Bullpen limitations / The 2023 schedule
On Tuesday's win, Kikuchi's command, Zach Pop, Tim Mayza, Ross Stripling, Julian Merryweather, Nate Pearson, Joey Votto, road trips, Aaron Judge, Brayan Bello, Dave Winfield, and more!
The Blue Jays won in a laugher on Tuesday night, beating the Red Sox 9-2 in Boston behind a great Ross Stripling performance, two key at-bats from Jackie Bradley Jr., making his Fenway debut as a visiting player, on either end of an eight-run third inning that saw eight Jays reach base in a row with two outs, and was hilariously capped off by a bases-clearing bloop triple off the bat of George Springer.
Stripling wouldn’t flirt with a perfect game in this one, but once again was incredibly good, allowing just one run on six hits over six innings with only a single walk and six strikeouts to show for it. He continues build his case for a multi-year contract this winter, whether in Toronto or somewhere else.
Part of why Stripling’s next home may have to be somewhere else is purely financial, as the Jays will find themselves in a mini payroll crunch this winter if Rogers is not willing to expand payroll too greatly. That would be less the case, of course, if they were able to get anything of value out of the man who followed Stripling in this game: Yusei Kikuchi.
Phase two of the Kikuchi Relief Experiment took place in the seventh inning at Fenway on Tuesday. It did not go well.
And because it’s Kikuchi, because it’s the bullpen, and because it’s nearly September, we’re going to have to talk about it all. Again. Sort of.
Bullpen limitations
They say there’s a grain of truth in every joke. I have no idea whether that’s true or not, and I have zero interest in making some grand digression into the nature of humour here, but I do think there’s definitely a grain of truth in this one:
Now, obviously anyone who has followed the Jays’ bullpen all season long, or is aware of the talent level of the Jays’ bullpen relative to other bullpens, or simply has eyes, will instinctively know that the phrase “too good” is a real howler. Over the course of this season the Jays' bullpen is in the middle of the pack by ERA, in the bottom third of MLB bullpens by FIP, is one of the worst in terms of fastball velocity, and is middle of the pack by strikeout rate, K-BB%, WPA, WPA/LI, RE24, and FanGraphs' "Clutch" metric.
Putting aside the fact that by ERA the Jays have had a very strong run since the start of July — a fact I addressed in my latest Weekend Up! piece — if you take just about any metric there is, you’ll find several bullpens better than the Jays’.
And yet…
Tim Mayza returned to action on Tuesday, making an improbably quick comeback after dislocating his non-throwing shoulder less than three weeks ago. Getting Mayza back on the roster necessitated demoting Zach Pop to Buffalo. And that’s where things get a bit interesting.
Pop had been optioned earlier in the season, when he was still in the Marlins organization, meaning that an option year on him had already been burned. He has two of those remaining, and they were surely a big part of the appeal when the Jays targeted him at the trade deadline.
I suspect this won’t be the last time we see him shuffled off to Buffalo — especially if he continues to be a bit of a work in progress, which I think is certainly an apt description for him at the moment.
The Jays have been tinkering with Pop basically since the moment he arrived. This had been completely expected. I included a tweet from the Athletic's Eno Sarris in my deadline day piece on the Bass/Pop deal, in which he noted that Pop has "a top-30 slider by Stuff+ that he doesn't throw enough," and suggested that the Jays could get more out of him by having him throw it more. That hasn't actually been what's happened, though.
According to Statcast data from Baseball Savant, Pop's slider usage has barely changed so far. He's thrown the pitch 18% of the time in August, compared to 17% usage on the season as a whole. What has changed is the way he throws it. The Jays have got him throwing the slider a couple ticks slower, which has helped him to add depth to the pitch. He's got two additional inches of break on the slider since joining the Jays. He's also increased his release point slightly, and moved slightly toward third base on the rubber.
Not exactly the plug-and-play "throw your slider more, kid!" fix that we had first thought. And the results have been a bit wonky. Not only has Pop struck out just one of 28 batters faced since first suiting up for his hometown team, he's looked pedestrian when it comes to generating ground balls — his calling card at the time of the trade.
Part of the culprit there, I suspect, is that his sinker is not sinking quite as much, which could also have something to do with whatever he and the Jays are working on.
Long story short, sending Pop to Buffalo to continue working on these things right now makes perfect sense, given that Mayza was ready to return — even if if means depriving the bullpen of one of its really hard throwers. Plus, even if everyone stays healthy, Pop can return in a little over a week, when rosters expand on September 1st.
However, as the tweet above points out, he’s not the only guy who the Jays may be looking to bring up. And the thing about that is, MLB’s changing roster have completely altered September call-ups — even as compared to last season.
Prior to the 2020 season, MLB announced several rule changes, including the expansion of active rosters from 25 to 26, the three-batter minimum for relief pitchers, and the 13-pitcher limit. Because of COVID and the need for extra bodies in 2020 and '21, and the shortened spring training because of Rob Manfred's lockout this season, the 13-pitcher rule didn't come into effect until the middle of this season.
I'm not sure we've all quite yet wrapped our heads around the profound way this new rule affects the game, but one of the consequences of it that will be familiar to Jays fans is the fact that what was once a roster spot that could be used to stash an extra arm and keep a team's bullpen a little more fresh now has to go to a position player. And because teams don't want to take away playing time from their best young prospects, we've seen the rise of veteran role players with one or two useful skills who can simply sit on the bench until needed. Bradley Zimmer and Zack Collins are prime examples of these.
That's been a small change, but also sort of a big one. Tons of fans spent much of this summer struggling to comprehend why Zimmer remained on the Blue Jays' roster and, well, there's your answer.
At the same time as the pitcher limit was originally announced, before 2020 and before the pandemic, MLB announced changes to September call-ups as well. We got a taste of these last year: instead of teams being allowed to activate any player on their 40-man roster, as had been the case in the past, on September 1, 2021, rosters simply expanded from 26 to 28, and there was no limit on the number of pitchers a team could carry.
This year, as Dan Shulman noted on Tuesday's broadcast, when rosters expand to 28, teams will only be able to add one pitcher. That puts the Blue Jays in a bit of a bind when it comes to internal reinforcements.
Right now the Jays’ bullpen is comprised of Anthony Bass, Adam Cimber, Yimi Garcia, Tim Mayza, David Phelps, Jordan Romano, and, of course, Kikuchi.
Anybody that is on a club's 40-man roster or 60-day IL as of midnight on September 1st will be eligible to play in the postseason, so the Jays won't need to make hard decisions on this right away, but in addition to Pop, they've got Nate Pearson, Tayler Saucedo, and Julian Merryweather on track to return from injury soon, along some intriguing prospect arms they could consider adding to the 40-man. In years past we’d have expected to see all of these guys at some point in September. This year we might see several, but unless something catastrophic happens to the guys above them on the depth chart, probably not all at once. And that’s going to make things tricky given that the state of the bullpen at the moment is more quantity over quality.
Of course, it would be absurd to count on Pearson and Merryweather for anything at this point, and if either suffers a setback or simply doesn’t look viable out of the ‘pen — looking at you, Julian — the bottleneck widens pretty significantly.
And speaking of Merryweather, I’m curious to know why he was lifted from his rehab appearance in Buffalo on Sunday after facing just three batters — A matchup thing? The fact that he’d thrown 18 pitches in the inning? — because it’s very easy to fear the worst when it comes to his health. That would be a shame for several reasons, not least of which being the fact that on this assignment he has once again had his tantalizing abilities on full display.
In eight innings of work for Buffalo this month, Merryweather has struck out 13, walked only two, and allowed just a pair of hits. The jump from the minors to the majors is big, yes, but as far as scouting the stat line goes, that's dominance.
And yet if that continues and the Jays think he can really help them, and Pearson — who will be throwing a bullpen here on Wednesday at the Jays' complex in Dunedin — gets on track, what on earth do the Blue Jays do?
Keeping Saucedo and Pop off the big league roster isn't such a big deal if Merryweather is actually healthy and Pearson looks like the guy who ended 2021 throwing big time heat and allowing just one hit while striking out nine over his final five appearances/six innings. But in that dream scenario the Jays would still need to find one more spot for one of those two. They’d probably also want to do so if Pop gets himself sorted, or Saucedo recaptures the form that saw him strikeout 20 in 14 2/3 inning while allowing just a single run earlier this year in Triple-A.
And that, of course, brings us to Kikuchi.
Kikuchi’s second relief appearance did not go nearly as well as the first. If you’re looking for silver linings you can find one in the fact that he didn’t allow a hit, but we’re talking about some pretty tarnished silver right there.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: his fastball command was nonexistent, he walked half of the batters he faced, he hit a guy, and he couldn't even get through a single inning.
It was tough to watch. You can't help but pull for the guy. You can't help but think he was the victim of a little bit of bad luck, as his defence let him down by failing to turn two on what should have been a run-preventing, inning-ending double play. But he made his own luck by issuing four-pitch walks to the first two batters he faced. Following those up with a strikeout and a would-be double play ball was a nice rebound, and if his defenders had turned two we'd probably be thinking at least a little bit differently about the outing. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it would have been the right way to think about it.
After the fielder’s choice, Kikuchi got Bobby Dalbec to swing over a well placed fastball before throwing him four balls in a row. He then battled with Rafael Devers for five pitches before hitting him on the forearm on a 2-2 fastball with the sixth.
He wasn't fixed. He hadn't suddenly found his release point, his confidence, or whatever. He’s still a mess. (He was at least throwing a good percentage of fastballs, though, I guess.)
I’ve written before that burying Kikuchi in the bullpen is the best possible solution to the problem that his performance/contract is creating, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t start getting some seriously cold feet about that idea while watching him on Tuesday night. We can take some solace in the fact that his presence isn’t going to prevent any of the guys currently on the outside looking in from ultimately being added to the playoff roster, but throwing someone straight into the playoff fire without at least a couple weeks to get used to the big leagues is far from ideal. And it’s not like the final weeks of the regular season aren’t without importance either!
Could we see the Jays revisiting Kikuchi’s offer to go down to Buffalo? Might the Jays choose to shut him down early with another phantom injury? The latter would at least allow him to stay with the team through September before being “activated” and made an “extra player” in October, which would mean he could continue to be in the dugout despite obviously being left off of the playoff roster.
Like I say, they don’t have to make these decisions this very minute. But it’s got to be something like that, right? Continuing like this can’t possibly be tenable for much longer, right? Right??
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The 2023 schedule has arrived!
The new collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players union may have nearly cost us an entire season because of the owners’ greed, and may not have addressed a whole bunch of fundamental inequities in the sport, but I suppose I can’t say that it was all bad, because it also brought the sport one step closer to having a truly balanced schedule.
No longer will the Blue Jays be penalized quite as much by playing in what is consistently one of the strongest divisions in the sport! Huzzah!
And so what, precisely, will this new world of slightly-fairer-competition look like? We found out on Tuesday as teams from around the sport released their schedules for the 2023 season.
Here’s a month-by-month look at the Jays’ full slate of games, with some notes on each.
• The Blue Jays will travel to St. Louis to face the Cardinals on opening day, which feels extremely weird. In terms of spectacle, though, there are certainly far worse places to begin a season.
• I understand why there is always a scheduled off-day after opening day in parks that don’t have a roof, because obviously those are some really important ticket sales to most clubs and they don’t want to have to issue refunds if the game gets rained out, but oh man do I hate it. Giving us our first taste of real baseball after a long, cold winter and then immediately taking it away? Sadistic.
• That said, I can only assume that the Blue Jays requested a season-opening road trip just to be sure they have a couple extra weeks to complete the first phase of SkyDome renovations, which will be taking place over the winter. So, with that in mind, I guess I can’t complain too much.
• Opening the newly-renovated building, raising the 2022 World Series banner, debuting Aaron Judge, and hosting their former rivals from Detroit? The home opener on April 11th is going to be a banger. Even if it’s a Tuesday.
• It’s a shame for Tigers fans that this will be the only series their team will play in Toronto this year, because it’s obviously going to be a tough ticket. A shame for Jays fans, too. I’m sure I say this every year, but that really used to be an incredible rivalry, and MLB has let it completely go to waste.
• Kansas City in April, before it gets mind-meltingly hot? That could work.
• Starting in March? Wow, so there’s a chance the World Series won’t go into mid-November I suppose. Neat.
• Celebrate Victoria Day with a visit to the Trop! Ugh.
• Seriously, though. MLB and the Jays and the schedule-makers know enough to make sure the Jays are scheduled at home on the May 2-4 weekend, but can’t give us an afternoon home game on the holiday Monday? Missed opportunity.
• Get ready for a heavy dose of pink on May 14th against Atlanta, as the Jays will be hosting a game on Mother’s Day for the first time since 2019.
• The Jays’ four games with the Yankees in May will be the last time they see their division rivals until September. Who needs ‘em, I say.
• A real gauntlet begins with Toronto hosting Atlanta on May 12th, as the Jays will play 30 times in 31 days from that point on, squaring off against some really tough competition over that stretch: Atlanta (H), the Yankees (H), Baltimore (H), Tampa (A), Minnesota (A), Milwaukee (H)…
• … the Mets (A), Houston (H), and the Twins again (H). Yikes.
• I could think of worse things than an early June trip to New York City. A chance to go see the Jays in Queens rather than the Bronx has its appeal too!
• Head down to Miami from May 19th to 21st in order to catch the Jays and Marlins, and also to scout a bunch of relievers the Jays will be trading for later on in the summer.
• Weird to see the A’s and Giants in back-to-back series that aren’t on the road, but sure. That works. Always novel to see San Francisco here.
• Canada Day against the Boston Red Sox? I’ll definitely take that. But someone please tell the schedule-makers how this country’s holidays work! The Jays will be off on Monday the 3rd, as will most of the country here. Another missed opportunity!
• Chicago then Detroit in mid-July, heading into the All-Star break? Yeah, that’s doable.
• Speaking of the All-Star Game, it will be held in Seattle in 2023. So it’s practically a Jays home game! It’ll probably feel like one, too, given the way Jays fans tend to stuff the online ballot box and get their players into the game.
• I’m sure there’s someone in this country who cares about the Arizona Diamondbacks, so there you go, mate. Enjoy!
• Padres? Sure. Fun. Fernando Tatis Jr. will be back from his PED suspension by then, but I wonder if he’ll be back from his shoulder surgery…
• Here’s something the schedule-makers got right: once again the Jays’ invasion of Seattle will take place on a weekend. Much better than having these games take place during the week.
• Call me a bad fan, because I know that Jays-in-Seattle series is definitely bucket list stuff for a lot of people, and… well… I wouldn’t not go. But if I had to choose between that and Dodger Stadium the next week? I just might pick L.A.
• Another month, another missed opportunity on a holiday Monday. The August long weekend/Civic Holiday/Simcoe Day/Whatever Your Town Calls It Day falls on the first Monday after a Tuesday in that month, which means August 7th, which means the Jays are in Cleveland. Meh.
• Cubs/Phillies back to back? That’s some good uniform action right there.
• The Jays will travel to face Joey Votto and the Cincinnati Reds on the weekend of August 18th, and while it’s maybe a bit premature to be thinking about the end of Votto’s career, there’s definitely a chance he will no longer be there when the Reds come to town in 2024. The Reds hold a club option on Votto for 2024, and it would be quite out of character for them to take it and pay a then-40-year-old Votto $20 million rather than taking the $7 million buyout. It’s probably a good thing that fans in Toronto got to see him make a visit this year.
• On the other hand, maybe Votto will be visiting Cincinnati next summer for the first time as a member of the Blue Jays. I wouldn’t hate it! Or rule it out!
• Then again, the idea with this new schedule is for series against teams in the other league to rotate location back and forth, right? In this case, one year in Toronto, the next in Cincinnati, then back to Toronto the next year. Right?
But… if that was really the case, does this not mean that the Jays will always be visiting these particular cities in odd-numbered years, and always visiting the other ones in even-numbered years? Are we locked in here? What’s up, schedule-makers??
• Hearing good things about seeing a game in Denver. Oh man, and Denver then Oakland? If you like getting high at ballgames do the Blue Jays ever have a road trip for you!
• Holiday Monday check: Blue Jays on the road. Typical!
• Colorado, Oakland, Kansas City, Texas, Boston? I assume all these teams will still suck next year, and that any games the Jays need to make up after whatever sort of listless, miserable first five months of the season will happen here. Don’t throw out your Blue September shirts once you’re done with them this year!
• Not sure how I feel about ending the season with identical weeks of Yankees/Rays, but at least the last six are at home and they’re not finishing at the stupid Trop!
• Oh man it’s totally depressing to think that we have to go through a whole dang winter before any of these games take place! The Jays’ World Series victory will have to tide us over, I guess.
Quickly…
• The Jays send José Berríos to the hill here on Wednesday for the second game of their series against the Red Sox. Boston will counter with Brayan Bello.
Bello has pitched just 17 innings for the Red Sox this season, lasting exactly four innings in each of his first three starts, then going 4 1/3 innings in a relief effort, and lasting just 2/3 of an inning out of the bullpen in his last appearance, back on August 3rd. As you can see in the chart below from Props.cash — player prop research made easy! — he’s certainly been prone to giving up hits. And no team has got to him like the one we see in the middle: the Blue Jays
Back on July 24th, Bello allowed five runs on nine hits and two walks over four innings at Rogers Centre in a game that the Jays won 8-4. I don’t know about you, but I’m up for another laugher.
• I said this on Twitter on Tuesday night, but I love the fact that Dave Winfield will be taking part in the upcoming anniversary celebration for the Jays’ 1992 World Series team. Not to take anything away from any of the other guys, but most of them were Jays for the bulk of their careers, or are best remembered as Blue Jays, and as such you still kind of see them a lot. Winfield, of course, was here for just the one spectacular year. And from how much it meant, symbolically, for the team to have signed a player of his calibre, to Winfield Wants Noise, to that double in the eleventh inning of game six off of Charlie Liebrant, he was an absolute giant. A legend. You know it’s special if he’s going to be there.
• Lastly, Nick and I will be back on Callin with a fresh episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour on Thursday, after the final out of the Jays/Red Sox finale (first pitch 7:10 PM ET).
We’ll be at it again on Sunday, after the finale of the Jays/Angels series. `
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On the broadcast tonight, they said another recent adjustment for Berrios is keeping his hands up during the windup. Wasn’t lowering and keeping his hands at his waist one of the first changes they made when they first traded for him? Probably old age messing with my memory, but seems to me that most of the recent changes to get Berrios right are just undoing all the tinkering they’ve done since acquiring him.
There's no guarantee that any of Pearson/Sausalito Summer NIght/Merryweather will perform well. They might of course, but Merryweather and Sausalito weren't exactly inspiring this year. Who knows what we'll get - if anything - from Pearson.
I think the trade for Mitch White was underrated. If he can give us 5-6 serviceable innings for his starts, then he's saved us from the horror show that was Kikuchi. That will be huge for the remainder of the season. .
Poor Kikuchi, he looks lost and it's looking like a lost season for him entirely. Two more years. Man.