replacements for Springer and/or Garcia, should the news on their health end up bad.
• Before we stray too far from talking about the bullpen here, I would like to point out that, ugly as things very much got, I actually don’t think this one was necessarily as bad as it looked. For one thing, the White Sox’ second run will go on David Phelps’ record, but was largely the result of a “triple” that was really a rare Bradley Zimmer misplay. Not only did Zimmer fail to squeeze a catchable (for him) ball on the warning track, he then couldn’t find it, which allowed the extra base to be taken.
For a second thing, if not for another rare misplay, the Jays could have been out of the Adam Cimber’s blowup eighth inning earlier, avoiding the White Sox’ fifth run and a lot of tension in the process. With the bases loaded and one out, Santiago Espinal failed to make the transfer on a relatively routine double play ball that had been chopped out to second base by Adam Haseley. Everybody was safe, Cimber was lifted, and Trent Thornton had to come in and get two outs — with each batter he’d face representing the tying run.
Unnerving! Though, to Thornton’s credit, he did exactly that. Still, he shouldn’t have had to be in there.
Anyway, Cimber and Phelps weren’t great — miss some bats, Adam! — but they did their jobs a little bit better than I think it felt. It’s probably also worth noting that the White Sox’ third run of the game came on a Jake Burger dribbler that nobody could do anything about! And that other the late-inning run, which was scored in Stripling’s final inning, was very much the result of Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s ill-advised dive at a dying quail off the bat of Luis Robert.
I don’t think you need to feel as bad as you might about how this one ended, is I guess what I’m saying. (Personally, I feel way worse about potential injuries to Springer and Garcia!)
• I hope everyone who can’t stand it when the Jays sit their best players noticed Tim Anderson on the bench for the White Sox in this one.
• Lastly, Nick and I will be back at it on Thursday’s off-day for a brand new Blue Jays Happy Hour! Be sure to follow the show on Callin and come join us live!
Next up:
Thursday, off
Friday, 8:10 PM ET: Jays @ Brewers (Alek Manoah vs. Adrian Houser), TV: Sportsnet One, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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I’ve been reading you since the DJF days, and I think “So, you’re saying the strike zone isn’t supposed to look like a ghost peeking out from behind a door??” may be one of the greatest sentences you’ve written in that time...
Would love to know what Martinez said. There was a bit of backlash out there about what he did, but I think it was fantastic. It's unbelievable how umpires are above criticism.